Tsaagan Nuur

I regret not writing for a few days, but it has been with good reason. It's been too damned cold for me to write, let along take a shower (if one existed) or even wash my face.

The second night of staying with another local family was splendid - Renchen knew of a shaman who was living outside of Tsaagan Nuur. We arrived at his house late in the afternoon, and while we waited for him to return, his daughter served us salted milk tea and bread. We watched sumo wrestling on their television. I was 3 days away from the nearest proper town, and they had a satellite dish! There was a solar panel that recharged a car battery during the day, which allowed them to have the TV on. All of this in a house that was made of timber, and had birds flying in through the cracks in the ceiling.

The shaman never showed up, but one of his sons did. He let us into the extra ger, and we had the place to ourselves. The ger was purchased in the spring, so all of the vibrant orange and blue colors hadn't faded. The ger was beautiful. Renchen, Olongerel, and I stretched out inside, and started a roaring fire. We were talking about life & women while we worked on a bottle of vodka. It was a great time to bond with these guys - I felt like we had solidified our relationship. I had a blissful night of sleep - there were no dogs or senile old men to wake me up.

On our last day in the Darkhad Depression, we spent most of the day driving south. As we were bouncing across the landscape, I thought about how much fun my brother & father would have on their ATVs. The steppe is splayed out in front of your eyes, and it stretches to the horizon. With enough gas, you could ride all day and not come across any vehicles, and probably a handful of people on horseback. Even though I was spending about 7 hours a day in the jeep, the landscape and daydreaming seemed to fill the voids.

We found a family to stay with outside of Olgiin-something-or-another. When we walked into the ger, a mother and her son were there. Her husband had taken the horse into town to visit someone earlier int he day. We cooked dinner in their ger, and then Olongerel and I headed outside to hang out in the jeep. I felt uncomfortable about staying with this family - while the woman let us inside and feed us, I felt it was more out of custom than friendliness. I learned that this was her nature, as she acted the same way when her husband arrived. He was quick to chat with us, and suddenly I no longer felt like I wasn't welcome. He had the most questions out of all of the Mongolians that I had interaction with - he was asking a lot of qualitative questions about my view of Mongolia, and why I had decided to visit. I had a great time talking to him, although I wish I could have communicated without Gege translating.

While we were packing up our gear, a young boy came over and asked if we would take his sister back home. Home was about 70km away, and it was on our route. Renchen & Gege has for my permission (since I was paying for all of this), and I gave them the nod. We picked up a 13 yr old girl, along with a giant barrel full of loganberry jam! I was astounded by the situation - her mother was sending her off with three strangers. There isn't electricity, let alone telephones for the girl to call her mom to inform her that she has arrived safely. After all of the press coverage on pedophiles in the US, I felt panicked that everyone was so trusting. Maybe I'm overlooking the facts - this family is poor. The girl needs to go to school the next day - they don't have any vehicles. They have no money to pay someone to take her home. They have to finish harvesting berries, as that will probably be their main source of income this month. Regardless of the reasoning, I was awestruck by the situation.