Mongolia -- Day 3 (the Gobi desert, sort of)

The beginning of our grand countryside tour. We were up bright and early to meet our tour group and head out of the city. The tour was six people in total: besides Fig and I, there was a Japanese girl named Miho (from Chiba, near Tokyo), a Japanese guy named Yuichiro (from Saitama, coincidentally also near Tokyo), the tour guide, and the driver.

The tour guide was a really nice woman in her mid- to late-twenties (28?), named Chanaa. Her English was kind of funny, but good enough to do the trick. The driver was a 23 year old crazy man named Ankha, whose English was virtually nonexistent (apart from "Why? Why? Why? Why?") and who provided 90% of all entertainment during our trip. On our way out of UB, he stopped and bought a tape from a freestanding cassette stand (cassettes? REALLY?). It was by a really famous Mongolian singer named Javhlan, who was featured on the front, for some reason in a kayak. Little did we know that this cassette would become so integral in our lives.

Driving through the Mongolian countryside was interesting, but also very soporific to all us passengers who had gotten up early. After some general self-intro (in which we discovered that 22 year old Yuichiro had somehow already been to 57 countries) we all sort of napped. Part way through the morning we stopped for a bathroom break -- the first of a devolving set of weird countryside bathroom adventures.

The place we stopped was a community of perhaps 300 people, and we stopped to use a set of old wooden outhouses by the road. They were next to a tiled building, outside of which we were surprised to discover three girls wearing french maid uniforms, complete with stilettos. Why on earth were they dressed like that, in Nowheresville, Mongolia? And as we watched, more and more of them kept appearing, walking around the building's packed dirt courtyard. What could it mean?!

Back in the van, I asked Chanaa.

Me: Why are they dressed like that?
Chanaa: It's uniform.
Me: A uniform for what?
Chanaa: Uniform!
Me: Like a school uniform?
Chanaa: Yes, school uniform!

WHAT. We all boggled at that for awhile, then napped some more until lunch. Yuichiro slept in the weirdest and most uncomfortable looking positions, with his head wedged between the seats or, a few times, conked out on my shoulder. We of course took some clandestine photos to mark the event.

Whatever lunch was, it was awesome. We had hot tea and some kind of noodles with mutton (Mongolia's meat of choice) at this totally abandoned restaurant. There was a TV in one corner playing music videos, which Ankha settled down to watch. Pointing at the screen, he insisted, "Mama song! Mama song!" After a minute, we realized that it was the same as a song he had pointed out to us earlier in the van, off that very Javhlan cassette. (And so it begun...!)

In the late afternoon, our sleep was well and finally interrupted when we suddenly turned off the paved roads onto no road at all. The van flew along over the bumpy desert landscape, and upon seeing we were awake, Ankha cranked up some techno music and turned on a set of flashing blue lights that he'd strung around the inside of the ceiling. Laughing and dancing and half-falling out of our seats, we had a most improbable moving techno rave through the Gobi desert. (Video to follow!)

At one point we stopped for about twenty minutes to explore some sand dunes. Thanks to the wind, our clothes and skin were immediately covered in grit. Ankha started chasing us around, pretending to shoot us with a stick-cum-machine gun, wrestling Fig (and losing), and carrying me to the edge of a little lake in an effort to throw me in. The whole time, he was grinning and growling and shouting, "Gobi monster!!!" (Which immediately became one of our tour catch phrases. When in doubt, "Gobi monster!")

At last we reached our berth for the night. Tucked in the lee of a mountainous outcropping stood a herd of goats and sheep, and three canvas gers (a.k.a. yurts). One was set aside for us to use, with a wooden floor and several cots. As it turned out, there was another tour group staying in the second ger, almost entirely consisting of Japanese people! At least eight of them. We were seeing more Japanese people in Mongolia than actual Mongolians! Anyway, one of them had a Japanese <---> Mongolian phrasebook, which we used to learn our very first (and most often used) Mongolian word: liar. So when Ankha came back from rustling goats (no kidding) we gleefully declared him to be a "hotarch!"

The bathroom situation continued in its steady devolution. Instead of an outhouse, this homestead had a pit cordoned off by two blue tarps. But the tarps were only waist-high, and formed only two sides of a small triangle, leaving the back of the latrine open. Now, this wouldn't be a huge concern had they positioned the tarps against the outcropping. But for some reason, they had positioned it sideways, leaving your backside open to the plains. We had to go in groups to use it, so that at least one person could keep an eye out for any approaching goat herders about to get a surprise eyeful.

After we threw our stuff inside the ger and got a quick look around, it was time for a camel ride! We went in pairs, me and Fig first. The camel guide was a wizened little Mongolian man who had to be at least 65, and spent most of the hourish-long ride singing Mongolian folk songs. The countryside was breathtaking, all wide desert and craggy mountains and grassy plains. We found out that "batok" is evidently the word for baby camel, as we were being followed by an adorably gangly baby camel that tried to eat Fig's boot. The singing guide kept pointing at it and happily exclaiming "Batok baby!"

Chanaa made us all the Mongolian version of chicken noodle soup for dinner, taught us a complicated card game called Camel that involved giving each other piggy-back rides, and then Ankha renamed everyone. Apparently, Miho resembled a Mongolian friend of his, so he decided just to call her by the same name. Then, he gave the rest of us Mongolian names for good measure.

Miho = I forgot, actually...something like Zolha (a common girls' name)
Yuichiro = Boma (a common boys' name)
Fig = Ulanaa (meaning "red girl," because her cheeks were flushed)
me = Tsetsgee (which is a kind of flower. Pretty good deal for me!)

Then we played around outside for a while. There was a totally cute and incorrigible dog named Sara that kept chasing us around, we took photos of the moon, and Ankha was full of mock threats about the Gobi monster. That light in the distance? Gobi monster! After we go to sleep? Gobi monster! Sara? Definitely Gobi monster!

It's a wonder any of us could sleep with that dire threat hanging over our heads.