Ari's Planet

When the sun sets over Khongor sand dune, it is setting across your heart that has been stolen by an open land. Khongor, my sweetheart. You do not really understand how beautiful the land is until its company, across the vast open vistas, is sufficient unto itself.

Stop, stop the van, I want to say at each bend, turn, appearance of a distant ger, a bird, a herd. This is not what I signed up for, we would go nowhere, months would be spent surveying the landscape, begging it to yield its visions. The van bumps along. My camera slams into the dusty window, desperate, it won't cooperate, this is no place for fine optics, they do not mix with the dust collected on old russian windows. A few hours on and my butt has reached the same conclusion about the old foam, which no longer does much, if it ever did, to cushion the ride across the dirt road. A few days of this are sufficient to convince: the only way to see this land is alone on a motorcycle, camera, tent, stove.

Most important on any such trip: some Mongolian. Our guide and driver do not carry a flashlight. A single candle, found in a ger, is enough to cook dinner. Starlight and a single double-ended fixed wrench are enough for attempted car repairs. Maybe a few warm clothes and some Tugrugs, but next some Mongolian is the key to opening the door to the people who live sparsely across this giant land. I can tell they want to talk, as do I, but a phrasebook is useless for conversation.

All trips should begin well. That means that anything that can go wrong, should at least go wrong at the outset, and all major catastrophes should be reserved for a future that never arrives. I had left my special battery pack for my camera at home, but had 4 rechargeable batteries, plenty if electricity is available. Several days of wandering yielded an inverter, for converting the 12V DC of a car to 220V AC, for charging camera, phone, MP3 player. There we are, doing the usual rounds of UB: to the driver's home to bid farewell to wife and new daughter, to friend to pay off debt, to gas station. The subject of electricity comes up and I say, not to worry, I have an inverter. A short discussion with the driver ensues, at which it is revealed that the lighter jack in the car doesn't work. Oh, maybe I should have brought that battery pack! Minor. We drive and drive. The sun is setting, we are on rough dirt roads, bumping along. We come to a stream crossing. The driver won't go over the bridge--too rickety, opts for a wallow through the muddy gully. Oh, we're stuck. Uhhh, at an angle. Everyone out. It's chilly. My jacket is in the car. It's good and stuck. The driver finally goes for some help at the tourist ger camp next to where we are good and stuck. We can see some discussion. A few minutes later they come with a truck and pull us out. We decide to stay there for the night. We got stuck just a few kilometers from our destination. Our trip is off to a great start!

The next morning we drive the few kilometers to the [NAME] monastery. Nara tells us how the location was chosen. A few hundred years ago the Chinese emperor ordered a monastery built. Soldiers rode all over the country looking for a suitable location. They came to this site and found two children playing. The soldiers asked them what they were playing at, they answered "at building a temple"; they named the temple after the two children. A chalk outline marks the location of a ceremony. Inside, the temple has seen better days following Soviet rule, but is now being restored. New roof tiles are scattered about. Children sweep the grounds. Nara talks about some of the Budhist deities; there are many. Small sculptures are made of painted goat fat. We walk back to the car, Sagi and I do some Mongolian wrestling (there is no ground wrestling, once your body touches you lose). I notice the bulging wear spot on one tire, Sagi says it is good for 3000 km more. An hour later we have a flat. Another hour and we pull in to have the tire repaired.

An attraction not mentioned in the tour description are the many small towns we will visit on our journey. Each day, between 1 and 4 pm, we arrive at a town to eat lunch and get supplies. Towns are dusty, grimy places. Tall fences delimit each houshold. Latrines may litter the landscape, filling the air with their quality odors. The number of annoying drunks varies. Eating lunch means finding a suitable restaurant, meaning not nearly too dirty and having at least one dish (of the two available) that we might want to eat. The food generally consists of a soup and and a noodle dish. The soup is always called vegetable soup, and this translates to some water, fat, mutton, noddles, cabbage, carrot, and lots of garlic. The noddle dish translates to noodles, fat, mutton, carrot, garlic. Pancakes may be available, which translates to fried dough, fat, mutton. Sometimes beef makes an appearance, and even rarer is goat. After a while, one does not really want any more fatty mutton, but that is all that is typically available. Ordering food tends to take at least an hour, even in joints labeled "fast food". Some towns have electricity and after a few days we discover that we can use lunch hour for some quick-charging of our electronics. Mongolian power strips are actually a bit better than their American counterparts, and even have universal sockets (so US plugs work directly, and even better, than the rounded Mongolian plugs). After lunch we hit the stores. Stores, labeled "shop", or if bigger "supermarket", invariably stock the same quality goods: a wide selection of candies, chocolates, sugary drinks, a few odds and ends, soap, toilet paper, some water bottles. The girls always get tons of candy (too much sugar!) I always worry about having enough water. Finally, 2-3 hours later, one leaves the dusty town behind. Truly, an experience you will not be able to miss.

We sleep in a herders ger. The residents move next door for the night. I sleep on the floor. It smells of animal fat. All night I can hear yaks walking about the ger. The stars are brilliant. At dawn, a short walk. Wasn't there a stream in the next valley? A horse in the distance, perfectly framed, picture after picture. Closer, and I see there is a saddle, where is the rider? Finally, I see him, crouched, with a gun; I stop taking pictures, the light is perfect. A pop as the rifle fires. I say hello, which is all the Mongolian available to me. He walks over, I'm a tourist, he indicates he's hunting marmots. What is that? My tripod, for the camera. Can I take his picture? Yes, a lovely stiff portrait. He walks back to his horse. The light is perfect, I want to take more pictures, I am a stranger with one phrase, he has a rifle. I watch the light surround his del (traditional coat) as he mounts and ride toward me, and I know each step is a perfect portrait of a man in a vast land. He reaches, dismounts, offers a ride back to the camp. I decline, my destination is the blue stream just a minute's walk away. He rides off, in the opposite direction of the ride proferred. I reach the blue stream, it is dry. We leave a box of chocolates with the herder whose ger we slept in.

A few more days, and my ears, which previously were as excited as the rest of me, have decided that the sounds in a confined van can be overly repetitive, tedious, distracting. I am lucky in my traveling companions, easygoing, friendly, though they chat a lot, in Dutch, of which I understand coowin (cows) and lakker (good, or something like that). My Mongolian driver could qualify for a race across Africa. His old wobbly tape deck with its tinny speaker has played his favorite Mongolian songs dozens of time.
A pop song, with the chorus Boys Boys Boys, echoes and bounces within my mind, which feels like it is fusing with the squeaky metal of the van. Mongolian conversations between the driver and tour assistant, seemingly endless Dutch chatter on my side. I sleep uneasily, afraid my skull will entertain itself with one of the protruding metal hooks scattered around the van.

The lake is deep, blue. Khovsgulnuur. We went north first, to catch the lake before we imagined it would be too cold. In the morning, women come to sell their wares. Gloves from camel hair. A jacket. Woolen hat. Games from ankle bones, to tell fortunes, to pass the time. If you cast them enough, all fortunes willbe yours. The bones all look the same to me so I buy a couple of necklaces. They bring our six horses in around 11 am, as promised. Jimmy explains how to ride in 5 minutes. He explains how they find them, like hunters. Many join to help. The horses are released afterwards so as not to tire them out before winter. His voice, do his horses know how he cares for them? They are unshorn, they run in the wild all their lives. Ochico is our guide, Nara rides with us. We ride up a hill, we ride along a river that is quiet and dry today. Heavy overcast, in the distance rain. Ochico, in his green del, contrasts with the white stones of the river, the dark clouds. My backpack with my camera bounces, I want to stop, capture this, but I have the slowest mount, I am the least experienced, is my butt more sore than my legs? Why won't this horse keep up with the others. They trott, Ochico comes back to choo my horse along (choo is Mongolian for "move stubborn horse!").

Wow, riding is fun, uncomfortable. How do you know if your horse is stubborn or just taking a pee? We ride up, past a herd of yak, two gers between them a satelite dish, in the wilderness of the mountains. We ride down the hill, through a soft quiet forest. My strap breaks, Ochico makes a quick repair with some rope. We arrive at the ger camp by the lake. My back aches, I am tired, hungry. The girls say I did not relax, I am happy I managed to trott at all! Sagi was supposed to follow, but I left him with a bottle of vodka. Finally, he drives past our camp, then corrects his mistake and arrives, late. Nara gave us some dinner from the hosts stock.

The next day we hang around camp. I watch them milk the yaks. Sitting in the ger with the family, watching them make butter, separate the curds, talk. Everything happens in the ger, one person next to another. Westerners would feel claustrophobic, they are accustomed to it. Ochico is quiet, Sagi cannot stop talking. In the afternoon we ride for a couple of hours to a large tourist camp by the lake. My knees ache, so I ride back. Esther gives me some good tips, on galloping, relaxing the knees. Maybe I'll get this galloping thing down sometime. She says, when I get back home, not to say I'm an experienced rider, the horses here are so good it is easier to ride them. I answer, I don't need to say I'm experienced, only that I rode horses in Mongolia.

On the third day we ride back. Nara rides in her beautiful new blue silk del. Along steep trails, along the edge, falls to the blue lake below would be fatal, I trust my horse. We stop for a break. I dismount, my knees do not hurt, I can run, walk. I am so happy, thank you Esther for the tips! We ride back to town. My horse gets more excited as we near his home. I hold him back, not ready for galloping. Riding feels better, though. Did I mention my knees didn't hurt, hardly ache at the end of the ride?

A small volcano next to White Lake in central Mongolia. We ride our horses the short distance. Trees, their pine leaves changing color to yellow. A lava field, dark, a clear sky, not a cloud. Skeletons of dead horses lay white and bleached. The cone of the volcano is red, we walk up the last few hundred meters. Behind us vistas of bright yellow trees, dark lava rocks. We go inside the cone, as if we entered an ant lion's den. A few trees hold on to the steep slopes, a pool of water at the bottom reflects, is divided into light and dark by the shadow, the light.

In the morning, I wake for the dawn, walk down to the water. Mist rests on the still lake, the yellow sun has just risen over the hills. A horse and a cow graze across the mist. Electric poles stretch away, lit by the sun. Birds take flight. A man walks, puffing mist or smoke, to retrieve his horse. The ger camp is waking up. Smoke streams from a ger in the nearly still air.

Later that day we ride our horses, this time to a ger camp nearby. Our horses gallop, finally I can gallop too, if a bit roughly. We reach a small gap, will my horse jump? Too late now, I relax, hold on, but he just runs right over it, confident. We approach the herd, our horses speed up, they are excited to see the other horses. My sand-colored mount listens: choo once, he moves, choo twice, he trots, choo thrice, he gallops, choo again and he goes even faster. The saddle is firmer, more comfortable. I like my horse for this day. We reach the camp, sit down. Offered milk tea, a pile of yak butter and buttery bread. I grab a big chunk of butter, now what? It's in my hand, I will have to eat it. Oh, take some bread, well, at least it is more palatable that way. The father sits, smokes, his son helps to translate, read in our phrase book. Awkward. A sip of watery, homemade vodka proferred from an old cooking oil bottle. A shiny kettle, smoke rises to the drying yogurt hanging from the ger's ceiling. The woman of the house busies herself cleaning. The smoke and the people, hard yogurt, the beauty of this is not simple. One the ride back the stirrup straps chafe, it feels like my leg is being cut into, it is only some surface chafing yet enough to make galloping too uncomfortable.

In the afternoon I walk back to the volcano, an hours' walk from our camp, arrive at that magical time. Where were those skeletons? I find a horse skull nearby. The sun is setting, a sundog rainbow appears, the trees glow yellow, the bones of the horse were picked clean long before, what animals rearranged them into the hollow? Marmot holes. A man drives up on his motorcycle, rifle slung over his shoulders. He is friendly, wants to chat, lights a cigarette. What is that? A tripod, for the camera. He is out hunting marmots. No picture. Communication is too limited, frustrating. He drives off to the valley, to his ger home. I sit, the waxing half-moon has risen, wind moves through the yellow trees, the lava rocks that were born of the volcano. The beauty of this too is not simple, but it is sufficient.

The herder is watching me. We have been driving, as usual, all day. We arrive at the hot spring in the last half hour before the sun sets. I burst out of the car, a perfect herd of horses is standing there, the sun is blasting the trees behind them. One of the horses moves along, is silouhetted, I am relieved to have a photograph that day. Finally, as the light changes, it is time to bathe in the hot water. Another tour group is there, representatives of the English speaking world. I can talk English to men for a few hours. The stars penetrate the mist rising from the water. The talk is the same, but different, their language is like the Dutch of the girls, the whinnies of the horses, the light of a brilliant planet blasting its way through the cold at 5am on a restless night.

Only 70 years, but the stones look like they have lain smashed for two thousand. I am spoiled, corrupted by archaeological restorations. [NAME], a buddhist monastery, was destroyed by the Soviets in 1937 when they decided Buddhism had to be rooted out of Mongolia. Now all that is left of the vast complex is a quiet place of broken mud brick walls and a few artifacts displayed in a museum in a ger tent. Additions have been made recently. A new building is used for ceremonies. A monument lists the names of monks killed in the purge, a small platform is used for summoning. The full moon shines through the platform as the sun sets. Several tourist camps surround the old monastery. We sleep in the Gobi desert in a ger warmed by camel dung, by a stream, a quiet ruined monastery. I reckon by the full moon it is the first night of Succot, I can see stars through the ger's roof.

In the morning, our driver, Sagi, becomes our doctor. One of us has a bad case of bowel problems, complete with cramps, headache, a mild fever. They don't like antibiotics. Sagi orders two tablespoons of warm cooking oil, followed by hot water with salt and sugar, then he rubs her stomach clockwise with warm oil for 10 minutes, a finally wraps her abdomen tightly in his del's satch. She feels better immediately. Not cured, but the symptoms are temporarilly relieved. Sagi already helped me. A couple of days before I had classic food poisoning combined with constipation, slept poorly, wanted to vomit. He wrapped my abdomen tightly, offered concern, empathy. Along the way we stop, I heave, he rubs my back, finally the ugly meal is disgorged, he and Nara help me. I feel better, my color returns. I understand viscerally when our friend says she feels better afer Sagi's minisrations.

A camel's gait changes when it touches sand, shortens. Its broad pads spread, it ignores us, lunches on stiff woody shrubs, trots to catch up. A young camel, its leg injured, makes a plaintive call to its herd, sauntering off in twilight. Animals tell their stories. A conversation between the leading camel, just splashed through a stream, with the follower, not wanting to cross, holding up the whole herd, staying my finger on the shutter. At dawn, horses, not camels, with their own ways of eating, sorting out differences. A young goat, kneeling to see their shimmering outline in the rising sun before my companions steal me from this place, approaches, wags its tail, its eyes are slits, do we each know what we are?

On the last day of our mad drive across the rutten dirt roads of Mongolia we passed through a plain filled with eagles, hawks, raven. Dark phase, light phase eagles sat along the road, soared in the sky, perched on electric poles, rested by narrow streams. An eagle, startled, climbed, hit our windshield, gone without a trace. Swirling dust devils moved across the valley, here, there, all around. If one steps into them, would one lose one's mind? Would we find out? Watching the swirls, one thinks ones mind is not sufficient to the task of being lost.