An adventure of a lifetime....one of many. The Hovsgul Trip!

August 27, 2010. Nayra’s Café. Mongolia. (i waited to today to post)
Today’s Quote: “Shut up and take my money!" -Phillip J. Fry

Lets start with some photos of before i went on the trip, including my move to a ger...

Ah Mongolia. Only you could take the Soviet design, arguably the ugliest buildings on the planet and make them beautiful


Time to Move...


Thats the van we usually use to shuffle between two towns. I got a lot more stuff than i thought, we filled that sucker up!


Setting up that fire port


Well it really happened...all my bitching and whining and i ended up with everything i wanted. I REALLY need to learn from this for future events in life!


It even gets morning and twilight sun!



So the Hovsgul Nuur trip began back around July 20 or so. It began in UB. I had preparations to make. I had the tent, but I needed a sleeping bag. I just could not bring myself to lug that stupid -20celcius sleeping bag Peace Corps gave me that I have used once. No I instead walked into the “Flower Market” made a bee line for the camping equipment and found the absolute cheapest piece of garbage sleeping bag I could find. Ten thousand tugriks got me something that resembled a blue tarp that you could see through. So a half assed tent and a half assed sleeping bag. Do I know what specific places to skimp or WHAT????
Next up I needed a bus ticket to travel to Hovsgul (the town of Moron…you read correctly) So as I am about to leave my guesthouse for that bane of my existence known as the Dragon Market located in the industrial center on the edge of the epic sized town of UB, I bump into a Spaniard, and Englishman and an Italian (as would be expected) They want to camp, and they hear Hovsgul Nuur rocks, but they did not know how to get there…guess they are coming with me!
So we load into a taxi and split the cost it takes to get to that bus station. We go inside and all hell is breaking loose. The bus station is a madhouse on a good day. Its not a good day! People frantically shuffling, shouting at one another, seeming to think that if they are annoying enough they can cut in line (they can) I begin by trying to find which of the seven windows selling tickets is the ones that sell it to Moron. No signs anywhere, and people waiting in line are far too impatient to try to understand my Mongolian, so after standing in the shortest line for ten minutes I finally get to ask the lady at the counter of that line if shes the right one. Shes not, but to get me out of her site shes unfortunately stuck with the painstaking task of pointing out which line I should go in. After she had done so I should have guessed, the corner aisle which is particularly full and bustling.
So armed with my glorious Mongolian I put my stuff down and ask my newfound cadre of multi-European ethnic entourage to watch my stuff while I buy our tickets for tomorrow. I figure if they plan to rob me I at least have their passports and the money for three Hovsgul tickets of theirs. They can have my smelly shirts. Seven people are in line. By “line” I mean that there are seven people who from the window descend one way out. Ten other individuals (all male, mid aged, kinda fat, sunglasses on indoors, tough professional suits on…the kinda people that if you judge them at face value you shout DOUCHE!!!) are throwing their money and passports through the tiny window and shouting destinations. The woman behind the counter works at the pace of a government paid worker. Emotion and commotion long since unaffecting her. Good for her.
We made no progress. Two hours passed, three people were served. Something about the combination of one guy at the front buy tickets for the entire Mongolian army to travel to fifty destinations and the woman being unable to read passport numbers and just the good old fashioned its hot and im gonna work slow work ethic. I ran myself through my meditations and kept constantly checking my pockets as the people kept bumping and rubbing against me. Remember…we don’t change barring gross trama…and I hate lines and rude stupidity as much before I got here as I do now, but when I wait in America in the future that hardship and relativity to this place wont hold a candle to situations like this. Im gonna be like Yoda, if Yoda wasent green and tall and didn’t have the Force and all that.
So literally after three hours im next in line, the guys not in line but trying to shove/cut are eyeing me. GRINGO!!!! Is being shouted mentally by them all. If theres anyone to push out of the way its me. The teenager in line in front of me finished and I slide into the window place. I knew the guy who was gonna try to knock me out from the very beginning. He was one of your typical biggish and well rounded Mongolian men and he pushed, not lightly either. Grabbed the front of my shoulder and tried to pull me back so he could slide in. I had seen it coming, and I got the grip, with my right hand I held the money and passports and with the left I locked myself down on the sill between me and the cashier. The dude found me not budging and and tried again, and with that second pull I twisted my body around to look right in his eyes and with a sharp bark I said the only word you can say in this situation “HOARSH!!!” (HEY!) I caught him off guard, and my stare was tempered by the long line wait and a year in this country. I was still gambling because in essence this could be taken as a challenge and I had no intention of fighting this guy if he chose to stop pulling and start hitting. But luck finally caught up and the guy let go of my shoulder after a moment and as I turned back to the still glass eyed bored cashier drenched in sweat and uncomfortable in so many ways I said in the most polite and formal Mongolian I have ever uttered: “Four tickets to the capital of Hovsgul if you please”
I had drenched my clothes in sweat doing this, but I had the bloody tickets!
So the next morning I wake up in my guesthouse and I do something I don’t like to do. I gambled on trust. The guesthouse I usually stay at knows me pretty well by now, and I know them. But I had a laptop. Now I could have gone to the Peace Corps office and asked for a storage cubical for the month or something, but in the end I just relied upon my Guesthouse not stealing or losing my laptop for a month. Its not irreplaceable per say, but it does have files on it that had I lost them I would have once again lost a large chunk of my creative talent. That had happened to me long long ago, before I had lost my muse, and it sucked balls….but im ready to try trust again!
I packed up the backpack with everything I was bringing and a small day bag filled with my needed electronics and whatnot. It was a lean amount of gear ladies and gentlemen. You see, I imagined me riding a horse with the big bag on my back and whatnot and so I would find myself needing to keep it light…but im getting ahead of myself ill tell you it then. The point is the bag was light.
I sat at Nayras for a little bit killing time until my bus at Dragon Center left and tried to once again get myself all calm again. It did not go well. As usual in retrospect it is very hard to remember what it is exactly that I was worried about. Robbed, killed and hurt come to mind. The alone thing didn’t help, but as usual it did afford me the great luxury of traveling where I wanted, when I wanted and in the way that I wanted.
Freedom…I discussed that word and how I came by it a long time ago. It seemed to apply most right then and there.
So after worrying myself up, I said a few final txt farewells and got on a taxi to Dragon Center, and once again got overcharged being driven to the worst part of UB.
I got there and…waited. Nothing for it, I had to be early to be sure they didn’t give up my seat and the only way to do that is to do as Mongols do. Sit for long uncomfortable periods of time at and around the bus as we await some old guy who cant be bothered to be there at the same time. The bus itself was sorta a hybrid of the Russian jeeps that look like they are built to withstand nuclear fallout and a regular tourist bus. It can probably hol around 15 bodies comfortably. Its gonna hold over 40… (what are you new at this?)



The trio show up bringing enough gear to supply the Romanian army. There gonna be there three bloody days! Ah well, so the bus finally took off.


Next to a rather fat woman but at this point that’s the least of all troubles you can encounter in traveling in Mongolia.
Six hours or so passed. Little of note. Bump bump bump….ow ow ow…and so on. Then the storm was there…
Ive seen summer storms in my day, but that storm was scary as hell. We were off road by now as well. The whole bus was worried. It was one of those storms that blacks out the sun…like night time blackout and whatnot. Bus didn’t even break stride. We plowed through. The storm was fast and furious, and the bus is definitely NOT watertight. Ah well, add it to the pile of discomforts. The storm passed and a tire exploded. Spent the next hour collectively standing around outside while we fixed that.
Then night fell and everyone found a way to sleep. I can understand why boundaries don’t exist on Mongolian buses. We simply need to rustle up against one another until we finally find some variation of comfort to fall unconscious. We don’t sleep, its just a state in which our bodies barely register the passing of time. My personal favorite way is how I used to sleep on school buses (it took my little bus an hour to get to my high school…long story) Its where you turn your body into a U and prop your knees up on the seat in front of you and sink down until the sheer amount of space locks you in. Its not exactly great on your spine, but hey…I fell asleep!
Next morning we woke up, and the terrain was different. More rivers and forests, sorta like Dadal, but there were subtle differences even from that area. We crossed a bridge/ferry and oddly the roads started to get a little better. We passed the sign for Moron and found ourselves over two hours away from the city (the city encompasses the area around it…TEASE!!)
So then after a somewhat NOT horrific trip we crossed over a hill and Moron was there. Moron is interesting. Its built like a modern city in the center of a depression. Its back is not to any specific mountain like most Mongol towns and cities and to see a city of tens of thousands that expands out in every direction and then after one block just drops off into countryside is an amusing site to see. What can I say, im easily entertained.



So we hop off the bus and it’s a bunch of Monogolians and me and the trio. Were obviously en route to Khatgal at the base of Hovsgul Nuur. Dudes run up and start using broken English to say “Okay you come with me” and all that good stuff. I break out the Mongolian and ask a price. First I had to get them to stop asking for Dollars and instead ask for Tugriks and then I had to break the news that im not a Mongolian tourist nor an idiot. Thirty thousand tugriks for a fracking lift. I get they are in this to make money, but the minute I opened my mouth and started speaking Mongolian it should have been obvious they should stop wasting time and just charge me the standard 7000 tugriks to take my ass there. Well that didn’t happen and as the only Mongolian speaker I had to do all the arguing. NOT my favorite job, especially after seventeen hours on the road, but eventually I got the rate and the vehicle to take me and the trio. We loaded up and went through another long and painful drive on a well weathered road to Khatgal. There was probably some beautiful scenery along the way but mostly I was so impatient to see the Lake that I missed it. Theres a road project underway to make a decent gravel road between Moron and Khatgal, but they had only gotten to the stage of dumping out piles of gravel along the way. It was a tad annoying to bang along the grass and hills while looking at a pile of gravel that will one day be a comfortable road for so very many.
Anyways….another uncomfortable car ride later, we pulled up on the park…oh wait though, first the car started to smoke. Not in an overheat type way from the hood, but from under the seat of the driver himself the car bellowed out copius amounts of smoke.


Ill give the driver credit, he stopped once. He looked at the engine piece under his seat, tapped it with a hammer once or twice. Started the car back up, and again the car started smoking. However, as the vehicle still worked he just drove us along. How amusing. We had to pass a checkpoint to enter the park, and I imagine that a smoking car wouldn’t be allowed in the park so as we came down the hill to the checkpoint he killed the engine and coasted through the checkpoint, even waving at the guard as we passed, and then turned the engine back on. Ah…sneaky
So we get to Khatgal and get dumped at the gas station. By now the trio were a little cranky as well and demanded to be taken directly to the lake. They didn’t seem to grasp that Khatgal is on the river at the base of the lake, and I was in no mood to instruct or complain, so I just let the do their thing. I walked towards the town and flagged down the first walking white guy I saw. “Sup dude, you know where the guesthouses are?” The dude didn’t even flinch. Just pointed in the direction he had been walking from and said “try Bonda Lake Guesthouse” So I did. Its funny who things work themselves out.
The guesthouse was right over at the river, and was obviously a staging area for those destined to horseback ride and whatnot. I go through the gate and ask the sweet ladies “Or bahn uu?” (Have you got a bed?) They give me my own ger with a king sized bed in it for 4000 tugriks a night. That’s under three dollars a day. Good gods I love this country. So I get some of the best sleep of my life on that bed and eat up a lot of the day. Finally I find the owner later that night. Hes Bayara. Dude knows his stuff, especially English. We were both very proud of our language skills though so our conversation was a Mongolian speaking in English and an American speaking in Mongol. Theres a joke in there somewhere…
So I didn’t mince words, the conversation went something like this:
“Hi, im here to see as much of the lake and the Taiga as I possibly can. I obviously need a horse and a guide.”
“How many are there of you?”
“Im alone”
“You ever ridden a horse before?”
“Not really no”
“How long do you want to go?”
“Twenty five days”
Ill give him credit, he maintained a poker face but I know this guy was mentally screaming jackpot. I told him id need a discount for being there that amount of time, I also told him id be happy to tag along with any group he knew as well. He shot that down pretty quick. Almost all people who go on riding trips go for a week, two tops.
To have someone who wants to go out that long and that far…yea I rock to this guy.
Ill give him credit for a different reason too, he knew his stuff. I went to eat dinner and before I finished he told me he had what I needed. A guide from the northern lake town Khank that would go on the trip and knew how to get me to the Reindeer people as well. Kick ass indeed! He wanted twenty thousand tugriks a day. That’s ten for the guide and then five for my horse and the pack horse they wanted me to bring. With saddlebags I really thought I had brought little enough that I didn’t need a pack horse but they wouldn’t have it any other way. Twenty thousand tugriks is around fifteen dollars a day. I think the only people who have ridden horses in my family did so on shore leave from cruise ships and they spent over a hundred dollars for an afternoon. Not bad, not bad at all. I said yup and asked when we shipped out…
“tomorrow” he said and then walked away.
Well tomorrow came and we didn’t go. It rained and was ugly as hell. Luckily if we hauled ass in some places we knew that we could do the trip in 24 days instead. So we did so.
The day after I awoken from a great night sleep and as I am wrapping up my breakfeast of Tsuivan in walks a guy. His name was Khmer….yes as in the peoples and language of the Cambodians. Well that name simply wouldn’t do, but for the moment lets press on. So we do the handshakes and intros and then we lock down the price amount and the day I need to be back in Khatgal and all that good stuff. Then we go to my ger and inspect my stuff. My tent and sleeping bag both got laughed at. The owner came back in a few minutes and gave me an additional sleeping bag as well as a glove to wear when it was cold out for riding (its freaking July!)



The tent I swear up and down to be waterproof and seeing as they didn’t have a spare they shrugged and just threw it in the mix. Then they inspected my provisions. Muslei, a few packets of noodles, some vodka and the power bars my Aunt had sent me. Again, we would need more so we both went on a delguur run. Just so you know, for that initial amount of food Khmer took out a flour sack and put it all in one bag and then put it IN my backpack (remember that piece of information…its important later)
We go to the delguur and I watch Khmer in action. He buys the important stuff first. A kilogram of pipe tobacco and about fifty sheets of paper to make cigs with. Then he additionally buys four packs of cigarettes and a metric ton of matches. After the essentials are covered, he then buys two kilograms of curled noodles and some square blocks of Monoglian bread (the type that doesn’t fall apart, its solid as a rock, and tastes about the same) Not having a clue what to get, I buy some terrible honey for the bread and a can of coffee grinds (don’t have a clue what I was doing) I kept asking if I had enough stuff and he assured me that in eight days we would arrive in Khank and could resupply again. (wait for it)
So we bring back the new provisions to the guesthouse and he tells me to grab all my things. So I put on my horseback riding gear and stuff away the odd shirt and pair of shorts I am not taking into the big packpack that will be staying behind at the guesthouse (as well as everything else in there…did you catch it?) and i take my clothes and tent and walk outside the haasha of the guesthouse out to where the river is. Khmer is waiting there for me with three horses.



This is where the new names for this trip were decided upon. Mongolians don’t name horses, and theres no way im hanging out with a Mongolian whos names a Southeastern Asian language. He needs to be way cooler than that. We had three horses so on the spot I gave everyone their appropriate title. My chain smoking,grey hatted, five foot tall, bad toothed guide in this amazing part of the world would be Gandalf. He would ride atop the brown horse named Aragon. That left two horses, my own to ride and then the horse that would serve to carry all the heavy stuff. My love of the books more than the movies (and I do love the movies a lot btw) is what led me to the next decision. I would ride the horse named Gimli and the unfortunate pack horse would be Legolas. That elf got WAY too much publicity in the movie and Gimli is a Dwarven wrecking ball in the book unlike the comic relief of the movies. I however, despite all my personal vanity and love of the books and my ability to identify with a lot characters in the book (I always kinda picked up the Faramir vibe) but no I would not take up a LOTR character name for this journey. Instead it would just be little ole me riding with Legolas, Gimli, and Aragon as Gandalf took me to things id never knew existed….oh good gods im such a geek I feel like I should be stuffed into a locker by the Dungeons and Dragons club!
Actually my name was not Josh for this journey. Gandalf kept forgetting my name time and again. When he did remember it (after I would tell him it) he would never get the “ish” part of Josh down and instead went with John. So I was a John to him…get it??? Waka waka waka…
Okay yea, back to the trip. So we load all the stuff up and i watch for the first time as we tie all our gear to Legolas. I gotta say its not that much stuff at all once I looked at it. I realize that a pack horse is supposed to be shared by three or so bodies, and I know this was just there way of getting another 5000 tugriks out of me a day rather than just giving me some saddlebags to use on my horse, but at fifteen dollars a day they can “rip me off” all they want.
Then I got on Gimli. Lets recap here real quick. I am not a horseback rider in America. It wasent an option and aside from a few vacation afternoons and a few minutes on a horse from the previous Naadam ive never handled a horse in my life. Now, lets describe the horse. Its Mongolian bred, and these horses are short, fat, and wild even after a lifetime of servitude. Finally lets keep track of the fact that this is not a day trip or even a week trip. Its 25, (well now 24 days because of the rain) day trip! Say all that you would like about me and my faults, as I have many. I am arrogant in some ways, overly cocky, I cry about my problems rather than fix them, I claim to not care what people think about me and then do, the list could go on and I know a few people could help add to it. Yes I have these faults and more but as I mounted this half wild horse and realized what I had just agreed to do I allowed myself a grin as I realized one fault I surely do not posess:

-I do NOT do things half assed! Good for me, lets hope it doesn’t get me killed!

A quick photo and we were off. Our first day on the road…scratch that, there wasent any road! No we were out there where on the motorcycles and the horses tred. The first day was sort of surreal and hard to explain. First off I spent a lot of time getting used to the saddle. Gandalf seemed to prefer the Russian style saddle. It’s a little bar of cylindrical metal that is covered by a light cushion seat. The cushion can shuffle left and right and I think the goal is to sit your ass down so that the metal bars are along your spines base or something to that effect. Trying to do so on a moving horse presents a “challenge” Furthermore, the stirrups are built for short people. By short people I mean that people under six feet tall if the stirrups are the furthest out will have their knees extended far enough that they can ride comfortably. Im 6’4. Whee!!!
Nah we just rode over the river at the base of Hovsgul Nuur and took the path into the mountain passes. It was strange to not even really see all that much of the lake that first day. We pulled up to a small spot along the way. Hovsgul Nuur is a lake fueled by a trillion or so rivers, all of whose water is fresh enough just to scoop from the stream and guzzle down. Initially Gandalf brought us to a spot and said the creek was about 500 meters to our right. After spending an hour setting up camp and searching for the water we found out there was none to be had.



Did you know rivers dry up? Like completely? One day waters here, the next its just a pile of sequential rocks. This is something that would happen a lot to me on this amazing journey of mine. I think in some ways everything I came across I realized in some way happened, but based on my lifestyle and interests I had never actually bothered to LEARN learn about these sorts of things. Others will come up as time goes on.
Anyway, the problem of a lack of water was quickly remedied as we made our way a few more kilometers down the way and reached another river section. We quickly made camp and Gandalf set up a rock fire pit. Though the East side of the river is actually largely uninhabited and very rarely traveled to we would encounter the odd firepit used by previous travelers than ourselves.






There was always two sure fire ways of knowing if the travelers had been Mongolians or foreigners. The first would be if there were any discarded cans or bottles in the immediate area. We foreigners do love our canned goods, and it all gets left behind. Far easier to identify is a Mongolian fire pit. Its not like us Westerners who make a circle of rocks and then a fire. Mongolians take three rocks and make a point that you can put a kettle of some kind on. The rocks provide an amount of shield for the fire from wind and its also just an all around efficient setup.





So he breaks out the kettle and after a scoop of river water we get a small fire going from random wood around the area. Then he pulls out our food.
…I told ya it would pay off. In all our haste to depart, when I had grabbed my stuff and handed my big backpack over to the guesthouse I realized upon looking at the food that I had left all my own food supplies back in that back, that was now over 20 kilometers away. Good gods I always do this. What the hell? So Gandalf starts asking me if tomorrow I want to ride back to Khatgal and start off again. Oh yea btw Gandalf does not speak a single word of English btw, every conversation I have with this man is in Mongolian. Anyways I say hell no and ask him if we have enough of his supplies to feed the two of us until we reach Khank in the north. He says maybe, and on that note I said we don’t turn back and keep going.
Boy, am I the seasoned adventurer or what???
Well theres nothing for it so we sit down and watch tea boil. Its me all alone with another guy Mongolian who doesn’t speak a word of English. We talk about exactly what you would expect. We cover the whole “tea” conversation. Talk about fire, the nice day, the good horses, will it rain tonight…and then we sat and watched the fire for four hours. We also drank tea, a LOT of tea. Dinner that night was pasta noodles and some bread….thats what were going to eat every night on the road for the next 24 days. It was too early in the trip for me to be overwhelmed, but even as happy as I was that evening it did catch up to me then that I may have just bitten off quite a large chunk here.
Gandalf’s tent is actually his travel bag as well. Mongolians are pragmatic and practical in nature. If some technology or tool makes their life easier they pick it up without a moment hesitation. The clothing Dell and their traveling tents are excellent examples of why nothing from the West has replaced them. The tent is outstanding. It’s a tarp, completely waterproof and requires no poles or cables like complicated western gear that will wear down or break after constant use. The tent is also used to be one of the two bags that is strapped on to the horse for transport the next day, so it requires no space. The only thing it needs are two pieces of wood to make a T shape and wooden stakes you can make anywhere. The tent is also large enough to hold 2 people and all the gear that comes with it. The piece of clothing known as a Dell is also still the best way to go. Its long and sturdy. Its warm when its cold and airy when its hot. It can be a blanket, keeps the bugs and mosquitos off your body when riding and from getting cut by branches along the trail. It also has a huge body sized pocket that can hold your odds and ends.
Well I helped him set up his tent and while he laughed at mine and said theres no way in hell its going to repel water I was too early in the game and too proud to take up his offer to use the other half of the tent. After my 50th cup of tea I went to bed around 9ish (it was still lightish out)
I woke up the next morning to realize that it had rained last night, and the tent did NOT in fact stop water. Check that, it stopped SOME water. The water had slid down the side and collected in the four corners of the tent. Thank gods I kept all my electronics in my small backpack and wrapped in my rainjacket! I got out of the tent and a rough night of sleep (didn’t bring a mattress….what the hell did I think sleeping on the dirt would feel like?) I put on a happy face as Gandalf woke up as well. He got another fire going and made a morning pot of tea. We were on a strict Mongolian diet of one evening meal a day along with about 500 cups of tea. How the hell do people in this country get fat? A lot of them are too!
Well the tent was a total bust and Gandalf laughed his ass off about that and me forgetting my food again and again. In all fairness if a guy twice my size was screwing up in the ways that I was yea id laugh at him too. Gandalf always smoked too. In one day of actual time on the horse he had gone through one pack of cigarettes and in the evening and morning when not on the horse he hand rolled unfiltered cigs to smoke as well.
…actually I want to bring something up at this point. I have been in this country for a year now and I have even mentioned the cigs before about how there not taxed all that much (its around 2%) but the pipe tobacco is something else I am a little confused about. This country LOVES to smoke, so why does noone use a pipe? Seriously ive been here a year, over 60% of the population is regular smokers and ive never seen a single pipe in my time here. Pipes are small, durable, easy to take with you if your traveling, low maintenance, seriously why does noone have a pipe in the country?
Anyways Gandalf like all Mongolians likes to do his vices collectively so after rolling every cigarette he offers me one. That morning to humor him I gave one a try. Ive smoked the odd cig in my life and even used a Philly once or twice to light fireworks on Carolinan beaches. I had never actually just full on inhaled the real deal tobacco (hookah doesn’t count…right?) So I gave one a whiff and…..WOLF!!!!!!.... good gods it was like smoking a pack of cigs in one breath! I know one bad habit I am not going to be picking up!!!!
Knowing this would be something he would only give me more of as the days rolled by I had to come up with a way that he would guilt free be allowed to smoke around me while I had accepted hospitality. So I turned up the dramatic effect and coughed profusely to let the guy know this was not something I could keep doing and as it made the chainsmoker that he was look like a badass he seemed pleased by this. Cultural difficulty solved! I rock!
We broke camp and started to take off, and then it started to rain. Not too badly, but a steady stream of water. Now luckily I had brought three pieces of clothing with me that I was wearing both during that rain but also during the overwhelming majority of time on my trip. Check out the picture. Those cream colored pants, that blue rainjacket, and that floppy hat. Ready for a plot twist? All those clothes were bought over ten years ago for a far different adventure.



You see ten years ago (good gods!) back in 2000 I had spent the summer going on an Outward Bound journey. 21 days of sailing and rock climbing off the Coast of Maine at a little island called Hurricane Island (I still have and was even wearing the shirt of it on this trip) I bought all these heavy duty clothes thinking that 21 days in Maine would be tough. What can I say, I was a FAR FAR different person 10 years ago. Back then I was a tad overweight so all the clothes I bought still fit very well for when I was packing for Peace Corps. That raincoat is built to withstand monsoons, and while Maine didn’t rain much on a day like the second day of my horseback trip I was sure as hell glad it was on me. That hat kept me from roasting to death and kept the insane flies off me, and those pants are these thermal things that breathe better than cotton and insulate better than long underwear. Ten years later and that clothing FINALLY pays off. What can I say? Theres something to learn from everything, even clothes.
Yet on the subject of clothes there was one small catch about wearing my blue coat. Gimli used to be a race horse. Race horses in this country take off at the wave of a blue scarf at the corner of their eyes. My bright blue coat seemed to bring back memories to Gimli and everytime that I moved either of my hands Gimli bolted. To go from light trot to a full of gallop of your life is a terrifying experience. Your probably not holding the bar in front of you, Gimli has forgotten hes top heavy, and the only way to stop him is to get the reins and practically break his neck pulling. This happened half a dozen times before noon. It was wet, cold, ugly, (didn’t see the lake at all) and I was sleepy and fearing for my life and a bit hungry. The second day was definitely the “you asked for it” day.
Yet at noon on the second day I came to a huge cultural moment and I found out something about Mongolian hospitality. At noon we came down from one mountain pass into a sort of small clearing. A small sliver to our left was of the lake but it was mostly trees and one small ger with its back to a hill that blocked it from the rest of the lake.
Gandalf pulled us up and we hopped down. We had been riding for three hours and after yesterdays riding being my first and my stirrups not going down very far as I dismounted I got my first taste of saddle soreness. It wasent bad in the thighs for me, but in the knees. As I realized how different this was from my usual exercise I prayed to the Sky Father that my running work after this insane adventure of mine would still work.
Anyways we had pulled up to this random ger and dismounted. Gandalf tied the horses up and I proceeded to ask if he knew the people who lived here. I got a matter-of-factly “no…its Mongolia” (literal translation) from him. He walked up to the ger and opened the door without so much as a knock. Inside was a stern looking middle aged woman who was playing with the fire. Gandalf walked in and sat down on the floor. I naturally did the same. Within moments milk tea was given to us along with bread, orum (think of it like butter that’s really milky and sugary) and sugar as well. Gandalf and the lady spoke about the paths around here and how the weather was effecting it. I couldn’t understand every word of it naturally but eventually even I was invited into the conversation. Gandalf had forgotten my name and when I said it they both replied “John” Ah well…
Yes, but what we were involved in right now was a lesson in Mongolian hospitality. People in the countryside must be a hotel/inn/bar/info center/store/ all in one. For in a country as vast as this one if people traveled between one town to another and could not stop at countryside ger for food and drink hardly anyone would dare make such trips let alone survive. There not nice because its nice, they are nice because it keeps everyone alive. How very pragmatic…very practical….VERY Mongolian.
So we came out of the ger less than an hour later feeling a little drier with some warm milk in our stomach and some calories in our system. That was lunch ladies and gentlemen. The rain got worse in the afternoon, but we rode on. My horse continued to terrify me to even scratch my face because I had to wear my blue coat. If I didn’t have it on my horse didn’t really care what I did, it just hated that coat! We trekked on and on. The second day was not particularly pretty either. No real lake views, and lots of hard trekking on terrain that I wasent particularly a fan of. Lets let a few more days pass and then ill describe the various terrians I encountered in this journey of mine.
At the end of the second day the rain had still not let up, and Gandalf brought us to a clearning where once again two gers had there back to a hill that allowed a small sliver of the lake to slither through. Gandalf rode us through a massive patch of bog that finally brought us to the front door. This group was larger than the part we had met at lunch. The kids were out rounding up all the cattle (they had over 700 total!) We were once again invited in and given cups of tea and dinner. Dinner was meat on the bone. One of the most common meals of the Mongolian countryside. My manners lessons paid off well on a day like today. I held the knife correctly, cut only towards me and never pointed my blade at anything. I also picked every bone I ate quite clean (not as perfect as Mongolians can but they knew I was doing my dogged best)



After a miserable day atop a wet wild horse there is something so enjoyable as something as a warm ger and drying clothes. The feel of food that would usually be so bland to me being the food of the gods. We don’t change, we only gain in relativity. I like that mantra, and unlike a lot of other mantras that one I am pretty sure I invented on my own so I am going to keep bringing it up.
Though I was quite happy with just the food and tea, they had an ace in the hole. They made Airag. Yet this was not the Mongolian vodka that you buy in a bottle. No this stuff tastes like water, and has about 15% alcohol content. I love the stuff, and the intoxication definitely helped. So there we sat, Gandalf smoking like mad (oh yea, they all smoke indoors in small round rooms, thank gods I cant smell that well) and chatting away with the very friendly family while I drank both our rations of alcohol. It was a VERY good night. We slept on the floor of the ger, which after using my crappy tent I will say the floor of a ger is a wonderful wonderful place to sleep.
I woke up the next morning feeling like a million bucks. Theres no real breakfeast in Mongolia but they fed us bread and they even made more alcohol. They offered me some but I quickly explained that I rarely drink in the morning. That went over way better than I expected it to. I also got some really cool shots of their distiller and how they use it.



Its actually a rather simple device, no wonder alcohol built the pyramids!
Well the day was a little nicer outside and after too long we strapped the gear back onto Legolas and rode off further up the East Coast of the lake Hovsgul.




The third day took us to great new heights…literally. We spent the majority of the day trekking up this one massive mountain called “Greater Santin” As we rode up the pass I could only keep thinking how tall the mountain must be if this was the pass. At the top I stopped to grab some shots of the Ovoo at the top. It was quite well decorated, and I did the ceremonial three clockwise rotations of the thing to ask the Sky Father and Earth Mother to protect me on this voyage of mine. The ride was long and perilous. The muggy weather and the forests we trekked up the pass were packed with bugs that not only attacked me but also our horses.



Do you know why horses have tails? Its one of those facts that I knew but didn’t know cause it never effected me but a horses tail allows it to swap at its back so the horse mosquitos get brushed off it. It does this because if a horse gets bitten just enough it will go wild and buck like crazy. I would know, it happened. I wasent prepared for it either and lets just say thank gods im in some of the better shape of my life because with one loose hand and two very strong legs I got the horse back under control.
The other problem was riding downhill. Do you remember that scene in Lord of the Rings when the Rohirrim charge? Granted I guess if it’s a warhorse they train it differently but I learned very quickly how hard it is for a horse to travel down an incline. We would dismount and walk them down. It’s a shame, I was hoping to recreate that scene as its one of my favorite scenes. Actually my favorite part of that scene is just after the Uruk-hai have all lowered their lances and just before they all clash theres one of the Orcs who gives off this absolutely primal “ROAARRR!!!!” What can I say? Im a fan of defiance. But no it was slow trekking but LONG trekking. We spent over five hours getting to the top of the pass and we needed to be near water as we would camp that evening and the nearest river was quite a long way down. We made it just before dark, but luckily we set up camp pretty quickly. We barely even had one round of tea before we started boiling water for pasta. We were hungry as all hell as the mountain pass had no gers to stop in for rest and food. It was the day that I realized how important and useful that hospitality really was.
We ate hungrily and said very little. After three long days I was beginning to realize just how well I do alone. It’s a blessing for sure, but also probably a bad sign that I can spend days at a time in someone elses company and I truly feel no urge to make small talk. I then also thought about just how much a rant when I am in the company of English speakers, and I think that means that very often when I am making small talk I find the overwhelming majority of things I have to say to be pretty damn useless. Buddha had a lot to say on the issue of speaking well and not when not needed.
So little was said, much was understood. We sat and watched fire, we ate like we had ridden for seven hours on empty stomach, he smoked more than the fire did and we collapsed into sleep.
I woke up at 2 in the morning to rain pouring on my sleeping bag. My tent was once again leaking and the rains had returned. There was little to do at this point in the night, and I was still too proud to go ask Gandalf for help. I stretched the tent as much as I could so the tauntness would carry most of the water just to the four corners and I kept the electronics bundled up. By the by, its about 30 degrees colder at night than during the day on the East side of the lake. Not easy to handle when its also cold out!
I got up the next morning with about four hours of unsatisfying sleep in me. The rain had naturally stopped at dawn, and while I complain about the night rain at least the morning sun would burn off a lot of the rain before we would pack up. I assessed all my stuff and luckily everything that got wet could get wet. This was where Gandalf would ceremoniously come out of his massive Mongol tent bone dry and laugh at me profusely while once finished with his laughing asks me to just split his tent. Stupid pride!
We were still way up in the hills where we had camped and as we broke camp and packed up we spent the morning walking the horses down the hills. By the afternoon we finally reached the beach clearings of Lake Hovsgul. Good gods that lake is massive.





Its 1% of the worlds freshwater and having seen how much there is I am surprised there is not even more. The fact that that water is so pure means that the lake freezes over enough that Russian tankers can drive over the surface in the winter and even by the month of June there are still ice chunks floating around in it. The lake is also supposed to be teeming with fish, but as not the most avid fisherman I wouldn’t know, though I will say the lake makes for one hell of a photo.
By the fourth day we finally had reached the trail portion that hugs the lake and I spent the day clicking away on the camera.



This is the only photo ill comment on. Im 29 years old. I got a full head of hair, zero debt, i run marathons, i have my advanced degrees, i get to be a Peace Corps volunteer and last but certainly not least i still take a half decent picture...life is good!



The access to the water also meant that plenty of gers were up for their grazing duties and allowed us plenty of spots to stop in to get some milk tea and some bread. By the way, all gers have two things that sort of took me by surprise. The first is electronic in nature. Every ger we stopped at had a television. One of those old school, UHF dial type televisions no less! Additionally they were getting their reception not by antenna, but by fracking sattelite dish! Meaning that in every ger that we came across there would be some type of American movie on. One was even watching (on Mongolian state television btw, Mongolia has no copyright laws) Toy Story 3 translated into Mongolian. As I haven’t seen the movie and intent to see it proper I focused on the conversation in the ger instead.
Yet to power a television and sattelite dish would require more energy than just a car battery could supply. So every ger we encountered at Hovsgul Nuur called up their worship of the sun to give them the strength they require. By that I mean every ger has a set of solar panels! Some even have wind turbines. America and the rest of the world catch up with this. These people still live in round tents that they have been in since the dinos died off, and THEY have upgraded to solar and wind power. What the hell is taking us the progressive “West” so damn long. Didn’t we invent the bloody things? Common people get with the program!







Finally there is one little tool that all Mongolians have as well literally hanging by the sides of their beds. A rifle. Seriously everyone had one and every last one looked like it was waiting to be used. What exactly are they shooting? My guess was poaching wolves, but I couldn’t tell you and my questions didn’t get answered.



Halfway through the fourth day we had a full view of miles and miles to our west across the lake, and while it was clear directly above us it was very obvious that a summer storm was headed our way. Gandalf kept pointing at the sky and then did this: (Points at the sky, then points at the ground, then with two hands made a two fingered body with one and then with the other brought his fist down on the body) I knew what was going on before charades, but then he did something I hadn’t ever seen a Mongolian do. He brought Aragon and Legolas to a gallop pace. He was running so to speak. Ive never seen a Mongolian in a hurry, EVER!
Free tip, when a Mongolian runs…especially the person supposed to take care of you, why don’t you go ahead and run as well! We were in a large clearing area with the lake on our left and the nearest trees were up in the hills about 2 kilometers ahead of us. We full on charged up the hill. I gotta say that second day in which my horse went wild at random moments had given me enough practice to actually hold on when my horse started to gallop. The storm was crackling to the left and you could even see the part of the lake where rain had begun to fall. We made it in the knick of time, and Gandalf dismounted and we stood with our horses butts to the rain as the storm blew by. It had quite the punch I will say that and I get why we were off our horses. Even stationary and sheltered under trees the wind and rain was strong enough that I needed the tree to keep from being blown off, let alone if I had still been on the horse.
Cool as Mongolia is ten minutes later the storm was gone, the sun came right back out and the only memory of the rain came in the form of a wet damp feel in the air so hard to come by in Mongolia. We rode on and made camp with another Mongolian family that night. As always I gave 5000 tugriks over to thank for the hospitality of a meal and a floor to sleep on. Good thing we chose to sleep in a ger too, that night we had a much longer summer storm.
Day five carried on and we rode on. Usually guides take people around at a leisuirly 4 hour a day trekking pace. I had ignored the pain in my legs and out of sheer desire to see more I had pushed Gandalf and our fellowship on faster. This meant that I knew we had to be ahead of schedule for our encounter with the town of Khank, the hometown of Gandalf. Halfway through the day as we rounded a corner to an open area far to the north of the little island in the middle of the lake I asked how much further to Khank. “Tomorrow” came the reply. We did a 10 day trip in 6, we rock!
The night of day five was more rain. Once again my tent was not up to the task. Worse still was on the morning the rain didn’t burn off, meaning everything I owned was wet and without the sun to heat things up things were getting really cold. We didn’t even make tea that morning and rode to the nearest house, where we strode inside wet and exhausted. Once again, hospitality kept us going and alive We took our time here, because at this point even Gandalf was cold and soaked through. Also because of the proximity to the town of Khank (You could see it on the horizon after a brief depression) The road was long and wet, but after six long days on the road and a wet finish we reached the town of Khank, where Gandalfs family lived.







Up here in the town of Khank its far more Siberian than it is Mongolian. The view no matter where you were gave you a shot of the georgous lake, imposing mountains with imposing peaks that on the other side lay Russia, Siberian forests stretching in every direction, lazy rivers feeding the massive lake, and quaint little log cabin homes that are cool in summer, hot in winter and give the countryside the feel that your entering some kind of wonderland or fairytale. Its an amazing place to live.


BEHOLD! The Mongolian Navy in all its splendor!








Gandalfs family was very welcoming, but its pretty clear their family by association. This is nothing new though, and everyone was nice. I could see the change to a Siberian diet when they opened the fridge, and tomatoes and cucumber salads were provided with oil for dressing instead of mayonaisse. It was food of the gods. We also had our first beer in a long long time.





In essence the first day we spent in Khank was lost to food and alcohol and the use of a fire to dry our clothing. I didn’t mind it one bit obviously. We spent a whole other day there. Didn’t really do anything other than recover from the alcohol bended and air out our gear. I knew my clothes were starting to really get smelly by then, but I just couldn’t bring myself to ask for a tumpin to wash them in. So they just stayed in the storage red bag and hoped that I didn’t smell THAT bad. I probably did. I also bought from the family one of their summer dells for 11000 tugriks (eight or so bucks) That would save me in so many ways when I got back to UB.

This must be where Stallone trained in Rocky IV!!!!




Hey check it out everyone! I found out where Uncle Jacks Beachouse car ended up....SIBERIA!




Will say this, the family pimped us out with food to go. Bortsuks and hardened curds which made for breakfeast foods we were loaded up on. I also did my part and bought the next round of noodles and breads as I had leeched off his for the past week.
We loaded up on the 8th day and headed out again, we needed to go over the tip of the lake. I guess at this point it’s a good time to talk about terrain. We had ridden over a lot of ground by the 8th day. Some ground rocks, other ground makes you fear for your life. Lets describe some of the ground.
Grassland. Simple as it comes, easy for a horse to ride on, the only thing to watch out for are the tiny little Marmots that scare horses to death and send them instantly on a fear induced running spree. Your 50 times its size you stupid horse! Still, grassland is a piece of cake.
Dirt path. By far the best. Its weathered and hardened, devoid of Marmots who fear being out in the open, and the horses know what it is and how to use it.
Rivers. Not quite as enjoyable. Rivers with active water flowing from it range in depth from the hooves length to up to the saddle and beyond. Horses don’t care very much about the depth of water and instead are looking into the water trying to find the best footing. As a result, they don’t really pay attention to how you are directing them and if a horse slips in this instance hes gonna worry far more about himself than you. My camera and Ipod are in my non-waterproof backpack….
Dry riverbeds. Even less easy that active rivers! With these the rocks are all loose from the lack of water providing tenstion and the horses once again are looking for the right path and the annoying piece of luggage they have on their back (ie: me) is stupid and doesn’t know what he is doing. The main fear is that the rocks unexpectedly shuffle and the horse comes down hard, but even without fears the annoying thing is that your pace falls to a crawl.
Mud grassland. Around the most after a bad rainfall. Its deceptive where the grassland keeps its excess water and so you suddenly go from firm dry grass to an impromtu green covered lake that your horse is taken by surprise in. Hes also half wild and doesn’t like being in such a situation. He stomps and wobbles to and fro, yea not fun…
The Bog: BANE OF MY EXISTANCE on a horse. Its usually where rivers branch off and flow into the lake, the area between is not even so much muddy as this area where mushroom sized pieces of turf exist and around it (like cracks in dry dirt) is the flow of mud and water. The horse aims for the turf, misses or sinks it down into the mud and you suddenly drop a foot. Then he scrambles for his next step and finds the ground just as unstable. Its like riding atop a really really drunken horse. Better yet, if you get thrown or fall off this horse you don’t land on ground, your going right into the mud. Even more fun is that when Gimli does put his foot down into the mud pockets he does so with the weight of a massive animal on a skinny leg, and a huge GOOP sound gets made and mud spits up into the air splattering the rider in gunk. So that’s describing one step, bogs can go on for whole DAYS!!!! I hated every step of bog I ever took, and I took a lot of them.
Mountain passes. Swarming with bugs, muggy or freezing cold depening on the location and laborsome for horses. Going up hills is a pain in the ass with a horse. Good news is that when traveling down hills we had to dismount and walk them, which gave me the chance to stretch my incredibly aching legs. I didn’t like the bugs though. They didn’t bother me all too much but if my horse couldn’t brush them off his solution was to charge wildly. Not what I would have done, but Gimli and I differed on this issue.
Theres other terrain, but its complicated.



The eigth day was nothing but bog, so was the ninth day. I was terrified out of my mind. Good new at least was that it didn’t rain, so I wasent wearing my raincoat, had Gimli bolted much in the bog I probably would have gotten myself killed. By the ninth day I was a little curious as to how we were going to get over the mountains on the west side of Lake Hovsgul to get to where the taiga was. The only map in my book was halfway down the western side, but when I asked Gandalf on the ninth night where we were going the next day he only pointed at the large mountains we had been riding towards for the past two days. That was an intimidating site!



Day ten was a moutain climb. Literally. We started by leaving the horse trail path and following a dry riverbed in between two large mountains. Then after two hours getting impressively lost from any path I could see Gandalf starts taking us up the steepest incline I have ever ridden on. It was a wobble back and forth as we went the only way the surrounding mountains would let us go….up!
Up and up and up. We rode straight up for over an hour. Finally we reached what I guess would count as a peak, and from it I could see back down to Lake Hovsgul. I didn’t know it then, but that would be the last panoramic shot I would get of that amazing lake. Ive drank the water straight from the crashing waves of its beach and let me tell you all ladies and gentlemen, that lake is the real deal. Someone more poetic than me would have recited something, but all I could think of was Aragon in the book The Two Towers seeing Gondor off in the distance when chasing after Merry and Pippin and singing some song about his long off place and I thought: Okay yea that’s a tad fruity even for me!







But then we proceeded to head down a portion of the mountain by walking the horses down. It was as steep going up as coming down. Legolas even fell over. Hah, nimble little elf my ass! Gimli made it, but he slid a lot more than he walked. On our way down on the tenth day we met a couple of Israelis traveling the other way. They were going at a much slower pace than I was and seemed not to know exactly where they had been or where they were going. I seemed to impress them that I would travel alone. It was the first time I had spoken to someone in English in over ten days. Its all relative huh?
We made camp in a nice valley that night that didn’t rain, but now we were MUCH higher elevated than in the East.





It got cold, like COLD cold. I had figured for borderline freezing temps on this journey, not sub zero! Especially without the aid of the sun. So I learned that night how to survive as I would do so in all future nights up on mountain passes. I would go to bed at about 8:30 when the sun was still out with all my warm gear on. I got in my sleeping back and went to sleep. By 2am it was too cold for me to sleep in that position, so I would then curl up, clench my feet in my hands for warmth, and lose two hours of sleep keeping myself warm enough to live, (the new dell helped) then at 4am when the sun came out it would be warm enough for me to go back to sleep for another four hours. Don’t skimp on camping gear folks, take it from an idiot!
Day 11 was also up in the mountain pass and we rode up and down the mountain pass towards the Darkhan depression to the west. Its no easy feat getting through those mountains, and since its too high up theres no gers to stop in for tea or whatnot. No we ate like it was going out of style each night up in the mountain pass.
Day 12 was coming down from the mountain range to a town called Reichenclibe (id like to buy a vowel!) As we came down from the mountain we saw a lot of unused pens and huts which I imagine get occupied at a later point in the season to keep animals spaced out when the grass is in short supply. Or its some other reason they are abandoned, I couldn’t tell you. It was like riding through a countryside ghost town of sorts. We finally reached out of the mountain range and after three or so ours fighting our way through bog area we reached the town. It was the first town or settlement id come across since Khankh. Its easy to forget them. In Khank we stayed in a guesthouse Gandalf knew. It was an old rail car (where the hell did they get a railcar out here)



It made for a great place to sleep and we bought more provisions. Gandalf bought even more cigarettes. Seriously this dude is pressing 55ish and smoking three or more packs a day. Test his body to find out what gene repells cancer quick!
Day 13 I gotta admit was not that much fun. I blame alcohol. The night before Gandalf and the guesthouse owner drank like fish. Now any Mongolian can handle a hangover like they got the sniffles, but at 9am as we should have been preparing to head out to the Reindeer people to the north Gandalf and the owner started drinking again. Its nine the fracking morning! What the hell dude?
Well he didn’t even just have a couple. He finished a bottle and then helped the guesthouse guy finish his. We had gotten drunk together before, but that morning he got himself full on tanked. Me and the guesthouse guy tied up Legolas the pack horse and Gandalf literally had to be put on his horse because he lacked the coordination. I asked the owner for directions and he pointed to the large motorcycle dirt path out of the north of town.



So Gandalf and I slowly made progress as he fell unconscious on his horse, the other horses following me. An hour or so out of town he fell off his horse, quite badly too. So drunk that he didn’t even throw his hands up and so he pretty much fell on his shoulder and his face. I laughed. I really did. Gandalf had been finding something stupid I had done to laugh at me every single day on this great journey of ours and he had always just been so damn competent I had nothing to fire back. But today, in this one glorious moment I was the competent one. I wasent tanked and I was the one who leapt off my horse to run over to help out the man whose supposed to look after me! Proud moment, proud moment indeed.
The fall hadn’t even woken him up. I rolled him over and I guess the light finally brought him around. He looked up and winced. Blood came out of his mouth. He felt for a second to make sure he had all his teeth and then in a Mongolian fashion he spit the blood out of his mouth and then rolled to his side and fell asleep/passed out. I looked around to see that I was in a wide open plain an hour from the town I had left and before me was miles and miles of plains before the next set of mountains. In essence I was a good distance to the corner of “no” and “where” on the other side of the planet from where I had grown up, sitting on the ground with a drunken passed out guide on the Mongolian steppes with three bored horses and no cell phone reception.
…I laughed…
Not your “it was a good joke” laugh or when your body gets tickled kind of laugh. The laugh that comes from your soul itself. It started as a chuckle and worked its way up. I really let go. I mean I sat their holding my sides as it all just came out of me. It was the laugh of so much, and it was not a laughter as a defense mechanicsm of the rejection of an anomaly. No this was a laughter of pure and utter happiness. The type of laughter where you realize just how amazing and good of a time you are having. The type of laugh that you know you could recreate this entire scene in five years and it would still not be the same. This one in a lifetime types of moments of unbridled joy. I let my sides go and fell to the ground and kept laughing. One of those laughs where you cant make the sound of laughter anymore because your out of breath and instead you just continue to make the compulsing movement of your body shaking with joy. Then survival kicks in and you body gets one good gulp of air and your body breaks back out into laughter once again and you feel like your feeling some kind of pre-mature enlightenment and you even forget nor do you care what made you laugh in the first place. This itself isint funny. EVERYTHING is funny. Every turn and corner. Every gesture or movement. EVERYTHING deserves this response of happiness and joy.
…that was what I did when my drunken guide fell back to sleep.
So finally I composed myself and got back on my feet. A quick shuffle brought Gandalf back into semi-consciousness and luckily being the big guy that I am and he being five or so feet tall and not much of an eater I sorta picked him up and threw him back onto his horse. BTW: Getting someone to straddle a horse who is having a hard time keeping themselves upright is no easy feat. I got a cigarette into his mouth and that woke him up a little. I tied his hand onto the front hook and off we went once again. Three or so hours later he was still very drunk but sober enough to realize how drunk he was and he tried to play it all off. We reached a river pass that we needed a guy on the other side to take us across by ferry, which after an hour of shouting we finally woke up that drunken guy and he pulled us across for three thousand tugriks. On the other side the drunkenness hangover hit Gandalf and he insisted on staying here for the night. We should have gone further but I was in no mood to argue so I just went with it. We were at the bend in the river where there was no wood, so we ate the bortsuks and Gandalf just joined me in my tent that night. That tent barely fit me! I dunno, it just felt like this guy had not read the “Man Law” book which stresses that there are certain things that men are not supposed to share. Some of which are things like umbrellas, but “crowded tents” are probably on the list. Especially after that movie came out about those guys who took care of sheep and all that. Least those guys got to eat beans!







So after a strange nights sleep we woke up and spent the next day reaching the town of Tsaagan Nuur. The town of the white lake. It’s the last stop grounds before you reach the taiga, where the reindeer people live who can eat the lichen that grows there. By the way guys, this is just the cliff notes of each day and I promise you there was not a day or even an hour in this entire trip that went buy in which I didn’t see some of the most amazing sites I have ever come across. Its just hard to write out beauty in a blog entry. Photos and videos will help.
We spent the night and were preparing to enter the East Taiga directly north of the small town. The ranger came by and asked for ID. This was the fun moment of truth. I didn’t have my passport with me, Peace Corps did. I also didn’t have a permit from UB that your supposed to get when you visit the taiga. All I had was my Peace Corps ID that was even losing its lamination. In essence this guy could do any number of things when he saw this. Reject me outright for not having a pass, demand hundreds of DOLLARS from me for an on the spot permit, demand I buy his horses to use in the Taiga, let me go. He didn’t even blink when I gave him my ID. Didn’t ask for a bribe, didn’t ask for anything. He even gave Gandalf a cell phone number to call if we had an emergency in the Taiga. Good for him! Good for me too! Some say we make our own luck. Well in this case I made all the factors in favor of bad luck and I still got the good luck. Theres a method to all the madness, I just don’t know what it is exactly.
Day 15 we began to trek into the taiga. Crossing over another 3000 tugrik ferry and then trekking quite a bit into the taiga on the first day. We had to as the rivers around the entrance were all dried up, but when we got to the camping spot I was glad we had gone as far as we went. The taiga was also the first place I had encountered spots where a large number of previous campers had tred before. This did not bother me actually made me feel like I was on the right track. We camped up and talked about how he seemed to be good friends with the reindeer people we were going to meet tomorrow. We went to bed happily.







Day 16. The day of days… We left early from our site and in four hours trekked to sort of the “Hub” of the East Taiga. Its where the two massive main rivers meet in the taiga. Gandalf assured me at this time in the season the reindeer people would be on the Tengis River that led to the north.





So we had to cross the thick deep river. The main crossing was where once again Gimli and I disagreed on which direction to march. Now in all fairness 99 times out of 100 Gimli knew better and let us on the right path….i think in 16 days we had argued about 100 times. He marched straight into the deep water, and there was nothing for it. I curled up my legs trying to keep them out of the water but he just went straight into it all. My shoes and lower legs soaked through. I guess I should be happy Gimli just didn’t throw me off.




So after already riding for four hours we made it across the river and proceeded up the Tengis River for another four hours. We should have encountered them in 2! After four Gandalf stopped and did the most steryotypical thing you can do in a situation like that:
He looked up the river, then he looked down the river, then he took off his hat and scratched his head, then looked over at me and gave a helpless shrug.





…the reindeer people were not here. More then that we were DEEP in the East Taiga. I could see Russia once again from where I was, and the path along the river doesn’t go in a circle, meaning the only way out was the way we came in.
So back another 3 hours we rode, at this point I was a little hungry and exhausted from 11 hours of riding and Gimli was in one of his moods so he actually used this as an excuse during a mud trail heading up to fall over. Lets be clear, I was not thrown from my horse nor did I lose control. My horse simply rolled to its side. I saved myself by rolling. You heard right. Somehow I actually timed the horses fall and simply let my legs roll out of it as the horse slowly fell to its side. Gandalf watched the whole thing from the top of the hill and I could tell by the look on his face that he had been expecting me to be crippled or seriously hurt by such a fall. I walked away with just a muddy side. Closest call I had on a horse, ill take it!
We were running from an approaching storm as well and since we couldn’t find the reindeer people we had to make camp, but we needed to get back to the river hub. We hauled ass (hence the horse fall) and even as we made it my horse once again took the wrong path across the river and my semi wet shoes went back to full on soaked. Luckily this happened just as the rain poured down.



As we finally found a less than brushy area to camp it was too wet to even try my tent and for the first night of the trip I split the dudes huge tent. We couldn’t make fire, everything we had was wet, and we had ridden over 12 hours that day….and no reindeer. That night I didn’t refuse when Gandalf passed me one of his rolled up smokes. What can I say I was short on vodka, and after a day like that you could use a drink.

The night was awful and rainy but at least at dawn the sun did its thing on the 17th day. We still had not come across anyone in over two days, and with time running down he proposed with try the other main river for three hours and if we didn’t find them there we would need to haul back to the south so that the following day we could exit the Taiga. So still wet but a little bit warmer we packed up and rode up the Gensgi river to the west. Three hours, a little under 25 kilometers, no reindeer here. We spent the rest of the day riding back to the place where we had camped on the 15th and made plans on how to exit the taiga tomorrow.



I have a simple explaination as to what happened to us in the Taiga: Reindeers don’t exist. They are mythological creatures like Unicorns and Vampires made famous by holidays and Hollywood and people who go on voyages to find reindeer become so disappointed that they didn’t find them that in the end they take some twigs and tie them onto their horses and take pictures of that. I wasent too bummed though. The taiga was georgous, and it gives me a reason to come back.



Actually as we made camp we came across two Mongolian hunters (rifles and all) from Tsaagannuur. Apparently they had been tracking us as we had ridden Southeast for the whole day. (given they had guns that was mildly intimidating) according to them they couldn’t find the reindeer people either, and so that meant they must have been on one of the secondary rivers in the back corner of the taiga that they usually don’t retreat to until the winter. By the by, hunting is impressively illegal in the park. I kept that to myself!
Day 18 was us leaving the taiga.





We didn’t take the same way out of the taiga and instead followed a canyon out onto the east side of the White Lake (Tsaagan Nuur) We got out and made a beeline to the first ger who loaded us up with bread and milk tea. Just what the doctor ordered after striking out in the Taiga. We crossed a few hills and then suddenly as we reached the evening we came across an area that could only be described as a playground for cowboys. It was this vast plainland area with the massive Hovsgul Nuur mountains in the background and everywhere you looked there were horses and cattle grazing and tiny little cabins and gers. It went on and on and on.



We pulled up to a cabin that put us up for the night. Then on the morning of the 19th when we saw the weather we decided to take the day off.



Hey look, its probably the baby from that movie my mom keeps going on about!



Everyone was stuck indoors, bored as hell and so at 11am or as I call it Vodkaclock. The vodka broke out. We also ate something I didn’t think exist despite the number of lakes but in one ger the women were making fish hosher. Because the pocket is breadish in nature it sorta tasted like fish and chips. It was one of the tastier things to eat.
We were still a little bummed about not finding reindeer and so I contributed a sufficient amount of money to vodka purchases (people went on a motorcycle alcohol run to Tsaagan Nuur town and we drank. A lot! It was one of those weird days where I found that I was able to keep down a whole hell of a lot of alcohol and not even really feel the buzz. The only problem is that we had no shortage of alcohol and the men seemed disturbed how I wasent getting all that drunk. By nightfall though (12 hours+ of drinking vodka!!!!) It finally all caught up to me and I sank into a good drunken coma (boy I hope my med officer doesn’t read this!)
Woke up the next morning feeling right as rain….oh and the rain from yesterday had apparently been snow up in the mountains as they were all now covered in white. Its early August and the mountains are all covered in snow. Guess where im going in two days???



Well for day 20 we spent riding back to Richenchilebe, where Gandalf and I decided to take it light after the night we had had before and given that we were about to hike over snow covered mountains for the rest of our journey yea lets do that clear headed. Day 21…we had three days to go 70 kilometers over 90% mountain terrain. What can I say? I don’t do things half assed.



So the final three days were sorta what I talked about before with the cold mountain passes.









I had stopped using my tent and was sharing Gandalf’s, but Gandalf had a lot of Dells to sleep under and I just couldn’t keep myself warm enough at night. Sleep five hours shiver between 2-4am…sleep another four. I don’t recommend this, but it was definitely a demonstration in the durability and sustainability of the human body.
As we reached the end on the 22nd and 23rd day I came across a great number of tourists traveling the other way. All of them were Israeli. Go figure! I come across a great number of Israelis in my travels. Must be their adventurous spirit and their combat training that lets them do something other than the steryotypical American “backpacking” through Europe thing. They all were rather impressed with the length and time and aloneness of my trip. I probably looked pretty weathered at that point. We stayed at Gandalf’s summer ger camp just outside Khatgal on the 23rd night.





We reached Khatgal the next day and headed straight in. Bayar the guesthouse owner from before was waiting for us and I paid the other half of what I owed for this amazing trip.



I also did something in front of the two of them I knew would be one of the best laughs of this whole voyage. I took out the storage backpack of mine and plopped it down on the table and opened it up. There it was….all my food id left behind. For the first time since this whole trip began, we all laughed….granted we were laughing at me but yea that was really funny. I big goodbye to Gandalf and Aragon, Gimli and Legolas and though I wish I could have had some time to reflect I was racing the clock and with a bus headed out of town I had probably 2 hours in Khatgal before I left once again.
That same day I got on a bus to Moron and then to UB. The trip from Moron to UB took 25 hours and I sat in the trunk on a sack of flour of a jeep wrangler.



It was definitely a stress test, especially because at the end of it was a shower, pizza, and a hot girl from Hong Kong named Esther who was waiting to hang out with me. On the way back I had a great number of phone calls to make. I had told my town, counterpart, boss, Mongol family, American family and Peace Corps office about my travel plans, and yet somehow everyone I knew thought I was MIA. A few phone calls to the right people straightened that out, and I had the text message archives to prove I had told them all! Best still was on the road back to UB I got a phone call from my Stepfather who I was like “DUDE!” hadn’t heard from him in forever but apparently this was a phone call sent out because my dear sweet mother seemed to think I was dead. My father and stepfather had luckily kept my mom stable for the past week or so and in two seconds I said “im alive, tell her im on vacation, leave me alone.” A good laugh let me know that the men of my family are the far less paranoid ones. Still, nice to have people that worry about you
We finally made it….(oh im not doing that again for a LONG!!!!! Time) I got back to the guesthouse and my measure of trust had paid off. My laptop was there and undamaged. I checked in and found out that every guesthouse only has cold water because there was a pipe explosion in UB while I was gone. Cant win can you?
I took the coldest cold water shower of my life and fell asleep for a million years. Then I went out and drank a thousand or so beers and ate two pizzas and finally got to see Esther again once my creature comforts had returned.
Now THAT’S how you end a vacation.
Actually Esther came back with me to Bagkhangai the following day because my town was finally going to have its Naadam. She came and we went. The naadam of my town was far different from ones id been to before. This one had each town business with its own party tent (school, hospital, police, government center, etc.) and so Esther and I spent the day drinking fermented horse milk and yammering. I definitely brought up some gossip for the town as this was the first time I had brought a hot girl around with me and there were plenty of “no no no just good friends” conversations.
Unfortunately I had only one day back in my town before I had to leave once again to go to a Peace Corps Mid-Service training thing…you know what, this blog is long enough and I want to post this before the end of the month. Ill go back to my old way of writing blogs now that I am back in town doing my thing as a PCV. After I write about MST of course.
Hey, one last thing. I got missed a few month dates. Ive been in this country now for over 14 months. Sorta hard to keep track of time when it sails by huh?
Hell of a vacation, hell of a summer, hell of a job, and boy this is one hell of an amazing life. Im happy, like really really happy…I like that.