Backpackers' diaries: a nose for reindeer people in Mongolia
Baatar, our guide, double-fists the mound of fresh, steaming horse dung and squeezes it into one of the tea bowls we've been drinking from. "Very good!" he says, as his sister cracks another bottle of Mongolian vodka. "Horse very good! Genghis Khan! Very good! Genghis Khan!"
"Oh god," says Zac, as the golden-brown juice trickles between Baatar's fingers. "He isn't going to drink that, is he?"
Marha, a champion wrestler at Mongolia's Naadam games, is not well. A visit to the shaman has not settled his stomach, so horse dung juice is, Baatar insists, the way forward – the fresher, the better.
Zac, Baatar and I have fallen in with Marha, his brother, and the guys they're guiding, as you do when you're in the middle of nowhere, you've been on a horse for a week, haven't seen a soul for two days and a night, and a bunch of charming chaps show up headed the same way as you. Further, after a less-than-magical moment when Satan the packhorse spearheaded a bid for freedom on a snow-clad mountain pass, our horses behave better in a herd. Zac emerges from the ger (yurt) to build a log fort with Baatar's great-nephew. "He did it," he cries. "He mixed it with vodka and he drank it!"
Amid this fuss, it seems like we'll never make it to the focal point of this long ride: the reindeer people. Yet after a day's ride across the vast plains, the sun illuminating stark, snow-streaked mountains, over an easy pass we're almost in sight of Tsagaannuur, a lakeside town, its bright log cabins boarded up as the populace tend their flocks in summer pastures. Another day, and we are camped by a meander of a flawless stream.
As we climb into the mountains, the temperature drops 20C in half an hour and we slip down jackets over our T-shirts, pick wild spring onions to eat with bread and sour yak cheese, and ride through purple scrub and forbidding skies into the taiga.
And then … bristling apexes of tepees emerge from the scrub, spindly, long-nosed reindeer quack from beneath velvety horns, a small boy rides a reindeer bareback through the larches and Om, our host for the night, welcomes us with salty, creamy reindeer-milk tea.
As with many of the reindeer people, Om has a small solar panel by his tepee. His is hooked up to a small lantern and his daughter's mobile phone. Our soundtrack for the evening? Lady Gaga.
• To arrange a similar trip, contact Ganbaa on +976 9979 6030 or lake_hovsgol@yahoo.com. Theodora blogs at escapeartistes.com. Zac blogs, rather less frequently, at kidventurer.com; Zac blogs, less frequently, at Kidventurer.com
"Oh god," says Zac, as the golden-brown juice trickles between Baatar's fingers. "He isn't going to drink that, is he?"
Marha, a champion wrestler at Mongolia's Naadam games, is not well. A visit to the shaman has not settled his stomach, so horse dung juice is, Baatar insists, the way forward – the fresher, the better.
Zac, Baatar and I have fallen in with Marha, his brother, and the guys they're guiding, as you do when you're in the middle of nowhere, you've been on a horse for a week, haven't seen a soul for two days and a night, and a bunch of charming chaps show up headed the same way as you. Further, after a less-than-magical moment when Satan the packhorse spearheaded a bid for freedom on a snow-clad mountain pass, our horses behave better in a herd. Zac emerges from the ger (yurt) to build a log fort with Baatar's great-nephew. "He did it," he cries. "He mixed it with vodka and he drank it!"
Amid this fuss, it seems like we'll never make it to the focal point of this long ride: the reindeer people. Yet after a day's ride across the vast plains, the sun illuminating stark, snow-streaked mountains, over an easy pass we're almost in sight of Tsagaannuur, a lakeside town, its bright log cabins boarded up as the populace tend their flocks in summer pastures. Another day, and we are camped by a meander of a flawless stream.
As we climb into the mountains, the temperature drops 20C in half an hour and we slip down jackets over our T-shirts, pick wild spring onions to eat with bread and sour yak cheese, and ride through purple scrub and forbidding skies into the taiga.
And then … bristling apexes of tepees emerge from the scrub, spindly, long-nosed reindeer quack from beneath velvety horns, a small boy rides a reindeer bareback through the larches and Om, our host for the night, welcomes us with salty, creamy reindeer-milk tea.
As with many of the reindeer people, Om has a small solar panel by his tepee. His is hooked up to a small lantern and his daughter's mobile phone. Our soundtrack for the evening? Lady Gaga.
• To arrange a similar trip, contact Ganbaa on +976 9979 6030 or lake_hovsgol@yahoo.com. Theodora blogs at escapeartistes.com. Zac blogs, rather less frequently, at kidventurer.com; Zac blogs, less frequently, at Kidventurer.com
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