into the world: The Mongolian Steppes

We have just returned from the Mongolian countryside where we spent nine days walking between the nomadic camps. Over half of mongolian's lives in a 'ger' which is essentially a yurt or a large tent with a stove in the middle and beds/kitchen/food storage in the periphery. We stayed near their ger's in our own tent surrounded by their herds and the dogs that watch over them. Each family had at least 500 head of a combined sheep, goat and yak herds on top of up to thirty horses. In all we walked an easy 100 miles in our time with the families-assisted by pack horses or yak cart, so the walking was very easy.

The countryside is outstanding-a lot like Montana or Idaho's eastern slopes. Pine forest mixed with pasture and huge sky all around. We were hot some days and walked through driving snow others. We ate our meals in the ger with the family. Vegetables are essentially nonexistent in their diets, replaced by more meat and dairy. They eat what they call "white foods" which are best explained as anything you can produce from milk. And they milk everything. We will do a separate post on the food we ate...get ready for some milky graffic weirdness. The pasture and grounds in the Ger camps were littered with bones and dung. When they slaughter an animal, they seem to use nearly everything and whatever is left is cleaned up by their dogs, crows, eagles and wolves.

We saw Steppe and Golden Eagles almost daily. In our trek between camps, riders would drive horses by and yaks would pass pulling carts stacked with hay. One day after scrambling up a local hill above the ger camp, we were surrounded by a herd of 400+ sheep and goats. Perfect setting to practice Heston impressions from the Ten Commandments.

Our packs have been used and abused for the past 6 months, but they have been put to a test that no gear company could even plan on. After a twelve hour dusty bus ride back to civilization, we discovered that our packs were lying in a pool of horse milk and covered in a thick layer of dust turned mud. One of the Mongolian passengers' jug of mare's milk tipped over along the way. We had to shower with our packs on twice to get the smell out. Ted and Barb had said "just wait for the Mare's milk" and we can now say that we have had our fill.

The capital of Mongolia really sucks, so bad that its not worth ranting about reckless drivers, penetrating exhaust and noise pollution loud enough that you can't think. After returning to the Ulaanbatar (the capital) we got so fed up that we grabbed our packs and tent and walked to the nearest mts directly from downtown. We ended up camping only ten miles from the city but we may as well have been in the middle of nowhere. Yesterday morning, we woke up to two golden eagles hanging out on a tree above us.

Leaving tomorrow for a short trip in Korea, then through India and finally Nepal. Things are about to get interesting.

Photo's and explanations below. Thanks for checking in..

Ger