Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
same day over again. Perhaps the only reality check came from keeping an eye on
how much water was left.
One evening we were riding casually along when, out of nowhere, came a young
Mongolian man on a mountain bike. 'Hello, how are you?' he said, in English.
'Good … thank you,' I replied, warily.
'I am a computer engineer. If you want you can come back to my mother's place
to stay the night,' he offered.
I had been enjoying the ride but was still craving to spend time in a
ger
, and also
to have some well-needed rest. Although Chris was a little bit resistant, this was an
opportunity that had come knocking. I watched him bend from his hard-nosed, no
stopping attitude to a carefree look.
'Yep, why not? Let's go!' he said.
Half an hour later we were sitting inside a
ger
, feeling as if we had been trans-
planted into another world. I watched as the elderly woman prepared to stoke the
stove, which also doubled as the furnace. She opened it and I caught a glimpse of
the red-hot fuel: fifty or so dried horse craps. After shovelling in a fresh load she
gracefully drew a ladle of boiling milk half a metre above a pot and poured it back
in with a fluid twist of her wrist. Not a drop was lost, as if the milk was somehow
bound like elastic. A cloud of steam rose abruptly and escaped through the circu-
lar opening in the roof. The woman bent forward into the light that spilled down
from above. Silver-grey hair fell from beneath a silky yellow hat. Her face was
dark, almost black, and etched with lines that arced from above her eyes to below
her cheeks. Prominent cheekbones bulged out, as rough, round and exposed as the
steppe itself. Later we learned that she was seventy-five-years-old.
She stepped out of the light and I looked up to its source. I hadn't been in the
ger
for long, but even so I had taken a liking to the circular ceiling. Close to one hun-
dred intricately decorated wooden rods rose to a small circular opening. Through
this the slender chimney exited and the sky was visible. The rods were supported
by walls of collapsible trellis. From beneath, the ceiling looked like a giant wagon
wheel from which dangled a collection of drying fat pieces and sliced up sheep's
organs.
Around the sides on the floor were a couple of mattresses, and close to the centre
a few thirty-centimetre-high stools. There was a picture of Genghis Khan on the
wall, and a special dresser with Buddhist tumblewheels, icons, candles and incense
sticks displayed. The only sign of the modern world was a packet of Kodak Ex-
press photos on a tiny table.
