Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
Around them a herd of about fifty goats, four horses and a few sheep frolicked
in anticipation of the first warm rays of the sun. When the sun rose the babushka
lugged a bucket of fresh milk over to the
ger
. Next the old man set to catching a
couple of goats to clip their hooves; he took chase with a lasso. Through the lens
it was obvious that although these people were living a life of survival, there was a
real art to it.
No matter how exhausted I was, filming was something that energised me. I
loved it, and in recent weeks I had begun to believe that maybe, just maybe, if I
kept on trying, we really could make a documentary about our journey.
Chris rose late with good reason: he felt ill. We spent another day and a half
with the family, and in that time learnt more about Mongolian life than we had
done in the past three weeks. Much of that time we spent drinking the famous
air-
ag
- fermented mare's milk. It came in large bowls, with the added ingredient of a
few belly-up blowflies. It was sour and off-putting at first, but I grew to like it. It
was slightly alcoholic, and the babushka kept telling us that you could 'live off the
stuff'.
Finally, we straddled our bikes and rolled downhill, waving goodbye as the
babushka threw ladles of fresh milk into the air for good luck.
Then it was back to the open, almost featureless landscape; crawling into the
distance, rolling along on our armchairs on wheels.
A couple more days passed in a blur of parched yellow and the sour taste of
air-
ag
. Our stop with the babushka seemed to have opened the floodgates to Mongoli-
an hospitality. Sometimes trucks would come hurtling out of nowhere and a great
big bowl of
airag
and blowflies would be handed down to us. If it wasn't a truck it
was a horseman waving us over to another
ger
in the distance.
The hills flattened out altogether until we were on a wide crusty plain. It was
so flat that from the low position on the bike only a sliver of earth was visible in
every direction. The track became red and sandy, trailing its way through avenues
of thorny grass. I felt like we were riding through a moonscape of crushed dry rock
beneath a sky that seemed larger than usual. We began to see herds of camels lop-
ing across the horizon in search of food.
There was something melancholy and appealing in the openness, and for long
periods of time I had no wish to stop pedalling. It left me feeling exposed, as if
I couldn't hide anything, even from myself. I remembered the e-mail from my
youngest brother Cameron that I had received in Ulaan Baatar, and began to think
ahead to Australia rather than reminiscing about Russia.
