Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
The horseman's family were as fascinated by us as we were of them. The man's
mother and children stared at us, and we stared back. As they didn't speak a word
of Russian, conversation was limited, bringing the focus on to food.
Dinner began with a wok of a mash that tasted like sour uncooked cake mixture.
The smell alone made me feel nauseous. But I had trouble explaining that I was
sick and was fearful of offending. Next came a large bowl of fermented horse milk,
complete with flies. I had been feeling marginally better during the day and wor-
ried that eating would bring it all on again. But what could I do?
After five or six cups of salty Mongolian milk tea and some homemade noodles
with mutton, I lay in the
ger
clutching my stomach. For hours into the night, I
tossed and turned, moaning with pain. Eventually, I stumbled out and vomited.
Come morning, I had barely slept and felt severely hung-over. The thought of more
milk and mutton would probably set off another spasm.
I rose from bed warily, careful not to make any sudden movements. No sooner
had I rubbed my eyes than I was whisked away by our host. He knew one word of
Russian. 'Meat! Meat!' he cried.
He dragged me over to the herd of sheep and without hesitation grabbed one by
the neck and flipped it onto its back. While the poor animal shook and shivered
uncontrollably, he took a knife and made a neat slit down its chest. He pushed his
fist through the slit into the rib cage and pulled out the heart. It sat pulsating for
a while above the animal's chest and I thought I saw its eyes look down in terror,
then begin to flit like it was in REM, before the shaking reached a peak. Finally, it
went still: all over within a few seconds. The man poked at the animal's eyes until
there was no response at all. The tongue hung loose from its mouth and the heart
was dropped back into the cavity and the limp carcass dragged over to the
ger
. If
I'd been feeling pale before, now I was close to fainting.
Our host was eager for me to take part in the butchering. He handed me a knife
and I began to cut as he directed. Even though it took intense concentration to con-
trol my stomach, I marvelled that I had become devoid of emotion so quickly: it
was just a slab of meat now that it was dead.
When we finished, the innards were slopped into a big bowl and sorted out by
the mother. She squeezed the faeces out of the intestines and refilled them with
blood. Meanwhile, the meat was heaved up on top of the
ger
for drying.
Hoping that our job was done, Chris and I prepared to leave. But we hadn't bar-
gained on breakfast.
