Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
Carefully I opened the present I'd bought for myself back in Choyr. 'Look, it's
a block of chocolate!' (Surprise, surprise.) 'Wow. Here, you have half of it, mate.'
I offered the block to Tim. 'Good, isn't it?'
Tim raced off to film another angle, and I laughed. At first I'd been annoyed
when Tim wanted to film us 'enjoying' my birthday, rather than simply enjoying it
with me. But, in the end, what did it really matter?
———
I crawled out of the tent the next morning to catch the sun sneaking stealthily
over the horizon. I yawned and stretched away the stiffness from my joints, then
stumbled out into the cold wind to pee, scanning the ground quickly to make sure
that I wasn't about to step on any of Tim's overnight 'landmines'. The shorter day-
light hours in Mongolia had given us a great routine of eleven hours' sleep per
night, but we hadn't covered much ground over the past few days.
We rode strongly all morning to reach the town of Ondershil. It was a rambling
town made up of the traditional white
gers
partitioned off into neat square blocks
by ramshackle fences.
We did our shopping for the next four or five days in all three of the village
shops, then looked around for a place to fill up the fuel bottle for our stove. In the
end, we had to visit the town's diesel-fired power station and ask the operator to
siphon a litre of fuel from the generator's 10 000 gallon tank!
We finished our chores and packed our bikes, chatting for a short while to a
group of people who had gathered around. Just as we were about to pedal off,
however, we heard an urgent cry from behind us.
'Waaaiiiittt!' came the shout, in heavily accented Russian. We turned to see
a short, stocky man rushing importantly through the crowd, holding a bottle of
vodka. He also had a few dirty glasses tucked under one arm.
'Wait, my friends!' He panted as he came to a halt. 'Before you leave, you must
drink with us!' He turned to the crowd for confirmation and got a rousing cheer.
He glanced back to catch me grimacing. 'No, no, no,' he chided, waving the bottle.
'You
must
drink before you leave. It is an honour!' I looked at Tim and he winced.
'Okay, okay. Thank you for the honour. We will drink, but just one, you under-
stand?' Tim waved a single finger at the man. 'Just one!'
'All right then, we will each drink one.' The man quickly placed the three
glasses on the ground then poured steadily, measuring the entire contents of the
bottle into equal thirds.
