Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
Later that afternoon I sat at yet another junction in the wheel-tracks and waited
for Tim. We'd turned off the road onto a track that had quickly dwindled and split
up into many tracks. From there, we'd made decisions according to the compass
and, occasionally, with the toss of a coin. We'd had lunch in a valley a little way
back and had been passed by a curious mob of wild camels. Tim had gone off chas-
ing them with the video camera, while I'd carried on, leaving a trail of tyre tracks
for him and trying to make sense out of our position on the plain.
I considered the options for a moment, but all of a sudden I was startled from
my thoughts by a weatherbeaten old woman who came wandering over the rise,
waving a bright blue jacket around her head in giant, helicopter circles, yelling,
'
Oiy-oiy-oiy-oiy-oiy!
' She broke off when she saw me and stared. I pedalled over
to her to see if she could point me towards the railway.
We communicated, as usual, in sign language and my few Mongolian words.
She understood my impression of a Thomas the Tank Engine, and said that yes, the
'chuf-chuf-chuf-chuf'
was certainly over that way, but (I think) that it wasn't due
till tomorrow! She invited me back to her home for tea and I willingly accepted. As
we walked over the rise and down towards her
ger
, twin boys of no more than five
converged on us, each dragging a large hessian sack full of dry horse poo. They
were her grandsons, it appeared. She'd been out looking for them.
Tim joined us, and we were treated first to tea, and then to a glorious lunch of
noodle soup and chunks of meat. To me, this was a big improvement on the stand-
ard autumn fare of freshly boiled gizzards with the blood poured in. These people
appeared to be civilised nomads and I was most impressed. Sure, they still had a
few cultural peculiarities, like stirring the food with the dung-shovelling utensil,
but every Mongolian we'd stayed with seemed to do that. These people washed
their hands with soap!
An older boy in the family had a physical and intellectual disability. Instead of a
wheelchair, he moved around on a homemade plank on wheels. The constant love
and care of his family was deeply moving. Out here, it was all that kept him alive.
After lunch, the man of the family treated us to a magnificent display of horse-
manship. He galloped around, wheeling his stocky mount hard and chasing his
herd of unwilling horses until he caught an unruly young colt with a long, wooden
lasso pole. The horses threw up billowing clouds of dust and their hooves shook
the ground like thunder. The whole scene was magical, and I rode away later in the
afternoon with the images of stampeding horses and Mongolian warriors etched
firmly in my mind.
