travel diary — day 195

In buddhism, rants, travel on 10 October 2009 tagged archery, australian, beer, biscuits, black market, bread, buddhist, cheese, clothes, daughter, department store, dinner, dutch, family, flies, flock, ger, ghenggis khaan, girls, goat, goats, guide, hiking, horse, horse riding, hygene, insurance, ipod, lunch, milk, mongolia, monk, picnic lunch, police, police report, river, sheep, stainless steel, statue, stream, tea, temple, terelj national park, theft, tourist hotel, translation, travel, ulaan bataar, water, yak with no comments

day 191 — a clear routine had star­ted. we had break­fast and said good­byes. the span­ish group were head­ing back to town and i was stay­ing on for an extra three days. i ended up wait­ing for what seemed like etern­ity before they pre­pared my horse to begin my exten­ded horse rid­ing trek. we finally moun­ted up and i had a nice black and white horse. we took a long ride through terelj, a pic­nic lunch and more horse­back rid­ing. the day was a killer and by the end of it my arse was sore as hell. i named my horse ‘chester mc numbbum’.

we had arrived at a local fam­ily ger which was really a local fam­ily ger. there was a hus­band and wife, who looked in their 40s, and their daugh­ter (who i guess was about 6 or 7). we spent the after­noon in the ger and ate some food and drink. the ger was full of flies and it was clear that hygene was optional (and usu­ally ignored), how­ever they were really nice people and tried very hard to make me feel wel­come. that even­ing we had din­ner and after­wards the fam­ily chat­ted with my guide. since nobody spoke eng­lish (no, not even my guide speaks eng­lish) i got a bit bored and ended up going to sleep. i woke up in the wee early hours of the morn­ing and needed to pee. i walked out­side and found myself sur­roun­ded by sheep and goats. it turns out that the fam­ily make a liv­ing from breed sheep. the flock, of about 100ish anim­als, sleep around the ger. i had to man­ou­vre through a herd of anim­als to find a free patch of ground to pee on.

i found a patch, i peed, i returned to bed … avoid­ing the startled glare of stu­pid walk­ing woolen jackets.

day 192 — we star­ted late, again, and i ended up sit­ting around the ger most of the morn­ing. we finally got going and only rode for about half an hour before stop­ping for lunch. it was becom­ing annoy­ing that the guide was mov­ing so slowly, but in ret­ro­spect it was great to give my ultra sore arse a break.

after lunch we rode all after­noon. it was quite a long, tir­ing ride. how­ever the coun­tryside was amaz­ing and i had a great time. the only annoy­ing part was that my horse really dis­liked the wild bees which kept attack­ing his legs. it’s quite bizarre. i could actu­ally see the bees fly­ing in with their stingers poin­ted and try­ing to sting the horse’s legs. i did as much as i could to flick off the bees and i killed a few, but they semed to have a spe­cial hatred for my horse and fol­lowed us for a really long time.

mid after­noon we found ourselves star­ing at an enorm­ous eye­sore of a statue in the middle of nowhere. it was a 40 meter tall trib­ute to ghing­gis khaan. the statue was made of stain­less steel and glared obnox­iously in the after­noon sun. i have no prob­lem with the statue, which was built by a rich mon­go­lian obsessed with their great con­queror, but i think they could have selec­ted a coat­ing that wasn’t ridicu­lously bright.

the inside, how­ever, was much nicer. my guide and i wandered around and went up to the open air obser­va­tion deck. we had a break and headed off again in the dir­ec­tion of our even­ing acco­mod­a­tion. we rode towards the river and fol­lowed it until we reached a big tour­ist hotel. my guide, a com­plete idiot at the best of times, rode straight through the middle of a group of people doing arch­ery. they stopped and i real­ised that they were korean. one woman was point­ing a video cam­era at me and i decided to have some fun. i spurred the horse, trot­ting quickly through the middle of the arch­ery range. when i got close to the group i said ‘hello’ in korean. they all stared at me, dumb­struck, and with the video cam­era still going, watched us depart. it was a bit of fun …

we gave our horses a break to get some water and then rode across some streams. that was prob­ably the best part of my horse rid­ing trip. the water was run­ning fairly fast and the horses had to work hard to cross. i pushed my horse, spur­ring him on, and at one point the water was so deep my shoes (in the stir­rups) got wet. we crossed a few more quick run­ning streams and up the other side to dry land.

the rest of the after­noon was a long ride up hill towards the ger where we would sleep. we arrived on dark. the ger was spe­cially built for tour­ists and only my guide and i were stay­ing there. the guide’s wife joined us, cook­ing din­ner and keep­ing the place clean. i was tired after such a long day and was keen to get some sleep.

day 193 — i woke up and we star­ted late. we had new horses which didn’t fol­low any instruc­tions. the horse would go in a dif­fer­ent dir­ec­tion to where it was told to go (seem­ingly inten­tion­ally too). it took ages to get any­where and it was hard work get­ting the horse to do as it was told. we finally arrived at a massive rock that is famed for look­ing like a giant turtle. i could see the resemb­lance, but it wasn’t ter­ribly interesting.

we waited a stu­pidly long time before get­ting lunch. we con­tin­ued on and the horse was still being a shit. it kept kick­ing the guide and the guide kept whip­ping it. i’d had enough of the guide’s idiocy and the horse’s retarded­ness. as i was try­ing to dis­mount, the horse stepped away and i fell on the ground with my foot stuck in the stir­rup. for­tu­nately the horse stood still, rather than drag­ging me along the ground. i’d had enough of the horse, threw the reigns at the guide, and stomped off in the mid­day heat. i headed towards the buddhist temple on the side of the hill which was our next des­tin­a­tion. i told the guide to fuck off and i’d fnd my own way back to camp.

i walked double time, angry as all hell, to the temple. it was hot and i was sweat­ing when i arrived. i over­took a bus­load of koreans on their way to the same temple. the walk did me good and i was much more calm by the time i arrived at the temple. i walked around three times, said a prayer and told myself to be calm. i also walked down to the main house to look at the paint­ings. while i was there, the monk came out and said hello to me. he spoke a little bit of eng­lish and was quite friendly. i also noticed that the guide had actu­ally brought both horses and fol­lowed me to the temple, but he waited a safe dis­tance away.

after the temple, i joined the guide and told him i’m not rid­ing that horse again. so we switched horses (his was much more tame) and i was happy because his saddle was dif­fer­ent (quite a relief on my arse). when the guide had moun­ted my old horse, he too had dif­fi­culty with it … so i cursed him under my breath, think­ing “how the hell does he expect a tour­ist to ride that shit horse when he can’t handle it either”. i can ride, but i’m not used to rid­ing horses which are half wild. but i had a much bet­ter ride in the after­noon, since the other horse was more will­ing to folow directions.

we rode the long way back to the same ger we stayed at the pre­vi­ous night. this time i told the guide that i’d sleep there by myself. he seemed happy with that and headed off. later that even­ing they brought food and i enjoyed din­ner, keep­ing my fire going, and play­ing solit­aire. it was fun to spend an even­ing by myself and i slept pretty well.

rant: my guide pisses me off. the guy farts around and wastes so much time. not only that, but he’s fuck­ing clue­less. he for­got the straps (which we use to spur the horses) and he brought fresh horses. my new horse is beli­li­ger­ent and, without the strap, doesn’t fol­low dir­ec­tions. the guide keeps whip­ping the horse to make it run, but the horse wants to go in a dif­fer­ent dir­ec­tion. the horse kicked at the guide two or three times, annoyed at being told what to do, and i was uncom­fort­able (partly because i didn’t trust the horse, partly because my arse was still sore from all the riding).

the worst bit is that we just sit around and wait and wait. today, we could have made it as far as the buddhist temple on the hill before lunch. but the guide fucked around, talked to his friends,  and made me sit and wait by myself. i waited for about 30 minutes and asked him what was hap­pen­ing. he told me we’d have another hour wait for the other guy to arrive with lunch. fuck! we could have made it to the temple and back, but instead we spend so much time sit­ting around … and it wasn’t the only time i had to sit and wait for idiot mon­go­li­ans to work their shit out.

while wait­ing, i chucked a huge shit, threw my bag on the ground and ran­ted at him. the guy just doesn’t have a clue. he told me to wait more, then went back to talk with his friends. so i’m stuck here, by myself, until god knows when … and i was so angry that i didn’t care that my cam­era was in the bag when i threw it.

day 194 — the ger’s owner insisted on ‘check­ing up’ on me, twice wak­ing me up. he checked in at 1am, for reas­ons i can­not under­stand, and finally brought my clothes and gear so that i could change. in the morn­ing i made some tea, ate break­fast, cleaned up and relaxed. i had to wait a while until the guide arrived with two new horses … again. this horse was wil­ful, but not as bad as the ones the day before. after a small battle of wills, the horse finally accep­ted tak­ing orders. we rode around some hills until lunch and returned to the main camp.

on the way back to camp, some­thing realy cool happened. we had to cross a few small streams. they were in deep troughs but were only about a meter or so wide. as we crossed, i expec­ted that the horse would step into the stream and try to drink (which is what all the horses had done). how­ever, at the last second, the horse decided it would just jump the entire stream in one go. it took me by sur­prise, but for­tu­nately i was already hold­ing tight in anti­cip­a­tion of the horse head­ing into the stream. the horse clean jumped the stream, to the amazement of the guide who laughed all the way back to camp.

when we arrived at the ger, there were three other tour­ists there. two were aus­tralian, one was dutch. all were female. that made me happy, so i took a break, we had lunch together and talked, i had a sleep and the girls went horse rid­ing. in the late after­noon i took the girls up the hill behind our ger to see the view from between the massive rocks that formed a tall cliff face. after din­ner i had to wait for my gear to be brought down (again) and i got an early night.

day 195 — we had a big break­fast with the ger owner’s mother. one of the girls was vis­ibly sick at the sight of all the flies inside the ger. a lot of the food we ate was based on either yak milk or goat’s milk. we had cheese, bis­cuits, tea and some bread. the people were very nice and although none of us wanted to eat much, we tried to eat what we could to be polite.

after break­fast we met our driver and headed back to ulaan bataar. i took a much needed shower, got my police report for the stolen ipod, got my trans­la­tion (for insur­ance pur­poses) and walked to the black mar­ket with the three girls. we wandered around until the mar­ket closed, walked back to the hotel and i headed to the depart­ment store to buy some beer. at the hotel we sat, drank beer, and talked all night.

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