GERS AND GOATS

Big Sky country

Visiting an ancient Mongolian walled city

That's grandson Zach on the left, with some new friends.

Grace and Zach ride a yak.

Gloria in front of our ger at a tourist camp.

Inside a local family ger, having breakfast of sweet rice and milk.

Stephen reads inside our ger.

The source of your cashmere.

We had a great evening playing in the dunes of the Little Gobi desert.

The countryside is very fine.

Our favorite part of our visit to Mongolia was the six-day camping trip that Bayra's father and brother arranged to the countryside west of Ulaan Bataar. As our hired driver was fond of repeating, "The countryside is very fine."

Think Big Sky country. It was lovely landscape, wild and vast, with nary a tree for mile after mile. Scattered sporadically over the grasslands and hills were single gers--or sometimes a small group of gers--belonging to the nomadic families that tend the large herds of goats, sheep, cows, or yaks that rule this part of the world. We never saw a fence. Fashion's demand for cashmere is a boon for these goat herders, and their pots are always full of mutton soup, with buckets of airag always available. Airag is fermented mare's mile, very tart, very popular. Our driver would stop at will at some random ger, walk in the painted door without announcement, and return to the van with gallons of airag.

The spirit of hospitality is strong in this country; winters are harsh and you don't survive without this open spirit of "what's yours is mine, what's mine is yours." When we wanted to ride a yak, we simply stopped at a ger that had a yak, asked for rides, and gave the man some money. Once we stopped so our driver could buy some airag and the woman invited us back for breakfast the next morning. Of course there is the hope of renumeration, especially from obvious tourists, but no expectation. The inside of the gers are clean and comfortable, no small feat when you're surrounded by dirt and animal crap. Every season, four times a year, the families dismantle the gers, pack up all their belongings and move on to new pastures. Because it was time to move for autumn, we saw quite a few blue trucks on the dirt roads, apparently all from some entrepreneurial outfit you can hire to move your stuff. Families would be crammed into the cab, all they owned piled in the back of the blue truck.

The "highway system" consists of one long straight paved road leading west out of the capital, with 50-kilometer stretches of dirt road interspersed between sections of pavement. When the pavement runs out completely, you simply make your own road, or follow the tracks of some pioneering vehicle that has gone before you. The Autobahn it was not.

We loved staying in the gers in the tourist camps. I'm sure Bayra's family would have been happy to roll out blankets on the ground, but we certainly appreciated the bathhouses and beds and the dried dung to burn in our small stove. Garrett taught us all how to play poker, so many a night we gathered in gers to wager our pile of Skittles and M&Ms. Games are a great way to bridge the language barrier. And thank goodness for Bayra, our sole interpreter on the trip.

Travel is challenging and rustic in Mongolia, as in all third world countries, but oh so memorable. We were so grateful to be with our Mongolian family, who eased our way and made it all so enjoyable.