Goats and Gers

After a three hour drive down an increasingly bumpy road the city gave way to free roaming herds of animals and spaced out gers. Yadmaa and Davasuren spoke no English (and I no Mongolian) but they were warm and welcoming and had offered up their ger to me for the next 3 nights.

When arranging my time in Mongolia I knew that I wanted to get away from UB for a few days but many of the tour options were either too long for my schedule or overly gimmicky. Eventually my search led me to Stone Horse tours, the company ran horse treks to the nearby national park as well as organising ger stays with local families. There was one other person staying there with me, a young German man returning from two years in Sydney and I definitely appreciated having someone else to talk to at times. We had no particular schedule to keep but Yadmaa offered to take the two of us out riding each afternoon. Once he realised we were both competent enough in the saddle he also enlisted us to help bring the cows and horses in at night and at one point we joined two other horsemen to help bring back a heard of about 200 goats and sheep that had wandered too far from the valley.

Wildflowers in the hills, Yadmaa on his horse, my bed, milking the cows, cheese drying on the ger roof

I was able to try out the traditional Mongolian sport of archery (I was terrible) and helped milk the cows one night (slightly more success) but for the most part I read or went for walks up the surrounding hills. The views of the valley were beautiful and the grass was thick with wild flowers but we took particular delight in stumbling upon the Ovoo that dotted the landscape, piles of rocks, sticks and other offerings that form part of Shamanist ceremonies across Mongolia

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The food, in true Mongolian fashion, was almost exclusively mutton. I had mutton dumplings in broth, fried mutton dumplings, mutton stew, mutton with rice and mutton with home made noodles. One particularly memorable breakfast involved a bowl of home made yoghurt served with strips of mutton jerky. While the food was all delicious and beautifully prepared I think I’ve had my fill of mutton for the next few months. As well as the yoghurt I was able to try home made cheese and Mongolian milk tea (served with fresh milk and a dash of salt).

While I would have loved to do one of the horse treks or even an excursion out to the Gobi had time permitted, my three days with Yadmaa and Davasuren was relaxing and a small taste of the traditional Mongolian lifestyle (mutton and all).

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