Mongolia
Living with nomads in the remote Gobi desert

Ulaanbaatar, BEST DAY EVER, September 29th, 2017

• So... I came up with some nonsense things to share with you in my update today, because not much happened during our 12 hour bus trip from Ulan Ude to Ulaanbaatar. But then!!! (*repeat exclamation marks indefinitely) something happened...

• When we arrived at the hostel, after having an amazing hot pot dinner, the hostess casually asked us what we were planning to do in Mongolia. So, we told her we were looking for a tour and maybe an opportunity to volunteer on a farm. Short story short: she then offered us to leave for a 5 day Gobi desert tour tomorrow morning and afterwards to stay at her nomadic family home to help out with their animal farm for two weeks. They have horses, camels, goats, etc. and we will be helping with milking and producing yogurt and cheese. YES, YES, YES!!!!!!!!!!!!

• ...Ok, so, I will tell you the nonsense things of the day anyway, since you won't be reading any updates from me for the next three weeks:

  • • I'm used to traveling alone, but I'm discovering more and more advantages of a travel companion. For example, the chance that someone mentions not to forget the stuff you left in the refrigerator, or that your towel is still in the bathroom, multiplies with every extra person. 

    • Had an awkward "Are we being scammed?" moment today when we wanted to purchase a bus ticket. We asked for two single tickets and put down a note of 500, thinking this should be (more than) enough. But the cashier just laughed at us, took her calculator, and typed the enormous amount of 10.000 Tugrik. Ten thousand?!, I thought, that is all our money! Surely she must have typed a zero too many. Or is she setting us up? I looked at Emma in despair, but because we had little choice, we gave her our big note. While she was loading our public transportation cards with money, I saw that she only loaded our cards with 1500 Tugrik each. That has to be a crooked deal, right, we gave her sooooo much more money! Well... Once in the bus, we took out our phone to calculate the damage of the scam. We found out that 10.000 Tugrik is actually only €2,80. Oops, no scam. I guess we need some time to get used to this new currency.

    • Tried to take pictures of the amazing Mongolian landscape through the blue tinted bus windows. Ha ha, stupid idea, added one photo to show you the level of failing.

Back online in three weeks! 😃

Back from the desert, October 21st, 2017

I don't even know where to begin this story. We just got back into society after living and surviving in the Gobi desert for three weeks. The first few days, we went on a tour to explore the Gobi's landscape highlights. About this, I can be short: we visited many beautiful sites, rode a camel and enjoyed local cuisine and traditions. It was really nice, as the photos will show you. 

What I cannot be so short about, is the 2.5 weeks after the tour, which we spent living in a ger (that's what Mongolians call their yurt) with  a Mongolian nomadic family. We weren't there as tourists or guests, but became part of the family and helped with every aspect of Gobi life. Our 'main' family members were Norowoo (30) and his mothere Igi (62). Norowoo's wife Jika (27) and their son Toki (4) only spend their weekends in the ger, as they go to work and school in a city too far away to commute to every day. On top of these 4 humans, the family consists of 750 goats, 570 sheep, 75 cows, 56 horses and 48 camels. Grand total: 1503 mammals. To fit in with this family completely, we were given the Mongolian names Enkhmaa (Emma) and Airunaa (Alexa), respectively meaning 'peace' and 'pure' - or so we've been told. 

The family has two adjacent gers, of which we had the bigger (and colder) one completely to ourselves most of our stay (such luxury!). Being there in October, our daily activities focused mainly on helping the family with preparations for the cold winter to come: making hundreds of preservable snacks, collecting fuel for the stove, milking the goats, moving and transforming the summer ger to a winter ger.

Although every day was different and had its own highlights, the activities were roughly the same. Therefore, I will describe these two-and-a-half weeks as one "typical October day in a Gobi ger", from our perspective. That is, the female perspective, as male tasks are different and focus on keeping track of the livestock's whereabouts and herding them, pumping up water for them, and, when the time comes, slaughtering them. Also, milking horses is somehow very manly, while you won't see men touch goat udders unless absolutely necessary. Anyway, we're drifting off, let's start the day!

8:00 - Waking up

In the morning it was the cold (-10° C) and not the sun that roughly awoke us from our tropical dreams. With a frozen nose, blue lips and numb toes, we tried to gather enough courage to climb out of our sleeping bag* and face the even colder air outside (*two sleeping bags, extra blanket, thermowear and winter pyjamas). After putting on our subzero clothes with healthy reluctance, we stored away our sleeping bags and mattresses, because, as Mongolians say, otherwise your bed will be calling you all day. Now, I guess there's a point to that, but the voice of my bed is loud enough to continue calling me when packed, sealed and stuffed in the bottom of my backpack (actually, when I listen very carefully and the wind direction is right, I can sometimes even hear my bed in the Netherlands whisper my name). Anyway, at this point we were usually ready to step outside in the cold, wide open desert and remember what an amazing place we were in. In the smaller ger, Igi would have the stove fired well by now, warming up the room and making milk tea. This delicious drink typically is a mixture of milk, water and tea leaves, and sometimes contains rice and dried cow meat as well. It takes a few cups to get used to the salty desert water with which the tea is made, but after that there's no better way to start your day than with a hot mug of milk tea complemented by bread, fresh buttercream and cookies (Mongolians have a real sweet tooth and eat cookies and sweets throughout the day). 

9:30 - Collecting dung

Because the Gobi desert is typically devoid of vegetation, an alternative type of fuel is needed to fire the stove for cooking and heating. This solution is found in dried dung. Cow dung, to be precise, as we found out after a day of scooping the wrong (horse) poop. That was, by the way, not the only thing that went wrong that first day: I tried to collect shit the traditional way, with a basket on my back, and failed miserably. Not only did I miss the basket most of the time I forked a turd over my shoulder, some of the dried dung also got into my pants (because it fell through the basket and into the crevice between my pants and bum). However, from the second day onwards, we mastered the art of poopscooping and became dungmasters. We only collected the right type of dung (with the perfect dryness), found out where the best poop-rich areas were and even began to understand why some turds are 'too ugly' to take, as Jika had explained to us. Honestly, the happiness we felt when finding the perfect poop must be somewhat similar to what a golddigger feels when finding a big nugget. Friends who know my fascination for poop will assume that collecting dung was my favourite task. This is true (of course), but mostly because it is really nice to stroll around the the amazing Gobi landscape.

10:55 - Toilet break

Inspired by collecting dung, at some point in time you may want to create an artwork yourself. At the ger, there is not even a small shed with a hole in the ground, so you are free to use the whole stretch of Gobi desert as your toilet. This is actually very convenient, because it means you can just pull down your pants and do your business. If you are lucky, there is a small hill or big shrubbery to hide your naked arse behind, and that is as far as privacy goes (although you aren't very likely to be interrupted by any human anyway, but there is a large possibility of being observed all the way by a sheep, goat or camel). Anyway, I would like to tell you a short and disgusting story about a particular time I went to poop. One morning, I was collecting dung far away from the gers and suddenly felt the urge to poop, which I did. So far, no problem, right? But then, out of unhealthy curiosity, I didn't cover my shit with sand and rocks (like I usually do, promise). When I came back later that day to collect more cow dung, I thought my own dung had disappeared. Strange, I thought, until I suddenly noticed that on the place were I left my number 2, there were crawling over a 100 dung beetles. At first I was a little creeped out (and by now, you must be more than a little grossed out), but then I saw one of the dung beetles run away with a small ball of my poop. Worst part of the story: I actually thought that was really cool, took a photo of it, and uploaded it here as part of this post. Sorry. 

11:00 - Tea break

After conquering the cold and wind outside, we usually rewarded ourselves with a (milk) tea break. The best thing about this break is that tea here goes hand in hand with A LOT of snacks: cookies (a real Mongolian specialty), aaruul (sweat or non-sweet dried goat yogurt) and fresh buttercream (solidified goat's milkfat) with sugar.

11:30 - Making yogurt and processing aaruul

The aaruul (dried goat yogurt) served with tea is home made from scratch (well, from goat) and involves a weeks long process to finish. After milking the goats and sterilising the milk, yogurt is made by mixing 25 litres of cold milk with just 1,5 tablespoon of yogurt and then heating this mixture on the stove until the point of boiling. One possibility is to leave this mixture overnight, in which case you'll have a full bucket of yogurt the following day. The other and most chosen possibility is to heat the yogurt mixture further, scoop it into cotton bags, and hang it out to leak dry. After leaking for a night, the cotton bags are placed between two wooden planks with heavy stones on top, thereby compressing the yogurt into a more solid shape. After another day, the bags look like oval cheese wheels and the dried yogurt inside is ready to process further. Usually, about half of the yogurt oval is left as it is, and cut into small rectangles with a sewing thread. The other half of the dried yogurt is crumbled to bits and mixed with two large cups of sugar. This sweet yogurt is then pressed into different moulds with traditional decorations. Both the sweet and non-sweet aaruul are left outside for two weeks to dry further, before storing them. Cutting and pressing aaruul is very simple, repetitive work and therefore one of the two activities Enkhmaa and I were trusted with completely (the second one obviously being poopscooping). By that, I mean that we made ALL of the (sweet) aaruul that had to be made during our stay - we certainly pressed more than 500 pieces of aaruul into a mould each. The reason for this ridiculously big production is the approaching winter. Soon, it will be too cold to milk the goats, and aaruul is one of the few ways to be able to consume the milk's nutrients the whole winter long. It is easy to store, can be preserved long and most importantly, it is a delicious snack. 

14:30 - Washing and cleaning

This is not just an afternoon activity, washing (up) and cleaning can be done all day: dishes, dirty cloths, dirty clothes, more dishes, sweeping the floor, dishes again, cleaning out the stove, dishes, cleaning the milk buckets, and then there is always that pan you forgot to wash. The worst thing about all this cleaning, apart from the fact that it is my second least favourite thing in the Gobi (the first one being getting out of my warm bed), is that it never really gets clean. For the dishes, often greasy from milk or meat, we never use soap, not always use a sponge, use as little water as possible and this water is sometimes cold. Clothes and cloths have to be washed by hand, again with as little water as possible but luckily with some detergent. Still, you need to have very strong hands to scrub off all milk and dirt stains. And, whatever you do and however hard you try, there will be sand. Everywhere. But what else would you expect in the desert? 

One other note on cleaning: the alert reader will notice that taking a shower (ha ha) or even washing our bodies is not part of the typical ger day I describe here. In 2,5 weeks time, we only washed our bodies with water (instead of wet wipes) twice, and only washed our hair once (yes, yuk).

15:30 Cooking and dinner

In the desert, dinner is early. Or maybe lunch is late. Anyway, the first and last warm meal of the day is usually consumed around 16:30. Typical base ingredients are rice, lentils, pasta or flower. Especially with flower, the possibilities are endless: mixed only with water it can be turned into noodles (tsuiwan), ragout (pantan), steamed buns (manto) and dumplings (buuz). These last ones are absolutely amazing and we learned how to make them. I can't wait to impress you all with my buuz when I get back! Besides the aforementioned, meat may also be regarded as a base ingredient, since it is typically part of every (winter) meal. The fresh meat during our stay was mostly originating from a horse of Norowoo's brother, and in our last days we witnessed the slaughtering of a sheep. Not to waste a thing, the family eats every part of the animal, including the head and organs. We managed to avoid the first completely, but the latter was definitely part of our second-last meal and to be honest, it wasn't all that bad. Oh, and to be clear: although it is unusual for us to eat horse meat, this actually is very good and has become a typical flavour that will always remember us of our desert stay. Apart from the fresh horse and sheep meat, we also tried dried cow meat on a few occasions. This meat is dried in big lumps and cut into smaller pieces before cooking. The dried meat regains some of its texture by boiling it, but it has lost most of its flavour and is very tough to chew. 

So, with those base ingredients, every dish will have some carbs, proteins and fat "to stay warm during the winter". But what about vitamins; vegetables? Well, this is more of an extra than a standard ingredient. Even when a vegetable is added, this often is a single carrot chopped into flards to evenly distribute it through a dish that serves four. From what we've seen, there are 5 vegetables to choose from here: potatoes (yep, those count as a veggie here), carrots, onions, parsnip and white cabbage. When asked to cook something Dutch ("Niederlandi" as the family would say), we could only think of one dish with these ingredients: hutspot! From the moment we cooked this, it inevitably became 'the thing Niederlandi people eat'. So, on another day, where family dinner consisted only of horse organs, we were given the necessary potatoes, carrots and onion to cook for ourselves. Like that, we ate hutspot twice in a week, which is more than I usually eat it in a year. 

17:00 - Finding the goats

After dinner, there is no time to sit back and relax (actually, it is not possible to 'sit back' at all, because there is no sofa or chairs, only stools). On the contrary, the moment has come for one of the most strenuous and difficult (for me) activities of nomad life: finding (and then milking) the goats. The goats roam around the desert freely, with no fence or leash to hold them. This means that, when it is time to collect them for milking, you often have little knowledge of their whereabouts. Sometimes you just need to walk to a higher place to spot them, but of course: in the case of my first goat herding, Norowoo, Toki and I had to drive around on the motorcycle for 10 minutes before we finally found them. Then, Norowoo asked me which direction home was (I pointed in the wrong one), wished me luck and took off, leaving me behind with 92 goats and his 4-year-old. Neither the group of goats nor Toki agreed with my idea of walking home, so before long I was running around like a crazy lady. With Toki on my right hip and the herding stick in my left hand, I heroically tried to walk in the semi-right direction, until Norowoo decided he had pestered me enough and came to pick up his son. From that moment, it was no problem to bring home the goats and I did feel a little cool guiding them back. However, after this first time, we were never again asked to help with herding. I wonder why...

17:30 - Milking the goats

If you think the hard part is over now: guess again. Finding the goats is only child's play in comparison to milking them. First, the goats need to be binded together, so that they have little room to move or escape. The binding is done by crocheting (for pros: with a slip stitch) the goats' heads together, with butts on both sides of the rope (if this explanation is a little vague, please see the photo). Then, the real work starts: milking. Sitting on a small stool with a bucket clenched between your legs, you position yourself behind a goat. While searching for the udder with your right hand between the goats' legs, you hold the bucket tight with your left hand in case the goat starts kicking (some goats just don't like their nipples to be touched by a stranger - fair enough I'd say). Note that in this position, your head is very close to the goats' arse, which is a very dangerous place to be; goat farts are deadly. When the goat more or less accepts that you will be pulling her nipples and stealing her milk, you can start milking with two hands. That is, if you know how to do this and are able to squeeze any of the white stuff out of the goat at all (I can make a lot of perverse comparisons here, but I won't and will leave it to your own imagination). My first, second and third attempt at milking failed. However hard I pulled, squeezed, pushed and tried, it wasn't enough. Extra frustrating was that Norowoo, during his explanation, seemed to be able to fill a whole glass with a few effortless pulls. It wasn't until I dared to vent this frustration on the goats' udder that I saw some drops of magic white fall into the bucket. It wasn't much, but it was the start of a new skill and a new hobby (I think at least half of you will understand the fun of feeling boobs - right?!). 

When all buckets are full and all udders empty, the milk is strained through an old headscarf, thereby cleaning it from sand, hairs and the occasional dropping. Some 25 litres of the milk are then heated on the ger's stove, a process that not only makes the milk safe to drink, but also creates the first secondary product: buttercream (orum). This is like the ordinary skin that you get from heating milk, but then much thicker and solid. After leaving the pan to cool overnight, the layer of butter is taken off the milk in the morning, cut into pieces and used as fresh bread topping, or eaten as it is. The rest of the milk is stored or used to make (dried) yogurt.

19:30 - Drinks and games

Around half past 8, when the sun has set for 2 hours and an incredible number of stars are sprawled across the sky, the workday is finally over. Most of the time this meant that Enkhmaa and I went straight to our own ger and beds, but on the days we had a little energy left, we played a few games with the family. Mongolians have quite a variety of traditional games, which are almost all played with the same material: sheep or goat's ankle bones. These unique bones have 4 distinct and typical sides, and can therefore be used as if they were uneven 4-sided dices. With a box full of these, a countless number of games can be created, that I won't explain into full detail here. As anywhere in the world, games go hand in hand with drinks and so here I have to mention our most feared liquid of the desert: Airag, fermented horse milk. Now, the taste isn't necessarily as bad as it sounds, but, to quote the Lonely Planet: "this drink is one that your stomach will remember for a long time." The first time we met Norowoo, he challenged us to play a drinking game that we would hardly ever win, and so we had to drink three bowls of airag each in a very short time. This, combined with a 4 hour desert drive, resulted in an instant and strong aversion to fermented horse milk. Therefore, we kept with delicious and fresh hot goat's milk the rest of our stay's evenings. 

21:00 - Time for bed

Not only our beverage of choice (hot milk) was childish, our bedtime in the desert was historically early too. Conquering the cold, working hard and trying to please and help the family all day is very exhausting and so we slept like babies. Just before crawling into bed, we completely stashed the stove with dung and sticks to at least fall asleep warm. Like that, we quickly drifted off to repeat all activities again the following day...

This is a ridiculously long piece of text and still it only captures a miniscule part of the experience we had in the Gobi desert. We also caught a pigeon, witnessed wedding preparations, gazed at the stars, broke down and built up a ger, drank wine, saw snow in the desert, stayed a few nights with another family, learned important words and traditions and much, much, more. It was amazing, and I would recommend all of you (the 3 individuals that made it all the way to thist last alinea) to go to Mongolia yourself and have this experience too!

Someone asked me how we communicated with our family...

The family's English was limited to a few words and therefore, communication was difficult the first few days. The family explained the work to us by showing us how it should be done, walking along with us sometimes, saying "yes" and "no" while giving examples of actions. After these few days we knew how things worked and could take initiative ourselves. Also, we learned some useful Mongolian words, which made things a lot easier. We knew things like "yesterday, today, tomorrow, bread, butter, bucket, kettle, goat, milking, dung, cookies, stove, pan" etc. So then we could for example ask "onotur yama sach" (today goat milking?) and they could say yes or "margash" (tomorrow).