You Won't Believe. . . A Day In The Gobi
June
Calender
©
Copyright 2021 by June Calender
|
PPhoto courtesy of Wikimeda Commons. |
Our
group of sixteen piled into three ugly old Russian troop carriers (the
Land Rover substitute in Mongolian tourist travel). Each had a driver
and his helper whose job was to make sure the driver stayed on the
faint tracks in the unmarked expanse of flat brown dessert. We drove
south from our ger camp (“gers”—rhymes with bears—are what the hated
Russians had called “yurts”). Here the Gobi was packed dirt,
with scarce very low, mostly brown vegetation that sustained feral
Bactrian camels. We were headed for a national park in a mountainous
area. The vehicles spread out across the desert so no one had to drive
in another’s dust cloud.
We
stopped briefly at the only lonely ger on the way. A herder couple
invited us into their felt home, showed us their small family altar
with postcard-size pictures of Buddha. They offered us dried cheese,
like sand colored stones. It had to be sucked; any attempt to bite it
would mean emergency dental care. (There were no dentists for miles
around). They had lost all their sheep the winter before last in the
worst blizzard in decades. Their eight children had left for less
destitute places.. Our guide gave them some money and the hard boiled
eggs meant for our lunch.
In the park we visited a small museum and ate box-lunches before
walking into a canyon where we were promised a surprise. We saw picas
and passed a picnic area where another troop carrier and a tea kettle
over embers indicated people would return. We met one of the group who
told us in halting English that he was a doctor here with other friends
from the nearest hospital. They had a day off and were enjoying the
canyon. Further on we heard laugher and shrieks that sounded like an
amusement park. Here?
We found a small group of men and women sliding and playing like
children on a patch of ice. Yes, ice! Ice in the Gobi. Ice left over
from that horrible winter. The canyon must have been filled with snow..
We and the Mongolian health workers walked back out trying to chat but
the foreign language they had learned was Russian. They were
all glad that at last the Russians had been replaced by a new Mongolian
goverment.
When we were a half mile from our vehicles our guide pointed at the
very dark sky in the north. He told us to hurry, that was unmistakably
a rain storm. It had not rained for many, many months but …
It did not rain, it poured. But not on us. We drove toward
the cloud which was moving northeast. It looked like a theatrical
curtain being pulled across the stage always ahead of us. Then it
disappeared beyond us.
Three miles from our ger camp, we drove into a lake. Only
about five inches deep, it extended as far as we could see. Where dust
had risen in clouds, now the troop carriers sprayed arcs of sparkling
water. No tracks were visable but the drivers had a good sense of
direction. We tourists, on our first day in this fabled dessert, saw
water, water everywhere, and nothing else at all until our ger camp
came into view. The storm had moved east, the afternoon sun was
shining. The water was sinking into the dessert leaving sparkling
marble-size hailstones on the ground.
Two vehicles reached the camp but our vehicle got mired in the tire
tracks of a predecessor about 50 yards from the fence (to keep out
feral camels). The others would come back to help our driver but we
piled out on the suddenly green plants. The desert had already soaked
up the rain. I had walked only a few steps when I was hit between the
shoulders by a kind of snowball. My roommate, an ebullient woman who
had retired from an executive position with the Canadian Girl Guides
was a pro at snowball fights. I gave her back as good as she
gave me. Briefly kids with hands full of melting hailstones, we chased
one another to the camp.
As we started toward our gers to
change out of soggy sandals, the guide called us to an area behind the
camp’s kitchen building where a low area had become a river. We saw a
shaggy old, nearly blind wolf that hung around the camp because he was
given scraps standing befuddled in water up to his shaggy
belly. What was this strange experience?
We headed to the dining room for cold Genghis Khan beer before dinner
and were stopped in awe at a magnificent rainbow--a complete half
circle of melding colors, its ends touching the earth as the sky behind
it became a glowing mango.
The
next day was entirely different. We drove north to the Flaming Cliffs
where Roy Chapman Andrews found the dinosaur skeletons that now stand
in the New York Museum of Natural History. Here were sand dunes, pink
cliffs and our hottest day, at 115 without a wisp of shade anywhere or
a cloud in the sky. The second day was the typical July day in the Gobi
but the first was the day about which we would tell our friends back
home, “You won’t believe …
Our
tour of Mongolia covered the most interesting places. We arrived in
time or the annual National Fair in Ulan Battur -- wonderful to
see, visited parks and took a long bus trip through
the hilly country side to the area where Gengis Khan had built his
capital, most of which no longer exists. Then we flew to the Gobi for
a couple of days. After that we
flew to the northern-most section which is forested and borders
Russian Siberia. There we met a reindeer herder group and were
introduced to a woman Shaman who had a tent
(very much like our Native Amerions's tents) and saw some of the
reindeer who were very uncomfortable and stinky sweating in
what to them was much too hot weather.
I
have been afraid we would be fed a lot of mutton which I don't like.
But the food was very good (we even had pizza). The city is small but
was very modern. In the country side we
stayed in "ger villages" which were comfortable.
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