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Khatgal, Mongolia
50° 27' N 100° 10' E
Sep 13, 2006 08:19
Distance 244km

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Other entries in Khatgal

Khatgal Rest Day

Text written in: English

I was tired from all my journeying and tried to sleep in.  Unfortunately the walls of the ger while thick and weatherproof do nothing to block sound and during daylight hours the whole town was a flurry of activity.  There was a whole winters worth of wood splitting going on. The town had a few communal wells that people drew from into large drums.

I decided to go for a walk through the city and spend some time down by the lake shore.  There were some abandoned structures down there destroyed by flooding, so the actually town was nearly 400 meters from the shore. I found a nice non swampy spot and spent about 30 minutes contemplating my life and the nature of the adventure that I was about to embark on.  10 minutes before they came up to me I saw a couple of gentlemen walking towards me.  It was about noon and when they were within 10 meters I could see that they were quite drunk from their stagger.

They had a bottle of vodka and a soup type bowl that they were drinking it out of.  Drinking out of smaller oriental style soup bowls was pretty common in Mongolia.  They offered me some vodka in the bowl and since it would have been rude to refuse I put it up to my lips and pretended to drink some.  The younger one then started cajoling for $2 dollars and I said no.  He started getting a bit uppity and I realized that I was certainly a bit isolated from the community if they started anything, but I was feeling like a man of principle that afternoon and if I gave him any money it would fuel him to harass the other tourists in town too.

We were at an impasse and the younger one of the two, about my age, a little smaller than me, but certainly not puny, started getting that angry look in his eyes. So I decided to step beside him and walk away from the situation. He took a step back and then stood in front of me very close to my face and I could see he was rearing for a fight.  I had already seen a couple of drunken fights in Mongolia, one in UB and another in the country side on my way to Moron.  When I thought things were going to get hairy the older one of  the pair grabbed his shoulder and pull him away.  It made me realize that the older men in the group always have more sense and moderation than the brasher young ones.  I was glad things turned out peaceful because in a small village if you start scrapping around, you are always in the wrong because he has a whole town full of life long friends and you are just an outsider.

I went back to the guesthouse and when I got there the latch on the gate which was in a half broken state was undone and someone's cows were in the yard. Having never spent much time on a farm I knew the cows would listen and I clapped both of them out of the yard and closed the door.  Even funnier was that Essi's sister was watching me through the window.  I am sure she got a good chuckle out the citified American trying to play farmer for a minute.

I collected my thoughts for a while and then decided to go shopping for provisions for my trip.  There were about 10 shops in town and I went to the 8 of them that were open. It was a Spartan affair and I immediately gathered that it wouldn't be good eating for this trip.  There was some canned ham and noodles.  I bought raisins and cookies and crackers knowing that they would be crumbs by the end of the second day. I bought 14 chocolate bars two for each day of the 7 day trip to Khonk where we could resupply. I bought the extra chocolate to guarantee that I wouldn't go hungry in the face of not so many food choices. I bought bread and anything else that could suffice as trail food. I took my haul home past a couple of guys that were building a log cabing mostly with hand tools.  It looked like a lot of work, but still, the gratifying sort.

I asked where I could find the post office and she said it was the tallest thing around.  I had trouble finding it and ran into the school which was the biggest and nicest structure in town.  It was a small town but still spread out.  I asked a couple of teens where I could find it by waving around some post cards and pointing at the place where a stamp should be and they pointed me in the right direction.

What I learned was that these rural post offices were also the main communication hub with phone lines and a large radio tower stretching about 50ft into the air, making them easier to find in the future.  They had a real operator and communications equipment that could have fit fine into a WWII movie.  They of course were very helpful and nice.

I went back to the hacienda and spent some time writing letters. The kids would watch the black and white tv for 10 minutes at a time.  There was a solar panel for it, but it didn't produce enough electricity to sit and watch tv for an hour or perhaps the kids didn't like to sit around like their western counterparts.

  It was dusk when the new arrivals showed up with Essei.  It was two American couples and a Frenchman all traveling separately.  Their ride from UB to Moron was only 16 hours compared to my 24 and it made me realize that my drivers were reject clowns, something I had already suspected.  We all sat around and talked about treks with a big map of the area. It was something like a war planning conference. I was hoping to have some companions sign on to go with me but they opted for a shorter 10 day trek.  I considered switching to join with them, but I wanted the longer one and didn't have an interest in putting my guide out of  work.  There was some brief talk of me paying extra since it was late in the season and the weather would probably turn south on us.

The new arrivals went into to town to a store that Essei had open back up for them and bought their supplies.  When they came back we got a campfire going.  I learned at that point there was a bucket pump shower than they would heat up water for and they put water in the wash basin outside the ger and the place certainly seemed a bit friendlier with some better plumbing options.

We got a nice camp fire going and I was certainly glad to have some companionship after I had considered it hopeless because all the tourists seem to have left town.  There was some nice drinking and stories of Thai Lady boys.  The New Englander seemed like a strange match for his piratesque girlfriend. He told stories of being scammed in Beijing at a teahouse.  Here is your bill for 200 dollars worth of tea, yikes.  Even worse was his story about changing 1000 us dollars into Mongolian currency at 9:00 at night in UB and having it in a front pocket and people surrounding him on 3 sides taking it and then disappearing really fast.  Even worse was that he had another full thousand in US dollars which the thieves didn't get.  Really though to have that much money in a pocket was absurd. It was more than a Mongolian income for a year.  He wasn't a stupid man but he certainly had more money than sense.  It kind of reminded me of my Aunt Joy who had 700 bucks in a purse that she "lost" in the airport. There just isn't that much value in having that much money on your person unless you into making large bribes.

It was a racous conversation and a good evening.  They played a trick on one of the men by having his girlfriend switch beds, so in the dark he tried to say goodnight to the other man instead of his girlfriend.  The lone Frenchmen was naturally a quiet man, but the language difficulty with English certainly contributed to that.  I was feeling like the point of the spear, Mongolia and horse riding had long been a dream of mine and this was my chance to realize it.