Sunday, September 29, 2013

We Did It!

Hello From Ulaanbaatar!

Despite a crazy storm that is not well translated in these pictures and a few other challenges, we were able to ride our bicycles all the way here.  6,300 kilometers.  More photos to follow upon our return.

Looking forward to seeing you soon.-

Thank you for the prayers and positive thoughts.  -They worked.

Take care and have fun.








Monday, September 23, 2013

Hi Everyone,

Tyler and Adrianne will be back in the states in early October.   They would like to invite you all to a gathering to share stories of their adventure and to be reunited with their friends.   the Party will be held in the Plymouth/Holderness/Rumney NH area on Columbus Day October 12th.   So please save the date.   More details to follow when I have them.  I know that they would love seeing as many people as possible.

-Brett

Tuesday, September 17, 2013

Is this dish available?

All night long the piece of canvas covering the entrance of our orts, similar to a tepee, flaps in the howling winds.  The pelting of snow can be heard as it hits the canvas a few inches from our heads, and i wrap my sleeping bag tighter around my face as the fire in the wood stove goes out during the night.  In the dawn light, with three inches of new snow covering everything, the world appears black and white.  The Tsataan, literally the Reindeer People, are already out milking their herd of 60 reindeer. 

We arrived at this camp of 3 orts, which house a family consisting of 1 brother, who lives alone, and a younger brother, his wife and 2 sons, after an insane van ride of 12 hrs through the night, and 2 days of horseback riding in the mountains.  It felt really magical to see these 3 tepees, wrapped in white and black canvas, silhouetted against the golden larch forests with snow topped mountains, next to a lake, with a herd of reindeer staked behind. 

Not only do they herd the reindeer, they ride them!  It was so wild to see these people flying along on their saddled reindeer over some of the rockiest, boggiest, uneven terrain, with total ease and grace.

We got to try some reindeer milk, cheese, and even got to help make a batch of reindeer khuushuur.  Khuushuur are these fried meat dumplings that are like the fast food of Mongolia, and all of central Asia really.  We have had the opportunity to make khuushuur, and buuz, a steamed dumpling, with a few different families along the way. 

We have now had reindeer, yak, horse, cow, sheep and goat on our trip.  As far as i know, no camel.  It is not just the meat though, it is the fat.  This is the best part and people have offered us chunks of white fat to eat with bread.  It is kind of gnarly, but I have to say that after eating some, I didn't need to eat for the rest of the day.  We have also had milk, as well as the fermented, alcoholic milk of most of these animals.  From this milk there is made every variation of dairy product imaginable.

All of this animal product makes everything have a particular smell.  I call it 'ger smell'.  Ger is the Mongolian word for yurt.  Or, really, yurt is the Russian translation for ger.  It is the smell of smoke, cheese, and meat.  Goats in particular have the craziest smell.  Just to ride past them on our bikes leaves a smell that sticks in the nostrils for awhile.

Animals provide the sustenance for existence.  It is amazing to witness a culture that still exists the way it has for thousands of years.  There are differences.  Many gers have solar panels, and people watch television and have phones.  But most people live almost entirely off of their animals.  They eat dairy products and meat. 

One night we camped in this beautiful valley, within sight of a few gers.  As usual, within a brief time, a herdsman, on horseback, rode over to us to see what was happening.  Even with our phrasebook, our Mongolian is bad.  There is such variety of vowel pronunciation, and a rhythm to the language that is so different.  So, we delve into conversation with this man, and at some point we give him the book so he can try and find what he it trying to tell us.

 He meticulously flips through our tiny book, page by page, and eventually points to something.  It is in the restaurant section, and says "Is this dish available?".

 I look up at him, wondering if he is making a joke.  There is no smile though, and it seems he is just really concerned about our lack of meat.  He keeps saying something about bringing us some meat.  I am all for trying everything when we are a guest in a ger, and I hate to refuse hospitality, but we have one pot for cooking, a limited amount of water for cleaning, and no way of keeping meat from spoiling.  We are trying to explain this in as nice a way as possible, and eventually settle on him bringing us some dried meat.
 
The next morning he arrives as we are packing up camp with a white shopping bag.  The bag says 'I love New York', with a big red heart instead of the word love, and inside is dried goat meat.  Excellent.  So, for the past 2 weeks, every night a bit of dried goat meat goes in our dinner, and we get to have the smell of ger everywhere we go.

Our dried goat is finally finished in the village of Tsagaanuur.  It is from this village that we rent the horses to visit the Tsataan, and while there, are lucky enough to attend a shamanic ceremony, as well as an entire day of a Naadam Festival.  Naadam is a traditional festival that typically is held in July, and consists of horse racing. archery, and wrestling.  In Tsagaanuur, it also had a reindeer race!

In keeping with the food theme, which is what we spend a lot of time thinking about and doing, we went to the equivalent of a food tent at the festival.  Inside the tent were 4 women making khuushuur, while one woman took the orders.  Most restaurants here don't have menus, and if they do, you have to ask what they actually serve, because it is often only one or two items anyway.  At this tent, it was obvious- khuushuur and soup. It is actually easier for us that way, because otherwise we just pick something and cross our fingers.

There was one table outside the tent which people were crammed around.  Once one person left, you could take their spot.  There were also only 6 bowls and spoons available.  So, the real wait was for someone to finish their food, and then you were served with their bowl and spoon.  All of this was washed with some cold tea and dried with a rag.  It was like musical chairs with dishes and cutlery. 

These food options, or lack there of, make going to town, not nearly as exciting as usual on a long biking, or hiking trip.  There is no Pizza Hut- All You Can Eat Buffet, or any kind of breakfast place with pancakes and omelets and cinnamon rolls.  Occasionally we have an egg, and find some fresh bread.  We are excited if we can find oats and cheese in town.  Apples cost about $3 each.  In the bigger towns, we can find carrots and garlic.  The small towns have noodles, cream of wheat, and thankfully, there are salted peanuts and raisins! 

No matter what size shop, there are always an incredible variety of candy, biscuits and chocolates available. Sometimes half the shop is junk food.  Guess it never goes bad.  In one shop we bought an already opened and half finished package of sunflower bars, because it was the only one left and the only thing that was not just refined sugar.  

The one common denominator of all these shops is the Choco Pie!  It is also the most prevalent piece of garbage we have seen throughout our trip.  We finally broke down and bought a box in a tiny village.  They are chocolate covered cookies with a marshmallow filling.  I was really hoping for something special, but it was terrible, tasteless and stale.

So, for now, our food fantasies continue.  Perhaps Ulaan Bataar will be able to fulfill some of them, but I think they will mostly have to wait for our return.  I am most looking forward to eating food that crunches and is raw.  Raiding the bulk bins at a supermarket is also high on the list.  Breakfast foods, sushi, pizza, thai food, indian....

Hope you are enjoying yours.  Looking forward to sharing some with you upon our return.

love, adrianne and tyler

What Sound Does a Goat Make?


Thank you all for sharing your inspiring thoughts and prayers.  It is really wonderful to hear from you.

It has been a while since you have heard from us because internet access is not that easy to find in rural northern Mongolia (nice to know there are places on Earth where this is still the case).

We bought a camera, and we have been able to take a few pictures, so hopefully there will be at least a few images to see, but our time without the camera had us thinking about other ways to share this experience:

The soundscape of Mongolia-

Animal Sounds-
          An important category since humans are outnumbered by horses 13-1.

"Baaah."
"Meh!"
"pbpb."- Goats often suppress their sneezes with tightly pursed lips creating an always amusing fart noise.

The murmur rising from the sod as a hundreds of little goat and sheep hooves shimmer and scamper out of our path.

The thunder of herds of horse hooves approaching our very small tent in the middle of the steppe in the middle of the night waking us to vivid imaginings of trampled tourists- and the subsequent roar from the tourists to alert the herd to the presence of the small tent and its alive and hoping to stay that way occupants.

"Hey, hey, hey!"
"Hey, hey!"  -The Far Side translation of every dog bark.  We hear this sound as we ride past some gers, but more often if we are in town, and particularly if we sleep in town, as some dogs have the amazing ability to shout out this sentiment all night long.

"Moo."
The familiar bellow of cattle is sometimes accompanied by the more pleasing deep grumbles of yaks.  The sound from the hairier beasts is less plaintive and more accepting of whatever their current conditions may be.

"Whooshshsh"
Birds.  It is amazing how often the air displaced by feathers can be heard overhead.  It is especially nice to hear this sound through the roof of a ger.

A few sounds noticeable by their absence; oink, meow.  Apparently, not that easy to herd pigs, and cats are not that helpful in rounding up other critters.


Cyclist Sounds-
     We hear them often.

Rattle, shake, bump, bump, rattle, thump-  Six wheels supporting two riders, their gear, their flags, their found eagle, hawk and owl feathers, and their four license plates can produce a surprising symphony of sounds as they roll over different surfaces.

"Hummmmmmmm buzzzzzzzzz"   By far the most preferred sound rising from below the riders is the hum of tires rolling over smoothly packed earth with no sand or washboard in sight, and the pleasing song of a quickly coasting rear wheel.

"Shcrih, shcrih, shcrich,  uf... son of a .." Sand.  We pedal, sometimes valiantly diagonally as our bicycles decide not to travel in the direction of the road, and the direction in which they are being steered, but instead to veer at very sharp angles and head for the deeper sand on the side of the main track.  This makes it very difficult to pedal, and sometimes difficult to sing happy songs.  And sometimes easier to walk and sometimes easier to curse.

"thunkathunkathunkathhunkathunkathunkathunkaaaaathunkathunkathunka"  Washboard.  Not that awesome, but preferable to sand because we can mostly keep pedaling.  There is usually some part of the eight tracks heading in the same direction that is a little smoother than the others, and the hunt for the elusive ribbon of smooth can keep one's mind quite occupied as it requires a surprising amount of concentration.  When the road is like this, it also makes stopping for a snack and a moment of stillness quite refreshing.

"Rattle clacka clunk tink bunk clanka kagagkaagaka..."  When the way is rocky, and their is no smooth way through you have to proceed as gingerly as possible with 4 months of gear. and 6 days of food and 2 days of water.  Go straightish and think light thoughts.

"Flapwhapwhapflapwhap..."  Uninterrupted by any natural obstacle like a tree, or a shrub or a rock, the wind which is sometimes blowing over nothing but grass is happy to meet our collection of flags and feathers and faces and introduce itself.  More often, it has met our backs, and left our flags listless as our parade and the wind continue eastward at roughly the same speed.

Human Sounds
     Although there are relatively few, and they are not that densely packed, we see at least a few others every day.

"Sain bainooo."  Hello.  Mongolian is not a language easily transliterated into English, because there are a number of sounds not normally made by English speakers, and vowel harmony is a difficult thing to write.  It is also challenging to speak.

"crickle"  The first draw of smoke into the mouth of the shepherd who has shown up to spend some time staring at us next to our tent, glows and burns the tip of the newspaper in which the tobacco has been rolled.  The cigarette continues to burn, and we continue to hear it, as the space (sometimes very short) between our new Mongolian friend and ourselves is not filled with idle chatter...or meaningful chatter...or much of anything but being there.  It is an initially disturbing trait of many people we have met here to be very comfortable with silence.  Now, we find it a nice reminder that actually there is nothing more important than simply to be.

"fwip.      fwip.            fwip.     fwip...."   Our Mongolian phrasebook is kind of handy since we were not able to find a good English/Mongolian dictionary.  We are able to look up things like;  "How much is a berth in the sleeping car" and slightly more useful things such as the standard greeting, "I hope your animals are fattening up nicely."  The problem is that the other half of the conversation is very difficult to translate as there is no Mongolia/ English portion of the book.  This is a problem for us, but rarely a problem for the people with whom we are speaking.  Minutes pass as they patiently search through the book which is not organized alphabetically for them until they find one word and point to it.  More minutes pass as the search for the next word takes place.

"Stockton passes the ball to Malone..."  It is often the unexpected things that make traveling so fun.  It was after a very annoying string of flat tires that we found ourselves in a fenced-in yard in a small village getting some "help" from the brother-in-law of the man who brought us to the yard.  He was attempting to fix the hole in one of our tires by attaching a giant slab of rubber to the inside.  After trying to explain that this is unlikely to work because the tube will chafe on the rough edges, minutes passed, while we waited for something.  When the something turned out to be a power drill with a sanding bit, we decided to abort the brother-in-laws project and patch the tire with a good patch made for tubes.  We then retired from the sunny yard into the comfortable living room of the house.  This is where we sat to eat some meat and rice and watch an NBA playoff game between the Seattle Sonics and the Utah Jazz from 1993.

"Crunchsquish" Gristle, amazing how it squeaks as it crunches!  And the flavor lasts and lasts.

"mmmmMMMMmmmgunggungmmmMMMM..."  150 or 200 cc motorcycles laden with two, three or four people and a sheep, or water, or a big-screen tv, or car parts, whine and moan their way up and down mountains around and through mud puddles and all over the countryside.

Others

The sounds so far described are different than perhaps you are imagining.  The sounds that one can hear here are louder than their decibels because there is so much background noise and din of modern western culture that is wonderfully absent.  Upon entering a shop in a small village, there is no hum of drink coolers, and there are not hot-dogs sweaty with effort rolling endlessly on squeaky un-oiled heaters.  There may be a few flies circling the paper meant to entrap them, and there may be a person passing a needle through a needlework project, but the buzz of living in the hive of electronica is absent.

There is quiet.

There is the land.

There is the sky.



There is the person staring at the stars in the middle of the night.

It is then, under the white ribbon of milky way, and the cool sparkling sky that one can even hear the subtle heartbeat of stars.


Hoping you all can find a moment to enjoy some quiet.
And looking forward to making some noise with you when we return.

Take care and have fun-
                  Tyler and Adrianne.