First Night on the Steppe
These two kids came to check out our camp last night. Others visitors included a herd of cattle, a flock of sheep and goats, a pair of cranes stalking the riverbank with their chick, a hungry dog, and a pair of very curious magpies. I was surprised, because it seemed like we had camped in the middle of nowhere.
We’re on the floodplain of a clear, swift river, by a sandy bluff with mountains on both sides. On the plain above, there’s a small homestead with a ger (yurt) and a few small corrals and sheds, a Mongolian ranch. That’s probably where the two kids came from. The river valley had similar homesteads scattered every mile or so. At first I thought it looked like a lonely life, but in fact, people have jeeps and motorcycles so they get out and see their neighbors and go to town, which is about a 30 minute drive. And we saw several people getting around by horseback along the way. What a great place to grow up!
Yesterday we flew from Ulaan Baatar to Moron, a town in Hovsgul which is about half way across Mongolia on the Russian border. Today we’ll pick up permits to go near the Russian border, and then we’ll head north into the mountains. After so many months of anticipation, I feel like I’m living in a dream, and everything is as good as I imagined. In fact, I slept better last night in our tent than I have since I left home.
The herds and flocks here look like they’re living wild, and they have no fences. Our guide, Tulga, says that when the young are born, the herders keep them at the ger while their mothers go out to graze or to drink at the river, and so at the end of the day the herd or flock always come home for the night. The sheep and goats may be kept in the corrals at night if there are predators around, and the larger animals tend to stay close by.
We asked about predators, and it turns out there are brown bears (like grizzlies) in the mountains around here, as well as wolves. I’d love to see both, but not “up close and personal”… Maybe we’ll get lucky when we make our horseback trek into the mountains to find the reindeer herders and their shaman.
