After 2 flights we arrive in the Gobi desert, and a 4×4 whisks us on a 45 minute rough ride through roadless desert. The landscape is almost entirely flat and void of structure or vegetation other than very short green grass (which we later learn is a sort of chive and makes the breeze oniony) I imagine the experience to be like speeding across an American prairie circa 1800. The driver plays a lot of Bruno Mars and Bieber on the radio. Kevin asks him how long till we get to the lodge, and he says, “my name is Cougar,” which turned out to be all the English he knew.

The 3 Camel Lodge turns out to be a village of gers (rhymes with beers) which is their word for yurt – round buildings of wood and felt that are the traditional home of the nomadic Mongolians, and can be erected or dismantled in less than an hour. Our unit is called reindeer, it has a bed, a few pieces of rustic furniture and a bathroom.

We have dinner in the lodge – we will eat all of our meals there, as the nearest ‘town’ is an hour away.

The food is simple, hearty soups, over cooked meats and plain veg.

The ger is cozy, and we fall asleep quickly, but are awakened before 5am by the sounds of thunder. We will soon learn that weather changes on a dime here, but this morning I’m eager to go outside and see the storm. I am greeted with a magnificent sunrise that Kevin and I marvel over and take a gazillion photos.

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The beauty of Mongolia will prove very difficult to capture in photographs – it’s so expansive and solitary.

We spend the first half of our day taking a 2 hour walk through Lamiin Ovoo, an area of long shallow rolling hills.

We pass several herds of grazing animals – the nomadic people support themselves with the products from their flocks of cows, horses, sheep, goats, and camels – but other than that the landscape is mostly remarkable for it’s vast blankness.

We return to the lodge for lunch and a lecture on paleontology as Mongolia is home to several spectacular discoveries of dinosaur bones and digs.

In the afternoon we travel to visit a nomadic family. Again we are in jeeps and we drive over an hour over roadless landscape – frequently there are no landmarks at all as far as the horizon and it’s hard to understand how the drivers navigate. Occasionally we drive through herds of animals, including the fluffy goats used for cashmere – the harsh cold of the steppe grows their coats exceptionally fine.

The family we visit raises camels and we are allowed to ‘ride’ them, on a lead. The Mongolian camels have 2 humps and you sit between them and hold onto the front one – it’s about as awkward as it sounds..

The mother in this family of 4 greets us, bringing us into her ger where she serves us tea with goat milk and some weird dried cheese curds they like for snack and we are also offered snuff which is pretty common in the culture. We ask some questions about their life, a typical nomadic family of 4 keeps about 600 animals.They send their children to school in the city. For a while there was an issue with children going to university and then staying in the city rather than returning to nomadic life, but in recent years that trend has reversed. To be honest, i don’t see how a person who has grown up living in this physical horizon of limitless open space could ever live in a city. Particularly as ugly and soviet era sad as the the city architecture is.

Also the nomads practice ‘sky burial’ which means they leave their dead out in places where they will be consumed by wolves and vultures and such. If a body is noticed to be consumed quickly, it means the person led a good and honest life and the earth wants them back. Conversely if the body lingers for days, they were sort of an asshole.

We get back in the jeeps and head for the ‘Flaming Cliffs’ a dramatic canyon of red rock where a lot of dinosaur excavation has been done and continues, and we poke around for bones.

That evening as we collect for cocktail hour, a trio of llama monks chant a blessing for us.

After dinner we are entertained by some local musicians and children. Following that we gather in the hospitality ger to meet a Mongul shaman – who turns out to be a pretty, college educated girl in her 20s who began having dreams and visions as a child and was called to this work, but now does it part time, as she just got a job with HP. She puts on some cray robes and dances with a drum and then a spirit speaks through her. She allows a few individuals to approach her and ask her questions.

There were few takers, so I volunteered. I told her I’d been sick last year, and although I was well now, I worried that because my doctors didn’t know what caused my cancer, that it might return. She asked me (through her translator) to remove my glasses. She wore a thick fringe over her face, so i couldn’t see her eyes, but she took my hand is her strong grip for a long time. She asked me if I’d traveled to a place with large rocks (??) then after a long pause said that I was a person whose spirit was very sensitive to different places.

Which was not entirely dissimilar to what my oncologist told me – that western medicine had no idea what caused my sort of cancer, but the theory was that it was environmental. So that’s a little bit woo-woo, right?

The next morning we hiked 250 steps up to a Buddhist temple high up in some pretty cliffs. Then some contortionists entertained us at lunch. Apparently there are a lot of Mongolia contortionists including a meaningful percentage of the folks in circ de soleil 

We spent the afternoon at a local festival where there was a children’s horse race, (Mongolia horses are quite small and not surprisingly the smallest children did the best including a number of girls)  a wrestling tournament, and an archery competition.

It was fun cheering and mixing with the locals.

The wrestlers wear blue briefs and a long sleeve red bolero that is open in the front. We are told it didn’t used to be open, but when women began to want to compete they changed the design to keep them out. Which is sort of crummy. On the other hand, a man mountain won as they don’t have divisions or weight classes – it would take a pretty gigantic woman to compete.

That evening is a popular band called ‘Legend’ in the dining hall, who performed some throat singing which is a Mongolian thing where they make their voice sound a bit like a moog synthesizer.

That night is a wild rainstorm and the morning drive back to the airport is a wild one, muddy and slippery and lots of fish-tailing.