More Sand
Mare's milk icecream. Don't try it. Not good. I picked it up accidentally because it was a white icecream bar and I thought it would taste like milk. I took a huge bite and then threw it away. The only thing that could possibly take away the taste of that crap was vodka. Vodka took away a lot of other tastes as well, like marmot (which would be the plague infested animal) and camel milk cookie. It even washes away the sand caught between your teeth I discovered but you have to swirl it around just right. Then there is the nastiness that is airag, fermented mare's milk. I love a lot of cuisines but Mongolian is definitely not among them. The diet consists of dried goat, horse, mutton, noodles, airag and camel. If you're lucky you'll come across a potato or a carrot. Thank goodness for canned German sausage. I know what you're thinking: how did these incredibly efficient people find a way to can a superior quality wurst product? Well, that will be a mistery forever.
The Gobi was exhausting. Driving on a bumpy road for hours on end is very taxing on the body. The beauty of the scenery and the sky make up for all the pain. The highlights of the trip included the 350 camels that appeared on the road and the lone horseman that was herding them. Very National Geographic. Then there was the drunk man that appeared in our ger at 4am and plopped down at Valerie's feet. My response to the incident was: "Just let him sleep it off." Of course that was not so cool with her. I guess it never occured to me that he could throw up on her while she was sleeping. He was escorted out of the ger and set free on the family that lived in the one next to ours.
This was not to be our last drunken encounter. The following day our driver got pissed out of his mind and then proceeded to drive us to our next camp. It took us nine hours instead of five because he couldn't keep on the path. He was swerving all over the place and then the 'engine heated up'and we had to stop and wait for it to 'cool down'. He fell asleep at the wheel. The next few swerves I asked him to pull over so we could take a 'walk'. We walked fifty feet away and then stood there staring at him from across a field. He must have thought we were crazy.
Night five I discovered that the sound of 'rain'was not actually water dripping onto the roof of the yurt but the symphony that is beetles falling from the ceiling onto my face and the floor around me. Oh yeah. I freaked out. I jumped. I made the aloof French guy sit very closely to me and discovered that I didn't like the immature American dude who, by the way, hadn't washed his hands or brushed his teeth in the time we had been out on this trip. Plus, he started killing beetles with his bare hands and then stuck them into the flame of the candle, creating a distinct hair-burning sort of smell for the rest of us to enjoy. Jackass.
The sights of the Mongolian desert included the Yolyn Am ice canyon (there were two six foot tall, 12 feet long pieces of ice melting in the canyon), the massive sand dunes at Khongoryn Els (180 metres tall) and the flaming cliffs of Bayanzag where Roy Chapman Andrews found the first dinosaur eggs, jaws and skulls of Central Asia. Roy is who the Indiana Jones character is based on. Most of his findings were exported to the American Museum of Natural History but there were some great bones on display at the museum in the Gobi. The cool thing about Asia is that nothing is off limits at museums. I touched everything. Probably didn't help the preservation of the items but I really had the urge to reach out and touch those bones and no one stopped me.
The Gobi was exhausting. Driving on a bumpy road for hours on end is very taxing on the body. The beauty of the scenery and the sky make up for all the pain. The highlights of the trip included the 350 camels that appeared on the road and the lone horseman that was herding them. Very National Geographic. Then there was the drunk man that appeared in our ger at 4am and plopped down at Valerie's feet. My response to the incident was: "Just let him sleep it off." Of course that was not so cool with her. I guess it never occured to me that he could throw up on her while she was sleeping. He was escorted out of the ger and set free on the family that lived in the one next to ours.
This was not to be our last drunken encounter. The following day our driver got pissed out of his mind and then proceeded to drive us to our next camp. It took us nine hours instead of five because he couldn't keep on the path. He was swerving all over the place and then the 'engine heated up'and we had to stop and wait for it to 'cool down'. He fell asleep at the wheel. The next few swerves I asked him to pull over so we could take a 'walk'. We walked fifty feet away and then stood there staring at him from across a field. He must have thought we were crazy.
Night five I discovered that the sound of 'rain'was not actually water dripping onto the roof of the yurt but the symphony that is beetles falling from the ceiling onto my face and the floor around me. Oh yeah. I freaked out. I jumped. I made the aloof French guy sit very closely to me and discovered that I didn't like the immature American dude who, by the way, hadn't washed his hands or brushed his teeth in the time we had been out on this trip. Plus, he started killing beetles with his bare hands and then stuck them into the flame of the candle, creating a distinct hair-burning sort of smell for the rest of us to enjoy. Jackass.
The sights of the Mongolian desert included the Yolyn Am ice canyon (there were two six foot tall, 12 feet long pieces of ice melting in the canyon), the massive sand dunes at Khongoryn Els (180 metres tall) and the flaming cliffs of Bayanzag where Roy Chapman Andrews found the first dinosaur eggs, jaws and skulls of Central Asia. Roy is who the Indiana Jones character is based on. Most of his findings were exported to the American Museum of Natural History but there were some great bones on display at the museum in the Gobi. The cool thing about Asia is that nothing is off limits at museums. I touched everything. Probably didn't help the preservation of the items but I really had the urge to reach out and touch those bones and no one stopped me.
posted by LOTC at 12:26 AM
1 Comments:
yipes. i recently ate a oaxacan grasshopper, and had to wash it down with several glasses of wine despite the fact that it was coated in some kind of spicy powder which probably would have been tasty on its own...
with all the 'washing down with vodka' you're doing, will you still have a taste for meat martinis?
xo
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