I almost didn’t get allowed in the country. I don’t have a visa as I am only here for ten days but the immigration people did not have a return ticket as I am taking the train through Russia from here. No matter how long they stared at the Russian train ticket they could not decipher it and luckily I had a copy of the ticket receipt with the departure date listed, Whew!! That was close.
Now I am just back festival and my days in the ger I will write a few blogs about this,
First of all it is always amazing to me, yet again, that I live as I do while whole peoples live in a completely opposite way. I go to the refrigerator and get a drink and turn on the TV or get in the car and drive somewhere.
- Meanwhile there is a family living in one of these.t
This is the race part of the Nadaam fesitval. The riders start about 12 miles away and ride through clouds of dust. It is so thick I am sure they can’t see. Yet they ride like the clappers bare back the whole distance with no let up. This is a photo of them at some distance from the finish, you can barely see the rider through the dust.
And that is the real race. It is 200-400 riders who gallop through the clouds of dust for `12 miles until there is a winner. - The dust is relentless. If billows up into huge clouds and spins into dust devils and assaults you all day long. It is in your ears and your nose and your eyes and your mouth. It gets in your food. I was coughing and sputtering the whole time and the local people walked through it not even seeming to notice. My toes and my nose were black with the dust and they didn’t even bother to shake it off.
- Oh yes, you don’t choose the dust, then you choose the dung. I will be posting some pictures of the ger and the out house. The ger is surrounded by scrub vegetation that is enough for the goats and maybe enough for the sheep but not enough for the cattle. All of the animals we saw were really thin and the scrub didn’t look that inviting either. We had to get a second place to stay because our host family pulled up stakes and moved to higher ground to try to find enough grass for their cows to eat. The fenced in yard near our ger was covered with dung. All kinds of dung. Little pellet-ity things and big cow pie things and others unidentifiable. I am not a dung conniseur so I can’t tell from what animals these little treasure hailed but I can tell you that the field was full of them and you don’t have any choice where you walk–you’re gonna walk in it. So that is your choice dust or dung. Nothing more, Not too bad really when you realize that these are the only choices you just go with the flow.
