Impromptu visit to countryside

My second day in UB, I went to Café Amserdam – a hangout for foreigners and expats in the city. The café serves “European-style” food (that’s what the Mongolians call Western cuisine). What it means is you can order Illy coffee. Thank god. I eagerly ordered an Americano, my first non-instant cup of java since I boarded Air Korea from Vancouver to Seoul.

And you can’t have a real cup of Italian coffee without an Italian sandwich. They serve paninis at Café Amsterdam, so I ordered a salami and cheese one. Oh, the sweet taste of SEASONED meat (Mongolians love their meat but they can’t handle too much spice, so everything needs to be generously doused in black pepper).

While I inhaled my panini, Bolor (pronounced “bowl-dra”), talked to me about her work. Bolor is the Mongolian paleontologist who I’m doing a story about for Dispatches in the Gobi Desert from September 7 - 10. She’s 35-years old and one of the youngest paleontologists in Mongolia (She was born and raised in Mongolia, but educated in the US. She now lives in NYC, but spends every summer in Mongolia). It seems the older, Russian-trained Mongolian paleontologists didn’t do a very good job passing on the torch. That’s Bolor’s goal. To get Mongolian youth interested in dinosaurs so they will be a new generation of Monogolian paleontologists to promote and protect their country’s fossils.

After lunch, Bolor’s brother showed up to take her to the country to see her horse. He asked me if I wanted to come. I said sure, I had the whole day free. Next thing I know, I was in a Japanese jeep dodging traffic in UB. Ten minutes out of the city, we were in another world. Big sky (like Alberta). Green rolling steppes (much like Alberta’s Foothills). A sheep here. A few goats over there. The road was very bumpy (a prelude to my “adventures in dirt-road travel” in the Gobi). 30 minutes later, we pulled up to a ger (That’s the Mongolian word for a circular, felt tent. In Canada, we call them “yurts” but if you call them that in Mongolian you may get your teeth punched in. “Yurt” is the Russian word for “ger” and the Mongolians hate the Russians. That whole Soviet-era thing.)

FIRST COURSE: As soon as I got out of the jeep, I was ushered inside the ger and served a tall glass of fermented mair’s milk. You have to taste anything that is served to you in a ger in the countryside or else you’ll insult the family. So I tried it. Not too bad, tasted like sour vodka. But I knew not to take more than a sip because if you’re not used to drinking the mair’s milk it will make you sick.

SECOND COURSE: Salted milk tea. That tickled my gag reflex. I don’t know if you know my history with dairy products, but I only started eating cheese in 2005 and I still can’t drink milk unless it’s cooked in something, like oatmeal. So the salted milk tea has not been easy to get used to. Even if all I have to do is take a sip.

After Bolor and her brother finish their beverages, we went outside and met her horse. She bought a horse but had never seen it. It was just born in the spring and was the most robust of all the colts. We snapped some photos, then took off back to the UB. On the way home, we got stuck behind a never-ending freight train (just like we do in Southern Alberta!).

They dropped me off at my hostel in downtown UB around 6pm. I grabbed my backpack and walked down to the “State Department Store” to buy some groceries before I went to the Gobi. Important things. Like Apple Jacks.

I noticed it was getting dark and I didn’t want to walk back to my hostel alone, so I texted another journalist I had met at the hostel to see if he wanted to have coffee at – you guessed it – Café Amsterdam. We met up around 8pm. At 9pm, he walked me back to my hostel. On the way back, we were harassed by street kids. They’re harmless, but nonetheless, I was glad to have a six-foot two tall white guy walking next to me.

I went back to my hostel room and packed my bags. My flight was at 5:00 a.m. which meant my taxi was picking me up at 3:30 the next morning. I didn’t get to bed until 11:00 p.m. and I was up at two the next morning to take my “last shower” before seven days of camping in the sandy and dusty Gobi Desert.