#22 - Living the nomadic life in Mongolia
We had warned you that we might not have the Internet anytime soon, so please forgive us for our silence during the last two weeks. Isolated in the steppes of northern Mongolia, we have indeed not been able to keep you informed of our first Mongolian adventures.
But these fifteen days have been the most intense and the most beautiful of our long journey, a breathtaking immersion in a culture about which we ignored everything!
Not willing to stay in town, we left as quickly as possible Ulaan Baatar towards Darkhan, Mongolia's second city populated only with ... 80 000 inhabitants! There, we met Javkha, producer of television programs and Puche, the cameraman who will follow us during these two weeks of immersion in a family of nomadic herders of horses. Javkha really enjoyed our project of Travelling Farmers and we have been organizing for months with him the realization of a TV show on our adventure to be broadcast on Mongolian national television on October ... stay tuned!
After buying food for the family that will welcome us - mainly rice, vegetables and vodka - we drive on a track until two "geers" (Mongolian equivalent for Russian yurts) lost amid a vast plain where short grass hardly grows. Around us graze horses, cows, and a huge herd of goats and sheep. In the distance we see nothing but desert hills without any vegetation. Impossible to judge distances in this environment with no trees or construction, and even birds that seem usually so free and fast seem despair faced with this empty immensity.
Jamar in fornt of his geer
The animals just waking up
We are greeted ceremoniously by Jamar and Ayona, a nomadic couple of sixty years old, with an impressive dignity in their Mongolian traditional costumes. Their beauty strikes us immediately, mostly Jamar's face with deep wrinkles, burnt by the sun and framed by magnificent black hair.
LThe grown ups from left to right: Ayona, Urti, Jules, Jamar, Netmet, Tristan and Urna
The animals we spotted belong to them. Their geer is only twenty square meters, but is remarkably convenient and insulated from the heat. As soon as we arrive, we start learning the many rules to follow in this place: enter with the right foot without stepping on the porch, never go to the right of the geer which is reserved for the family, receive all that we are given with the right hand while placing our left hand on the right elbow, holding our bowl from underneath ... The geer is the foundation of Mongolian culture and all the uses and rules to follow are therefore focussed in this one room.
A meal in the geer
Following the practice, Jamar offers us some cow's milk tea, then airak, Mongolian traditional drink made of fermented mare's milk and finally vodka. We offer him a bottle of Genghis Khan vodka, an essential gift you will not fail to offer if you are ever invited to have dinner in a geer. We notice the many medals pinned on Jamar’s long coat, which are legacies of the Soviet era rewarding the country’s best horse breeders. Javkha that accompanies us presents us to the family – he is the only one who speaks English - and then lets us begin our discovery by ourselves.
Interview with Javkhafor the incoming TV show
On July 28th, 1.5 hours south of the Russian border, we now live with a Mongolian family that does not speak a word of English. We never shared the everyday life of people so different from us: happiness is not far.
They are nomads we are sedentary people. Their geer is always open to anyone coming by, who can enter without knocking while we barricade ourselves in houses and apartments closed by walls and gates in the middle of huge cities. They move so that their animals survive while we travel for pleasure. We constantly strive to build up different experiences when they seem to live each day the same day, in the same way as their ancestors a millennium ago. These two intense weeks are more than promising!
The view from our tent at night
Not speaking a Mongolian word, we realize with relief how much language is only one component of the communication. Gestures, smiles and grimaces in fact allow us to build good relationships with our guests. Children who have the advantage of understanding, playing and making friends without speaking are a great help and we can quickly feel their affection for us. We are gradually acquainted with the rest of the family: Urti and Netmet, the son of Jamar and Ayona live in another geer fifty meters away with their four children, and three grandchildren of the couple welcome us to live with them for summer.
Not everybody is smiling on this one...
Jules, the best baby-sitter ever
However, we do not want to be here as tourists, and try to be as clear as possible about our desire to help them in their daily tasks. From the first day on, we help milking mares and cows, and moving the herd of sheep and goats. Unlike farms where we worked before, no fences here: all animals live in liberty, except foals and calves that are kept near geers to milk their mothers more easily. We help milking the cows by hand twice a day, at 7am and 9pm. The mares require more work and it is six to seven times a day we milk them.
Jules works, Tristan observes
After miling the cows, milking the goats
This brings the first big difference that we witnessed: the notions of time and work are not comparable to what we knew. For us, a farmer sleeps at night, wakes up and works the day with a break for lunch and then stops in the afternoon. Each hour worked must be productive and efficient in order to then enjoy the comfort that the work provides. Here it's different. There is no other work that milking since there are no fields to maintain, no fences to repair, no house to renovate. Every two hours we spend half an hour milking thirteen mares and then we sit down together to drink milk, read or play cards in the geer. At first, used to separating work and leisure, we could not understand this rhythm and asked to do more, but we soon understood that here it was different. It does no good to be zealous: the mares will not make more milk and the day will always last twenty-four hours. Wanting to help the more we could, we thought it was inappropriate to sit in the shade of the geer and watch the horizon in silence for an hour or two - until we understood that this is the way it has been going on for generations and the days unfold that way here, away from the bustle of big cities we know. It is with great pleasure that we have therefore taken the pace of our new family, alternating peaceful milking with naps under the 35°C burning the steppe and our skin, swimming in the river and playing with the children ... No lifestyle ever seemed to us more serene and poetic - stress never existed here: why bother?
The horses enjoying some fresh water
Netmet and Tristan went looking for the wood
Every day we learn new words in Mongolian, with this primitive but effective technique, used by explorers of all times which consists in pointing something with one’s finger until the speaker may say its name. Gradually we enrich our exchanges and complicity settles. Seeing that we are happy to be here, Jamar gives us increasingly important tasks, and we soon ride their horses to move herds of horses and sheep. It is difficult to feel more alive than galloping behind fifteen horses to bring them close to the geer before they get too far.
Two proud Mongolian horse-riders!
Tristan goes looking for the female horses before the milking
Wanting to discover as much as possible, we help and look Ayona cooking. Unsurprisingly, milk in all its forms is the staple food here. Cow milk, fermented mare's milk, Mongolian yogurt, cheeses of all kinds, we even distill vodka with milk cow! Mutton and goat meat is consumed daily. Once or twice a week we help Jamar and Netmet - women should not see blood - to choose down and then kill a beast. The slaughter of animals follows a very precise method that only experienced men (i.e not us) can effectuate so that the blood of the animal does not flow. It consists first in an incision on the belly of the animal, then in immersing the arm to tighten the strong heart of the animal during thirty seconds to stop all blood flow. This is pretty impressive to see the first time, but one cannot help thinking however that no animal on earth has so far had such a free and happy life.
Here we understood where the food we eat comes from
This regular sacrifice is obviously necessary for its food intake, but its usefulness extends to other areas of Mongolian life. Of course, we enjoyed eating such tender and natural meat. Mixed with vegetables and served in broth, it was one of the basic ingredients of our daily diet. No part of the body is thrown away, and even the fat is considered excellent for health. The two dogs of the family are also pleased since they can gnaw the bones of the beast that they are offered. A piece of meat is also used as religious offering, and is deposited on the small Buddhist temple that adorns a corner of the geer.
But this slaughter is also an opportunity for important celebrations in Mongolian culture. Once or twice a year, when the full family gathers or as special guests come to share their life, a ceremony is organized around the sacrifice of a goat. We had the privilege to attend such a ceremony performed in our honor! During more than six hours, a person outside the family came to realize the dangerous and impressive process necessary for achieving the feast, which we then shared. The goat, once killed, is completely stripped of its skin, so that, once separated from all organs, the skin remains in one piece and forms a large container with a single slot where the head of the animal was. Meanwhile, stones that have been carefully selected before are heated for more than one hour until they get to a temperature near 1000 degrees. The next step is to get into the skin the meat and the animal’s organs, separated and prepared meanwhile, interspersed with hot stones and a few vegetables. The last step is to close the skin containing our future dinner and burn out all his hair until we can only see the leather skin of the beast, blackened by fire. The slightest hole in the skin could lead to a dangerous explosion for those who are around, which explains the thoroughness of the preparer. Only a few people known in the region have the expertise required for this exercise.
Once the dinner cooked, there is nothing more to do than open the skin on the belly of the goat (that one might consider reconstituted) and eat all the pieces that are inside. The skin is of course eaten; nothing should be left of this culinary masterpiece dating from the Attila’s reign.
After five hours of cooking the final step !
Finally, if the hair of goats is of no use, wool sheep is obviously more than necessary for the family. In a country where temperatures are extreme, very high in summer and up to -25 ° C in winter, insulating the geers is indispensable. This is largely using the skins of their animals that our family perfectly insulated his den. We have again been fortunate to participate in a sheep shearing. Armed with scissors, we spent an entire morning cutting superb fleeces of immobilized sheep. A part of what we get is then sold on the nearest market, while the other will be stored until winter.
Tristan cutting a sheep's fleece
You must of course ask yourself a question: what hygienic conditions have these people that live so far from the standards of comfort we are used to? There is obviously no shower or traditional toilets and the lack of current electricity makes any desire of washing machine somewhat misplaced.
We can assure you, however, that the health of all members of our family seems perfect and we have not had so much trouble to adapt to their living conditions. Laundries and showers are occasionally made thanks to the water in the river not far from our location, which brown colour does not discourage anyone. This waterhole is shared with horses, goats, sheep and cows that come to relax when the heat is too strong. So no, we have neither had daily shower, nor changed cloth everyday in spite of our regular contact with animals. We nevertheless felt healthier than ever during these two weeks in the Mongolian steppe.
Jules doing his laundry
The only shadow of our stay, however, was an accident that happened to Tristan, but the circumstances and the absence of serious consequences of the incident make this event become today another beautiful memory. Left on one’s horseback looking for the herd of mares for the final milking of the day, Tristan had the misfortune of facing a stallion belonging to an outside herd. This one, certainly judging the rider as a threat to his mares, gave a blow with its back legs in Tristan’s calf. The deep gash made us fear the worst, but a short stay at Darkhan’s hospital reassured us. With few stitches, a warrior bandage and rest for at least a week, Tristan has recovered faster than we feared.
To conclude this article, we want to solve an underlying mystery in the Mongolian culture and that perhaps you even glimpsed: to what extent this family is "nomadic" if it remains in its daily geer that obviously is not moved every day? If, as 30% of the Mongolian population, Javar and Ayona are part of the nomads of this country, it is that, like them, they perform four major annual transhumance, when the season changes. They therefore need to find a more suitable location for the new season, pack up everything they own and move sometimes hundreds of kilometres away. Two hours are enough to disassemble their 'home' and take away everything in it. This year, we appreciate people that can live happily in material deprivation, and we are therefore nothing but fascinated by their way of life.
Ayona, Jamar and all the members of your beautiful family, you will certainly never read us, but we still want to thank you again for having so warmly welcomed us and making us live such exceptional moments at your side.
Thanks Jamar and Ayona
As for us, we leave tomorrow for new adventures, with a family raising yaks in the mountains of Khangai. Simon, Jules’ brother, will join our adventure.
Our next article will therefore certainly not be next week but on our return to civilization in two weeks.
Until then we wish you a beautiful end of summer, and we hope you'll enjoy these long news!
We’ll be back soon, with new adventures!