“Do you want to go horse trekking in the Mongolian steppe?” they asked me. “It will be FUN, EASY, and CHEAP.”
These are the three magic words every dirtbag traveler wants to hear, so naturally I was in.
The Mongolian National Festival of Naadam had ended and life in the capital city of Ulaan Baatar was calming down. I had met a number of other backpackers in the previous few days and as restaurants, hostels, buses, and trains began to return to normal service, we felt it was the perfect time to explore more of this fascinating country. Eight of us met at a local hostel to talk about options. There was me, five Israeli travelers (Oded, Kiki, Ari, Morel, and Shonna), a British lass Anna, and another American, a girl named Brandon.
The super friendly Mongolian dude, Altan, who worked the front desk at the hostel (24 hours a day, it seemed) assured us that horse trekking was one activity we couldn’t pass up. “You have a few options,” he told us. “The best place to do it is in the north, at Khovsgol Lake. The water is so pure you can see fish swimming 100 feet down. There are beautiful mountains and picturesque camping locations everywhere you look. And we can set you up with an outfitter who will provide all transportation, food, camping equipment, and easy-to-ride ponies. The cost is $60 per person per day for a 10 day trip, so $600 total for each of you.”
$600 per person??? That was an OUTRAGEOUS sum of money to me in those days. $600 was enough money to live for a month in Laos. $600 was what I paid for a used car in New Zealand. $600 could buy me a train ticket across Russia and back THREE times. There was no way in hell I was going to pay $600 for 10 days on a horse. The other backpackers, also massive cheapskates like myself, agreed.
“Ok, so that’s a no?” Altan asked. “In that case, there is one other option: if you can get to a small community in the steppe called Uyanga, there are lots of herders with lots of horses. You can bring all your own supplies and food, and you can probably negotiate with one of those herding families to rent some horses for a week. If you do it this way, you can make a trip happen for about $10 a day, but you have to do everything yourself.”
No problem! We all saw ourselves as super sophisticated travelers, used to finding our way through strange situations in foreign countries. Plus we all had camping experience. This is something we could easily handle. At least, that’s what we told ourselves.
The first step was to plan a route. Altan told us that a Mongolian pony can travel 20-30 miles per day, every day. They could also go up to 100 miles in a single day of hard riding, but then they’d need to rest for a few days. To us then, it seemed more than reasonable that we could cover about 150 miles in a week of riding. We scoured the map and found a large Mongolian town called Tsetserleg about 150 miles north of Uyanga. As luck would have it, Tsetserleg also had a train line that connected directly back to Ulaan Baatar. Perfect! Knowing our return route was as easy as booking a train ticket, we asked Altan to help us with transportation to Uyanga, and he secured us a private van with a driver for the eight hour trip at a total cost of $100 USD.
Next we had to outfit ourselves with food and gear, so off to the market we went, where we divided into two teams: one to secure camping supplies, and one to obtain food. I was on food detail, along with Ari and Kiki. If you were planning meals for a trip like this you would probably be tempted to multiply out the number of people (eight), the number of days we would be camping (seven), and the number of meals per day (three) and then start calculating the amount of food needed to create 168 meals. However, you would be absolutely wrong in this approach. Instead, you should do what we did, which was to take two huge burlap sacks, then unthinkingly fill one up with things like pasta and rice, and fill the other up with Snickers bars and Jolly Ranchers. We decided this would be enough food by looking at each other, shrugging, and saying “seems like enough food.”
We reconvened to find the gear team had purchased three knock-off North Face tents, seven sleeping bags and pads, a couple of camp stoves with gas, bowls, cutlery, and other odds and ends. I had been traveling with my camping gear already and so opted to use my own tent, sleeping bag, and pad. In terms of other supplies, I decided to splurge and spent a whopping $20 on a custom, felt cowboy hat (which I still have) to keep the sun off my head. But because it had been scorching hot in Ulaan Bataar, at no point did any of us think to ask about the weather in Uyanga, nor did we consider buying any extra clothes. Instead we simply tossed our typically backpacking duds into our bags: travel pants, a shirt or two, and a hoodie or fleece.
Thus the 8 of us set out for the steppe, fully confident we would be able to find some Mongolian ponies to rent and ride them 150 miles through the idyllic countryside in perfect weather. Little did we realize how wrong we were.
The journey began on a perfect note: we were all riding high from excitement, and as we watched the road unfold endlessly before us with scarcely a landmark to look at, it seemed we were living the most romantic and unconstrained life possible. Without smartphones to get stuck inside, we passed the time discussing life, travel plans, and arguing over who was a better band, Pink Floyd or Queen (obviously Queen).
The journey to Uyanga would take about eight hours, and having left Ulaan Bataar in the afternoon, we quickly found darkness descending upon us. We mimed to the driver that we wanted to find a place to camp for the night and he simply pulled off the beat up highway and onto the vast expanse of grasslands running alongside it. Looking at us as if to say, the world is your campsite, he came to a stop and killed the engine. It felt surreal to step out of the van and onto this endless carpet of grass, not a building, a person, or an animal in sight. I was giddy with the combined feelings of isolation and freedom. As we set up our tents for the first time and boiled water for a giant meal of mac and cheese, anything seemed possible.
We awoke the following morning to surprisingly chilly temps, boiled water for a morning cuppa, then quickly struck camp and got back on the road. Within a few hours we arrived in Uyanga, where our driver unceremoniously dumped us and our gear on the side of the road, then pulled a rapid u-turn and headed back the way we came, dust spitting from his tires.
The town was barely more than a dusty outpost, with a handful of Soviet-era buildings and a number of rusty shipping containers that had been converted into useful businesses like welders and motorcycle repair. The eight of us looked at each other confused about what to do next. But then we saw it: off in the distance were a numbers of gers, AKA yurts, surrounded by hundreds and hundreds of horses. We shouldered our packs and headed towards them.
We made our way 1/2 mile west through the rolling green hills until we found ourselves in front of a ger with about 40 horses and as many yaks outside. Our two lead negotiators, Morel and Oded, stepped forward to knock on the door. The door opened and I can’t imagine what this Mongolian family was thinking when they saw the eight of us standing there with stupid grins on our faces. But when we pointed to ourselves, then their horses, then flashed a wad of cash, it got our message across pretty quickly. The entire family, at least 10 people in three generations, came out of the ger to assist with the negotiations.
We unfolded a paper map of the country, laid it across a few of our backpacks, and then began to explain what we wanted to do. Morel pointed to the ground, then to the town on the map and said Uyanga. Nods from the Mongolians, yes, Uyanga, here. He then pointed at us, drew a line on the map with his finger to our destination, and said Tsetserleg. More nods from the family, yes, Tsetserleg. So far so good. He then pointed at the eight of us individually, then to eight ponies. More nods. Then to our backpacks and three more ponies. Still nodding. Finally, he counted to seven on his fingers and made a gesture like he was going to sleep. The whole family nodded in unison. Seven sleeps, you got it buddy. Yes, this was easy! Who cares if we couldn’t speak Mongolian? They understood us perfectly. Then, in a truly universal gesture, he rubbed the tips of his fingers and thumb together. How much?
The family patriarch grabbed a piece of paper and pen and wrote down a number. $500 USD. Morel countered with $300, and they quickly compromised at $400 USD. Then the man held up his finger, pointed at his three sons, pointed at us, and wrote down $25. For another 25 bucks, my sons will go with you as guides. Now you’ve got a deal! I’m sure to each side it seemed as though we made out like bandits. For us, we had rented 11 horses and three guides to shepherd us through the Mongolian steppe for less than $8 per person per day. For the family, we had just paid them the equivalent of 15 months of the median Mongolian income. I often think back to the insanity of this moment and wonder what I would do if I was in the Mongolians’ shoes. If someone knocked on my door right now, pointed at my truck, pointed at me, made a driving gesture, said “Cleveland,” pretended to sleep for 7 nights, then showed me $50,000 in cash, would I send them packing? Or would I shrug, shake their hand, and say “hop in.”?
As it was now late afternoon we decided to set up camp in the family’s field for the night, watching them tend to their horses and yaks and playing with the young kids, writing out words in Cyrillic for them to sound out, like awesome and cool.
The next day began with an important question: “does anyone know how to ride a horse?” Of all of us, it turned out that only Brandon had ever been on a horse before, just once, on a retired and well-mannered quarter horse. “It’s easy,” she said, “horses like to follow each other. Just let the guides go first and ours will putter right along behind. And these tiny little Mongolian ponies are so small and cute, I’m sure they’ll do exactly as they’re told.” But as it turned out, what Mongolian ponies lack in size, they more than make up for in stubbornness, cantankerous energy, and even downright disobedience.
Our three guides, the brothers, had given us a quick lesson on how to ride: jump in the saddle, give the horse a sharp kick in the haunches, and shout “chu-chu” in a deep, voice. The brothers demonstrated this with such skill and smoothness it almost seemed like they and their horses shared a mind. But when we tried it, our horses would stand still, nibble the grass, or turn and walk back to their pasture. My horse in particular acted as though she’d never seen grass before and took every available opportunity to have a little snack. Thus I dubbed her the Hungry Hippo. The brothers were just about pissing themselves laughing, watching us hopelessly spin in circles on our mounts.
But with a little practice, and a little extra assertiveness on the reins, we were all able to coax our ponies to reluctantly move in the same direction. So we set off for Tstserleg, excited to cover the 30 miles to our first planned campsite, Naiman Lake.
But the going was far from easy or smooth. If any point if the ponies sensed you weren’t paying attention or weren’t in control, they would seize the opportunity to do whatever they wanted. They might make a 90 degree right turn for no reason, chomp at the hindquarters of the horse in front of the them, or just plain stop. At one point, Hungry Hippo felt the reins fall slack for a second. She instantly stopped and put her head down to graze. Her halt was so abrupt that I went tumbling over the front of her, landing in a heap right next to her head. This scared the bejeezus out of both of us, but whereas I reacted by groaning and rolling around on the ground, Hungry Hippo went sprinting in the opposite direction, covering a quarter mile faster than a dragracer. By the time I got to my feet she was clearing the horizon, hell bent for Russia by the look of it.
Well shit, I thought, how the hell am I supposed to get that horse back now? But not to worry: the youngest brother and his horse flew over the ground like they were shot out of a cannon, giving chase to Hungry Hippo. When he reached the spooked horse, the brother jumped from his horse to mine without touching the ground, spun an elegant U-turn, then galloped back to our group with both animals, holding the reins of his horse in his hand. Leaping back onto his horse, he handed me my reins then rode away, giggling so hard he was shaking.
The day wore on like this for hours: brief moments of calm riding regularly interrupted by much longer bouts of us being fully incapable of controlling our ponies. By the time late afternoon arrived and we decided to call it quits for the day, we had covered a whopping four miles. A crawling baby could have covered more distance than we did that day. As we dismounted and waddled around on sore asses, we felt suitably humbled, and yet somehow still naively optimistic: now that we had the hang of it, surely tomorrow we could EASILY cover 30 miles and get back on track.
But first, we needed to set up camp. The tents went up and we put some water on to boil. The brothers de-saddled all the ponies and hobbled them to prevent them from wandering back home overnight. Realizing that we would be spending seven days in the world’s biggest soccer pitch, Kiki had had the foresight to pack a soccer ball. As he tossed it onto the grass, the brothers’ eyes lit up. We began passing the ball around and here we got to experience an entirely new side of our guides. On horseback they seemed like gods, faultless and confident. But here on the ground, we saw them for what they were: gangly, uncoordinated teenage boys. At one point, the youngest brother tried to kick the ball, only to step on top of it by accident, sending himself banana-peeling across the grass.
After the game, we got down to dinner. We had a steaming bowl of pasta with sauce squeezed out of little packets, while the brothers gnawed on strips of dried meat and the hardest biscuits I’ve ever tried to eat in my life. A few of us nearly cracked our teeth on them before we learned the trick to scrape off a chunk and let it sit in your mouth for 5 minutes to soften before attempting to chew it. During dinner we had a mimed conversation with the guides where we learned that they were 21, 18, and 13 years old.
Then it was time to call it a day. But as we crawled into our tents, it hit us: where were the guides going to sleep?? We didn’t have extra space in our tents and they hadn’t brought any shelter that we could see. But like all things involving life on the steppe, they had solution: each of them wore a marvelous greatcoat made from thick leather that wrapped around their bodies one and half times. When one of the coats was unfurled it made a waterproof ground cloth nearly the size of a queen size mattress. The brothers sardined themselves on top of that, put another coat over the top, and were quickly snoring.
We woke on day 2 with high expectations of covering big distances, convinced that while we slept we had somehow mastered riding these willful ponies. But as soon as we mounted up it was clear that we had just as little control over them as the previous day. We set out at a stuttering pace, going left and right as much as forward. But as the hours ticked by we began to learn certain techniques: say chu-chu as often as needed, motivate the pony regularly with a kick to the haunches, and never ever let the reins go slack. In this way we were able to keep the ponies more or less moving in one direction, even if at barely a walking pace. But with less energy now needed to direct the horses, we were able to look around and appreciate the marvelous landscape we were slowly moving through.
I’d heard the term “big sky country” applied to places like Montana and Wyoming, but I never understood what it meant until I got to the steppe. With the exception of a few small hills, the sky was unobstructed from horizon to horizon, and until you experience it it’s hard to appreciate just how rare that is. The sky almost seems to have a weight to it, it takes up space in your mind in a way that makes it feel like a physical thing.
The land itself is the same way: a rolling grassland so uniform in character, with so few different elements, that stretches beyond the horizon in a way that makes you sure it goes on forever. Our ponies steadily marched us up endless valleys, back and forth over meandering creeks, and over the top of countless wildflowers bursting to life for a brief moment in the Mongolian summer. From time to time we would pass the gers of other Mongolian herders, bright pops of white in a landscape of green. The brothers indicated they knew all these people, friends and neighbors separated by thousands of acres of grass. The herders’ horses and yaks were clanking around the meadows as they had been doing for summer after summer, generation after generation. Never had I felt so strongly that I was living in place that existed outside time.
Although the day started on a bright note, it quickly turned gray and cold. Drizzle arrived in the afternoon and we began to seriously regret not bringing more clothes. I felt lucky that I had brought a fleece jacket, and my cowboy hat keep the rain off my face, but nevertheless I found myself crouching low in the saddle to try to share a little body heat with Hungry Hippo, who was naturally unperturbed by the dank conditions. After four hours of riding, our unaccustomed asses were protesting being in the saddle, and thanks to the rain and cold our morale was dropping. We decided to call it a day. At the sedate pace we had managed to coax our ponies into, we calculated we’d covered 7 or 8 miles. But that didn’t dampen our optimism: we were certain that tomorrow was the day we’d finally cover 30 miles.
We set up our tents near a rare stand of trees and were able to find enough dry wood to get a fire going, over which the guides promptly burned our trash, plastic and all. We warmed our hands on the flames and as we waited for water to bowl for dinner, we toasted some of the thousands of marshmallows we had prudently brought along. The brothers had never had a toasted mallow before, and in fact the dose of straight sugar might have been something they’d never experienced. The youngest brother ate at least 12 toasted marshmallows, the sugar high propelling him into ever more ridiculous fits of giggling.
When the water was ready, we dug in our giant sack of goods for some Rice a Roni. It was then we made a shocking discovery: in just two days of camping we’d already eaten our way half of our supplies, and we still had five days to go. Although we had plenty of Jolly Ranchers and Mars Bars, we didn’t have enough real food for everyone to have three meals a day for the next five days (who could have seen that coming?). We were going to have to ration, and pretty severely. With that unhappy thought in our minds, we savored every bite of cheesy rice in our bowls, then headed for bed.
The next day dawned in near perfect splendor. The cerulean sky above us stretched endlessly, dotted with handfuls of puffy white clouds. Golden flowers lined the creeks trickling across the valley. The sun warmed our bodies and put everyone in a good mood as we took stock of our food situation. We dumped both sacks out on the ground and tallied everything up. We determined that if we had a handful of cookies for breakfast, ate no lunch, and saved all of our rice, pasta, and oatmeal for dinners, we’d have just enough food to squeak through the rest of the trip. Thankfully we had no shortage of Jolly Ranchers and Starburst to chew on, to fool our bodies into thinking calories were incoming.
After a cup of instant coffee (perhaps the only cup of coffee I’ve ever enjoyed) and a few biscuits, I moved off around the corner to do my morning business, not realizing at the time it would be the last poo I’d have for the remainder of the trek. Then we packed our camp and set off for a few hours of slow, but serene riding.
In the early afternoon we passed another family of herders and were awestruck by the fuel they had gathered to heat their ger. In a landscape with almost no trees, the Mongolians have proved ever resourceful by gathering yak dung, drying it out in the sun, and stacking it up in massive piles. As the dung is 95% grass, once all the water has been leeched out of it by the sun, it turns into dense hockey pucks of burnable fuel. The family invited us to join them for lunch inside their ger, and since we were all starving, we readily accepted.
The inside of of a ger is a marvelous thing: a brightly decorated, single round room in which all family activities take place, from cooking, to bathing, to sleeping. And in the center of it all is the most important appliance a family can have: a cast iron stove. The stove is what makes life possible on the steppe, as it’s used for cooking food, boiling water, and keeping the family warm and dry when it’s -40° outside. And it’s powered entirely by yak dung. As we gathered inside the ger, the family passed around steaming bowls of horse’s milk (this time I was better prepared to appreciate the taste), a fermented cheese which I found quite sour, and more of the tough little bread rolls. We shared some marshmallows and other sugary treats with them, and spent the hour all laughing at our inability to communicate in any way except via food.
Soon the brothers indicated it was time to leave as we still had some miles to go before our intended camp of Naiman Lake. We left the ger and rejoined our horses to find that the morning’s clouds had built into an ominous sheet of gray. As we plod up the pass separating our valley from the one containing the lake, a thunderstorm sprung up, soaking us all through to the skin. As there was literally no shelter around for miles, there was very little we could do except press on. As we climbed higher the storm grew colder and windier. Soon we were being pummeled by hailstones flung at us at 30 miles an hour. Even the ponies, normally so stoic, turned their heads to the side to avoid the stinging blows. We could see that the storm was even more severe at the top of the pass and made the call to stop and set up our tents.
As soon as we had them erected, the storm blew over. As clear skies appeared overhead, the moisture on the ground (and our clothes) began to evaporate, chilling us to the bone. Only one of us, Ari, had brought a rain jacket and pants, and as he had been wearing them during the day’s ride, he announced that he wasn’t wet, he wasn’t cold, and he was happy to go outside to boil water for dinner. The other 7 of us piled into one tent to try to get warm. Meanwhile, the three Mongolian brothers had cast off their great coats and were gleeful wrestling in the sodden grass, seemingly impervious to the cold and wet.
Putting 7 people in a 3-person tent makes things pretty cramped, and soon we were itching for a bit more space. Brandon and Morel had the brilliant idea to wear their sleeping bags like giant down coveralls and hopped around outside, looking like human sized inchworms. I however, was so cold and tired I couldn’t think of anything except bed. Grabbing a Mars bar from our stash, I crawled inside my tent, stripped off all my wet clothes, and wriggled into my sleeping bag. I began devouring the chocolate bar and fell asleep as soon as I’d finished the last bite.
When we awoke the next day, the weather couldn’t have been more different to the afternoon before. There wasn’t a breath of wind, nor a cloud in the sky. A bright sun beat down intensely on the landscape and the temperature rocketed into the high 70s. The group quickly grabbed every single wet possession we had (which was essentially everything), and laid them out on the grass to dry. Although it felt as though my soul itself was being recharged while sitting there leisurely in the warm sun, I couldn’t help but think about all the distance we had to cover to get to Tsetserleg, still over 100 miles away.
Which is when the Israelis informed us that it was Shabbat and therefore they could not ride horses that day. Instead, they would have to walk, leading the ponies by their reins. But since we didn’t want to split the group up, as we had no way to communicate, that meant we all had to walk our ponies. And once our clothing was dry and stuffed back in our packs, that’s exactly what we did, ambling along at two miles an hour, pulling our ponies behind us while the brothers looked at us with a mix of bewilderment and horror.
With the ponies being pulled directly forward by us, they couldn’t misbehave and we actually found ourselves making the best forward progress of the trip. Within an hour we had crested the pass, spotting the picturesque Naiman Lake nestled in an idyllic valley below us. Another easy hour of walking brought us to the lake shore. We found it so beautiful and inviting that we decided to camp there for the night, despite only having covered a handful of miles that day.
To be frank, we were all exhausted from fighting the weather, our ponies, and our hunger over the previous days. We needed to rest and took the afternoon to nap, sing songs, and splash in the lake. Kiki had purchased a fishing kit in Ulaan Baater and was excited to check it out. But when he opened it he discovered that it contained only fishing line, hooks, a few sinkers. There was no rod, and no bait. He was about to throw the thing in the trash, but I convinced him to give it a try. We grabbed a few raisins from a bag of trail mix and squashed them onto a hook. We clamped a few sinkers onto the end of the line, and found that by whirling it around like a lasso we could get a pretty good cast, which we reeled in hand over hand. Imagine our utter astonishment when on the second cast I caught a 10 inch trout. The fish must’ve been as hungry as we were to go after a raisin. We quickly killed iand filleted it, grateful to have a bit of protein to add to our cheesy pasta dinner.
As we polished off the meal we heard the clanking of bells and soon another group of travelers came into view. We were surprised to see five western backpackers, all speaking French, and being led by a single Mongolian man in his 40’s who shocked us when he called out “Hello! How are you!” in perfect English. We quickly waved him over and asked if he could translate between us and our Mongolian brothers. It was already the end of day 4 of our horse trek and we really needed their input to figure out how we could get to Tsetserleg in just three more days.
“Tsetserleg???!!” the man laughed after we had told him our plan and explained how long we had been traveling so far. “You’ll never make it at this rate. You need to ride 35 miles per day for the next three days, and your best day was what, 11?? Haha, good luck.” At this point, I had completely given up on the idea of getting to that city, but the Israelis were relentless, arguing that they knew Mongolian ponies could do 50 km per day.
“Yes, they can,” the man said. “But with those boys riding,” he indicated our three brothers. “With you, forget it.” But nevertheless he took the time to explain to our guides the plan of getting to Tsetserleg. They just about jumped out of their skins when they understood. “No way,” the man translated. “Not possible. Nope. Forget it.” Not only was it not possible in terms of practicality, it turned out that where we camped right there, some 30 miles from our starting point, was the farthest those three brothers had ever been from their home. So even if they had agreed to take us all the way to Tsetserleg, they wouldn’t have known the route. Instead, we quickly realized our only option was to backtrack to Uyanga and attempt to find a way back to Ulaan Baatar from there.
It was a little disappointing at first, but soon we realized this new plan would give us the opportunity to relax and go slowly, instead of racing through the landscape. We spent the rest of that night and the entire next day lounging around the lake, fishing, laying in the sun, and pretending that three cookies was enough for breakfast.
It was now day 6 of our trek and it was time to head back the way we came. Embarking early in the morning from Naiman Lake on a cool, cloudy day, we headed back up and over the pass. When we reached the main part of the valley we had originally come up, we all expected to go right back down it. But the middle brother gave us another option: he pointed the way we came originally and mimed going to sleep three times. He then pointed over another small pass to our south and mimed sleeping twice. In other words, a shortcut! I have a strong geographic sense of space, and knew that this couldn’t be possible, but I was happy enough to see some new terrain, so didn’t argue as we changed course and sauntered up and over the small pass.
As the day wore on, a few of us grew tired of our ponies’ continued stubbornness and hopped off to simply walk them through the plush grass. In the afternoon we spotted a ger and some semi-permanent stables. As we had been traveling for a good 7 hours and had managed our longest day so far, a whopping 14 miles, we decided to camp there for the night.
It was then that we discovered the real reason our guide wanted to take this path back to Uyanga: a Mongolian family came out of the ger and gave our guides huge hugs. Friends, neighbors, relatives? We weren’t sure, but we could tell they were happy to see each other. In fact, our three brothers spent the entire evening and night in the ger with this family. I imagine that when you live in a place where the only way to see your friends is to ride all day on horseback, every reunion is a special one.
The family was very hospitable to us as well, bringing over a giant carafe of boiling hot yak’s milk to help keep us warm in the evening’s chill. The eight of us sat inside a tent to keep out of the frosty wind, sipping carefully on the scalding liquid. At one point I had to pee, and as I got up to get out of the tent, I inadvertently knocked over the carafe. It fell directly on my shoes, burning my feet with cups of hot milk. My skin would heal quickly; the far greater problem was that my shoes were now soaked inside and out with milk that began to fester and putrefy over the next few days. The stench that came off of those shoes over the coming weeks rivaled any decaying roadkill corpse I’ve ever smelled. Why I didn’t simply toss them in the trash and scoop up a pair of knock-off New Balances at the market in UB is a mystery known only to the mind of a cheapskate 23-year-old me. But that stink was a problem for future Josh. In the moment I was happily taking a scenic whiz in the Mongolian steppe.
At our campsite we had noticed there was an abundance of dried yak pies strewn about the grass. And as dinner time rolled around, Oded decided to try to cook our dinner over a traditional Mongolian yak poo fire. We gathered some dung chips and stacked them up behind a rocky windbreak. Oded held a match to the pile and to our delight, whoomp! It promptly burst into flames, giving off a surprisingly pleasant earthy odor. The dung burned hot, and soon our pot of water was boiling. A big bowl of pasta all around, then off to bed for a good night’s sleep.
Day 7, our last planned day of the trip, and we had something like 15 miles to go to get back to Uyanga. My ass was sore, my nose sunburned, and my stomach empty. I was itching to get back to UB to have a hot shower and gorge myself silly. But more importantly, I needed to find out the status of my Russian visa. It was a Tuesday, and if all went according to plan, my visa would be issued that Wednesday, and I’d need to be on a train to Russia on Thursday. It didn’t leave me a lot of time for dawdling in the steppe, and I was concerned that if we traveled at our usual crawling pace, we wouldn’t reach Uyanga until night time, we’d be stuck there until we found a ride to UB, and I’d potentially miss my entry date to Russia.
So when we spotted a Jeep trundling up the valley towards us, I flagged it down and offered the driver $5 if he could drive me into Uyanga, some 12 miles up ahead. As he loaded my backpack into the Jeep, everyone in our group realized they were also ready to be done with our trek. Backpacks came off the horses and onto the Jeep, smashed into every nook and cranny. Brandon, Kiki, and I piled in with the bags, the other five waiting behind for the Jeep to make a second trip. It was then that one of the most touching moments of the trip occurred: as the Jeep pulled away, the three brothers, these three boys with whom we had spent the previous week, sharing snacks, swapping songs and soccer matches, but never even having a proper conversation with, came galloping after us, grinning and waving like maniacs and blowing kisses. Then the Jeep rounded a bend and click, our universes separated.
The Jeep dropped us in Uyanga and went back for the others, which would take about an hour. In the meantime we popped into what appeared to be the town’s grocery store to ask about transportation. The shop consisted of a counter and a series of shelves stocked with three items: onions, those hard biscuits/bread things we’d tried earlier, and burlap sacks filled with who knows what. The shopkeeper stared at us with wide eyes as we tried to explain what we needed. But despite our best efforts of pointing at ourselves and repeatedly saying “Ulaan Baatar, avtobus?” while pretending to drive a car, the message was lost.
Scratching our heads, we left the store just as the rest of the group showed up. Within minutes a Mongolian couple arrived as well, driving an old school Soviet bus just like the one we had ridden in to get here. I’m sure they were just there to buy some onions and mysterious burlap sacks, but we instantly hailed them. “Ulaan Baatar?” we asked while pointing to ourselves. “Avtobus?” while pointing to their van. And then the trump card: we held up a fistful of cash, $100 USD, which was about 3 months’ worth of median wages. The couple instantly forgot about their onions and began tossing our bags in the back of their van. This was another of those moments where I wonder what I’d do in their shoes. If someone stopped me at the grocery store and offered me $10,000 to drive them from Lone Pine to Salt Lake City, right now, would I do it, or tell them to kick rocks? In any case, this kind Mongolian couple was more than happy to take our money for the 8-hour one way trip to UB, so away we went.
At sunset we stopped at a roadhouse for dinner. The menu was written entirely in Mongolian of course, and we were at a loss of what to order. I spent a few minutes trying to sound things out when I came across a word I actually knew: гуляш. AKA goulash. To be honest I wasn’t entirely sure what goulash was, but I thought it was some kind of stew sort of thing. Since no one else had any clues about the menu, we ordered 8 goulashes, which arrived a few minutes later. Stewed lamb meat with a handful of potatoes, served in a thick, savory gravy. After five days of severe rations it tasted finer than anything I’d ever eaten. We asked for seconds, then thirds. We paid the bill for ourselves and our drivers, the final total coming to a whopping $10.
Back on the road, we drove through the night, all of us passed out in blissful food comas. We arrived in Ulaan Baatar in the very early morning, our drivers dropping us off at the hostel where this whole misadventure had begun. They then flipped a U-turn and sped off back to Uyanga, where surely they were going to buy a ton of burlap sacks. Our group made plans to meet for dinner, then everyone went off to shower or do laundry. I headed for the tourism agency, my heart in my chest. If my visa wasn’t approved, what would I do? Fly home? Head to Europe? Go back to Southeast Asia? I needn’t have worried: the agency woman greeted me proudly with a my train ticket in one hand, and in the other my passport, open to the beautiful sight of a Russian visa stamped on the page.
Overjoyed that my long journey across Asia by ground could continue, I thanked her, grabbed my documents, then headed back to my lodging to repack all my stuff and take a shower. When I stripped off my clothes and looked at myself in the mirror, I instantly saw the effects of eating so little food in the cold and rain, and estimated I’d lost about 12 pounds that week. That night the group met at one of the few western restaurants in UB, needing a little comfort food. It seemed my stomach was an endless pit which I kept shoveling food into. A burger with fries, fried chicken, an entire pizza all disappeared inside me. Finally satisfied, I bid the group goodbye, went back to my accommodation, took another hot shower for good measure, then fell asleep.
In the morning I gathered my belongings, took a taxi to the station, and I was off to Russia by train. But that is another story.
Joshua Cripps is a renowned landscape photographer who has garnered worldwide acclaim for his breathtaking images of our planet’s wild places. His photos have been published by the likes of National Geographic, NASA, CNN, BBC, and Nikon Global.
The Mt. Whitney Gallery was founded in 2023 by Joshua Cripps as a way to share his passion stunning landscapes of the Sierra Nevada and beyond.
Set at the foot of the breathtaking Sierra with a view of the range’s highest peaks, the gallery features large format, museum-caliber fine art prints of Josh’s signature photographs.
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