Start Choppin' or Milk Cow Blues

N 47 39.019 E 107 26.545 - 19 October - Near Terelj

Then probably my favorite place we stayed the entire time we were in Mongolia. We were supposed to stay with a nomad farmer, help them out with tasks, and all that sort of thing. We thought we were leaving at 9 and when 10 rolled around, hmm, maybe something is wrong. Not sure what to do but then near 11, our driver shows up. The same one who picked us up at the bus stop the other night. Sigh, we will have less time at the farm now, but ok, I guess when in Mongolia...

We make a few stops on the way, a cliff formation across from somewhere that has a few sad looking animals, camel, yak, and donkey. Cars stop and people can ride them around in a circle for a few minutes. We look but are totally unimpressed. But he has something better, the rock formation actually has a pretty impressive and deep cave up towards the top. We scramble up and look at that. Seems nice.

The next stop is the big Chinggis statue. Really, it is just really tacky but also slightly impressive too. As we drive up from one angle, he does sort of appear to be riding his horse. So yeah, in the parking lot, mostly actually filled with Mongolians, this thing is crazy, like really huge statue of him riding a horse, all in shiny steel. The ticket office tells us it is 10000 to get in (拢10) which is crazy. That sort of money should buy you food for days, so we give it a pass. A quick look around the parking lot and please take us on.

Our last stop is one of the rune stones, we had seen a copy of it in the natural history museum in UB. Seemed impressive, written in Turkish, super old and all that, sort of Rosetta Stone for the languages on it. It was just in the middle of pasture land. And as a bonus, we could see Chinggis way off in the distance too, shining in the sun.

We stop at a nice valley, a few gers in a camp. He waves at an old woman in the fields, Mama, and we pet the dogs. He says it is his ger and dogs and all that. Hmm, it starts to dawn on us, not just a driver but he is the nomad rancher. He and his mother also run sort of a B&B on the side. It does make sense, there isn't really any money in ranching. He was probably one of the wealthier of them, he had about 600 sheep and 600 cows (1/10 of that would be a nice typical family herd), but they have to barter for everything. There isn't really a source of cash, so tourism helps with that. Most seems like they can do quite well with their flocks, they certainly have survived a long time without tourism.

Mama is a real character. She has a great cackling laugh and is really nice. But she also looks as though she could (probably has on many occasions) wrestle down a cow and butt heads with the sheep. Amazing for like 70 years old. She makes us a really delicious noodle soup and then we help make dumplings out of the fresh mutton he has been slicing off the bone earlier. We make them laugh with our incompetence, but we do get a bit better. We are ok at stuffing them and folding them but never really get the hang of rolling them out. There are hundreds of them and we are then expected to eat them all for dinner later (think I had like 12-14 of them). They are delicious, the best dumplings I had in Mongolia.

We also make them laugh by "helping" with the wood chopping. That is hard work, not splitting wood, which isn't so bad but chopping the long branches in to stove sized pieces. We have some beer with them, try to have conversations with them. They have a stack of photographs and we show them some of our own.

At 9 pm, Mama gets up, have to milk the cows now. It is very dark out, just a slight glow from a full moon. The whole front area of the ger camp has filled up with hundreds of cows. It is funny how they all come in for the night. I guess it must be habit and must be warmer. At other places, you would go out at night and there would be large herds of goats or sheep just outside where you hadn't see them at all during the day. He and mama had a system, grab a calf who was nursing, pull it away and mama would get her stool under there and milk away, 1/4 pail worth, until they got too unruly and they moved onto a new cow. About 8-9 of those and there was enough milk for all the various things we ate that had milk in them, yougart, cheese, etc. We were taking pictures of the milking by torch light, we are quite surprised then when he pulls up the car and shines the headlights so we can take better pictures that way. They seem quite pleased and amused by the results. What a nice pair and a nice place, it will be sad to leave here tomorrow.