Milking It

In the morning, we set out for the countryside, with 300 km and a seven hour drive ahead of us. About 30 minutes outside the city, the paved road abruptly ended, with no signs indicating where to go. It’s amazing – they don’t even tell you the road is ending. The driver just needs to know the way and has to find a way from the paved road to the dirt road, then needs to know his way across the countryside. We drove for hours across the desert on the “dirt road”. The road was too bumpy to read the phrasebook without getting ill, so our plans of quizzing each other in Mongolian were lost. But the views entertained us for quite some time.

My plan after this tour was to take a second one alone, which would involve taking the bus over the steppe. What fun that looks to be!

After driving for several more hours, the pavement reappeared with trucks working on extending new asphalt towards Ulaan Baatar.

Our driver tried to reenter the road from the shoulder, but sadly, we bottomed out on the ditch. We were able to limp away, but when we reached the town a few minutes up the road, we spent the next hour driving between the three local garages seeking a recommendation for a mechanic that could fix the car. Then some more time driving down the residential street looking for the mechanic’s house so we could take him to the garage to do the repair work.

After sitting on the ground for an hour, watching the sleepy town...

... and practicing our acceptable sitting positions (squatting, kneeling, and side-legged since Indian style is considered unacceptable for women), a new driver showed up to take us to our new family and our new home.

Upon arrival, we were led into a ger and immediately served milk tea, which is warm and comforting, and must be sipped before you place the cup down. After being fed some local food (dried curd; beef with rice, potato, and sauce; and plenty of milk tea) we were left alone in our ger. We lamented our lack of language skills and our forgetfulness related to their manners, something we would come to do repeatedly in the days that followed.

The family has four sons: the oldest is at university, the second has his own ger and herd nearby, number 3 son is about 14 and the youngest, 5, was named, as best as we could approximate it, Batgaryl. The family speaks pretty much no English whatsoever, so it was nice having a little kid around. It made it easy to interact because five-year-old is a universal language. (No, that is not a traditional Mongolian hat he is wearing. He is like any little kid in the world; he will find a piece of plastic and put it on his head. What a cutie!)

We asked if we could help with the farm work, but I'm not sure how much help we were. The task at hand involved herding goats for milking. Here are the goats, lining up on their side, waiting for the game to begin.

Son #3 was riding a horse to herd the goats.

If you have time, there is a video of him in action. This kid is a real cowboy. Watch how comfortably he stands in the saddle when he really has to ride.

Mom was catching the goats and tying them up. Notice she doesn’t have to tie any knots. Her technique allows her to link them and their motion keeps the tension on the rope.

We didn’t prove ourselves very helpful with herding – I think we scared away more goats than we kept from running -- although Kerry did catch a few baby goats to toss in the corral so they wouldn’t nurse. Way to go! Eventually, we decided we were making their lives harder, so we let them herd while we looked at the adorable baby goats in the corral.







... and the baby calf, which was only three days old.

How sweet is that!

Here are Liz and Kerry enjoying the farm life, which is a little closer to their everyday reality than mine.

Now that the goats were secured...

... it was milking time. We all tried our hands at milking goats and we were all able to do it, some better than others. But none of us were as fast as Son #3. Watch him go in this short clip.

Liz was close to his speed because she had worked on a farm milking cows. The five year old was also milking a little into his hands and drinking it or giving it to Kerry and me. It was really cute and is good play for him since one day he will have to do this to help the family.

But, eventually, like any five-year-old, our little Batgaryl got bored and found new entertainment in throwing sticks, writing his name in the dirt, and playing with the goats.

We had experienced a full day and taken in a lot of culture in a short period. But after settling into this temporary nomadic life we had sought, I began to spend more time noticing my surroundings. Most people seem to think that Mongolia's landscape would be boring, but it is actually quite interesting. Everywhere you look out across the steppe is the most beautiful site you have ever seen. As the sunlight waned, I found myself unable to put down my camera. As you scroll through some of the my favorite sights, below, I think you will understand why it was so easy to fall in love with this simple place.

Good night, moon.