Five Bestselling Travel Memoirs Box Set

by Twead, Victoria

  This could only happen in a Donald Duck cartoon. One kick out of that guy, I thought, as I watched the biggest of the six glaring through at me with dark golden eyes, and this whole thing is going down. Ker-splat! And I’ll be here squatting in the middle of an open field – again. To avoid the absurdity of being caught between an open cesspit and a collapsed shack, we’d headed for the forest.

  The fact that the sun didn’t set until after ten o’clock was annoying, frankly, since darkness offered the best privacy available. And oh, how blissfully, sinfully dark it could get on a moonless night. The stars were like a trillion pieces of shattered glass sparkling in the sky making the heavens sing. It was truly the earth beneath and the speckled sky above. There was nothing in-between, and it felt almost as if I, myself, did not exist.

  During our daily drives, the toilet issue proved to be even more of a challenge. We would make special stops in an occasional “town” and find a single gas station where there’d be a three-sided outhouse. For some unexplained reason, the opening always faced into whatever traffic there might be. More often than not, the inadequate wood structures where we could relieve ourselves were just thin planks over a big open pit, similar to the guest house latrine just described. At one roadside pit stop, we were lucky enough to find the edge of a crag to climb down into that offered far more privacy than squatting behind the van’s large back tires. As we hung onto the roots and the earth on the side of the cliff, it splashed down the rocks in a waterfall-like whoosh.

  Bree had nearly startled me into falling to my death when she yelped, “Ow, Ow, Ow!” while rubbing her rear and trying to scoot over, finally balancing herself on the tiny mossy ridge.

  “It bit my butt! Ow, Ow,” she’d continued.

  “What?! What bit you?” I’d jumped.

  “The stinging nettle, ooooh!” and she’d started to laugh. When she was done, she turned and showed me her startlingly white bum and the red rash that was already spreading across her left cheek.

  “Just don’t fall off, you two!” Mom had shouted down at us upon hearing the commotion.

  My final reflection on the subject of available toilet facilities was that Bree was right. These bushes were ideal, given that they were, at a minimum, free of goats, stinging nettle, traffic, and stink. By the time we started making our way back down the hill to the lone wooden house, we could see a long trail of dust heading in our direction.

  “It looks like Ammon’s back. Let’s go see if they caught anything!” Bree said, picking up the pace.

  “Nope! Nothing,” he said, as we approached the idling motorcycle. “Those sheep are smarter than they look, I guess!”

  “So, what now?” I asked, my stomach already starting to rumble.

  “I think they’re going to go out and try again later,” he told us. Nothing is reliable here, why should the animals be any different? I thought, disappointed that the wait for dinner would be longer than expected. Despite having half a dozen small cows and a pen full of goats, sheep was on tonight’s menu, so they would go out again in search of their roving herd. I wondered when mutton wasn’t on the menu, but I pretty much knew the answer to that question.

  The hunters had had some success the night before, though, and treated us to roasted wild gopher. There was very little meat on the small rodents, hardly enough to fill my belly, but my taste buds appreciated the change from mutton. Another day, we’d bought smoked fish from a “side of the road” vendor at a nearby lake, and I went from being a fish-hater to a fish-lover the moment I tasted it. That gopher and fish were some of the best food I’ve ever eaten, I thought, practically salivating as I recalled those meals. I swear that gopher was the most flavorful, tender meat I’ve ever tried. I’m sure it was good, even by western standards! But when I stopped to think more about it, I realized how it would sound back home. “Hey guys, come try some of this roasted gopher!” I imagined myself grabbing one out of the oven. “And how would you like a rat to go with it?” That would never fly! Next thing I know, I’ll be the one carrying a bag full of duck tongues and chewing a baby chicken’s head on a skewer.

  Tonight our accommodation was not a ger but a wooden shelter with a couple of rooms. Our family shared a room with four metal-framed beds, the ceilings so low that Ammon was forced to lower his head in order to stand. We were only staying one night. In the morning, we’d move on to Kovsgol Lake and then continue to White Lake. We planned to spend a couple of days at each to do some exploring on horseback – finally!

  While we waited for our dinner to be caught, we entertained ourselves with the rest of the local family’s livestock. Baagii was happy to join us on our “day-at-the-farm” adventures. A young boy led us around back to the shed. Inside was a wired kennel from which a trapped puppy whined. When the wooden door creaked open, I could see it had blue eyes and dark fur, and it wagged its tail uncontrollably. He looked so happy to see daylight, but my heart wept to see it gnawing at the wires and reaching desperately through the cracks.

  “Why don’t they just let him go?” Bree asked when we heard it was not a pet, but a young wolf that they’d caught recently after they’d had to kill its mother.

  With Baagii translating, the boy told the story. “His mother, she eat our herds! Soon, he will eat them too if we let him go. We must kill him, or he kill them.” With that, he’d pointed to the tiny, unsecured pig pen where a huge sow lay grunting on her side. The eight or so piglets running around in and out of the pen didn’t stray far from their mother’s teats. Given Mongolia’s harsh seasons (ranging from -40 to +40°C [-40 to +104°F]), I knew that any loss of livestock could be devastating. He didn’t need to finish for me to know that the logical extension of his argument would eventually be, “He kill us.” Compassion for the baby wolf was a luxury these people could not afford.

  “Time for milk,” Baagii said to lighten the mood. He smiled broadly and handed Ammon an old, beat-up pail.

  We made our way towards the cows in the open field, past the calves locked in wooden pens where they would remain until the humans were finished harvesting the “easy” milk. The first cow we were led to was definitely on the scrawny side, and I wondered how much milk we could take out of such a beast and still leave enough for the poor calf to suck dry.

  After I’d learned by watching everyone else struggle with the task, I cautiously took a seat on the short stool next to a cow with brown and white colouring. I couldn’t help but notice that her back legs were tied together to prevent her from getting away or kicking us. That tiny rope is not going to help me if I am sitting almost underneath this refrigerator of an animal when she decides she’s sick of being pulled and tugged at. I’d never been so close to a cow before. She was soft, and I really wanted to snuggle her, but instead, I reached underneath and concentrated on how I was going to extract her milk. It wasn’t until the moment I clutched the warm, firm teats in my fists that I thought, Oh my gosh, is this awkward or what? I’m touching nipples! I struggled with them until I heard the rewarding sound of milk splashing into the tin pail. The discomfort quickly dissolved into satisfaction, which just as rapidly turned into guilt as the baby calf came rushing from its pen towards us. Nudging me away impatiently, it nuzzled the small swell. My fingers felt wet and sticky from both milk and the calf’s wagging tongue.

  Not far behind the youngster, an old woman wearing a long skirt and woollen shirt, presumably the wife and mother of the farm, hobbled after the calf carrying a bucket in the crook of her arm, milk overflowing from the rim. Taking notice of our nearly empty pail, she shouted a few abrupt words and waved her hand at us in amused disbelief. Clearly, she had already milked all the other cows and was distinctly humoured by our “accomplishments”. Between giggles, Baagii managed to explain what she’d said. “Eight people and this is what you get?!”

  I leaned forward awkwardly to get a look inside our pail and felt a flush creep up my cheeks. We had maybe two inches in the bottom. The woman replaced me on the seat and quickly clutched th
e organic milk dispensers. The milk squirted out under the force of her powerful fingers as if someone had turned on two fire hoses. Within minutes, the pail was more than half full.

  While we were thus engaged, her husband had finally been able to fetch our dinner. A limp, trussed-up sheep hung from the back of his motorbike. The sheep’s pinkish grey tongue dangled from its mouth. I could see that it was already scared half to death, and my heart contracted again. I knew what was about to happen so it wasn’t as shocking as the bird I’d seen killed in Longji, but it was no less upsetting.

  The man had a little black moustache and he wore a blue baseball cap with a big, dark coat. He went straight to work, untying the animal and letting it fall flat on the ground. Barely able to right itself, the terrified animal did not have the will to escape, so no restraints were needed. The man brought a pink tarp from inside the house, rolled it out, and promptly threw the sheep on its back onto the tarp.

  Baagii explained the procedure as the man went about his chore, completely unfazed by our presence. He pressed a small, sharp knife into the skin just below the sternum and sliced downwards, making a gap barely big enough to slip his bare hand through. Reaching in halfway to his elbow, he “unplugged” the heart artery so the sheep would slowly bleed to death. In Mongolia, this efficient, clean slaughtering method keeps all the blood neatly contained within the body. I was wondering just how long it would take to bleed to death when the man immediately pulled up one of the legs to start the skinning process. Although I was envisioning its eyes rolling around like marbles in its head, the sheep did not utter a sound as the hide, starting from the ankles, was pulled away from the body. It was done much like you might peel a banana.

  Bree was already sitting on the ground with her back against the tire of the truck. Her head hung nauseously between her legs. She groaned more than the sheep ever had. The others laughed at her weak stomach and the twisted faces she was making. I felt the same, but was not about to admit it and suffer their derision, too. By the time he was working on the third leg, my stomach was a wiggly nest of worms. I pretended to be strong and immune to what was happening, but though I kept my eyes surreptitiously on something else, I could not block the sound of crunching bone as he broke the legs at the knee. I have to get out of here. I need to get a breath of air. My head was spinning and I was overwhelmed by this new feeling. How can I be reacting like this? How can seeing something make you feel so lightheaded?! I was confused. I’m not ill. It’s all mental, but I sure as heck am physically feeling this. This is NOT my imagination. As specks of black entered my field of vision, I casually made my way back to the dwelling to “get a drink.”

  The room was dark when I entered, and I had to pause to let my eyes adjust to the dim lighting. The thick smell of sheep’s wool flipped my insides all over again but I was relieved to find Noortje and Sarah there. They both preferred not to witness the gruesome event. An older daughter in the Mongol family, probably around thirteen or so, was preparing noodles for dinner in the squishy kitchen. She kneaded the pale dough and then sliced and rolled it into very lumpy, uneven strips. It was not about presentation as much as it was about just getting it shaped into pieces that could be thrown into the soup. I guess it all looks the same at the other end, anyway.

  I didn’t want to be gone too long and attract suspicion about my absence. Having reached a somewhat more sober condition, I walked myself back outside. The youngest girl, who was about six years old and too young for other chores, took an interest in the gutting. She squatted next to her father, her head nearly inside the hollow belly of the sheep which was now split open from neck to groin. She was hunched over and ever so silent, fully attentive to the process as he dissected all the organs and intestines into three different buckets. The man carefully removed the gallbladder, ensuring that he kept it fully intact so as not to damage the rest of the organs. Except for the gallbladder, every single part was used. Even the blood was scooped out to make sausages.

  Once he’d peeled the skin from the ribs and hindquarters and bared the red muscles beneath, the wife came to retrieve the meat. The sheep was eventually reduced to nothing but a clean pelt which was hung inside the small dwelling. Later it would be tanned and either sold or used to furnish their home.

  The little girl ran off to play when her father stood to fold up the perfectly clean pink tarp and go inside. One day this business of handling the meat with her bare hands and stringing it up inside would be her responsibility. It’s good for them to be exposed to it so young.

  The carcass was hanging in one piece from the low support beam in the kitchen. The mother stood at the small counter near the stove making dinner. She sliced bits of neck meat from the carcass and threw it into the soup pot together with the older daughter’s doughy noodles. The slaughtered corpse hanging nearby did nothing for my appetite, but I was too hungry to skip dinner. I waited cross-legged on the colourful wool rug, my belly twisting with hunger and uncertainty as I remembered my very first taste of mutton back at the Mongolian border. Khongorzul, the lady who travelled with us on both the overnight bus and the train, had promised us the best soup of our lives.

  “C’mon. You come with me. I get you some real Mongolian soup,” she had said. “This is REAL soup. Mongolian soup,” she went on, inferring that it was far superior to the “awful” Chinese food we’d been enjoying. Lipton’s instant chicken noodle soup immediately came to mind, the kind that we couldn’t possibly dream of getting here but I was hopeful nonetheless. The bowls we were served contained a thin broth with an oily film on top. Careful not to insult her favourite Mongolian dish, we hesitantly asked if we were supposed to take out the floating, white chunks.

  “NO! That is best part. Very healthy,” she insisted before scooping one up on her spoon and happily shoving the blob in her mouth. Oh man! I was not in the mood to sample dead animal soup, and fatty, greasy soup at that! It was dreadful, to say the least, and a rather unnerving introduction to the country where I would spend a whole month. I can’t even believe someone could eat this. I heard these Mongolians had a sense of humour. Maybe she’s pulling my leg? But no. Though I desperately wished she had been, she continued to slurp passionately until the bowl was empty.

  “This isn’t too bad!” Bree’d said.

  “Oh yah? Just wait a few more days and we’ll see what you think of it then,” Ammon predicted, scowling at his bowl when Khongorzul had gone off to the bathroom. The mere word mutton had always projected the image of a skinny, old sheep wrapped up in dirty grey wool hanging in matted clumps and dying in a muddy ditch. Upon actually tasting it in that horrid soup, my worst suspicions were confirmed.

  After this introductory meal, I realized that the food was as horrible as I’d heard, but that obviously, the locals didn’t share my assessment. They thought it was divine, and no matter how distasteful I found the food, I knew there was no need to feel sympathy for them. Taste is a relative, cultural matter – we mostly like the kind of food we ate as children. Besides, they would probably find my chicken noodle soup disgusting. I could appreciate her being completely content with, and proud of, her country’s cuisine, but it was not for me. No, thank you very much!

  From the time of our first introduction to traditional Mongolian food, Bree was still eating her fair share at every meal, while Mom and I learned to surreptitiously shovel most of our meals into Ammon’s bowl. He’d glare at me out of the corner of his eyes whenever I did it, as he only ate to avoid losing weight from a physique which had always resembled something of a stick bug.

  While we waited for tonight’s sheep noodle soup to cook, Baagii taught us some more customs as vegetarians Tom and Sarah munched on their packaged cookies. For example, in Mongolian culture it is unacceptable to refuse anything that is offered. It is obligatory to take at least a sample, no matter what it is.

  “Please, Baagii, no! Don’t let them bring us the eyeballs,” Bree pleaded, squeezing his arm tight, knowing that sheep’s eyeballs and their large
fatty tails were considered delicacies and were therefore usually offered to honoured guests. Mongolian sheep store fat in their tails to help them survive the harsh terrain the same way camels store it in their humps. He smiled and I saw Bree melt a little more than the heat warranted. Because Baagii had lived in the United States for a couple of years in his early twenties, he could appreciate how revolting eating eyeballs was in our culture. Though I’m sure he’d amused himself many times observing the reactions of other vulnerable guests, he obviously had a soft spot for Bree.

  When he said, “Okay, I won’t,” she fell even deeper into whatever spell she was well on her way to succumbing to. We were grateful never to have been tested by such delicacies. The main snacks offered to us were comparatively bearable. The sour goat milk biscuits they loved tasted a bit like vitamin C rocks. I might have enjoyed them had they not been streaked with dark goat hairs. The yoghurt, which was equally sour and hairy, was homemade in an old, stained bucket. With China’s to-die-for yoghurt still fresh in my mind, this Mongolian version fell completely on the opposite end of the spectrum. Nearly every night, though, these same “munchies” returned to haunt us.