Well, it is probably time to move on and tell you all a bit about some of the other countries we have visited, but first various shots from Mongolia, one last time. Here is a mundane shot of the inside of the ger we lived in while working on the fish project. You can see the little wood burning stove that we came to really appreciate...
...as the weather turned cooler and the larch trees turned their spectacular yellow.
We visited a small monastery and temple about 20 km upstream from our field site on a couple of occasions. The monastery site has quite a bit of history, although the small temple there now (below) was built using donations from the fish conservation project - part of getting the local religious leaders on board withh the conservation project.
We learned about the monastery and its history from the caretaker (below) who studied with the monks there in his youth, before the the old monastery was destroyed when the soviets took over the country. Although the monastery is active again, the monks are only there seasonally and had left for the winter.
We didn't blame them, as it was beginning to get colder, especially on the river.
Only a very few die hards remain in the area where we stayed all winter, and soon signs of people departing became a regular occurrence. Below is a ger that had been packed up and was shortly hauled off to a warmer site.
The animals were leaving too. We prepared to leave, with mixed emotions, but were excited to have been invited to a wedding on our last day in the countryside.
Our mongol driver was away for the day but he had been training the camp manager, David, to drive one of the Fargons for a while, so that we could attend the wedding in his absence. We were on our way to the wedding over an icy double track through the woods, learning a mongol song that we would impress our hosts with, when the importance of having a mongol driver to drive the nearly-no-brakes-Fargon in the mongolian countryside became very clear. We hit a tree. There are no seatbelts so we all got tossed a bit, acquired some cuts and bruises, and were frightened. Fortunately Zeb, who was closest to the tree on impact, moved his legs up from where they may have been crushed. After taking some time to make sure nobody's injuries were too serious (keep in mind this was a month ago - we are all fine!) we did manage to hobble back down the road several kilometers to our camp, while one of us went on to inform the wedding party that we would not be making it.
As it turns out, this was also my birthday. Meega, one of the mongols in the car with us when it crashed, was great through all of this and even made me a nice card and gave me a candy bar for my birthday. We did notice, however, that once we were comfortably back at camp she kind of broke down. I think more than anyone she could appreciate how much more serious this could have been - having grown up nearby and probably seen first hand how hard bad injuries are to remedy out there.
Of all the injuries, David, our fearless leader and driver at the time, suffered what is likely the most lasting. He broke his tooth off on the steering wheel, only enhancing his local countryman look.
The wedding party would not take no for an answer, and later that day they made a house call and came by our camp, sharing their celebration and ceremonial vodka as they made their way from the bride's family home to the groom's family home.
The next day we all piled back into a (different) Fargon, on top of our luggage, for the 9 hour drive back to Moron, where we would catch a small plane to Ulanbaataar, where we would catch a plane to Beijing, where we would catch a plane to Kunming....
No comments:
Post a Comment