well, whaddya know?
We went to the library and there on the shelf was a Lonely Planet guide to Mongolia published a mere couplea months ago. I had become used to our local library offerings being at least two years out of date, which doesn’t really matter as anything published-on-paper is history by the time it rolls off the printing press anyway.
But this one still had that new book smell. None of the pages were creased. If there hadn’t been a stamp inside proving otherwise, I’d have been sure it hadn’t even been opened.
Now, three days later. It’s open, thumbed through, devoured.
It’s different to the other LP guides we’ve looked at too. The other ones don’t start their “how to get to this place” sections with hitchhiking tips. Mongolia does! The other ones don’t mention mutton in just about every single eatery suggestion. Mongolia does. The other ones don’t as a matter of course mention the best place to pitch a tent (under the bridge, behind the train station, beside the river). Mongolia does!
And y’know what else is there in that guidebook? The place we have our sights set on going to and hunkering down for the last few weeks of Mongolian winter (OK, pedantically-speaking it will actually be spring, but when we come from a place where the temperatures never drop below zero, minus twenty will sure seem like winter to us). And while we’re being pedantic, I should perhaps point out that there is no write-up of said place, no description with a star or two, no paragraph dedicated to extolling the friendliness of the host or pointing out the presence of bedbugs…in fact there’s not even a sentence. It’s just that on a black-n-white map in the middle of the book, I spied the words Anak Ranch. Up until this map, we were planning on embarking on a train trip that would end at 3am at a station in the middle of nowhere, where we would be met by horses to transport us to our ger, SOLELY on the basis of one website and a few sporadic emails with someone who lives there. Now we know for certain it IS in the middle of nowhere, and it’s in Lonely Planet as well!
Tags: postcard: Mongolia, preparation, transport
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