BootsnAll Travel Network



Central Mongolia, Day Three

We leave a wildly waving, jumping Muugi in the morning and head north toward the town of Tsetserleg. The three of us can’t help but notice that Shaga seems less sure about this route than in days past. “This is new road. We don’t go around mountain, we go over mountain.” He stops at many gers before lunch to make sure he’s still on the right track. We’re hungry so he stops at a cluster of four gers along the pass and asks them if they’ll cook us lunch. All of the places we’ve stopped so far have been either friends of his or Ogie’s, but these folks seem like they haven’t laid eyes on foreigners for ages. Within two minutes every other ger is emptied and sitting around our ger to gawk. I wonder how long they’ll talk about the day the pale-faces turned up.

Tsetserleg is a quaint little mountain village by most standards, but is a bustling metropolis in these parts. On this Thursday afternoon the streets are full of a mixture of blue jeans and traditional Mongolian long coats. We stock up on water, food, beer and vodka and enjoy some cake and coffee at the Fairfield Guesthouse, a surreal step into modernity complete with flush toilets and complimentary soap and toilet paper. What a novel idea!

 
An hour north of Tsetserleg we find Shaga’s friend Duchinjance, an enormous hulk of a man who lets us stay the night with him. He was once the top provincial wrestler and his son is now one of Mongolia’s top wrestlers. Duchinjance also happens to be a master chess player and he takes care of Winslow, Danielle and Shaga is short order. Shaga helps make dinner, rolling out the noodle dough while the big guy’s wife hammers, yes hammers out the dried yak meat. The dogs own the night in Mongolia. They howl and bark all night, sometimes right next to the ger making for some interesting dreams.

 



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