Disseminating Tracks IV: Camel Country

Not long after breakfast, our digestive juices are swirling around as our vehicle bounces across the desert.  We follow established tracks, though occasionally we lurch sideways to take another one.  I think about how hard this kind of driving must be on the drivers, the constant diligence of the eye, the constant jostling of muscle and bone. 

We all get a reprieve at the Khavtsgait Petroglyphs, dating anywhere from 3000 to 8000 BCE.  A short steep climb brings me to the top of a bluff, dotted with jagged black stones that had been here long before that.  Tulga shows be the first two or three petroglyph sites, them releases me to seek more on my own, I meander up and down the northern cliff face, the now familiar glyphs jumping out in the morning sun.  Ibex are most prevalent, one in particular having been drawn in exquisite detail. The thin paths are lined with goat droppings, looking like a musical score.  In the brush, the grasshoppers are beginning to awake, clicking like those old sprinkler systems from the 1970s.   It is pleasant to wander these heights, the hills behind me defining the border with China, and everything else stretching away to the flat line of the horizon.  

It isn't too far from there the flaming cliffs of Bayanzag, where we catch up with the Korean tour groups. I walk out to the edge of a narrow spit of land, allowing myself for a moment the feeling of being out here totally alone. The features of the landscape speak of having once been part of the sea floor long long ago, before they dried up to give the dinosaurs room to roam.  

Lunch follows, at a ger camp run by two young women.  One of them greets us to offer milk, drunk warm from a hand-carved earthen bowl.  She is dressed in traditional garb, yet the rest of her hints at a certain nonconformist cool, with her cop sunglasses and hair tinted that orange shade which the Japanese used to do in the 90's before they got the chemistry right.        

Afterward we stop to refuel in Bulgan. It is most certainly a one-horse town, with just a couple of shops and a uninspired Buddhist temple of aluminum wrapped in wrought iron. More Korean tourists buy ice cream.  A drunken monk in yellow robes collects dust as he shuffles about.  Another man carries a newborn baby, its forehead streaked with the grey of ash.  I lean in and say how cute it is, then remember that doing so may tempt jealous spirits into carrying it away. 

We move on over the flat earth. Despite the remoteness, animals are never far away.  Camels graze in the most remote sections; cattle prefer to stay closer to small water stations.  We'll occasionally part like Moses large oceans of sheep strewn across the road.  Tracks constantly multiply and divide.  At one point in the low hills we lose the other vehicle, but then quickly unite, its familiar boxy shape and accompanying trail of dust never difficult to spot.

Throughout the day, we make multiple stops, usually to pile out to look at some animal, or a bird swirling overhead.  Eagles are most common, though a group of ibex moving toward the hills occupies us for a good while.  As such, the long drives are never monotonous, as the land does its best to present its infinite charm.

The day ends at a busy ger camp.  It has an old Western homestead feel, with a broad porch and long wooden benches in the dining hall.  The visitors here seem divided into European adventure-types, and the more general Korean tourists.  The latter will keep me awake late, as their drunken voices carry shrilly through the thin air.    

I read awhile in the early dawn, coffee warming me as I sit on the chilly porch.  Camels graze out on the desert, their shadows stretching them into oddly-shaped spindly beasts.  The famous sand dunes are out to the south, rising along the base of the hills.  And above, the long, low and jagged peaks that are the Altai.

We won't visit the dunes until the cool of evening.  Tulga helps us occupy our morning with a walk out on the bluffs above camp.  A small shack at their base provides the water and electrics, all running off an ancient car engine as generator.  (I'll constantly be awed by the DIY approach that Mongolians have taken in order to live in these remote reaches.  MacGyver could learn a few things.)  A handful of horses graze amongst the crags, and further out, a group of English bicyclists pedal into the heat. 

When the shadows of the camels begin to stretch in the opposite direction, it is time for our ride.  But first we visit the camp of the camel drivers, sitting around the inner perimeter of the ger of a tough-looking middle aged woman who looks part of the earthen floor on which she so solidly sits.  She bosses a couple of the younger men about, but truly dotes on her young son, who is stinted in size and unable to walk properly.   The love they share is obvious in their interaction.  A bowl of fermented camel's milk is being passed around, rich and thick like cottage cheese.  I'm not particularly squeamish about the weird food of travel, but I worry a little about doing the following day's long bumpy car journey with a runny tummy.  After all, there are no trees to squat behind.    

We saddle up and move slowly through low scrub to the dunes.  I miss the gentle ringing of camel bells, but at least the driver isn't playing incongruous music on his mobile like my driver in the Taklamakan last spring.  But our's today is similarly disinterested in the whole thing.  It is far more pleasant though to sit bareback, rather than be crushed into those uncomfortable wooden frames the Uiygurs prefer.   We lurch gently along, laughing as our animals get bunched up.  We take a pleasant meander through a shallow riverbed, as the non-riders in the group play paparazzi from the carved out cliffs above.  

We disembark, the setting sun accentuating the sweep of the dunes as they cast lengthening shadows. Tulga points out a 'peak' further out, and allows us to find our own way.  I take a long circuitous route along a ridge line, reached by a tough climb, the footing uncertain and ever shifting.  Once at the top it is easier to move along the sharp lip of the dunes. The others further off look small as they each follow their own path.  At one point I come across a horse skull, a reminder that some paths are shorter than others.  

I find I've misgauged the length of the ridge, and as I race down into its trough I find that both my legs and my laughter are completely out of control.  A sandstorm swirls around us for a minute or so after we regroup at the peak. Then the silence returns, yet another immensity in which to lose ourselves.

On the turntable: Art of Noise, "Moments of Love"
On the nighttable: Laurence Bergreen, "Marco Polo: From Venice to Xanadu"