After sleeping uncomfortably for most of the ride and watching a movie on my friend's little electronic device (I really don't know what to call it), we arrived in the grasslands of Mongolia. Mongolia has some pretty scenery, just picture dirt + green + mountains (green and brown). The sky was beautiful as well. After a month of Beijing skies, it was a nice change.
Then we arrived at our camp and I got one look at our living conditions (tent-like things) and started to get this sinking feeling in my stomach. Then I looked at our bathroom (smell: unbearable, stalls: nonexistent, conditions: mosquitoes, brown, and just bad all around) and started to regret coming to Mongolia. This emotion was supported by the wrong time of month to go and I had cramps the whole day and night. Then they fed us vegetables for lunch and herded us to where the horses were.
The horses were sooooo adorable but i also felt pity for them. All of them had scars on them in the shape of numbers, shapes, characters, etc. I guess to identify them, and most of them grouped into couples (which was really cute because they laid their heads on each other). My horse had a girlfriend who followed his every move. Too cute. So my friend was following my back the whole time, sometimes her horse's head would nudge my leg and stuff. But after 45 minutes or so of riding, the butt pain started to increase in substantially bigger increments and around this time this other horse who got out of control ran into my horse after it's rider fell off of it. I almost fell off but was able to balance myself just in time. My horse was really mad after that but I comforted it (at least I think I did) and then it started walking back to the girl that fell off her horse because I think it was worried. My horse and my horse's girlfriend were the only ones to stay behind and see what happened to her. Apparently she hit her head because she was bleeding and I think this other horse tried to jump over her earlier and so she was hunched over on the ground holding her head. I think they were calling the hospital. Then our horses joined the rest of the horses and our group stopped for a rest. While we were taking pictures and enjoying the scenery, these Mongol women were trying to sell us these cute baby lambs for like 5 kuai. It was actually sad, they were pulling these lambs on leashes made of rope.
By this time we rode the horses for an hour and a half and I was only planning to ride them only for an hour because I didn't bring that much money, but there was a slight problem: I had to go back to camp and the only way to do that was ride the horse again (the other option was of course walking through horse poop). But I think the people there planned it out so that we HAD to ride the horses for like 4-5 hours - basically trying to rip us off. And it worked. After arguing with them for a while, we told them we all just wanted to go back NOW, but even then, we took the long route back and ended up riding the horses for 3 hours. 150 kuai (after bargaining because for some reason they suddenly wanted 60 kuai per hour after telling us it was 50 kuai/hr). That was 3/4 of my money gone. The day started to look a lot dimmer with a lighter wallet and I had a feeling it was keep going to be like this. And I was right.
80 kuai for lamb meat. I didn't pay, but there were some who did and I KNOW they regret it. After watching some people rolling around in the dirt (part of our tour called - Mongolian wrestling, or something like that; I left after 5 minutes) we had dinner. More vegetables. Then they brought out the lamb. It was just a whole lamb roasted. And I mean the whole lamb. Then they had this celebration/ceremony (lots of cheering and music and of course, alcohol) and cut it up. I didn't watch. They basically gave every table some lamb, so even the people who didn't pay got to eat some. I didn't eat it. One table got it's head on a plate and got to see it while eating the rest of it. Many people told me it didn't even taste all that great (our tour guide told us it was like the best dish in the world).
The rest of the night is not worth mentioning but i'll tell you that none of us showered, few of us brushed our teeth and washed our faces in ice cold water (I was one of them), and all slept among the mosquitoes within our tent/hut shelters.
No comments:
Post a Comment