Toerke

It starts with one. Then you see a few. After a while I am covered by a blanket of stars. It’s been a long time since I last saw so many stars together. It starts with one. I am handed a bowl. You dip the tip of your ring finger into the Wodka and sprinkle a few drops into the air. And this you do three times: once for father sky, once for mother earth and once for the gods. The bowls are passed around and around and so are the stories.

Norov is our 3 in 1: guide, translator and cook. She was born in Bulgan where she lived for 18 years. Then she moved to Darkhan, a larger province town where she stills lives in winter with her mother and niece. During the summer she works for travel agencies. Because most of them operate out of UB, that’s where she lives with her sister during the season. Family members often move in with each other for a while. School children from the countryside live with relatives in towns during the school year. They move back to their parents to help out with the herds in summer.

Tsogo is our driver. He has five children and a Russian jeep. He comes from the Altai mountains where he helped herd “the five animals” as a young boy: sheep, goats, horses, cows and camels. He used to work with combines, huge machines to crop fields. Because everyone earned the same wage during Marxist times, hard workers were rewarded with trips abroad. That’s how Tsogo went to Moscow, Saint-Petersburg and Irkutsk. Now he drives his jeep for Tseren Tours during the summer.

The four of use are the quartet during this 17 day jeep tour.