Moonlight over Mongolia
The Ger Experience
Along the southern border of Mongolia, there are five aimags (provinces) containing sections of the Gobi Desert. One of the most untouched
places on earth, this desert covers about a third of Mongolia.
Site of an ancient inland sea, the area is a treasure chest of fossilized dinosaur bones and eggs. This is where the dinosaur bones now residing in
the New York Museum of Natural History were discovered by Roy Chapman Andrews in 1924--apparently the first big find of bones and eggs of this
kind. (We observed many samples of these fossilized eggs a few days
later in UB in the Museum of Natural History.) This vast
Bayanzag -- Flaming Cliffs-- area of flat steppes and peculiar pink rock formations was
about two hours away from the Ger Camp, our home for two nights in the Gobi
Desert.
Traveling in the Gobi, they tell you to keep several things in mind:
it’s very cold at night (tell me about it), the region is very sparsely populated
(you may see a trail of dust 10 or 20 miles away and know it’s a vehicle),
dust storms come up suddenly, rabid dogs can be found, and they say that
almost every year bubonic plague may appear from August to October (but in the western parts of the Gobi, not where we were going).
Obviously, water is the staff of life here, and you have to carry plenty of
it, not only for drinking, but for brushing teeth, etc. In other words,
it’s a fascinating place! But don’t get lost.
What can I say about our ger experience? (yurt to us westerners.) It
was very interesting, to say the least! Or the most. And FREEZING
COLD.
Three beds filled much of the interior of the round, felt-walled ger.
A cold iron stove sat in the middle of the floor with the stove pipe extending
to a hole in the ceiling above. The ger was unheated and freezing cold
when we arrived. Just one bulb helped dispell the darkness. The camp
generator
would be turned off promptly at midnight and the one light would go out, but
that night the stars in the black night sky of the opening overhead twinkled
even more brightly and were like a brilliant umbrella canopy in the roof of
the ger.
Jean and I arrived exhausted from our long day’s journey and decided immediately to each take a cover from the third bed for more warmth for our
own beds. The total weight of the blankets over me felt like about ten heavy
pounds—but who was counting. We knew the electricity would go off
shortly
and made one dash across the wide dirt swath to the bathhouse across the way
to wash up and go to the bathroom! We knew that no matter what, we’d
never
make it across in the dark again that night! Then as quickly as we
could, we crawled, freezing, into our beds, shivering as the temperature
plummeted. I kept my three layers of clothing and long johns on--but
it still took a long time to get warm beneath my blanket nest
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