All day, vodka, vodka!: Very nice life

September 1, 2014

Early impressions of Mongolia were pretty good. The scenery was nice; rolling hills of treeless grass dotted with yurts and animals. I passed through Darkhan, the third largest 'city' in Mongolia, although it was no bigger than a small European town. As with the smaller villages the houses had brightly coloured roofs that looked really pretty. The road was good, traffic was light and generally gave me plenty of space. As for the people, well, I wasn't really sure about the people.

All of my early interactions with Mongolians involved them slowing down their cars, either to offer me a lift (presumably for money), to shout something unintelligible at me, or simply to stare at the foreigner on a bike. The slowing down to stare at me became something that annoyed me on a daily basis, but the worst incident happened in the first couple of days. A man overtaking me slowed down his big 4x4 and stared out of his window at me until a car appeared coming in the opposite direction straight towards him. He managed to lift his eyes back to the road just in time and he swerved back to his side of the road which, coincidentally, was where I was trying to cycle. Anticipating all this I veered off onto the gravel and shouted angrily at the moron behind the wheel. His response to this was to laugh hysterically at the pissed off foreigner on a bike. He'd just run me off the road and now he was laughing at me and he had the face and laugh of a complete idiot. I consoled myself with the thought that I had traveled a long way to see stupidity being taken to these exciting new levels.

Taking a break to eat something by a little stream later on I was approached my two men that sat and joined me. Conversation was difficult, as I quickly discovered Mongolian to be an incredibly difficult langauage (with the exception of their frequently-used greeting of "Hi" which I'd mastered surprisingly quickly.) The men had food with them too and I was offered some of their meat. They showed me what it was by pointing to a horse that was grazing nearby. Always a horse grazing nearby in Mongolia. As a vegetarian I declined and, although they didn't try to pressure me into eating it, I was already getting the impression my sort wasn't common here. But the men were very nice, and left me a bottle of coke as a present.

Not long after that a man came running towards me as I cycled up a hill. I could see that he had come down from a van that was parked a little higher up, on the grass, and he was dressed all in a khaki outfit that made him look like a grown-up boy scout. I was surprised that he could speak very good English and he explained that he was a cyclist too. He immediately got his camera out as if to prove it, and we stood there at the side of the road while he excitedly showed me all his photos. As well as ones of him and his wife with their bikes we went through dozens of photos of him fishing and hiking and camping. We'd only just met, hardly exchanged two words, quite why he thought I wanted to see all his photo albums I wasn't sure.

"Here's one of me with a big fish! I am champion! With this fish I am champion! Oh here is one of my son."

"How old is your son?" I asked.

"Eight! Eight o'clock."

"I think you mean eight years old."

"Yes."

Here's one of him. I think his name was Dimgee, or something like that

The pictures went on and on, until eventually a message appeared on screen saying 'battery exhausted' and I had my reprieve. At least now we could just talk.

"I speak English, Russian, I translate Russian," he said.

"Oh, is that your job?" I asked.

"NO!" he screamed the word, "my job is fishing. And drinking vodka. And f*cking! I f*ck every girl! Every girl!"

There was a slight pause in the conversation here as we both stopped to take in the gravity of this lie. Although he was in much better shape than most Mongolian men I'd seen of his age, who had either been strutting around with massive beer-guts spilling proudly outwards or lying unconscious in the street next to empty vodka bottles (on this latter point I may believe he also has his moments) I just couldn't believe every girl would want to f*ck him. I mean, there were too many girls, and not enough hours in the day. And he was wearing socks with sandals.

"What are you doing here anyway?" I ventured. "Are you camping?"

"NO!" he screamed. "I'm with friends. We are..." He couldn't find the word, but was clearly making a tent shape with his hands.

"You're camping."

"NO!" he screamed again, continuing to make the tent shape.

"You are, you're camping."

"NOOO!!!"

"You're tenting?"

"YES!!!"

I asked if I could take a photo of him before I left and of course he agreed and I took one. But then he insisted I take another one of him, full-length to show off his green things.

"My green socks, my green sandals, my green shorts, green shirt, everything green. And a little bit of yellow for Mongolia."

"Why is everything green?" I asked.

"Because I am president of the Green Party. Political party. The Green Party."

"Oh," I wanted to ask about some of their policies, how popular they were in Mongolia, but before I could he went on.

"It's good. I can drink vodka! Lots of vodka! All day, vodka, vodka. Very nice life."

Today's ride: 91 km (57 miles)
Total: 27,300 km (16,953 miles)

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