Stalag Concrete

We rotted in a concrete outdoor pen for 54.5 hours. Oh. At 8,000 feet. In the rain. With a pit toilet and no water access.
I could leave the pen and go into “town” because I had been processed and given my passport. Jim however was being held hostage as they had his passport in “passport control” until customs received the import tax for the car. The town was a conglomeration of depressingly decrepit one story mud brick buildings. I went to buy some ramen and a woman unlocked a shipping container set in a dirt yard. Inside the dim, unlit interior there was an assortment of dry goods on dusty, rickety shelves behind a counter that ran the length of the container. Dish soap, toothpaste, beer, ramen, they were out of water, wafer cookies sold by the pound in open bins, were the choices. I opted for the kimchee flavored ramen thinking the fiery hotness of the kimchee would kill anything that might be living in there and a couple of beers. Upon returning to the Stalag I was hassled by the guard about the beer (this part of Mongolia is ethnically Kazakh and muslim) because another team had created a drunken ruckus the night before. I told him we would drink it after we were out of there and put on my best “you mess with me and I will take you out” body language. It’s amazing how intimidating a mother can be when she wants to be. Ironically the US is called Mongolia’s Third neighbor, after China and Russia, and Americans do not even need a visa to get in so he really couldn’t hassle me about my passport but he dutifully turned every page very slowly and gave me the hairy eyeball.
The second night the guards let us “out” which ironically is “into” Mongolia. They let us out of Stalag Concrete after I started to cry in the Mongolian Customs building when they told me we would be there for a second night. This is after I went in there to use the phone and plead with The Adventurists to PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE get us out of there. The head guard yelled at the civilian who was dialing the call for me and then yelled at me. As the words “we have no fire” came out of my mouth I lost it and had to walk outside I was crying so hard. Then everyone rallied to help us “there’s a whole town of people who will gladly help you” one female guard the size of a sumo wrestler wearing head-to-toe camo said in a super thick accent.Earlier in the day I had done some business with her husband. A very sketchy looking guy who exchanged Dollars and some leftover Rubles and Tenge too. This was carried out furtively with currency hidden in book pages because the guards get “angry”. That was the only word spoken in English. The rest of our negotiations involved me punching a number into my iphone calculator which he would tsk tsk, hit clear and punch in his number. Then I would shoot him a look like “what? You think I was born yesterday? Then punch in my number. Back and forth until we had a deal. I have to say that I have grown to relish these currency transactions, it’s like poker but with more adrenalin.More guards and customs officers came over to see if I was okay as I stood outside hunched in the cold, crying. The sketchy finance guy invited us to his yurt for dinner. The other guards looked at us expectantly as if maybe they would be off the hook if we said yes and accepted his invitation. We were desperate for heat, padded surfaces, hot food. Later we heard it was 8 degrees celsius, that’s 46.4 degrees fahrenheit. We were going to buy warm clothes when we got to cashmere country. We had no gloves, sweaters, scarves etc.

We got in his sketchy car with 3 good tires and 1 bad tire and after crabbing through town got dropped of in front of a yurt. He waved us inside and peeled, crab-like, down the dirt road past the ramshackle huts and decaying mud brick walls that had seen better times.

We went inside the yurt, minding our manners by not lingering on the threshold and going to the left, just like we learned from our Lonely Planet guide book. Two young women stared at us and shrugged like, whatever. We sat down on the carpet and I started to cry. Again. That kinda broke the ice. Then more people came in. Stared at us, spoke to each other as if to say who are these people, and then got to their work. A fire built. Meat chopped. Water put on. Tea made. I went out with the girls and babushka (who did all the milking). We brought back 2 plastic pails of milk that were pretty damn tasty.

Long story short we ate boiled goat and hot yak milk from the yaks outside.  The hot yak milk was for my cough, they indicated by gently hacking in imitation of me and offering me a steaming hot bowl. Hot milk is not something I would touch with a ten foot pole at home, but we weren’t at home. 🙂

While the girls and I compared music playlists (they like Shakira best) Jim displayed his manliness doing shots of vodka outside with the men. What a night.

When it was bedtime they made up a kind of sofa bed for us. So we slept in the yurt with this family who spoke not one word of english and maybe 5 words of Russian. There were 4 beds: one for Babushka who is 69, then Marnash 19, a boy 5, a couple in their 20’s (she is expecting their first child) shared a bed. During the night it rained and we could hear it pounding on the yurt but we were warm and dry.

Morning came and we all went outside and took turns doing our business on the steppe, the rain gently sprinkling our naked fannies. Then tea with salt, milk and butter. Dried milk curds (not yummy) and fresh cream and butter skimmed off the top of last night’s yak milk harvest. That cream and butter was one of the most delicious things I have ever eaten. It was indescribably FRESH, nothing else will ever come close, until we get a yak…

Then a walk back to our 42 degree outdoor prison cell.

Thanks Jeff for calling the US Embassy to get us into Mongolia because I don’t think The Adventurists channels were functioning. I can’t wait to hear that story!

The fenced concrete pen where we were held captive.
Making coffee in the car. We bought this crazy heating element thingy you hook up to the cigarette lighter and stick in a cup of water. When it worked it was awesome!

Tea before dinner in the Yurt. The bread in the center of the table is fried. We had it cold but it was still awesome. Babushka is a widow, that’s her husband’s picture on the wall above her.  Marnash to my right is her granddaughter.
The baby yaks are adorable! They tie them up to this rope that is staked ot the ground and the mommies stay close by.

Milking the yaks in the dark was pretty interesting. The two granddaughters used flashlights but Babushka didn’t need one. As the mommy yaks were milked one by one her baby was then taken off the rope and allowed to nurse for a little bit then tied back up for the night. It took at least an hour if not two to milk 12 yaks. It was pretty darn cold and windy and drizzly.

The hotel in town?

While we were in the Stalag we entertained ourselves by unloading and loading the car a few times. This is our sump guard which we were going to bring back to the states and mount in a case on a pedestal in our foyer. Instead we decided it was For The Gods and left it behind.

Babushka’s husband’s uniform. Preserved for all to see on the wall of the yurt.

This is how meat is stored in the yurt. Looks like goat. The hunk we had for dinner was taken from this selection.

The Stalag was not without it’s wild life. We were entertained by these marmots that lived next to the fence.

These kids would come to the fence and ask us for “presents” and try to sell us goat horns and skulls. I went up the road and gave them the paddle toys we brought, they liked them. I tried to sell them but they would have nothing of that even though they kept trying to sell stuff to us. LOL. What one will resort to when bored out of your mind. We all really felt like prisoners in a prison camp. One Aussie noted that due to international regulations every country in the world with the exception of North Korea would have given us shelter and a bed if we were in a prison camp. In hidsight we should have just gotten arrested and then maybe they would have dragged us someplace warm.

The interior of the yurt before everyone got home. Our dining table on the left and the stove ont he right. When the fire was going and cooking was going on it was toasty warm in there. Not a bit of smoke came into the yurt, it all went out that chimney pipe through the ceiling.

The road to “town”. Ummm yeah, looks appealing, non?

 

Our yurt in the morning. This by the way, is a Kazakh style yurt. Monoglian yurts do not have all the wall hangings inside.