Russian Hummers and Boiled Blood

Sain baina uu!

I’m back from the countryside! We spent the last two weeks traveling to Khuvsgul Aimag (the northernmost province in Mongolia) for our countryside homestay in the Darkhaad Depression. We flew from UB on EZNis Airlines into the small rustic town of Murun, the aimag center, surrounded by vast plains and low rocky mountains. From Murun it was some 300 kilometers to our homestay site, so we stopped at a ger camp for the night.

On our way to the ger camp we stopped at Uushgiin Hondii to see the largest known deerstone site in Mongolia. We were able to hike around the valley below our camp before our dinner: spaghetti and meat (sans sauce). I shared a cozy ger with two of my peers for the night and woke up to a light dusting of snow across the plains.

The second day’s drive took about nine hours. Our group rode in three grey Russian vans which are virtually indestructible. The dirt road from Murun to Ulaan Uul, the Soum center (regional town) closest to our homestay site, was beaten and undefined. Years of wear in the sloppiest of conditions have beaten the road into a lumpy mess. New paths are created whenever the mud gets too thick, so our drivers were constantly jerkily swerving to pick the “smoothest” route. If there’s one thing I’m thrilled I didn’t inherit from my mother, it’s her car sickness. In the bumpiest parts we drove 5 km an hour and to make up for such slow moments of travel the smooth parts became a race track for our three drivers, often slamming the brakes when we approached a dip too large to handle. I was surprised our car didn’t roll at some points or float away as we drove straight through a river. The Russian Hummers, as one of my teachers called them, are fearless.

Lunch was at a canteen ger along the road and the family that lived there invited us in for soup and tea. We stopped for directions at a snowy spot and broke the travel monotony with an impromptu snowball fight (we were all excited to see snow). We descended into the Darkhaad Depression, a valley of grassy pasture paralleled by a snowcapped mountain range and entirely Siberian Larch forests, after passing a line of ovoos or shrines. I was given a handful of seed and gradually tossed the grains onto the shrine while circling it three times. The ritual supposedly brings good luck so we all obliged. When we arrived in Ulaan Uul around 6 pm we were sick of driving (some more literally than others). We wandered the ghostly streets along broken wooden fences and worn down alley roads to find the last remaining open shop. We bought a jar of peaches and a bottle of Khuvsgul’s own vodka and spent the evening sharing stories and chasing the bottle of rubbing alcohol with peach syrup.

The next day was a short drive to our homestay sight. At the base camp we a lunch of bread with orom (the foam from boiled milk cooled into a delicious cream), khuushuur (meat filled fried dumplings), and the organs of a recent sheep slaughter; stomach, liver, kidney, sausage (intestines stuffed with strips of stomach and liver), and the notorious boiled blood. I ate all but the kidney. The stomach was like chewing gum, the liver wasn’t bad (I had been eating liver paste for breakfast with my UB family two weeks prior), the sausage had a good taste, but a…diverse texture, and the boiled blood was….not my favorite. It’s served in slices like discs. The texture is smooth, but it falls into pieces as soon as you take a bite. I found taking it in one bite was the best way to consume it. It tasted….like blood. I later found out they often season it with lots of salt and some diced onion, the only flavorings in the countryside. It was salty, rich and though I didn’t gag like Bear Grylls, I was not about to have seconds.

We had a brief horse riding lesson after lunch where we got to try the Mongolian saddles. They’re wooden and seem more decorative than practical. The saddle itself is so narrow one can’t sit inside of it. In a walk, you sit on the back and anything above canter you just stand. SIT provided us with combination Mongol-Western saddles which allowed us to sit, but were no more comfortable. Mongolian horses also come in a size small, so my time riding that week was quite humorous.

My host mother and sister were kneeling in the group of parents when we were all introduced. She raised her thin, short body to greet me; my sister stayed kneeling behind her. I used up my arsenal of Mongolian dialogue in a few minutes and so we sat silently, my sister still watching me intently, waiting for the van to drive us to our ger. The rest of the day was spent spitting out my limited vocabulary, flipping through my translation dictionary and dancing out my life story to my new family. I showed them pictures of my family and tried to explain the professions of my parents. I tried to explain that my mother is an orthodontic technician, but all I could get out was “dentist.” Hope you like the change in profession, Mom (or should I say doctor). A number of my explanations were similarly simplified and falsified. If ever find yourself in the Darkhaad Depression, my new major at Cornell is ‘grass’ and I no longer hail from the evergreen state rather our nation’s capital.

I got better at communicating as the week went on, but the first day was rough. As evening settled in my host mother poured me a cup of warm milk tea and at 9 pm when the stars were drifting across the Darkhaad valley I settled into my bed of folded blankets and deels.