silhouetted by headlamp and moon

 A rare passing jeep

 rising moon

rising moon and stars

Life in a ger

With only a few changes since the time of chengis khaan, the cozy space which is a mongolian ger serves as kitchen, prayer space, bedroom, living room, and workshop to name just a few, and thanks to solar and wind technologies, have ample power for watching television and charging cell phones.

Many an hour is spent avoidng the cold watching movies. This was actually a dubbed american film starring Cuba Gooding Jr.

My favorite breakfast "urum", a sweet cream product.

Togo with the not so pleasant duty of Lighting the stove so that everyone else gets to wake up to a warm ger and a hot bowl of milk tea.

myself eating one of many buuz, steamed mutton dumplings

All in a days work

Myagaa and his cousins combined own about 800 head of livestock including sheep, cashmere goats, cows, and camels all producing massive quantities of... well it is called "bas" in Mongolian. It is a constant struggle during the winter to collects the bas when the animals go to graze during the day and replace it with dry dirt so the animals are able to stay warm at night. Bas is also used for fuel on the stove. A great renewable resource which unfortunately does produce loads of pollution on the traditional low efficiency stoves. Aside from all this bas collection, there was herding, milking, cleaning, and cooking to be done on a daily basis.

 loading up the truck with dry bas

 Went to a neighbors place to collect more nicely dried bas

 Stopping by the community well on the way back

 Taking out ashes from the stove

Bayar still had to go get the livestock at the end of the day

I should have been named herder

After an eight hour bus ride largely on dirt roads to Mandalgovi (pop 10,000) followed by a two hour jeep ride, I arrived at my new home for a week in the Gobi. I took an excessive number of photos which Ill post in a couple installments and will start of with photos of everyone. Myagaa, a friend of my language teacher, and his family fed and sheltered me for a week and asked for nothing in return. Many thanks to them for their overwhelming hospitality.

 

 myself

 

 Togtohsuren (Togo)

 Bayacralah (Bayar)

Myagmarjab (Myaga)

 Chinsuren (Altan) and his daughter Naidanjureg (Naida)

Naida

chinsuren and his wife Altanhundag (above) and their child live in a separate ger

 

Home for a week

Sunday Hike up Bogd Mountain

The Crew:

Ulsbold the doc

Colin (aka coco) the frenchman hitchhiking from his home in southern france, en route to vietnam

Ogi the pentalingual mongol

Vadim the Ukranian who came to Mongolia via a fire truck

Enee the artist

Yours truly