Author: Tom Russell

By Tom Russell

Mongolia. This was a place like no other. A land of extremes where normality does not exist. Being here was like time travelling to the wild west. Travelling to a different universe where life is completely alien. 

Hal and I had been here now a month. On a farm near Orkhon, up north. We hopped on a train from Ulaanbaatar, sharing our carriage with two grannies. We waited at the station for Mingee. A few hours of waiting and we still hadn’t heard from her. We slept on the benches as people eyed us. This woman after looking at us for a while said ‘Mingee?’. ‘Yes Mingee, Mingee”. She started to move about drawing out an imaginary map on the ground. All we understood was that we had to cross a river and then the railroad and that was our destination. Safe to say we stayed put. 

A woman came up to us. She wasn’t Mingee but she was going to bring us to her. She pointed to a truck. We jumped into the back of the truck, lying amidst chopped lumber. We drove through the town. People riding around on horseback, cows milling about. A little boy hopped in the back with us and later jumped back out when he was clearly home. We came to a stop. 

We stayed a few days at Mingee’s parents’ place in the village. A small, fenced area with the grandparent’s ger and their garden, a cooking area and then another ger and some small barns and paddocks. Here we met Schmetterling and Galeile. They were working for Mingee as well. A couple hitchhiking across the world. Schmetterling was from Germany. A dreaded, psychedelic-taking voyager. Galeile was a doctor from Belgium. A great duo. 

We slept in our tent on the concrete floor in the kitchen. A room with a wood burning stove and cheese hanging up to dry. We spent our days building fences and getting our stomachs used to the Mongolian diet, which consisted of this fatty meat cooked in more fat. We had a horse, called Chaton. Hal would train him and later would teach me how to ride. 

After a few days we moved to Mingee’s farm. Further out from the village. She had her house, which she shared with her daughter, and a building where us workers stayed. We cooked on the wood stove outside and ate our meals on the porch. An American named Fynn was with us now. He played the tin whistle and only spoke in jokes.

This was it, truly in the middle of nowhere. The horizon was only limited by my eyesight. Never ending expanses of plains. The Orkhon river passed through below in the valley. This was it; we were out there. Pure life, without superficialities. This was life to the bone, living in Mongolia and shitting in a hole. 

Mingee was this Mongolian woman who lived here and ran the farm by herself. She had forty or so cows and a few hundred horses. An unbelievably strong woman. You needed to be to survive out here and to last winter. 

We would wake and herd the cows. Riding around on horses screaming ‘Chandar’ with our sticks. Chasing the calves into this little pen and then Mingee would milk them while we tied them up. Mingee and her daughter savagely beat any cow who wasn’t behaving. Boots slammed into their side. Amidst the violence Hal and I began naming the calves. Double Decker, Milky Way, Oreo. This emotional attachment to animals is something that Mingee and Mongolians don’t feel. There’s no space for sentimentality here. To Mongolians, animals are simply resources. Resources to aid in their mission to survive. As such they get treated accordingly. I’ve watched as a cowboy named Marlboro cracked a plank of wood in half over his horse’s head, while others punched their horses in the face. Mingee even asked the local policeman to shoot her dog after it killed someone’s goat.

During the day Hal and I would do construction, building the shed. We built it out of scrap wood and rusty nails. Hal was the brains of the operation, coming up with the plan and then ordering me about to carry the logs of wood. It worked well that way and by the end we had ourselves a shed which we reckoned would make it through winter without collapsing. 

After a day’s work, if we had the energy, we would take some horses and go for a ride. Riding around the mountain as the sky turned purple with every sunset. After dinner we would sit on the porch, playing games and chatting. Schmetterling in the first few days had discovered a plantation of wild weed, which he started harvesting and drying out, so he would enjoy his homemade joint at the end of the day.

And that was about it. That was our daily schedule and yet no day would ever be the same. Everyday all these simple tasks turned into a nutty adventure. But overall, life here was barebones. It was simple and beautiful. The simplicity gave you the space to bathe in the beauty.

Everything was about survival. About preparing for winter. Food you didn’t get at your local supermarket. If you ran out of food, you killed for your food. You had a slaughtering day. Cows during the harsh winter lose their fat while horses don’t so it makes more sense to eat the cows in the summer and horses in the winter. We were there in summer. We had run out of food to eat so today’s job was to solve that. Hal, myself, Mingee’s daughter’s boyfriend Tomo and Marlboro went out to find the cow Mingee wanted to kill. Marlboro chased the cow into the horses’ pen, where we shut the gates blocking him in. There were four of us in there with this one cow. Marlboro and Tomo throwing lassos, trying to hook his horns. The cow charging about. Eventually the lasso landed around its horns, but the rope was ripped out of Marlboro’s hands. Tomo dashed to grab it with the cow running, he grabbed it and quickly spun around a pole. With the rope wrapped around the pole, the cow buckled in his stride and fell to the ground. 

Hal and I timidly helped drag the cow to the killing site. Marlboro and Tomo whacking him with their sticks. With ropes now around his legs we pulled him to the ground, pinning him down. My hands pressing his forelegs onto the ground. Marlboro pulled out a penknife and thrust it in between his eyes. I struggled to hold his legs down which struck out in spasm. My eyes didn’t leave his eyes. large. Terrified. The spasms slowed and his eyes stopped moving.

Marlboro started gutting the cow and butchering the meat. An entire cow killed and butchered with a penknife. He grunted directions to us now and then in Mongolian, we tried to work out what he wanted us to do. Squeeze the feces out of its intestines, hold back this leg, grab that lung, carry the head over there. Not a single bit of that cow was wasted. Everything was a resource that was too valuable to waste. The only thing left behind was its skin, left out for the birds. The meat lasts the longest while the organs are the first to go off. We placed the meat in a freezer box, while all the organs were all put in one pot and boiled in water. That was dinner for the near future. 

The organs teamed with cucumbers bought from the local policeman was an interesting combination. A combination that didn’t do many favors for my digestion. It was a relief to the group when Schmetterling decided enough was enough and set out to build a toilet. It ended up being more of a throne. A nice wooden throne with a view. I’d sit there and take in the view. Nothing but the steppe with horses grazing in the distance

Mongolian horses are famous around the world. In Mongolia people’s horses roam free until they were needed and then are captured. We had three horses at the farm for daily life while the rest of Mingee’s horses roamed free. The horses are branded for identification but often some run away and never return. They either stay lost, or cross paths with the wolves. Mongolian horses are small in stature but incredibly resilient and strong. 

One day we spent branding some of the younger horses. I think it may have been one of the craziest days of my life. We went back down to the farm in the village. Nasa, a cowboy, and a few teenagers from the town had led a herd of thirty or so horses into the farm, and we shut the gates. You could see the stallion straight away. The stallions always had a longer mane and possessed more muscle. We started by trying to separate one from the herd. We would push the herd into a corner and the cowboys would try lasso the horse. The horses obviously didn’t take too kindly to this so they would try bolt out of there, crashing through whatever fences were blocking them in. Once a lasso stuck, we would tackle it to the ground and then tie his front legs together. No horse likes to be pinned to the ground and so we would have to wrestle with it. Usually there would be two of us wrestling it while someone else shaved its hind leg to prepare the skin for the brand. And then the brand would be placed on. This process of wrestling was hard enough without the commotion going around you. All the other horses galloping around you. I was even wrestling one horse on the ground when I heard a crash behind me of a horse breaking through a fence and then jumps over the top of me. Absolute madness. All the Mongolians were drinking vodka, pouring it down your throat while you’re on top of a horse. At one-point Fynn and Nasa started wrestling each other. Having some sort of competition amidst this chaos.

That night we threw a party for the local village. A night spent necking vodka while chanting and dancing around a fire. There was this beautiful girl there but safe to say it didn’t go too well considering I only spoke English and I asked her if she was from Orkhon, which was the only village for a few hundred miles. Mongolians love their vodka to the point they could hardly walk, and yet would collapse on top of their horses and gallop home. I lay by the fire, admiring the stars. After twenty years of living, I’ve somehow ended up here, lying on this patch of grass in Mongolia. Sometimes I think I know things, that I’ve learnt these profound lessons, but I think the only thing I know is that you have got to be open to it. Open to life and everything that entails. All the weirdness of it that makes it special. 

This is just a brief description of what life was like in Mongolia. Every day was another adventure. I could never recount it all but from branding horses to castrating cows, we experienced a lot. But time on the farm was coming to an end. We were going to take some of the horses and go for a long old ride for a few days, before heading back to Ulaanbaatar.

By Tom Russell

We squeezed into this convenience store, jostling past customers as they bought their individual cigarettes, to the back door. Out in the yard were two motorbikes sitting there. They were for us. We had a few days to kill in Ulaanbaatarbefore heading north, and the lure of a motorbike trip was just too appealing. Nonchalantly we asked Beno, the garage owner, if we could expect any trouble with the police as we didn’t have official motorbike licences. ‘This is Mongolia’, he replied with a smile.

Bags strapped on the back and saddle bags brimming with food, we bade farewell to the Beno. Hal rode out the gate first. I wasn’t in any rush to take the lead. I’d ridden smaller bikes before, but this was a different beast, and it had been a while since I’d been on a bike. My feet scuttling along the ground, pushing the bike to cover up my consistent stalling. Hal glancing behind every now and then checking that I hadn’t died this early. Slowly I was getting used to being back on a bike. At traffic lights I was no longer popping wheelies out the gate. Through dusty roads and past the flurry of gers we were on the main road out of the city. This was the one main road in the country, a linear path connecting the north and the south. Driving amidst the chaos of traffic was not an experience I’d like to repeat. 

The pollution and the noise didn’t last long. Soon there was nothing. Ulaanbaatar was quickly left behind. The Steppe. All my life I’d read and seen pictures of the Mongolian steppe but none of which quite encapsulated it.  Rolling green fields, broken by sharp mountains. My eyes filled with every shade of green. Even now, gunning it on the bike, you still didn’t really feel like you were moving. The vastness of the landscape swallowed you. We were just distant specks moving in this barren world. Emptiness. Emptiness. Emptiness. Everywhere, there was nothing. We would pull over  every now and then for a smoke and to rest our arses, and the silence would hit. My ears, no longer filled with the roar of the engine, were empty. Nothing. Not a sound. 

Riding a bike in this vastness, your mind can’t help but wonder. My mind was free, no longer blocked in by the constraints of buildings or the buttresses of people. Wonder. Space to breath. Space to think. Free from all the external buzz that beats you into shape. We crossed entire worlds. We would ride to the horizon and then cross the lip and a whole new world would reveal itself. Down into a new valley and a new world.

Up in front I saw some police lights and Hal getting pulled over. Reducing my speed, I drove past and pulled over a safe distance in front and peered nervously behind. Hal and the police officer were chatting. The first test. A big grin broke out across my face as Hal hopped back on his bike and slowly approached where I was waiting. I couldn’t see under his helmet, but no doubt there was a grin there as well.  

We still had a few hours of sunlight left before we would be forced to make camp, so we hurtled on. The steppe was eternal. Once we were in it, I didn’t believe in an outside world. Herds of horses galloping across the landscape. Occasionally, the bizarreness of everything would overwhelm me. Passing by a herd of camels I couldn’t help but giggle. The weirdness of life is a great and beautiful thing.

Another police stop. As expected, we were beckoned over. Filled with confidence from our last interaction we pulled over and got out our documents. There were three of them. One in a smarter uniform was clearly the big boss, the other two in uniforms of a lighter blue. One of them was twirling his baton while occasionally rubbing his stomach that poked through his shirt. The other had a much quieter presence. The big boss would speak to the quieter officer who acted as our translator. He explained they weren’t happy with our standard driving license. Still, we weren’t too nervous. This being Mongolia we expected to hand over some money and be on our way. We figured this was just fear tactics. Amidst a serious language barrier, we exchanged the occasional few words, awkward laughs, and some cigarettes. The big bellied officer jokingly hit us now and then with the baton.

The big boss drove away, while the rest of us remained. A few hours later and we’re still in the same spot watching the sun set from the side of the road. Our mood started to slowly dwindle with our frustration mounting. Now everything was less jokey. The officer with the baton was getting slightly too power giddy and was becoming a serious annoyance with his baton. Every hit was bringing us slightly closer to our breaking point. Cigarette after cigarette to pass the time and calm our nerves. The wait continued. We figured we weren’t going anywhere anytime soon, so we might as well sit and enjoy the sunset.

The sky was now dark. After four hours of waiting the big boss returned and the conversation picked back up. After some mumbling we grasped that we were going to have to pay a fine. Yes, finally. Brilliant. We both had our cash in our hands and were basically thrusting it towards them. Take it and let us continue. They didn’t make any move to take our money. Instead, they mounted our bikes. Woah. Woah. Hold up. Hal sprinted and jumped in front of the bikes. He had no intention of letting them drive off. Standing in front of them, he called up Beno and hastily explained what was going on. He handed the phone to the big boss. After talking, Beno told Hal that only a Mongolian citizen is allowed to pay the fine, so they were going to take the bikes for now and we had to go with them. Left with little choice we got on the back of the bikes, with the police driving. At least we were leaving this spot on the side of the road. Here we were in the middle of nowhere in Mongolia getting a police escort to lord knows where. I made sure to give his belly a big squeeze.

We were dropped off outside this restaurant. They unstrapped our bags and then sped off on our bikes. There were some rooms above the restaurant, a Mongolian motel it seemed. We sat down on the curb. Both of us taking a second to process what had just happened. The two of us sitting there, we still had no clue where we were, there was the restaurant, the road and then further off in the distance some lights from a small village. We had no clue where our bikes were or where the police station would be. Where in the middle of the steppe does one find a police station?

We talked to Beno and the plan was for him to get a bus to where we were so we could go to the police station and get this all sorted. Well, this wasn’t where we pictured we would be spending the night. A woman walked us upstairs to our room. We thanked her and dropped our bags. Dirty and bug infested with cracked walls, it wasn’t too inviting but it would have to do. 

We found a nice bench to sit on and cooked dinner on the side of the road. As our noodles simmered, we joked about, trying to see the funny side of it all. You have got to accept you are not in control. There’s no script to follow and that’s where the excitement comes from. The monotony of normal life manifests itself in the repetition of events to where it becomes tough to distinguish between one day and another. Here that doesn’t exist.

I woke the following morning bleary eyed. The night’s sleep was pretty rough. I kept getting woken up by bugs crawling on my face and parts of the ceiling falling onto me. We had nothing else to do but to kill time until Beno arrived. Back on our bench, backgammon and chess were our cure. The motel owner’s little daughters kept us company, insisting we play with them. My focus on the chess games would be shattered by some brutish pigs occasionally running around behind us. Sitting next to a mountain of trash and an outhouse wasn’t the best placement. Determined not to waste the day, we strolled around the plains for a bit. The sense of barrenness you couldn’t escape. Walking along, you passed by a carcass every now and then. Sitting on a hillside we tried to get the lay of the land. Below us was a little village with gers and a few buildings. We figured that’s where the police station would be, and hence, our bikes. Mourning the loss of our bikes, I watched as a motorbike troop drove past in the distance. We could see the road where we were pulled over. A little streak across the open land. I could make out little figures on motorbikes simply driving past the checkpoint on the grass, taking a wide berth of the police. So that’s how it’s done.

Our rescue turned up at around six. Boy, were we glad to see Beno. We quickly stopped for a quick meal in the village. Sitting there, we discussed the game plan. He seemed confident that we could get the bikes back. He chatted with the restaurant owner about the police in town. She apparently knew them, so she gave them a ring. She got off the phone looking more dismayed than before. It wasn’t looking good, apparently the big boss had contacted the police in Ulaanbaatar about it all. We packed up and made our way to the station. The mood was a lot more sombre. 

We found the station in the middle of town. It was empty apart from some cows milling about outside. The waiting never ended. Some herders came over to chat. Apparently, the police had gone to a different village, but they confirmed our bikes were here in the shed. They were chuckling as they told Beno that the three police men, fuelled on vodka, were joyriding our bikes around last night.

A police car finally turned up. Hal and I nervously glanced at each other. It was time for our best behaviour. Beno approached the big bellied officer and they talked in hushed voices. Neither of us had any clue what they were saying so we stood there trying to adopt what I thought of as an innocent expression. 

Beno started to walk away, beckoning for us to follow. After we had put some distance between us and the station, he broke down what had happened. The bikes needed to be transported back to Ulaanbaatar on a truck – we weren’t allowed to ride them – and we would need to pay a fine in the city; but we were all free to leave. Relieved that this was all over, we bought some beers and headed back over the hill to our motel. The realisation that our motorbike trip was over dawned on me, but I didn’t dwell too much on it. You just got to it rolling.

Back outside we shared a beer with Beno and chatted. Our new friend talked of his time studying in Moscow while we talked of our far-off lives in Durham. The sun was starting to set so we grabbed our bags and walked off to find somewhere to sleep. With the fine looming we didn’t fancy paying for another night at the motel. I pitched the tent while Hal started to cook our dinner. Lying on the grass with our bellies full, we chatted about things that never come up in daily life but out here feel so normal to talk about. Soon, the orange glow of the setting sun gave way to a blanket of stars. Stars don’t exist elsewhere like they do in Mongolia. There’s a depth to them, layers. You feel like you’re looking further and further into them, beyond them. We picked out the different constellations we could see and created our own. 

The only problem with the steppe is just how exposed it is. The wind cuts across the land without obstruction, making for a tough night’s sleep. It was basically like a dust bowl. I awoke with everything covered in a layer of dust, I couldn’t see out my glasses and my hands were black. Shaking off the dust, I crawled outside. Standing there, a tear almost left my eye. A herd of horses were trotting about by our tent. You’re awake and immediately alive in one of the most magical places in the world. 

Cooking breakfast on the side of the road, we prepared ourselves for a day of hitching. Straight away a car pulled up near us. Through google translate he offered us a lift back to the capital for a few bucks. We threw our bags in the back. That was the easiest hitch of my life, we didn’t even have to try. ‘There’s got to be some sort of catch’ Hal said. He started driving the wrong way. He seemed to be conducting his morning business around town, dropping off tires at different houses. We stayed along with him though, figuring he wouldn’t take too long. We parked on this hill for close to an hour, while different cars, bikes and even people on horseback pulled up to meet him. We joked about how it felt like he was the entire town’s drug supplier or something. One by one people also started hopping in the car, until it was now more than full with six of us in there. 

There’s a saying in Mongolia, ‘we get there when we get there’. We were finally on our way. Driving the same way as yesterday but this time we were on four wheels, myself sitting in the front with Hal knocked out in the back drooling on this herdsman, this time burning our way back to the capital.

By Tom Russell

We stepped on the train at Shanghai. Bumping up against people, we shouldered our way to our seats. The journey had begun. Sid and I were heading to the Anhui district. Some may call it an adventure, others therapy. A trip born out of suffering and hurt. I’ve always viewed nature as a healer, a transformer. Every time I come out a little less broken. Something the two of us were hoping for.

The train was moving, properly moving. Engineers from Star Wars invented this train. A spaceship streaking across the land. Outside the window the landscape remained the same. Buildings, buildings, buildings, buildings. The dominance of mankind was everywhere. The never-ending expansion of urbanity and with it the destruction of nature.

We hopped out of the train at Huangshan and got into a taxi to the national park. Driving out of town everything around me felt wrong. The buildings, the lack of people, the plants, this sense of incongruity. This town didn’t feel real, as if it just fell from the sky and landed here and that was that. There was no synchronicity with the mountains around. The park entrance felt like being in a ski resort, people milling about buying poles and souvenirs. This wasn’t the serene nature park we had pictured. 

We began the climb up to Yellow Mountain. We were buzzing, we were about to climb up one of the most famous mountains in the world. A mountain that’s inspired philosophers, artists and now hopefully us. Steps. Thousands and thousands of steps. Up and up. Nothing but steps. The only thing worse than steps are steps rammed with people. Heaps and heaps of people. People who had taken the gondola up and then decided to brave the steps down. We witnessed some serious displays of pain from people. People crawling down backwards on their hands and feet. People collapsed on the side. And then there were the two of us marching up them. Sid was the mandarin speaker out of the two of us, but he’s white while I’m half Asian. The greatest source of entertainment was watching people’s reactions to him speaking. Sid became a celebrity on that walk up. Photos of him were to become their source of dinner conversation when they were back down.  

Over a thousand meters in elevation gain all done on steps. This was what it felt like to be Sisyphus, I guess. Both of us dripping in sweat we made it to the top. We were now in the mist and fog. You could see nothing. The occasional tree poking out of the mist. We were walking in a mystery land. We were staying in this lodge which was up near the top of the mountain. We ditched our bags and headed back out into the fog. We climbed up to a small peak and sat there together. The wind harshly striking our faces, we couldn’t see a thing. The sun had just set and sitting there the fog swallowed us into its darkness. Still, we stayed. I’d let out a scream every now and then. This scream was this act of defiance, to scream into the void, knowing it would live but seconds before being extinguished. That brief flicker of life. We sat there just feeling. Feeling everything it means to be alive. Sid was sitting there screaming as well. Boy that made me smile seeing him sitting there. Here he was. He was on this mountain, he still had the passion, he still had the fire.

Slowly navigating our way in the dark, we made it back to our home for the night. A quick noodle soup and then we drifted into sleep. 

I woke up with nightmares of those steps and my calves reminded me that they weren’t just nightmares. Fire. A burning fire from my calves. The sun hadn’t yet risen, and we could feel the cold from inside. Chasing sunrise was just too good a thought to lay there in bed. So, we were off again. We strolled along the paths, trying to find our way to Lotus Peak to watch the sunrise. Our dreams crushed when we found the trail blocked with winter closure signs, and cameras recording us. China isn’t the place I plan on breaking any laws on camera. Back we go. The sun was slowly rising now and with it there was the occasional break in the fog. These brief glimpses into what surrounded us. Tiny pockets showcasing the world. Thousands of sharp peaks jutting out from the mist. Trees covering their tops. And bang, that was it. Back in the fog. Little fleeting moments of beauty that you can’t hold onto. Letting them pass is the only way to not get lost living in visions of the past.

We made our way to the northern side of the park in an effort to escape the rain and mist. People didn’t seem to come to this side of the national park, so we finally got the bliss that comes from solitude. We finally escaped the mist, and the world was revealed around us. This beautiful world. It felt like a fantasy land. Places like this only exist in myth or legend. This was what the trip was about. To get away and to enjoy a beautiful place. We lay in this one spot for a few hours. Gazing about. Speaking when we wanted to speak. In the mountains there’s this honesty that exists. An honesty with yourself and also with others. Falsehood doesn’t exist. We shared this openness. It’s so easy to feel pain and to lose yourself in that pain. But you cling to all the tiny things, all the minute mundane things that get you psyched. You feed the fire with anything you can, and you break the consumption.

It came time to find camp for the night. Usually this isn’t too hard an ordeal but here in China it was different. We walked around trying to find an area where we could dart off trail. Every time we bumped into a park policeman, and they didn’t mess about. There would even be cameras hidden in rocks. Eventually we broke off into some bushes. Fifteen minutes of bushwhacking and we found this ledge on the cliff side. Just big enough for a tent. The outcrop was surrounded by bushes on two sides, offering protection from the wind. It was perfect. We dropped down into our little nook and settled in. With the tent pitched we had nothing to do but enjoy the sun setting across from us. Sid even found a beer hidden in his pack. With the sun gone the temperature dropped. It wasn’t long till we retreated into our tent and got into our sleeping bags. It dropped to -5 degrees. We were greeted with a rainstorm during the night and with it the never ceasing shaking of the tent. A sleepless night.

Sid survived his first wild camp. It was still raining, and we were back to being in the mist. Our nook was starting to flood with water, so we were forced to break camp early. Cold, wet, and tired we were still excited. A new day out here was too good to be moping about. It was nice to share this with a friend from home for the first time. I could see the same passion in Sid that makes you want to be in places like this. 

We walked through snowy woods, with only the noise of our feet crunching on the frozen ground, along streams and up passes, running and jumping our way down on the other side.  

Today was our last day up here, we were heading back down. We crossed back over onto the other side and then we were going to descend on that side of the mountain. It was as if the mountain was giving us a goodbye present. The mist was just below us and everything opened to us. Never have I seen anything like it. Stopping every few minutes to take in the view made descending slow going but we eventually made it. Back down to earth from our celestial peaks. 

We didn’t walk away from this trip with everything fixed but we did walk about knowing that we had lived.