Five Bestselling Travel Memoirs Box Set

by Twead, Victoria

  Chapter 36: I Know You

  “We’ve got to get going,” Ammon was urging. “Where is Future? Doesn’t he realize if we don’t leave now, we’re never going to make it? And you can’t get anywhere in the dark. Like the ranger said, it’s hard enough in the day. This guy is just fiddle-fartin’ around like he’s on a holiday or something.”

  “Well, that is kind of the mentality here, I think,” Mom piped in. “Are you as tired as I am? I couldn’t sleep through those dogs howling all night long!”

  “We haven’t even ordered breakfast yet!” Ammon growled and threw up his hands in exasperation. He must not have slept well, either. When Future strolled in a few minutes later, it was obvious that he was enjoying himself and didn’t see any point in rushing.

  “There has to be something to eat!” I demanded, not meaning to be heard.

  “Yes, Little Savannah,” Future said, walking over to translate the chalkboard menu on the wall. “There is mutton with rice, mutton soup, mutton---”

  “I swear to the lords I am not eating another stinking bowl of that yucky, horrible – Argh!”

  He laughed in response and simply said, “Little Savannah, this is good for you.” In comparison to what? Sand? The thought of another soggy white dumpling stuffed with woolly old sheep made me sick. At dinner the night before, I’d lost track of how many hairs I’d pulled from my bowl and teeth.

  Most of the ten-seat restaurants we stopped in at little towns along the way had menus hanging on the wall. Each apparently offered a wide variety of choices, but they were invariably out of every item we ordered except for those based on mutton. All we ever got in response to Future’s queries was head-shaking and an endless series of “noes,” though every once in a while they’d have goulash, a delightful dish made with beef, noodles, and potatoes. Sometimes we had the added luxury of the local version of carrot salad, which was, quite literally, just shreds of carrot with a bit of vinegar and pepper for dressing.

  “Oh dear, I guess there was no imagination put into that one,” Mom had initially laughed at the small orange pile on her plate, but we ended up shovelling the salad down happily. It was delicious!

  Just as in China, we never knew what we were going to get when we ordered. We were repeatedly surprised by Chinese versions of club sandwiches, French toast, and spaghetti bolognese. Ammon always shook his head at the strange versions of western food we were served as he enjoyed a fabulous Chinese dish for a quarter of the price. I found it hard to accept the fact that, as often as I might order a pizza, I wasn’t going to get anything that came close to the favourite food I so dearly missed from home.

  “Well, you’re going to have to eat the mutton unless you want to walk back to Ulaanbaatar, ’cause it’s not getting any better from here,” Ammon impatiently hurried our discussion of our limited choices. "And you have six days left! So suck it up and get used to it!”

  Nearer to Mongolia’s capital city, meals often included at least a few standard vegetables, mainly carrots, onions, potatoes, and very occasionally, beets. Ammon was just telling me what I already knew; the further we ventured away from Ulaanbaatar, the fewer options there’d be.

  Mom yawned and tried the gentle approach. “Savannah, these people have eaten it all their lives. It’s not the end of the world if you have to eat it for a month,” she said, trying to preserve her children’s small remaining bits of sanity.

  “Mom, dogs eat dog food their whole lives, too. It’s hard to force them to go back to it once they get a taste of what human food is like. It’s too late for me! I’ve already tasted real food. These guys don’t have anything to compare it to, so how can they complain?” I objected, remembering Khongorzul and her satisfied smile as she enjoyed that horrible soup in the tiny border town before we took the sixteen-hour train ride to Ulaanbaatar.

  “Okay fine. There’s some chocolate in the car. Go eat that while it’s still hard,” Mom said. The days were scorching hot and they somehow got even hotter the further south we travelled, but the desert climate’s relatively chilly nights gave the melted chocolate a chance to harden again.

  All Bree had to say was a subdued, resigned, “This is lame.” Nobody knew exactly which unfortunate circumstance she was referring to, but she was beginning to look like one of those sand kids we’d seen in the desert. I’m sure I was, too, had there been a mirror anywhere that I could check. Luckily there wasn’t. I couldn’t recall the last time I’d seen myself in a mirror, and I was pretty sure I’d rather pass on that, anyway. We’d spent weeks and weeks living in baggy clothes with no make-up. I was even forced to wear my geeky glasses ’cause there was too much dust for my contact lenses. When I’d found out only two years earlier that I had to wear them, I was in complete disbelief. I was the only person in my immediate family so afflicted. A four-eyes. Me?! How did that happen?

  Cleaning facilities were generally non-existent in the countryside. Luckily, I had used the free laundry in our Beijing hotel before entering Mongolia. Ammon was already happily into hand washing when we were in the city, but outside the capital, there wasn’t a bucket or enough water to fill one to be found anywhere. After nearly a month out in the country, rolling around in dusty vehicles and practically sleeping with farm animals, I knew I, too, would have to hand wash my clothes. They stank. I stank. Everything stank.

  There were never any showers at our rural accommodations, but on one rare occasion, we did find a very large metal pipe gushing with icy water from the earth. The six-inch-diameter hose located near a few gers and buildings in the open desert was used as the small community’s water supply and wash site. Locals filled big plastic jugs and tin milk containers for cooking and drinking. These were then transported using a small wooden plank that was drawn by a rope and supported by two wheels on either side. When we arrived, a few teenage girls and children were doing laundry, and a very short but nonetheless well-toned man in tight underwear was taking a “shower.” Freshly washed and still wet, he proceeded to clean his small motorcycle with a soapy rag. I could tell from the way the two girls were avidly watching him that he was the hot shot of the neighbourhood. I didn’t think they were happy about our drawing his attention away from them, since they’d probably planned to do the laundry when they knew he would be there.

  We all jumped at the opportunity to wash the twenty-eight layers of Mongolian grime off the limbs we could expose without stripping down. Then out came the shampoo; washing our hair never felt so glorious. Future ran around in his orange-and-grey-striped undies and white plastic sandals rinsing himself. Then he washed the van so it, too, could enjoy five minutes of cleanliness.

  “Don’t you love a country where you can run around in your underwear in the wild?!” Ammon said, smiling and accidentally catching Future’s attention.

  “Ammon! Help me, you must,” Future laughed, waving his wet shirt around before stuffing it in Ammon’s hand.

  “You dirty guy!” he joked, as he scrubbed Future’s back with the soapy shirt.

  Though we were sopping wet when we jumped back in the van, we were completely dry only minutes later. Soon we were again sitting in puddles of sweat as we drove further into this strange country. There were still many herds of goats, sheep, horses, and even camels roaming free.

  “Five sheep and ten horses to every person in the year 2000,” Ammon reported, turning around in the passenger seat on the car’s left-hand side.

  “But I never owned a sheep!” Future said, perhaps surprised by Ammon’s statement. We all laughed because we knew he’d never owned animals of any kind.

  “Well Future, I guess your five went to those who have hundreds,” Bree told him.

  “Yah, I think so! They stole my sheep!” He pretended to be aggrieved.

  “There are roughly three million people in Mongolia; forty-five percent of them live in the capital and thirty percent are nomadic. Most of the nomads sell raw wool to travelling traders or transport it to towns themselves,” Ammon explained.

 
Future was among that forty-five percent. He relied on his intellect and personality to make a living; he was not meant for hands-on tasks like herding, mechanics, or other skills related to outback living. As I tried to understand how he fit into Mongolian culture, I figured that a big part of surviving has to do with your general outlook on life and not letting hard times get the better of you. With all the near catastrophes we’d encountered at every turn – running out of fuel, flat tires, broken parts, sand traps, and so on – it would have been futile for Future to react angrily. His positive persona and accepting attitude encouraged us to rely on him.

  “This bumpy road is killing me. I’m going to have a broken back by the end of the trip!” Mom complained as we all climbed out of the van, still feeling a bit raw from the previous excursion. We were stopping at the desolate ruins of Ongiin Khiid, an old Buddhist monastery. It was constructed in the late eighteenth century to honour the Dalai Lama’s first-ever visit to Mongolia. Once home to hundreds of monks, it was now the crumbling essence of what had once been a major spiritual spot.

  We had only seen one or two cars the whole day, so we weren’t surprised to have the place completely to ourselves. The few monks who came every morning had long since completed their rituals of worship. By the time we arrived, the blazing red sun was hovering low in the west.

  “Here’s an interesting fact. Mongolia has only a little under 2,000km (1,243mi) of paved road!” Ammon announced to our groaning, aching bodies.

  “Meaning?” Bree prompted him for more.

  “That is NOT a lot! To put it in context, Hong Kong – you remember that place? You’ve been there---”

  “Yah, I knooow!” Bree said sassily.

  “Well, you never know. You did forget your tooth, eh?”

  “HEY!” she barked, as she laughed and waved the retainer, to which her fake left eyetooth was attached, around on her tongue at him.

  “Now you’re being nasty!” Ammon protested.

  I giggled, remembering how our waiter from a lunch break days before had run after us, frantically waving his hand over his head. He caught up to us, opened his hand, and said the equivalent of, “For you? For you?”

  Bree had gasped and rushed over, swiping the object from his palm. “Oh my gosh, my retainer!! Thank you, thank you. I love you! I would have died without my tooth!” When she’d popped it into her mouth mid-sentence, the man first looked confused and then startled when he realized what he’d just been holding. Nonetheless, he seemed pleased to have made her smile. Literally!

  “Put that thing away!” Ammon shuddered before continuing. “Hong Kong has more roads than all of Mongolia put together, and it’s just a small island.”

  “That’s not hard to believe! I don’t even remember what paved feels like anymore. What does it even look like? Can somebody please describe it to me?” I went on, exaggerating slightly.

  “And did you know Mongolia is the eighteenth largest country in the world? I could never understand why nobody ever mentions it when it’s so big. And I’d seriously wonder, ‘Is it real, or is it just there on the map?’ Well, now I know,” he smirked contentedly.

  “You always loved maps. When you were just a little guy, you always marvelled over them,” Mom said, not for the first time.

  “Eighteenth doesn’t seem that big, though,” I said.

  “But do you know how many countries there are in the world?” Ammon asked, the answer ready on the tip of his tongue, as usual.

  Bree, anxious to guess first, as usual, shouted out, “sixty-eight!”

  “Ammon, I think I do not know! I did not know this. That it eighteenth biggest was,” said Future, always ready to join the conversation.

  “Ummm, I really don’t know. Let’s say, oh, I dunno. I probably only know, like, ten,” I gave up quickly.

  “Oh c’mon! You know more than that!” Mom said, a touch annoyed. “You know a lot more than that. You’ve been to five already. The U.S., Canada, Mexico, China, Mongolia. You know Russia, ’cause we’re going there next, and Italy and France---”

  “And Japan!” Of course I know more! “Venezuela, Brazil ...” I thought of every home stay student we had ever had, and before I knew it, I was over twenty-five countries. “Korea, twenty-five; Thailand, twenty-six; Singapore, twenty-seven---”

  “And we’re going to India and Nepal, which you should know. And here are two more that I’m sure you forgot: Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan. We’re going there after Russia, so you better memorize those,” Ammon said, as we explored the ruins further.

  “Okay, so that’s thirty-one. Oh, and the Netherlands, that’s thirty-two.”

  “Okay, sixty-eight then!” Bree chose again, even more sure than before.

  “No, you’re way off. There are fifty-four countries in Africa alone!”

  “What?!” We were both surprised.

  “I’m guessing a hundred and two then!” I said.

  “You guys are still way off. These are things you should know. There are one hundred and ninety-three countries in the world, give or take a few, depending on whose list you’re going by.”

  “How many have you been to already?” Mom asked him.

  “Mongolia is the thirty-third country I’ve been to,” he reported proudly.

  “Wow, Ammon!” Future gasped as he climbed back into the driver’s seat.

  “I can’t even name that many!” I said. He really does know everything off the top of his head!

  “Wow! I want to make it to a hundred,” Bree said, announcing what was clearly a very recently set goal, given she’d guessed there were only sixty-eight countries just moments before.

  “And you want to go to ALL of them?!” I asked Ammon.

  “That’s the dream,” he smiled.

  “You are a loooong way off, my friend” I chortled as I climbed back into the van. I was certain he would be dead and buried long before he got even half of them. I had only been to five so far, and it seemed an entire lifetime had passed.

  “NOW I KNOW!!” Future announced, pointing his finger at Ammon and stopping him in his place just as he was about to climb in after Bree. The old ruins of the ancient monastery were beautifully lit behind him, golden in the fading sunlight. Ammon had grown an impressive beard rather than try to shave out here, and his hair was now long enough to curl around his shoulders. He was also tall, of course, and his bone structure was strong and prominent, like that of an ancient Roman.

  “I know now who you look like, you. I see him before, this guy. This guy – JESUS!”

  “I’m a believer!” Bree shouted out of nowhere.

  “You reminded me all this time. Is Jesus. I have this man seen, Jesus, in picture. That is you!! I knew I see you before.” He looked very pleased with himself, like he’d just figured out a riddle that had been puzzling him for a long time. And indeed, he had, if only to his own satisfaction. We all turned simultaneously to examine Ammon/Jesus anew.

  Ammon stood perplexed for just a moment and then laughed uncontrollably. “Okay then. Now that my cover’s blown, let’s not talk about this here,” Ammon joked, waving back at the once magnificent Buddhist monastery.

  Chapter 37: Trust from Dust

  Aside from the beetles leaving zipper-like tracks in the singing sands, Khongoriin Els dunes appeared to be completely untouched. Our footprints were gigantic next to the tiny threads the beetles left behind.

  “They’re so cute. I just love watching them!” Mom bent over to get a closer look at the shiny black bugs.

  “They are incredible,” I said, watching another one skitter along. Checking the bearing of the insect’s path, I wondered where on earth it was headed, and from where it had come. There was absolutely nothing but the endless dunes in every direction. Getting anywhere significantly different from where it was would take much longer than his natural lifespan.

  “These sand dunes stretch across 100km (62mi) and are up to 20km (12.4mi) wide. Some of them reach heights of 0.8km (.5mi),” Ammon told us before slipp
ing his guide book back into his baggy, cut-off shorts.

  A light breeze blew the golden crumbs uphill like ripples on water. Looking back, I could see that our footprints were already being washed away by the windswept dunes’ ever-changing movements. From this distance, I could just barely make out the camouflaged figures of our camels where we’d left them below. The walk was too strenuous for them.

  We climbed until we could climb no more, though Bree and Future somehow found the energy to chase each other playfully. Some people never grow up! He tried trapping her but she dodged him like a cat. In his attempts to jump and catch her, his hat flew off his head and rolled away, or perhaps she’d kicked it off his head while hand-springing out of his grasp. He dove down the mountain after it, somersaulting backwards and forwards and surely getting sand in each and every orifice imaginable in the process. Bree stood laughing triumphantly from the top while he and his hat tumbled downwards in a spray of sparkly brown sugar. Future’s legs were swallowed up to his knees when he slid to a stop and waved his rescued hat above his head. I envied their ability to live in the moment like that. They never seemed to worry about dehydration, sun stroke, heat exhaustion, or the simple fact that there was only mutton fat to replace their spent energy. Not for the first time, though, I realized that he was on vacation, too, and having just as much fun as we were, if not more.

  Crunching grainy bits between our teeth, we returned to the lower edges of the dunes where we’d left the camels and found a curious hole our two guides had dug. They explained they were letting the camels have a drink and showed us the little pool of mucky water sitting in the bottom.

  “But how did they know where they would find water?!” Mom asked, amazed.

  “Where ground is cold, this is how you finding. And green, life grows,” Future proclaimed. Barefoot, I felt around and noticed that the ground was surprisingly cold, moist even. Of course! Suddenly, it made perfect sense and explained the small patches of green grass which unexpectedly sprouted up only steps away from the edge of the dunes. Getting down into the hole, Future dug deeper until a fair-sized puddle formed around his bare ankles.