When I remember this day a few years from now, I hope that I remember the mountain meadows, wildflowers, fast running streams, and geese on the wing - but not the flys. So I'll just say that there are a lot of them and then drop the subject. July here is like springtime in the Rockies with green hillsides all around and it is wonderful. We are on the trail from 9 until 4, with about an hour for lunch, tea, and a siesta. For most of the day, we see no one. This day I feel good about the ride and am more comfortable in the saddle, which is a Russian cavalry style model, with wood boards, nuts and bolts, and a blue cushion tied on. At one point I get a thumbs up from Oteu, our lead wrangler as I canter up to where he is waiting. I tell myself this is high praise and I am proud.
For the last hour before reaching our campsite, we watch rain and lightning over the next ridge. Reaching the site and meeting our support van, there is just enough time to set up tents before the storm hits with wind, thunder, and pelting rain. Dinner is a comical affair with the cook huddled under a poncho strung from the van roof, everyone eating under the van lift gate, Timor pouring vodka to share from his hip flask, but excellent spaghetti with pan fried fish follows.
At the Hilton at Beijing Airport overnight, I am in limbo, neither home nor in Mongolia. I need to recapture Mongolia so I can leave this modern hotel that could be anywhere in the world and begin the emotional and physical trip back home. Mongolia was enormous wide grassy valleys rimmed with hills. The sound of fast poundinghooves became common. A boy just galloping for the joy of it, but more often to herd horses, sheep, goats, yaks, or cows. Unexpected rivers and curving streams cut through the valleys—the steppe. Small rounded white domes, one or two or a cluster in the distance—the nomads’ gers. All of this became commonplace in 10 days’ time. Riding 4 or 5 abreast, the horses nearly touching, I could look to the side and see 5 noses in a line. Thrilling to say to myself “I am riding a horse on the Mongolian steppe!” My horse Blackie with a missing ear; I was given some of his tail as a farewell gift. The boys—our wranglers—riding next to us, holding the lead rope and then proudly letting us ride on our own. Daylight until 10 pm, light at 4:30; a full moon on the horizon. Hot hot sun, sweat soaking us, flies thick on our hats and on the horses.
French cuisine served on a card table with often-warm beer. Lying in the tent in the evening listening to the boys, the guide, driver, and cook—our friends—playing cards until it was too dark to see. Sitting in the hot springs before breakfast, sun on the wet grass. And the wild horses! The takhi brought back from near extinction; champagne colored, the long curved distinctive nose—small groups of them on the hillsides in the early morning, grazing and moving slowly. All of these moments will stay with me forever. The hot, crowded city times will not.
