59 hours of travelling with only cat naps to get here. But I did just well.


9/17/05 Mongolia
The landscape is vast, currently in green native grass that is a third the height of chives but tastes just the same and often ends up in our soup. All of the vehicles we have run on diesel and are about 25 years old and up. International scouts, russian military trucks and buses, japanese pickups with wooden gates, upholstered with thick floral rugs. We are each assigned drivers but I'm told I can get a Mongolian driver's license for ten bucks. It's good to have a driver though who can maintain a rig in the Gobi desert.



Where I sleep is a very kind sanctuary. Except for the fluorescent light. But next break I'm definitely buying a battery powered lantern or a few. A small ger about 20 feet in diameter and 20 feet high, the door only four feet tall, the walls are blue and the supports are orange with paintings of intricate designs. It's a lot like a hobbit hole or a smurf house. Our stove is in the center and I've just thrown on some leaves from the valley -- sage-like native brush -- to give the ger a wild and grounding scent.



The drillers have their own ger camp just over a rise of volcanic outcrop to the northeast, which happens to be the southern limb of this west-plunging syncline we are exploring. The sun sets downhill from camp and casts a gorgeous array of pink horizons between us and the mountains to the west where the wolves live. Just today my geotech's (geologist's assistant - the job I had for the last few years) family lost 10 sheep to one wolf because they were grazing nearby. His ger is not far from our rig and in a few weeks they'll move on, since Mongolians are nomadic. Kind of makes sense in some divine way that I'm here since I've lived in 12 places over the last 10 years and had about 32 roomates last time I counted.


Constant winds sneak up on me at the end of the day. My skin is still acclimating to it and my lips require blistex on the hour. I'm told the winds will get colder and to cover every bit of skin in the winter.
With so many various foreigners working here, I feel like I've already picked up a few subtle accents. It's as if my work is constatnly announced by the MC of the Whitbread race from Australia or "whheat-brid rice" and he's cheering me on each morning with promises that we'll have a really good breakup at the end of this (check out the Irish pub in UB).
Russian, on the ohter hand, is extremely unatural to me and I doubt much will soak in with me without some concentrated input of basic vowel sounds, sayings and numbers. My geotech's name is something like "Tokh" and the other is "Amigaa". But you don't say it timidly. It's more like "TOKH!" and "AmiGAAA!".
Our drillers and geotechs know a few english words and we have our hands as well to point out the specifics. They are very smart but usually the communication barrier dumbs us all down.



We work long days but it seems so much less when you don't have to worry about a commute, groceries, cooking , laundry, cleaning. So it makes sense to have workers and it also provides some camraderie around this valley - it's like one constant Nadaam festival minus the wrestling and horse racing (which by the way is done by 5-7 year olds - 120km of horse racing and it's a nose-to-nose finish between a 5 year old boy and 7 year old girl).
Yes it makes a lot of sense to have help. It is odd to have a sixty or even seventy year-old man as my driver treating me like a VIP but then again he's got a pretty plush job and gets to be with his son, my geotech, all day. I couldn't get his name, it had way too many strange syllables that are extremembly foreign to me.
I respect that Mongolians do not allow their elders to do back-breaking work while the youngins sit around getting high. And I respect them for their patience which is certainly something I can learn (maybe already have). Along with Mongolians nomadic history, I see it day to day as workers will take spontaneous walks. When work is slow, they'll be seen on the horizon just strolling in the desert.


Or driving -- they don't like to drive in the same track twice and so the desert is littered with tracks, between towns even going the same direction but in new parallel paths. The motor bikes don't make as many tracks and since most Mongolians have bikes over trucks there are fewer tracks as a result.



I'd like to say congratualtions to my mates back home who finished the Colorado Outward Bound Relay, just a short while ago. I was thinking of you while I was logging mad coal, someone running along at 3 in the morning. You fools are AWESOME!
And to my family, yes, I miss you very much. But I'm afraid I'm lost to the world for a short bit. But only to enhance life back home after a while.
Until later folks!