Try This Tape

ARKHANGAI AIMAG, Mongolia – Battir and I have different tastes in music. He prefers saccharine love songs with milquetoast melodies belted out by Ulaanbaatar's latest pre-fab teen sensation. I prefer, well, not that.

Since Battir is the only person who can drive, navigate and repair our aging Soviet van out here on the steppes, we've been listening to mostly soft rock and power ballads on the trip. As there's no radio stations out of the capital area and no one here possesses an angelic voice, we would be hearing these cloying tunes over and over again, if I hadn't remembered to pack a small piece of plastic. This $10 accessory from Sony is an over-looked but essential bit of equipment for anyone planning on a long overland journey in a third world country.

I'm talking about a car tape adapter, a piece of plastic that resembles a cassette tape with a long cord strung off the end. These devices were popular in the 90's, when they allowed drivers to listen to CD players in older cars. Now most American cars come with CD players standard, and these devices have little use.

Not in Mongolia. On the first day of trip, one hour after leaving the UB Guesthouse, Battir slid a tape into the antique van's antique system. We heard a Mongolian love song, with a Celine Dion tempo and a gently played Casio keyboard. Another song came on, indistinguishable from the first, and another and another. Then, after the fifth song, I heard a familiar drum pattern, then a few keyboard chords I'd heard before. And the singer didn't sound like a copy of the one earlier in the tape, she was a clone. It took nearly 30 seconds - 25 more than it should have - for me to piece together what was going on: the tape had started over.

As we drove through champagne colored fields splattered with a thin patch of crusty snow, the tape looped and looped. Out of courtesy, I said nothing. I concentrated on the alien scenery, counted the stray sheep and tried to remember every state capital. Anything to drown out the muzak.

By lunch on the second day, I stopped being polite. I rummaged through my internal frame pack until I found the cassette adapter and marched over to Battir. Now, it took me some to do this. Battir is an imposing figure, a gigantic six-foot five inches with a rotund belly. At age 26, he is still growing. He easily consumes twice as many buuzat dinner as any other member of the crew, and on some nights approaches our combined food intake. Battir wrestled as a teenager, and competed in the national championships during the Nadaam Festival, Mongolia's most important holiday. He's massive man, someone who in America would be a bouncer at a gentleman's club.

Thankfully, I've learned this guy is a big softy. My first was the music - a Mongolian alpha-male listens strictly to gangsta-rap. Then there's the smile. It's hard to be afraid of someone, no matter how big he is, when he wears a goofy grin from cheek to cheek. Battir's is constant. Whether unloading hundreds of pounds of luggage from the van or checking the oil, he never stops smiling.

Confident the man wouldn't try any wrestling moves, I gave Battir the tape and pointed to the player. "Put this in there," I said, even though Battir doesn't speak a word of English. And with a smile, he did just that.

Half a second later, the booming bass of Basement Jaxx's "Where's Your Head At?" came on the stereo. It's been a long time since I've heard Western music outside of my teeny iPod earbuds, and it sounded great. All that afternoon, the car worked through a lengthy playlist of hit songs. We sang along to R.E.M., U2, Nelly, Jay-Z and Eminem. It was wonderful, even if I did sing slightly off-key.