A Day at the Races

TSETSERLEG, Mongolia – How do you set your watch to Mongolian Time?

If you are familiar with the temporal concept known variously as "French Time," "Black People Time," "Island Time" and "College Freshman Time," your watch will need no adjustment. Mongolians, too, are constantly late.

As with any culture not known for punctuality, it's not that people here are so busy they cannot keep appointments. It's just that there's not a high priority placed on getting there exactly at the specified time. Mongolians dawdle, loaf and mosey; rarely do they run.

So when Bobby informed us last night that we would attend the Tsetserleg New Year's Horse Race at 8 a.m. the next morning, we probably should not have set our alarms for seven.

After a protracted farewell to our warm sleeping bags, Myriam the Frontierswoman tries to revive the fire, and I head for the loo. Outside in the dawn light, I am able to take stock of our accommodations. We are staying in a ger, but out the door, instead of the endless steppe, there is a wooden picket fence. This is the backyard of our hosts, who are sleeping, along with Battir and bobby, inside their two bedroom house.The arrangement is an elaborate visual joke. The Mongolians packed up and moved into a warm toasty house with central heat, while white folks travel hundreds of miles to stay in some pieces of canvas thrown up on top of some dead grass. They also pay for the privilege.

Half an hour later, our host's daughter appears with some hot water, Mongolian milk tea, and fried doughnuts. We nosh on the food as we stuff and zipper our overstuffed packs back together. Then we switch to cards, and play a couple of rounds of hearts. Eight comes and goes, and soon it's almost nine.

"Where are they?" I say.

"Uh." Caleb says, exasperated. "It's always like this."

Battir pokes his rosy cheeks into the ger soon after, hunting for our belongings. The van is packed in 10 minutes, but Bobby continues conversing indoors about the price of yak cheese, or whatever. Soon the host family's two sons amble out of the house, apparently bored silly by the grownups' conversation. They bring a basketball with them, and we alternate taking shots against a square piece of wood that's been nailed to the top of a metal pole to form a makeshift hoop.

Bobby finally appears, smiling and apparently free of worry. She informs us that there is a small problem with the van, and that Battir needs to change a part of the tire. We will leave soon, she assures her slightly perturbed clients. Then she goes back inside, leaving us to dribble. We don't pull out of the gravel driveway for another 45 minutes, or just before 11 a.m.

Tseterleg is a small town, but with 15,000 people, it ranks as Mongolia's seventh largest population center. Most people live in small fenced pieces of property, in grey-and-white homes of poured concrete. If there is any beauty in the place, it is in spite of the town's design, which imposes a drab Soviet grid on the golden hills of the steppe. The town is built on the banks of two hills, with the administrative buildings situated in the bottom of the narrow valley. Our host lived high on the east-facing hill, so Battir must take a looping road down to the center.

I doubt there's one traffic cop in Tseterleg or the surrounding state, but Battir drives as if he's under constant threat of citation. Not helping matters is the fact that he does not appear to know our destination. Bobby is constantly chatting and pointing in different directions at each intersection. We eventually reach the base of the hill, and Battir turns off the engine. Bobby darts out of the van, but not without first telling everyone to stay inside. I peer out the window to discover we've stopped not at the race course, but at Mongolia's strangest restaurant.

Although it is well advertised in the guidebooks, I found it impossible to believe the Fairview Restaurant existed until I saw the building, smack in the middle of Tsetserleg. Here in a town where a three window concrete block building functions as a hospital, is an ex-pat run restaurant that serves lasagna, chili con carne, burgers and pies. An oasis in a desert of fatty mutton, the Lonely Planet claims this restaurant is the best in the entire country.

The previous evening, a rumor had spread through the van that we would stop at the Fairview for dinner, but that turned out to be false. I thought we'd get a burger for lunch, but Bobby returned to the van after 15 minutes with just a business card. As the van continued its crawl around town, she explained that she wanted to talk with the owners about forming a partnership. Satisfied with the place, Bobby will start recommending guests at the UB Guesthouse eat the Fairview. As for us, unfortunately, the place was closed for the New Year.

We continued driving down the gravel streets, until Battir made a left and suddenly we were in a long, narrow field. Scattered throughout were locals with their horses, motorcycles and ramshackle cars. This was the race course.

There is no admission fee for the race, nor any refreshments or announcer shouting the proceedings in staccato voice. Instead people just stood around, chatting. Battir drove the van right through the middle, and at an arbitrary place, stopped. I no sooner put on my scarf and stepped out when people started to scream and point far in the distance. The horses! After running a lap around the entire valley -- about 15 miles, the leading riders were sprinting toward the finish line. The brown mares galloped at an incredible speed, so quickly that shortly after I first their dust trail, I saw the leading horse itself, and only seconds before it crossed the finish line.

The winning rider, a diminutive boy not more than 10 years old, finished not three minutes after we arrived. We came at precisely the correct moment.

In this case, Mongolian Time meant right on time.

Something Old, Something Digital

TERKHIIN TSAGAAN NUUR, Mongolia – From the outside, the ger where the resident family lives and the one where I'm staying are identical except for a small detail: the family's ger has a satellite dish. That's right: the canvas tent next to mine has a satellite dish. Not the tiny kind that people in the Bronx string on a fire escape or rooftop, but a six-foot model that's wider than the door. Here I am 400 miles from the nearest city, in the middle of a mountain range, staying in a collapsible home, but my hosts get more channels than I do in the States.

Oh, I know I shouldn't be shocked that there is television on the steppes. The Indo-American author Pico Iyer traveled around the region 20 years ago and reported back about "Video Night in Kathmandu." In the rather ponderous final product, Iyer argued that people around the world, no matter how from "civilization" they may appear to live, are being drawn into our globalized world.

Good for them. Too often, Westerners come to places such as the Great White Lake, and expect to find indigenous people living exactly the way their ancestors did 1,500 years ago. Meanwhile, these same people have an iPhone on order to be delivered as soon as they are available in New York. I despise "native" rituals, so common in China, hate "sacred dances" and "traditional rites" performed three times a day for tourists.

Mongolia is refreshingly different. I won't say the place is "authentic," rather the Mongolians approach to tourism, at least on this trip, is just more laid-back. Once we left the capital, there have been no stops at souvenir stands, no detours to cheaply restored cultural relics with steep admission fees. People here don't apologize for their lives.

At our first ger, Battir's family extended extraordinary hospitality, but made no attempts to hide away the trappings of twenty-first century life. Some of the family wore the traditional Mongolian herder's outfit, the del, while the teenagers strolled around in jeans and knock-off sweatshirts. In one corner of the ger hung a series of family portraits taken during a visit to Ulaanbaatar's Sukhbaatar Square. At night, we listened to the radio.

Here at the Great White Lake, we arrive just before dark and immediately are shown the same kindness. Inside the family's ger, we down buuz and buuz in soup and take the obligatory shots of vodka. The oldest man in the house starts asking questions through Bobby, our guide. Where are we from? Are we students? How is Mongolia?

We talk until nine, when Bobby takes to our sleeping quarters. Rather than bunking next to the fire, this night we sleep in a ger specially for tourists, one with five beds and no wall of photos. The arrangement here is more a business proposition than the one we found on our first night, as this family relies on tourism for their income.

The next day, we wake up to plates of stale bread and a young girl warming the embers of the fire, making it safe to crawl out of our sleeping bags. As we wait for the adults to rally, the girl shows us a game. She takes out a worn bag of shagai, or sheep ankle bones, and shows us how to play shagai dice. The bone pieces, which are about two inches long and an inch wide with a S-shaped curve, are thrown in pieces. Each side is an animal: camel, horse, goat or sheep. Players take turns rolling the dice, moving a set number of places based on the animals thrown (horse is great, camels stink), until someone "wins" the race.

Cing is smitten with the game, and after Bobby arrives she has Bobby ask the girl the price of a set. The girl is visibly puzzled: She clearly brought out the dice as a way of making friends with the guests, not making a sale. After a lengthy discussion, she finally accepts 5,000 turgug, or $4.50.

Her mother arrives shortly afterward, and then there is a subtle shift in her behavior. They stop being just hospitable and start offering "service." The mother wants to know if we would like to try on dels and go horseback riding to the lake. I shoot Caleb a look and at the same time I see Myriam glancing a Cing: we all realize this is ridiculous, but don't want to offend the host family. They believe that we came to Mongolia and expect a bit of a show. So, as a courtesy we accept the mother's offer, and soon her husband appears with a large trunk. Inside are a few crisply folded del. A del resembles a one piece, knee-high dress made with thick cotton. As with all things Mongolian, it is extremely functional: the open legs allow a rider to comfortably be in the saddle all day while insulation protects against the wind. The four tourists are each handed a piece in his or her own size. Myriam and Cing both wiggle into plum-colored garments, Caleb's is maroon with a repeating gold circular pattern, and mine a dull shade of gray. Our hosts tie colorful belts to complete the ensembles.

We are then paraded outside, where our noble steeds await. A young man, perhaps 10 or 11, helps Caleb, Cing and I mount (Myriam, of course, needs no assistance). Our handler arranges us in a line, and then requests our cameras. Then, with the young guide and his even smaller brother in the lead, we are sent in the direction of the lake, three kilometers distant.

On the way, with my horse frequently running off-course, I have plenty of time to ponder the family. They brought out a bit of kitsch - dressing us up in colorful costumes and taking snapshots to send home to Mom and Dad - but they didn't put on a mask in their dealings with us. There is no pretension that these people are herders who live off the land and spend their evenings reading the Tibetan Book of the Dead by candlelight. They're in the tourist industry, making three dollars a night for hosting and feeding a foreigner, and an additional two dollars for every hour someone rides a horse. It's not much, but with few expenses, it means enough for something special from time to time.

Here's my only question: When the yuppies in the Patagonia jackets arrive, do they hide the satellite dish?

Myriam Takes the Reins

TERKHIIN TSAGAAN NUUR, Mongolia – I summoned my inner cowboy, felt the noise build from deep in my gullet, and then bellowed so loudly that the sides of the frost-lined mountains echoed.

"CHU!" I said, but nothing happened.

My diminutive transport continued to munch on brown tufts of grass, ignoring my command to go. I tried again, this time with a gentle voice.

"Chu." And again and again. "Chu, chu, chu."

The obstinate equine would not budge. He could somehow sense the novice rider (and poor speaker of Mongolian) in the saddle. Then a knight in a reindeer coat galloped up beside us, and barked the order with such gravitas that the horse had no choice but to trot. Myriam, once again, showed why she is the group's naturalist.

I profile Myriam at great risk, because she is one of the most mercurial personalities I have ever met. Her vivacious enthusiasm hides a complex person, someone who can't be pinned down. I'm sure the Myriam I know is quite different from the Myriam I would have met off the steppes.

So, I start with the irrefutable. Myriam is German, her nationality clear from the first word out of her mouth. Her cadences are a bit abnormal, drawing out "o" and "u" sounds for an extra beat. Her natural tendency is to reach for the longer cognate, using compound words that are seldom found outside of English academic literature. She sometimes says "jaa."

Her hometown is a small village in Southern Germany. Her parents run a biodynamic farm. I've never heard the term before, but apparently they raise livestock and vegetables using organic methods and renewable energy. Here Myriam learned how to ride a horse. She adores animals, and pets anything in sight with fur or feathers.

Despite their reputation for punctuality, Germans dawdle through school. She spent most of her childhood in a Steiner School (sometimes called a "Waldorf Education"), where pupils don't use standardized textbooks, they create their own illustrated guides to the material. Significant amounts of time were spent being creative, with many art and music lessons. Rote learning and grades were minimized, although when they were introduced, she did well. Myriam graduated from high school at the age of 19, and will take between four and six years to earn her bachelors. In between she is taking two Gap years, to break up the long stays in academia.

She wanted to do a long-term volunteer project, so when she heard about a Swiss-Russian charity that sponsored a village for mentally and physical handicapped Russians, she pledged a year of her life. Incredibly, Myriam spoke no Russian. She boarded a plane for Irkutsk, 5,000 miles away, without knowing a word of the language. On arrival, a man drove her 60 miles to her new work site. There is no Internet, no cable television, just a few buildings, a barn and some animals. She works alongside a few Russian staff members, and one other volunteer, who is Swiss.

Two months after she arrived, Myriam felt ill. Her stomach hurt so badly that the village van took her to a hospital in Irkutsk. The doctors determined she had appendicitis, and removed the vestigial organ. Maybe a surgeon did not sanitize the scalpel or a nurse had a touch of the flu, because Myriam continued to deteriorate after the surgery. She slipped into a coma, probably from an infection. Worried, the hospital staff called Myriam's parents on the farm.

At this point in the story, my mouth is open and my eyebrows are arched from worry. But Myriam continues her near-death tale in a jaunty tone, as if this was a perfectly normal string of events. "After five days I woke up," she said. "My parents, they were worried for me, jaa. But they knew if it was my time, it was my time."

After a couple weeks of recovery, Myriam resumed her unpaid position deep in the forest. She shared a stuffy room with the Swiss girl, washed dishes, planted crops, and hauled equipment. She supervised the mentally-challenged patients, some of whom were prone to fits of violence and hysteria. They have few resources and little support in this isolated village; most Russians stigmatize the mentally and physically ill. What little money comes in is mostly from selling crafts made by the residents at European craft fairs and specialty shops. Myriam works tirelessly; her respite trips to Irkutsk are weeks apart and then only for a day or two.

For the first month Myriam was essentially a deaf-mute. She could not express her desires or understand what people around her wanted. Slowly, slowly the words came. She wrote them down, made lists and practiced over and over with the residents. Soon she had phrases, then sentences. And as the months went by, she got to know the people around her along with the language. Now her Russian is at a level where she finds it easier to speak to most Mongolians in Russian rather than in the English she's learned in grade school.

Myriam finds satisfying what to most would be unbearable. She's in Mongolia on a holiday, a holiday mandated by her continued to desire to work. Russia would only issue this tireless volunteer a six-month visa, so she had to head south and wait for the embassy to slowly process a couple of pieces of paper. The current estimate is two weeks.

So she came out here to the countryside, back to open spaces and wild horses. Wearing a bell bottom-shaped coat of reindeer fur given to her by a colleague in Russia, she mounts her steed without assistance – unlike the other three riders on this particular day.

With a single "CHU!" she takes off to the south. After a few paces the olive-colored scarf with tiny croqueted roses tied around her neck takes flight, forming a train of fabric that flows backward, as she charges ahead, toward adventure.