Tag Archives: Mongolia

Way beyond Rudolph

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You can’t help falling in love with the reindeer.

Among all the animals roaming Mongolian expanse, the reindeer stands out as the most sophisticated, the most touchable and definitely the tastiest one.   While a yak stares at you with all the emotion of a pommel, a reindeer casts a diva-like glance from under the long eyelashes.    A camel always wears the unsightly brown crust on its ass, but a reindeer’s classy butt is heart-shaped, while its antlers are gift-wrapped in velvety baby fur.  Camel milk tastes like the sour wind of the Gobi desert, but reindeer milk is clean, heavy and feels like hot silk in your mouth.   A horse has to constantly waive off the relentless taiga flies with its tail, but no flies swarm around a reindeer – the otherwise lethal taiga insects descend only  to create a beautiful shimmering halo around reindeer’s head for a brief moment of pure adoration, before moving onto the usual prey.  Standing in the middle of sheep or goat herd, you get DOLBY surround sound effect of the relentless group farting, but when the reindeer run past you like a beautiful stream of snow white and herring gray, all you hear is the delicate sound of ankle bones rustling – tsa! tsa! tsa!  – and that’s why “tsaa” is the taiga people’s name for the reindeer, and Tsaatan people call themselves just that.

Among Tsaatans, reindeer is very much a member of the clan.  Every family chooses a special reindeer to be sanctified by a shaman to carry inside the living spirits of the locale.  The designated reindeer wears a pretty scarf, usually of blue silk, it never gets eaten or even tied down, so it develops a habit of roaming around the village, sneaking inside empty yurts or following somebody around.

The spirit reindeer of my family happened to be angel-white and totally shameless.  The relentless beast viewed me as a personal entertainment channel with the 24/7 access.  My pet-owning friends often complain how awkward it is for them to act naturally in the bathroom in the family dog’s presence. Now imagine yourself on a mountain, in pristine taiga, ankle-deep in the early morning dew, preparing for the inevitable in the endless open space, with no doors or walls to create a comfort zone.  And now picture – three steps in front of you – a very patient white reindeer, staring.  You have to go urgently, and he’s got nowhere urgent to go.  Guess which one of the two has more fun playing this game and doesn’t ever get tired of it.

Sometimes reindeer are used as cargo transport for moving the tribe from an old pasture to a new one.  Loaded with pots, pans, solar batteries and other household stuff, a reindeer occasionally readjusts the cargo weight by shaking its skin, the pots and pans rumbling  as if the animal is performing a shaman ritual to procure good luck for its own upcoming journey.

But the very best moment in a reindeer herders’ place is when a herd pours back into the village at sunset, preceded by a delicate sound wave of ankle bones clicking, as if a flock of angels is descending upon you.   And you feel it’s the perfectly magical moment to make a wish, yet you can’t remember anything you ever wanted before, but it’s all right, it is actually quite all right with you.

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99 problems

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Grandma’s oldest son walks slowly, dragging his right foot a bit, and has a sad look. Apparently, the guy had a stroke recently when he turned 40. High blood pressure is a growing problem among Tsaatans, who have switched to Chinese and Russian diet, including processed foods and alcohol, and it’s literally killing them now.

-He’s a weak one, – explains says Grandma, pouring some of the fire water into a cup. – Just needs a little vodka from Mom’s hand, it’s good for his health.

The dude can barely hold a cup straight. He stares at the ground, shoulders slumping, with all the energy of a busset hound. Five minutes of silence and heavy sighs. I start feeling very bad for him, wishing he’d stop drinking with his bad-ass mother and spend more time outside. Or something.

Finally, he downs his medicine, and suddenly lightens up.
-I’ve been to Paris, you know.

Sure, I nod, Paris, Mars, whatever is going on in that head of his. He gently puts the cup down on the ground, wipes his sad mouth with a dirty coat sleeve and limps out of the yurt. I turn to Saraa, who can barely contain herself from bursting with information.

-Are you ready for this? – she giggles and lays it all out for me.

Turns out, the dude really HAS been to Paris.

Apparently, a French woman once visited the village and got totally smitten by our stud-muffin, still pre-stroke back then. (Dark and brooding – what’s not to love?) So she returns to France and sends him an invitation to visit. And off he goes. (It blows my mind trying to imagine this road trip – horseback through marshes, hills and vulture-guarded canyon to the Tsaagannuur village, from there – 14 hours of bumpy road on a Russian van to Murun village, followed by a 21-hour bus ride to the capital Ulan Bator, and then it’s just a straight shot to Paris in a big metal flying machine).

So our Love Ambassador spends 2 months in Paris and comes back, clouded in mystery. Tells everyone the French woman set him up in her apartment, and he had a cappuccino from this special machine every day, and developed the taste for croissants, and everything was fine but he’s back because he missed the mountains.  Couple of months later he gets married to a local woman, eventually fathering 5 children with her, and so the life goes on.

Until a few years later, when the French woman returns to visit a Tsaatan festival at the nearby town, bringing with her a kid, that looks suspiciously like our playboy – says EVERYONE IN TAIGA.

So now the dude has a French ace up his sleeve and a very vindictive Tsaatan wife, who, when angry, always curses at him to “go live with your French whore and her bastard!”

As for the others in the village – they really, really enjoy this story. It’s a good one to tell the visitors.

And it’s actually pretty funny, n’est-ce pas?..

The Salt of Life

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The Old Man is from the next village over. Been friends with the Grandma for ages. Smokes his pipe non-stop and likes conversing with the newcomers , using plenty of long meaningful pauses for added dramatic effect.

This was the right person to tell us about the behind-the-scenes of the nomadic tribal life.

-So… – we start, nonchalantly, – how is married life in Tsaatan taiga? Villages are so small… People ever cheat on each other?

The old man gazes at the sky for a moment, then puffs on his pipe, stretches out his legs and stares at the mountains.
-Well… I’ve been married to my woman for 50 years, and yeah, at times I felt like strangling her, but it all worked out…. We’re very happy. The youngsters – those do fool around sometimes…

An inquisitive tourist draws nearer, all tingly with curiosity:
-But… where? The whole village is wide open, with only 5 yurts around… how do people pull it off?

The old man blows out the last smoke, taps out the pipe, shuffles his feet, glances inside his coat.
-Well, you got yourself enough room – the hills, the valleys, the waterfalls… Or when you need to ride down to the valley for salt, or some other errands…

Just like we thought.
It’s no different here from New York, Shangai or Moscow.
Just closer to nature.

Grandma the Wailer

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-Wanna see a trick?

Before I have time to focus my camera , the Grandma picks up a small twig from the ground, lights it up and puts it in her mouth, letting out a whole lotta smoke rings.

Whoa. Let’s just say I am surprised. Cackling at my facial expression, the fiery Grandma turns to Saraa and taps her special cup:
-Brought some?

You see, Grandma is famous all over this side of taiga for two things: her singing abilities and her love for vodka. It’s a packaged deal, really. She gets drunk and she loves to sing. A local Tom Waits of sorts. I feel a tad ambivalent to feed her alcohol addiction, but I’m told she’s always craving new audiences for her performance, it’s really a win-win, so we prepare the required social lubricant and walk over to the celebrity yurt.

Having successfully wowed the newcomer with the burning twig, the star downs the well-deserved booze, stares at me for a second, making sure the camera is on, and then motions to her now-empty cup. I think that means “welcome to act 2”. We pour again.

The Special Song is solemn and beautiful and you almost want to cry at how fragile she looks.

Act 3 (following another inevitable shot) is a story: she tells us about some regional singing competition where she arrived unannounced and walked through the door, immediately getting mobbed by the legions of fans. Everyone begged her to sing, and she had to oblige – provided they would pour her some. (Vodka, in case you’re lost). Three rounds, according to the Mongolian tradition. Which they did. And then she sang. Needless to say, she won the main prize – a large sum of money.

I look around the empty yurt. There is an old iron stove in the middle. We are sitting on bare ground.
There are a couple of old mugs tucked away in the cooking area, and that’s pretty much it.

I ask what she did with the prize money. She looks at me as if I’m stupid.
-Bought some vodka! What else?…

Both Saraa and Grandma are now literally R.O.F.L.ing at my question, and I say to myself – duh!, pour another shot into the communal cup and go with the flow.

Girl Power

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The Oldest Sister is 18 and she’s on senior duty when parents are away – milking the reindeers every two hours, sweeping the yurt with cedar twigs, cooking for 8, making tea non-stop and playing cards with the little rascals for hours.  She wears pink and dreams of traveling all around the world.  Asked which countries she’d like to visit, she lets out a passionate “All of them!!” – and you immediately recognize the pitch.
 
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Girlies are about eight years old each and come in a pack of 4. They go everywhere together, holding hands, and love singing in unison. Cute as hell, but if you are looking for some quiet time in the mountains – tough luck. The ever-attentive Girlies will follow your fresh tracks, smother you with affection, suffocate you with hugs and assault you with singing. The only way to lose them is to throw Shorty and his crew into the mix and hope the Girlies get distracted long enough for you to run and blend in with the mountains.
 
Female friendship rules in a remote Mongolian village are still the same as everywhere else: stick together, have fun, look good on camera.
 


 
 

Wild Things

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The nomadic village is only about 30 people strong, half of which is kids. The whole tribe is just 5 teepees and everybody is a relative of some sort.
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DjeeJig – “ the little one” in Tsaatan – is the tiniest one yet he’s the grandest character of them all.  He’s 7, looks 4 and can’t stop eating.  I call him Shorty.  The villagers call him “The Boss” and for a good reason – he’s got quite the temper on him.  To compensate for his small size, he stays raw.   If the older sister (18) wins at cards, he grabs a piece of firewood.  If the mother denies him candy, he wields a knife.    He slaps deer bucks across the nozzle, saddles up the village dogs, refuses to wear boots even in snow and growls like a wild animal when angry, which is pretty often.  Everybody laughs, but obeys.  Shorty’s got a card blanche at the village, and it’s equally scary and fascinating to watch him  – but better to do so from the distance.

**
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Troubles is Shorty’s brother, 8 years old.   Totally one with Nature.  Refuses to wear anything but grey pants with a huge hole on his bare ass.   His job is riling up the crowd, tickling the funny bone, serving as Shorty’s sidekick and, occasionally, a pack mule.   Falls asleep like a dead rock when it’s time, can monitor the mountains through the binoculars for hours, and can’t wait to grow old enough for the horse parking duty, like his older brother.

**
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Joker is a same age cousin.    Sports a red Snoopy sweater, disrespects the idea of footwear, and should have been born in Hollywood.   He can sense you turning on your camera 600 feet away and jump smack to the center of your frame  in a nano-second – Hello!  Special Smile!  It’s practically impossible to take a picture in the village without him in the frame’s foreground, background, middle-ground, or flying through diagonally – whether you wanted him there or not.

The three have no iPads or iPhones,  no babysitters, no day care, no schedule, no meal-time or bed time.  All day long, left to their own devices in a pristine taiga, eating whatever they find in any of the teepees or on the ground,  it’s a round-the-clock horse play.  Often literally.  But you can already tell which one would have been destined to become a CEO if raised in a much less fortunate environment.

Off the grid in Mongolia: Part 3

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Lonkh gathers some moss and starts the fire.  His hands are dark and leathery.  Lonkh is a small guy and could be anywhere between 28 and 52 – it’s hard to tell, as it often is with the nomads living the hard life.  But turns out Dekke and Lonkh used to be classmates in summer school for nomadic children, whenever their parents would be able to bring them there.   Dekke leans over to tell me that “Lonkh” means “half-bottle”, because he’s as tiny as a small bottle.  Bottle of what, I’m thinking to myself, but don’t go there.

The most striking thing about Lonkh is his riding style.  Most of the time he slumps in the saddle, half-hanging off the horse, very much unlike Dekke who is riding with a very straight back.  I ask him why and he gestures that this way is better if you need to place a girl in front of you in the saddle  (just in case he finds one randomly roaming around in taiga, I guess).  As she translates this pipe dream, Saraa breaks into her typical explosive laughter.  Dekke just rolls her eyes and shakes her head.  Clearly, they are not rooting for the old classmate.  In response, he just sends them his best smile (with whatever teeth are still in place).  I really wish I could have been there when this Fresh Prince was courting the girls of the nomadic school when they were all teens.

Dekke is married now and has two grown sons back in the nomadic village.  Her husband drinks and often tries to beat her up, so she avoids him by spending weeks in the taiga with her horses, sometimes alone, sometimes guiding people between the mountains and the settlement down in the valley.   She often eats what she finds in taiga and usually sleeps outside, in a makeshift bed made out of saddles and a blanket.  It’s really comfortable, she says.   She can’t sleep inside other people’s homes anyway.  The spirits of other people’s ancestors come to her at night and bother her, so she prefers to sleep in open air.  You see, Dekke’s father was a famous local shaman, so she has a gift.  But she was a bastard child, and thus he passed on to her no knowledge.   So she just sleeps outside, away from other people’s family altars, summer or winter, and it’s better, she says – fresh air, and my horses can see me, and we are happier that way.    I look at her calm weathered face and think to myself, I don’t think anybody can beat this woman up even if they tried.   And then  I think maybe she is the spirit of this taiga herself.  The Taiga Spirit in red Mickey Mouse sweater.

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Mighty Dekke

As for Saraa’s life – that could easily be produced as a Mexican telenovela.   The very traditional marriage, the baby, working as a nurse in the settlement’s hospital to feed the family,  her desire to study more and maybe become a doctor, the classic mother-in-law, who called her a whore for wanting to go the city to study, the divorce, the long hungry years of being a single mother in a settlement with very few jobs, her first business:   taking reindeer loaded with barrels of vodka to the illegal gold-mining camps deep in the mountains, at night, in the dead of winter,  the mind-blowing profits coupled with the very imminent danger, and a sound advice from a kind old man at the camp who warned her one night – woman, it’s time to leave the camp now, before it’s too late.  Her next venture was a bit safer:  she figured the local prisoners had too much free time on their hands, they should be carving traditional souvenirs from reindeer antlers and she would find how to sell them.

Her fate took turn for the better shortly after:  a young and handsome military officer met her at the post office and started courting her.  She held her guard up as long as she could.   He had been proposing for to her for 5 years, and all those years she was telling him – listen, been there, done that,  you can move in, but I ain’t gonna promise you nothing.   The officer eventually won the battle – she married him right after she realized he had become a real father to her son.

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Saraa works as a tourist guide now, having learned English on her own, and that’s how I know everything that’s going on:  she’s local, she’s a woman, she’s plugged into the grapevine and she likes to share, if you like to listen.    Dekke is her close friend, too, and strangely enough, right here right now, deep in the middle of Mongolian taiga, with no connection to the outside world, I feel absolutely safe and protected  with these women by my side.

**

We get back on our way.   The taiga is stunning, the ground a mix of purple, orange and emerald green.  The forest is still whispering all around us, but now it feels friendly.  You get under its spell, you feel like you belong, you stop taking pictures to avoid producing that foreign sound of camera clicking.

On top of the mountain we ride up to a bunch of piled up stones.  These are oovos – a shamanic tradition, a way to please the local spirits.  Some are decorated with blue silk scarves – the color of the sky, some with animal skulls.  There are Mongolian banknotes tucked between the stones, and there are also cans of beer.  Everything you need for a spirited party, in other words.  We circle the mounds on horseback three times clockwise to ask the spirits to protect us on our way.

But I already know I got nothing to worry about in this neck of the woods.

Oovo

Off the grid in Mongolia: Part 2

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off into the mountains on horseback

Beginning

Countless torturous hours later, the mini-van spits out my pitiful remains and a very fresh Saraa.  We are now in the very North of Mongolia, in the Tsaaganuur settlement right at the northern border with Siberia.  Too tired to have any dreams , I plummet to sleep like a rock.

The early morning welcomes me in Saraa’s voice: “Good morning, sunshine, they are here!”

“They” includes a pack of horses led by a beautiful Amazon, adorned with  a red Mickey- Mouse sweater and an impenetrable smile.   Her name is Dekke, she is a Tsaatan, a horse-woman and a taiga guide.  A small Mongolian man half-hanging sideways off a horse behind her is Lonkh, joining us to go in the same direction.

Dekke takes off her glasses and looks me up and down.  Forward comes a horse – well into its senior years, of a very beautiful grey color.  Clearly, I will have to prove myself to this woman somewhere along the way.

Dekke puts her friend Saraa on a pretty white horse with auburn spots.

-Watch me fall off this thing! – cheerfully informs me Saraa. –  I always do!

We ride into the heart of the Magic Forest –  the scenery is straight out of a Hollywood blockbuster.  One minute you are riding past a blackened tree scorched by a lightning, with its dry arms up into the skies like a dire warning.  Another, you are at the top of the hill, the thick grey clouds staring you in the face,  and the wild grass whispering from down below:  fresssh flessshh…

The arrival time to the village remains unknown.  We get there when we get there.  Could be today, could be tomorrow.  Depends on how well you can stay in the saddle, they say.   And don’t snap photos on horseback – she startles easily.    Through the thick woods, across the swampy valley, over the burned patch, around the small lake.  My horse is now breathing heavily ascending a big hill.

A big group of vultures starts circling in the sky right above us.   The word “carrion” pops up in my brain.   And then I realize that the closest thing to carrion around here is me.  Suddenly, I feel uneasy. I force the letters in my head to rearrange into “carry on” and straighten up in the saddle.

There are no road signs anywhere, no markers, no park guides.  There is no compass, no map, no satellite phone,  no chance for an emergency helicopter.    There is only Dekke, who knows this taiga like the back of her weathered hand, and then there is Saraa who knows everything else you need to know for survival in this neck of the woods – except she keeps falling off her horse.

Just like now – we hear a dull thump and a piercing shriek behind, which can only mean that Saraa fell of her horse again, so we stop for a much needed break.

Dekke the horse woman

into the wild

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Dekke and Lonkh making strides

(Next chapter)

Off the grid in Mongolia: Part 1

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The guidebook said: “It is extremely difficult to get to the Tsaatan reindeer tribe.  No more than 50 tourists a year make it all the way to the nomadic village”.  Excellent, I thought to myself, that’s exactly where we’re going next.

Fortunately, every tour operator in Mongolia’s capital city of Ulan-Bator seemed to offer a trip to the Tsaatan village.  Unfortunately, they to take the visitors to a typical fake “ethnic village” arrangement.

Grouping tourists in dozens, the tour operators would put them in pimped-out SUVs and take them to the nearest site, where formerly nomadic Tsaatans would perform their Native Song and Dance.  A lavish lunch with the imported beer would be provided, after which the formerly nomadic mountain reindeer, now sick from living at the low altitudes, would be arranged neatly for the photo opp.  For an additional fee, a properly costumed Scary Shaman would read your fortune and vaccinate you against an evil eye and the mortgage rate hikes.

Not exactly what I had in mind.

A couple days later, the Universe sent me my new guarding angel, Miss Saraаngerel.  Born and raised in a small settlement all the way up North, Saraa is a true Mongolian Woman and an unstoppable force of nature.  Within 36 hours she confirmed the current coordinates of the nomadic tribe, arranged all the travel, stopped the rain and took me onto the 100%-local route to the Northern mountains.

It started with a 24-hour haul across the Mongolian offroad inside a beat-up Soviet van.   Saraa put me in the VIP seat next to the driver, while about a dozen of illegal gold miners packed in the back.  The remaining space got filled with their gear and what looked like barrels of berry jam.

The van went on an all-night mad dash through the low hanging clouds and the steppe grass.  Every five seconds it would skip over a bump, smashing everyone’s heads against the ceiling.  The crowd behind me didn’t seem to mind, never stopping drinking, smoking and singing the endless folk songs.  My girl Saraa was blooming like a centerpiece in the middle of the motley crew, singing along and flirting all around.

Meanwhile in the front seat I was guarding my head against the jumpy ceiling while trying to keep my motion sickness at bay.  Every now and then my scrambled brain would shut down completely, making me curl into a tight ball on the front seat.   Every time that happened, a teenage-looking driver would take one hand off the wheel, probably jeopardizing the whole car, and cover my head so I don’t fly up too high over a bump – the Mongolian hospitality at its best.

Mid-way down this road to hell we made a pit stop.  The full moon was illuminating an array of limp wooden shacks amidst an open field.  The boys scattered from the van and sprayed every vertical surface in sight.  I followed the gang into a dark shack:  a couple of crude tables, a single bulb under a low wooden ceiling, and a California-king wooden platform in the corner.  A sleepy-looking young woman turned on the fire and started on the Chef’s special:  home-made noodles with dry meat.  Two toddlers were sleeping on the floor stove-side.

Exhausted beyond words, I sprawled on the make-shift bed in the corner, feeling my new friends stretching alongside in front and behind me.   In the distance, Saraa’s voice encouraged “You rest, honey, only 12 hours of driving left, and then we switch to horseback”…

Horsing Around

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As a child, I loved the concept of horses.   I used to collect every magazine page, every postcard or a stamp with a horse on it, putting them in a special album.  I was fascinated with horses and dreamt of riding like a western movie hero, galloping fast and furious, on a wild mustang that would only listen to my command.  It was a very intense, but also a very long-distance relationship: there were no horses anywhere near my home.

Finally, at the age of 14 I lucked out and got a horse-back ride in a summer camp.  The mare was senile and quiet, and the solemn 10-minute snail-pace ride went without a hitch until I tried to get off the horse, caught my shoe in the stirrup and fell down, shattering the bones in my right arm.  It took forever to heal and the dream kind of lost its luster.   I figured I’d never gallop wild like Clint Eastwood, and that was that.

But the dream came rushing back to me  when I found myself in Mongolia.

There were horses everywhere.  One of the main events of the Naadam Festival is the horseback race by 7-year-old kids.  Locals decorate their homes with paintings of horses.   About half of the traditional music is dedicated to horses and riding, there is even a  musical string instrument called “horse-head”.   Looks like a horse head, sounds like a woman weeping in the open steppe –  guaranteed to squeeze a tear out of the most cynical bastard.  A horse head is also on the local airline logo.

Mongols even have a special word for a person’s spirit, your most inner self:  it’s “wind-horse”, and the stronger you are, the stronger your “wind-horse” is perceived to be.  “Wind-horse” is a term widely used in Shamanic practices, too.

In other words, my childhood obcession resurfaced.  So one day somewhere in the countryside I gathered the courage to ask the locals if I could return to the camp on a horse instead of a van.  Sure, they said.   Gallop ok? – I double-checked.  Whatever you want! – they gestured, put me on a quiet-looking horse, and sent me back to camp with two local boys, about 7 and 12 years old.

It was a nice, dry day.  There was about 2 miles to the camp.  The kids were young and seemed pretty friendly.  How hard can it be to gallop a little, I thought.  I was looking forward to a nice ride, getting comfortable in a saddle, when suddenly the boys lashed their whips, shrieked something wild and our horses suddenly took off like they just got fire lit under their tails.

I barely had time to grab fistfuls of my horse’s mane, as I had immediately lost the reigns and any control of the situation.  I would later find out that the 7-year-old was some kind of a national horse-riding champion.  And the 12-year-old was some kind of  an ex-champion.  And that both of their horses had won multiple races.  And that although my horse had not been a champion, she had ambitions, too, and would not tolerate hanging too much behind the others.

StoOOooOOp the hooOOooOOooOOrse! – I was trying to yell,  swallowing mouthfuls of dust and flying pebbles, trying to hold on to the mad beast under me.  My whole life flashed in front of my eyes, including the damn horse album.  I was holding on for dear life, feeling all my internal organs tumble inside and the brain matter bump around in my head, smashing against the cranial walls.   The wind was about to blow the contacts straight out of my tearing eyes, the right arm started to itch again where the fracture had healed over a decade ago, as I started planning my imminent fall.   From time to time the little rascals would glance back at me, clearly mistaking my SOS signals for expression of glee, scowl and whip their horses hard, making them going faster and faster.

I was just about to let go and accept my dire destiny, when my horse suddenly changed the gait.  It was now moving in a wave pattern:  jumping forward on both front legs, hanging in the air for half a second each time.   All of a sudden, the body caught onto the new rhythm and balanced itself out, I recovered the reigns and realized – this was it! That was the gallop!  Finally, the horse and I merged into one wind-horse spirit, moving in unison.  It was like flying and felt totally euphoric, the best sensation ever, worth every moment of the horror leading up to it.

Unfortunately, we were already sprinting into the camp.  The little juveniles were already there, cheering my effort.  After peeling off the crazy horse, I tried to stabilize my jelly legs, squeezed out a happy smile, and limped into a guest yurt, where I collapsed on the nearest cot and proceeded to manually shift my eye lids back into their natural position, waiting for my stomach to find its way back down.

Over the next couple months spent amidst the mesmerizing Mongolian landscapes I eventually learned how to gallop without clutching a horse’s mane, just leisurely slumping in a saddle, almost cool like Clint.  And just when I was about to feel very proud of myself, in a village somewhere a wild-looking horse stormed past me full-speed, foaming at the mouth.  In the saddle, a pink-clad teenage girl was typing away furiously on her sparkly mobile phone with both hands, her head down and the reigns just tied to the saddle, letting the horse find its own way across the wide open land.

**

Clearly, I will never ride like Clint Eastwood.  Nor like an average Mongolian child.

But I learned something better in Mongolia:  every one of us has a wind-horse inside.  And if you let yours run wild,  it might take you to the happiest place you’ve ever been.