Getting To Zavkhan
Except for on three occasions in the past seven months, I have only been as far from Khovd as I can walk in an afternoon. So I was excited about an invitation to go with a team of our teachers to Uuliastai in Zavkhan Aimag to give some workshops for secondary school teachers there. It was a chance to learn a little more about Mongolia. As always, I learned more than I expected.
We would travel in an olive green
фургон (like poor-gone,) the Russian-made 4wd vans that can be found all over Mongolia. A фургон looks a lot like a VW bus from several decades ago, but that is where the resemblance ends. A Poor-gone is simple and rugged beyond belief, and after the brutal thirty six hours I spent riding in this one, it has my respect and admiration.
I learned that it is normal to put twenty or even twenty two people into a Poor-gone, that the fifteen people we would be stuffing into this one were no problem, though it's likely that twenty Mongolians the size of those in our van would be
some problem. "We will be leaving from the first university at 8:00," Davaa told me. "Maybe 8:30." By now I am not new to Mongolia. "I will watch out my window," I told him. The first university is across the street from our apartment.
At 8:40 I saw some activity across the street. The Poor-gone arrived fifteen minutes later. At 9:30 there were twelve of us ready to go. We went to the gas station just east of town, and got out. At 10:15 we drove a quarter mile up the road and parked. Someone opened a bottle of vodka, poured a few rounds. At ten thirty the last passengers arrived, with luggage. Fifteen total, and from what I could tell we were packed as full as we could get. But I am not Mongolian. There are twelve seats in this фургон.
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Two small towns lie between Khovd and
Altai, our first destination, which is twelve hours away. At
Zereg we pulled off to look for a board to lash across the back doors to keep them from bulging open and spilling luggage, boxes, and two large bags of potatoes out onto the road. At 3:30 in
Darvi we stopped for lunch and gas, and to investigate a brake leak. Then on, for seven more hours. We arrived at 10pm, or 11 Ulaanbaator Time, since we had crossed a time zone. We stayed in a student dorm, (spring break for students, we just slept in their beds with our clothes on, five to a room) got to sleep at around midnight, and were awakened by the switch of the lights at 3:30 am. Leaving behind five teachers to present their own workshops in Altai, we set off for the remaining six hour drive to Uuliastai.
Of the several difficulties of traveling this way, the hardest for a photographer is knowing it is unlikely that I will ever see this particular piece of the earth again. Kilometer after kilometer bounces and vibrates past my window, and from that vantage point it begins to all look the same, though experience tells me that that's not the case. Here the road across the wide flat expanse comes up against a long steep ridge. Now that ridge ends, and we move into an area of intermittent brush. Now it looks like finely broken lava. Herds of bactrian camels dot the horizon now, my closest previous encounters being their skulls in the sand above Khovd, identifiable by their small brain case and the stick that remains through their nose even after death. I am still waiting to see one alive, and close.
Relief (various kinds) comes when we stop to pee, men a few feet from the truck, women a little farther away. There is no need for bashfulness, and nowhere to hide. While the driver is smoking a cigarette, I have a few minutes to look a little more closely at the spot he decided to pull over.
The final six hour stretch required two long uphill grades, each followed by an equally demanding downhill where I tried to suppress the recollection of brake fluid dripping over a wheel rim, down the tire, and into the sand after lunch in
Darvi the day before as I crouched to see what the driver was doing.
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