Our First Encounter with Healthcare in Mongolia
The jeep rolls up the hill, and the doctor emerges, with a metal box of tricks. She’s a slight, friendly woman in her 30s: I...
Tagged: horses
Disaster Strikes
We know it’s going to be a brutal ride out from the reindeer people – six full days, seven hours a day, riding fast as...
Charon the Ferryman and Tsagaannuur
In news from the department of the bleeding obvious, drinking horse dung juice, even mixed with vodka, has not improved Maahar’s tummy. He heads back...
Way to Treat a Stomach Bug, Dude
The ger we are visiting belongs to Baatar’s sister, and a second sister is visiting. As is a young man so drunk his eyes are...
The One Where I Almost Get a Shower
I am more than a little discombobulated when a bunch of other tourists show up at the best ger ever, and make camp. Despite the...
Best… Ger… EVER
This is the view from the best ger ever, a herd of horses passing by, untrimmed manes trailing in the breeze. It is, in fact,...
Crossing the Pass — and Mongolian Horses
The mountains that divide Khovsgol Nuur from the Darkhad Depression aren’t terribly mountainous. They’re misty, sure, and a little forbidding, but rather rounded compared to...
On Khovsgol Nuur
There’s a pleasant rhythm to a long journey, and within an hour or so we’re in it: spotting the different types of wildflowers, keeping an...
Horses and Khatgal
“When I was 17,” Ganbaa explains, “I was a wrestler. And a group of us went to Russia, wrestling. There were no tall buildings in...
The Beauty of Tibet on Horseback
The mountains outside Songpan, where northern China gives way to old Tibet, are some of the most beautiful we’ve visited. Alpine meadows give onto vistas...