S is for Surprise

4:30 am

“It’s going to be a good day,” Baagii says, grinning broadly as she enters our ger (nomadic tent) at the crack of dawn to rouse us. “I have many surprises for you!”

Baagii, our spirited guide in Mongolia, is the star of our fifth day’s adventure in Hovd. It’s a long, entirely true story, necessarily made short(er) for this post. (Words in bold gray are links to directly related posts.)

The first surprise of the day – which Baagii did not plan – is that Magsar, our driver, fails to appear at camp at the appointed time. An inauspicious sign? Yet some hours later arrive he does, hurtling towards us in the dependable old Russian van that’s been delivering us to diverse corners of this remarkable aimag (province), leaving a cloud of dust behind him.

Hovd, 2007

12:00 pm

After some hours on the road taking us southeast from the capital, quite in the middle of nowhere, Magsar stops at the base of an unremarkable rocky mound and Baagii summons us to climb it.

Baagii and Sergelen

Turns out this hill is chockfull of ancient pictographs of animals dating back to 3500 BC.  Cool!

Our next stop is to say hello to a family of goat herders. Baagii sits down with the women to milk the goats with complete ease and surprising dexterity.

2:30 pm

A few hours down the road when we break to answer nature’s call in the most charming outhouse, our local guide Sergelen shows us more rock art and takes photos for scientific record. 

Onwards. We have not seen much vegetation or water this day, so this little stream with a few trees delights us. 

As the van crosses the stream, intrepid travel mate Pam squeals, “I love driving through water!” My immediate retort with a laugh, “Better wait till we get out of it” is in vain; the van smoothly glides over to the other side.

That is where we soon find another of Baagii’s surprises: the Khoit Tsenkher Cave… or perhaps I should say first: the climb up to this cave! The parked van is bottom right of this image; the cave top right.

We are enticed by tales that the cave is rich with Stone Age pictorials, pointing to cultured settlements here in prehistoric times. Our party of middle-agers huff and puff to the top. Magsar and Sergelen are the first to reach the entrance, with me and my camera not far behind.

Baagii bravely scours the cave for evidence of the promised 15,000-year-old paintings…

…but in the end all we find is graffiti left by idiots visitors who preceded us.

I learn later that almost all the rock art in this important cave – which made the Tentative List of World Heritage Sites – has been defaced or covered in dust. So the only timeless treasure we see is this magnificent view.

We descend only slightly disappointed. And return to the side of the stream to savor a late picnic lunch and rest.

We continue onwards, not knowing our final destination for the day, open to being surprised. 

6:20 pm

As it happens, we never make it. We reach another stream, but this time we don’t get to the other side. When the van stops dead, our hearts skip a beat. This is my view out the left window.

One by one we climb out of the van and gingerly walk back through the rocky stream, thigh-deep in water, whence we came. Once all our feet are safely back on terra firma, I look at the van and see this.

Well, so now what? Can’t exactly call a taxi. Can’t call anyone; there’s no cellular network out here.

The boys look frazzled and offer no solution. Baagii looks calm and tells us, “Please just wait. I will go get help.” And off she goes, across the river. The rest of us… wait. Several go for a long walk, hoping to meet a herder, anyone, along the way. Others read, or meditate, or perhaps pray.

I watch Baagii in the distance. She vanishes around the mountain.  Exactly one hour after leaving us, I behold her in admiration as she appears on a horse and gallops away to disappear again around another bend.

In the meantime, I see Magsar and Sergelen across the stream when a vehicle approaches them. It stops; there is a discussion, and what? – the jeep drives off without them! Later I hear they were not willing to help, but I’d like to think – being in this über-hospitable land – that I just missed something in the translation.

Never mind, Baagii to the rescue! Again it is an hour later, exactly two hours since the van stopped midstream, when I spot her with the rescue team.

8:45 pm

It is this ragtag team of boys and men with Baagii and yours truly (in red) who manage in about 20 minutes to jiggle and grunt and 1-2-3 push… or make that rock and roll! this baby backwards to shore.

[Photo taken by my dear friend Ruth Lor Malloy]

As Baagii and I stand by the van still in the water, I assure her no one is upset. She is visibly relieved, beams me her dazzling smile and exclaims, “This was my surprise!” We both break out in a roar of laughter.

Back on shore, they decide to give the van time to dry out. We express our appreciation to the rescue team with small gifts we had brought to give along the way.

After dinner is prepared and eaten, the next question is whether this clunker can be made to start. While we hold our breath, Magsar gets behind the wheel, turns the key… and sputter, spurt - water squirts from the exhaust pipe - cough, cough… and vrooooom! Amazing!

The crowd claps with shrieks of glee. I turn to Baaggii and say, “Now no more surprises.”

We leave the stream at 9:40 pm and arrive safely back to camp three hours later.

This watery adventure full of surprises is linked with Our World Tuesday, ABC Wednesday (where the letter is S), Watery Wednesday and Outdoor Wednesday.