We were halfway through our 25-day tour of Mongolia, and it seemed as if Ben and I were starring in our very own comedy of errors.
The day started like any other, except we were moving a bit slower than usual, after all, we had both fallen off horses less than 24 hours ago. As we gingerly packed up our things and headed to breakfast we didn’t know that our bad luck would follow us for another 36 hours.
Sitting down to breakfast, we had the option for a breakfast buffet, but since our ribs were so sore, we opted to order some food instead. Ben ordered what I did, but when they asked if he wanted sausage, he said “yes.” That was a decision he was soon going to regret.
We finished breakfast and loaded all of our things into our Toyota Land Cruiser and headed off. It was going to be our longest day of travel yet, 350 kilometers (217 miles) which would take us more than 10 hours on the insane Mongolian “roads.” Our destination was somewhere in western Mongolia where our guide Oso’s family lived. From the shores of Lake Khövsgöl, Mongolia’s largest freshwater lake, it would take two days of driving to reach our destination, so we planned to drive as far as we could, stop to camp, and then continue on.
It was a painful and at times excruciating ride. Even though we weren’t driving particularly fast, the roads in Mongolia are otherworldly. I often try to explain Mongolian roads by using those insane “Built Ford Tough” commercials. You know, the ones where trucks are driving over boulders? Well, those are Mongolian roads. Constantly being jostled for hours when you have sore ribs should be added to a list of cruel and unusual punishments.
Little did Ben know, his day was just a few hours away from getting worse.
Throughout our time in Mongolia, we were scheduled to spend about half of our nights in ger camps, a few nights in hotels, and the rest of the nights camping. This night, we were supposed to tent, but as we got to the area where we hoped to stop, the skys opened up and it started raining so hard our windshield wipers couldn’t keep up. Thrown in for some additional excitement
The problem, however, is that Mongolia is sparsely populated. I mean, it is the 18th largest country in the world by land size, (similar in size to Mexico) but there are only 3.2 million people who live there. More than half of those people live in the capital, Ulaanbaatar. The rest of the population, about 1.6 million people, are spread out into towns, villages
Well, we happened to be nowhere near Ulaanbaatar, or a town, but our driver and guide knew of a village that wasn’t too far from where we hoped to stay. But, along with no running water, they also don’t have hotels or motels in the traditional Western way of thinking. What we soon found out, as our driver continued to stop and chat with every person he could, was that there was a family in the village who ran what our guide told us was called a “local motel.” Essentially, it was the home of someone who was willing to give up their beds for guests and sleep on the floor for a small fee.
Our guide and driver pulled up to this home and chatted with the owners and once they agreed on a price, we started to unpack our food and gear for the night.
After nearly two weeks of camping or staying in ger camps, this was the first time we’d been in a home in Mongolia that wasn’t picked up and moved several times a year. It was a two story home with the main floor comprised of a kitchen and dining area, with two bedrooms upstairs. For those keeping track, the village didn’t have running water so the bathroom was really just a small shed outside in the back yard with one of the floorboards missing. After more than a year of traveling across Asia we were familiar with the squat toilet, but we hadn’t ever seen this particular version until Mongolia.
We took our bags to one of the rooms upstairs and our guide and driver got the other bedroom. Since it was dark and stormy out, we used our headlamps to make our way around the house and went back downstairs to help prepare dinner.
It had been an incredibly long day, so once dinner was finished and we had cleaned up, Ben and I took our sore bodies upstairs to sleep.
A few hours later, I was woken up by Ben jolting upright in his bed and saying “Oh no.”
Half asleep I whispered at him, “What’s wrong?”
He was busy scrambling out of bed but gave me clear instructions to find the toilet paper and our azithromycin, antibiotics for cases of travelers’ diarrhea. I knew exactly what the problem was.
Ben scrambled to get dressed, I gave him the toilet paper and pushed him towards the door. He had a long walk to the outhouse – down the upstairs hallway, then down some stairs, across the entire main floor, out the back door, and across the yard – I knew time was of the essence.
I got him out into the hall and, while he was trying to be stealthy in his exit, Mongolian construction doesn’t necessarily allow for quiet footsteps in the middle of the night. Each step he took made enough noise to seem as though the house was coming down around us. I was feeling sorry for our guide and driver who I assumed Ben was waking up with each clomp of his feet.
I later learned that his heavy footsteps couldn’t be quieted given how low the ceiling was. He was understandably hesitant to bend down given the nature of his rush to the restroom, so instead, he took the “limbo” approach. He awkwardly tilted his pelvis up to try and accommodate the short ceilings and his bathroom needs – basically looking like a frog poorly trained to walk upright.
He made it to the end of the hall, then started the climb down the stairs, seeming to make more noise the further away he got. While I was upstairs half-asleep, wishing Ben could walk a little quieter, I didn’t realize the obstacle course he was going to find at the bottom of the steps.
We knew that we were staying in someone’s house and paid for the privilege of sleeping in their beds but hadn’t really given thought to where they might spend the night. Ben found the answer to that question as he half-sprinted across the dining room area, opened the door to the kitchen, and saw the lumps of a dozen or so bodies spread out on the floor between him and the exit to the outhouse outside.
With his headlamp shining, Ben started stepping over people, clunking noisily in his haste to get outside. As members of the family woke up to find this large foreigner standing over them, shining his lamp in their faces. He attempted to apologize, but only in English, likely making the experience even worse as most Mongolians know about as much English as Americans know Mongolian. They just stared up at him confused and shielding their eyes from his headlamp.
He finally made it outside into the rain and lightning, sprinting the last 20 yards to the outhouse while at the same time undoing his belt. However, in his rush to relief, he closed but didn’t latch, the door to the outhouse. It was flapping in the wind, allowing
This scene (though with less surprise on behalf of the family) was repeated several more times throughout the night. I can only imagine what the family was thinking when we finally pulled out in the morning.
