Jagga the Scut

Mr . Byambatogoh’s home sits atop a small hill, separated from the higher green peaks to the south and west,  and grassless outcrop range to the east, by shallow stub grass valleys. We arrived there via a local bus from Ulaanbatar to the small town of Sanser, where we were eventually picked up by a family friend who drove us cross-country in a 15 year old Toyota, to the two-ger homestead.

Sanser is an odd little frontier town comprised of a scatter of ramshackle wooden buildings, each seeming to represent a bar, or shop, or restaurant, or combination of all three. You can’t help but feel like you are in Tombstone as you drive through it.  Horseback is the preferred mode of transport, though occasionally a motorbike with a family of passengers would pass by kicking up the dust and tumbleweeds.

Horse hitches adorn the front of most establishments,  and the look that the occasional 2 gallon-capioed drunk would give you, as he stumbled out of a distillery with a half-burned cigarette hanging from his mouth, only amplified the sound of the theme tune to the Good, the Bad, and the Ugly that was running through my head.

After navigating our way across the almost invisible track way running beneath the tall grass that coated the undulating expanse which lay between Sansar and the homestead, we were welcomed by Mama offering a bowl of salty milk tea and a basket of ‘treats’. We sat on one side of the ger, while the family sat on the other curiously watching our every move. Nibbling away at the goat-hair infused, hard, homemade cheese, we precariously balanced the bowls of hot milk tea in our right hands, occasionally bringing them to our lips, over-emphasizing slurps for effect.

After perhaps a half hour of awkward nods, repeated incomprehensible phrases combined with huge sweeping hand gestures, occasional moments when we were clearly being pointed at and gossiped about, failed attempts at quoting from our phrase books, and at least two refills of the salt milk tea, our hosts eventually up and left us to our own devices.

Our accommodation over the next three days was the ‘guest ger’ of the family homestead. It was an 8 wall example, furnished with three beds, and a mirrored dresser decorated with family photos and a pair of ceramic camels. The family alter, complete with a photograph of the Dali Lama, rested against the northern curve of the round structure.

Our hosts, Mama & Papa Byambatogoh had their outdoor lives written all over their faces in uncountable wrinkles that doubled each time they lit up in a smile, which they did a lot. They were blessed with three sons, and one ‘sort of’ daughter-in-law.

 We didn’t see too much of  Papa over the three days, but Mama was a constant. She always seemed to be on the go, making cheese, cooking meals, monitoring the milk cauldron, regularly stirring it by scooping up some of the mixture in a small plastic pot, raising it high above the rest, and then emptying it back into the mix from aloft. The scooping and dropping was done numerous times in quick succession, kicking up the smell of the salty brew and mixing it with the not unpleasant smoky aroma of burning dried sheep dung that the daughter-in-law had dutifully collected from their back yard pile.

How hard these ladies work is unquantifiable, but watching  Mama herd, coral and then continue to milk some thirty or so goats in the middle of a rain, thunder and lightening storm was certainly a good indicator.

The family’s youngest son, Pathgrl, whose name was so unpronounceable at first that we nicknamed him Patrick, was a little diamond, burning with an almost unquenchable energy, and a total shark at the game of Anklebone. Patrick was easily the best at communicating, and had even managed to pick up a small smattering of English from other travellers that had passed by through the years. His playground was the dung-splattered wilds of the west, and his playmates a scraggly cat and its kitten (both called Mishka), and anything else that could be prodded, poked or ridden, be it goat, dog, horse, camel or beetle.

Their eldest son, a handsome boy, was studying the traditional arts in Ulaanbatar, but dropped by long enough to lull us with a Long Song or two.

Then, there was Jagga, the one in the middle, who, forgive me for saying, I frequently suspected had been dropped on his head as a bairn. He was our main guide during the three day stay. He was twenty-four years old, had just about made it through high school, and had spent a little time in the Mongolian army. I called him ‘the idiot son’. My co-travelers were both amused and a little appalled when they heard me call him that, replying in his defence, ‘… but he’s a good farmer.'  Indeed he was, and in this neck of the steppes, I guess that’s all that matters.

Talent for farming aside, our host’s middle son was what my mother would call, 'a scut of a young fella.' He was the main reference point for my initial comparing of Mongolian goat herders with the Irish itinerant. Jagga has the squashed-nose look of any Ward or Hackett that you might see dragging his heels around an Irish horse fair, and forgive me for saying so, the manner of one to boot, God bless him!

He likes his drop, and the tobacco, and is totally lacking in social graces with neither Western niceties (not that you’d expect them), nor Mongolian laws of hospitality representing any part of his repertoire.  Maybe I’m being too harsh on the boy, perhaps it was our fault because we interrupted his Nadaam plans. Clearly, the older brother had originally been lined up for the duty of ‘minding us’ during the festival, but got called away last minute, and Jagga got lumped with the job instead.

My initial move to dislike him came out of what seemed, at first, to be a playful game at dressing up. He pulled a beautiful silk deel from out of the guest ger dresser and insisted that I try it on. Not thinking it more than a bit of fun, I obliged and we photographed our little Mongolian family. We danced around a little while his girlfriend looked on, and then he carelessly announced that I should wear the robe to the festival on the next day.  His poor maligned girlfriend’s face dropped on the other side of the ger when she realized that any thoughts that she may have had of wearing her Sunday best to the opening ceremony next day had just been blown out of the water by Jagga’s thoughtlessness. I promptly took it off and declined the offer.

On our first morning, as we prepared to leave the homestead for the Nadaam horse race, he scammed 30,000 togs out of us for a magic taxi.  It had the ability to shape shift between a Prado, a tractor and numerous other vehicles in between. The original plan was to go on horseback, but Jagga decided that the ‘maasheen’ would be better.

At the village Nadaam, we enjoyed the festivities, accompanied here and there by the pregnant girlfriend and random machine drivers. We would run between the wrestling competition and horse race, occasionally popping into a fast food ger to indulge in Kosher (deep fried meat patties) and airag (fermented mares milk).  Jagga snaked off at every opportunity. Most evenings were spent going from distillery to distillery looking for our vagabond guide. He would eventually be found rosy cheeked and dishevelled, helped into the car by whoever happened to be our taxi driver on the day.

We were under no illusions that the extra bills we’d handed over, outside of the eyeshot of his parents, were funding his vodka habit, and our multi-formed taxi was really the good will of locals that his long suffering girlfriend had managed to persuade.

One of the blessed joys of the extreme language barrier that we found ourselves up against, was the licence it gave me to call him a ‘dirty, thieving little bollix!’ to his face. All I had to do was fake a smile mid abuse, and he’d nod his head and give the thumbs up.  One of the few moments we were in agreement I think.

Our last evening at the homestead was spent playing frisbee.  The whole family and a visiting neighbour joined in the fun, and we enjoyed a good hour around dusk playing and laughing.   At one point, I rugby tackled one of my travel companions over a playful insult he had sent my way.  Our hosts were very impressed thinking I had picked up a trick or two watching the wrestling matches at Nadaam.  Instead of trying to explain the whole ‘rugby playing’ thing, I simply mimicked the Eagle dance of a victorious wrestler while they pointed and laughed.

Our departure from the Byambatogohs next morning was filled with hugs, kisses and badly pronounced Mongolian Thank You’s. Both Mama and Papa were there to wave us off, while Patrick chased after the machine. As we drove away from the two gers in the middle of nowhere, I was amused by the sight of our friend Jagga pulling himself out from under some blankets beside the fuel pile at the back of the family ger . The Mongolian version of ‘being in the dog house’ clearly translated to ‘sleeping by the dung heap.’ My last and abiding image of Jagga, is of his pregnant girlfriend chucking a wicker basket at him. When it fell to the ground, he dutifully picked up and began to fill it with the contents of what had been his bed.

The Armenian Adventure

So our plan to ski in the mountains in central Armenia kind of fell flat. Every guide book and internet reference seemed to say it was an excellent idea. We were assured from every angle that skiing was good into mid-april and I was desperate to finally put all my skiing lessons from Ski Dubai to good use on a real mountain.

As we flew in over Armenia my first views of the snow covered mountains made my belly hop. In hindsight, the mocking laughs of customs officials when explaining the reason for our visit should have deflated me. But no, I wasn’t ready to accept the inevitable that quickly.

We arranged a driver at the airport to take us directly to Tzaghkadzor ski resort, famous for having been used by the USSR olympic team for training. As we drove out of Yerevan towards the mountains, the barren brown slopes began to dampen my enthusiasm. Even still I kept trying to persuade myself that the snow was ‘just over the next hill’.

When we got there we found a ghost town. Its funny now of course, but at the time I was very disappointed. Yup, ski season had long since ended, everything was shut, and the mountains, were snowless. We managed to find ourselves a place to stay for the night, and someplace to eat and grab a beer. The ghost town was our first insight to poverty stricken, post-communist Armenia. The only real sound was the whistle of wind in the trees. The occasional plastic bag tumbleweed broke that sound as it flipped over itself all the way down the street, which was flanked on either side by deserted and often ramshackle concrete buildings. Snuggled up in 70’s style blankets with two fizzing ancient bar heaters keeping us warm, we managed to make it through the night.

One of the other complications we came across was the fact that no-body, not a single soul, spoke English. Armenian and Russian are the languages here and there’s no in between. So we had a great deal of frustration and fun honing our sign language skills in an effort to communicate with the locals. It must have been hilarious for them to watch us waving our arms and contorting our faces in the most ludicrous of ways, in an effort to get our point across.

The next morning, after a breakfast of ‘Spaz’ (a salty porridge like soup that I ended up with by default because no-one else would eat it), we decided to leave the ghost town and head further north to Lake Sevan and into the mountain villages. A little bit of exploration was what was needed to rejuvenate our trip. It was fun and, for the most part, we met some generous and helpful people.

Apart from some cowboys who wanted us to pay 100 dollars for a two-room cabin with no running water that is. The cabin guy, also the owner of the local shop/restaurant/petrol station/souvenir shop, got very upset with us when we said we would have to pass. He kept pointing at the light and flicking the switch on and off as if the perk of having electricity was the cause for the cost.

“Turn it off then! We’ll sit in the dark and pay you 10 dollars for the night,” was Ian’s response. Oh, the cabin guy was not pleased then!
We left that venue fairly quickly when the dogs started barking and we saw his pudgy bald head start to turn peuce, fearing that he was about to call his band of brothers and come after us with a shotgun and the hounds! A sometime taxi driver with a back seat full of freshly caught fish helped us out in our endeavour by getting us to

the next town. We were able to gather that he was from Russia. For some random reason, I decided to try out a little Czech on him. He looked at me like I had two heads. So the rest of the journey involved him slowing everything he said down or shouting it thinking we would understand better. We obliged by pretending we did, nodding and smiling all the way to a place called Dilidjan, a mountain town just north of Lake Sevan.

We found a really nice guesthouse run by an Artist and his wife. The artist was also the Director of the local art academy and dabbled in restoration. His living room was filled with a combination of his own work and older paintings by Russian masters which he was slowly restoring for the local museum. He spoke French and his wife had a smattering of English so, between the two, we got on very well. They filled us with sweet Armenian tea and a sweet flaky pastry bread that I couldn’t get enough of, while the artist showed off this new digital clock that had been brought to him from Germany.

It showed the outside temp, the inside temp, humidity level, time of course and on the left hand side stood a man underneath the clouds and sun who, to the great amusement of our host, produced a “parapluie” when it rained.

He very kindly drove us around the mountain valleys taking us to some of the medieval monastic sites that seem to pepper the landscape. I quite enjoyed that. Apart from the shape of the buildings, the general architecture was very similar to some of our own examples at home. The sites and random hilltops were full of flat slabs with crosses carved on them in Celtic-like knot work and animal motifs. Little shrines were being kept up by the locals in some of the church nooks and crannies. At one site the oak trees and tall grasses were being strangled by hundreds of cloth strips, handkerchiefs, and in some cases children's underwear. A kind of modern pagan offering identical to those at the holy wells and rag trees in Ireland. Doubtless prayers for an end to some kind of hardship in the lives of the people who put them there.

Armenia is famous for 3 things. Cognac, being the first country to accept Christianity as the state religion, and stony resilience. That stony resilience is everywhere and chiseled into the faces of the people in the streets. They are not a handsome people. They are hard and battered looking. Men and women both have mouths full of gold teeth. Their features seem to vary between two forms, long and angular, or wide and bulbous. Our first impressions were to be a little wary of them. They all had that Ukranian mafia look about them, not that I actually know what that looks like, but I can guess. Ian seemed to recognize every second guy that passed as a resident of Southhill, in Limerick City or some other northside ghetto back home. Poverty and unemployment was rife there.

Everywhere we went outside the capital, through the villages and in the mountains, groups of men with ‘hard life’ written all over their serious faces seemed to be gathered in random corners, standing for hours on end. Our guide told us this was because there simply wasn’t any work for them. Many of the younger men went to Russia to work, those who were lucky enough to find work in Armenia usually had to leave their families and move to the capital. Along the roadsides the rest stand waving their arms at passing traffic to try to persuade it to stop so that they can sell the few fish they had caught, or the bundles of scallions they had hand grown and picked that day. Subsistence living in the extreme. Meanwhile their homes and villages remain either half built or falling down around their ears.
One would assume that the money for public works simply isn’t there. I suppose it makes some sense. Public works requires money, usually taken from taxes. You can’t very well collect tax from an unemployed nation.

So, we eventually returned to Yerevan, the capital. We had about four days there. We walked around the city hoping to enjoy some of the sites that the book I bought was gushing about. Thing is though, the city does not have a focus towards tourism and all of these sites were a let down in one way or another. They were either undergoing reconstruction or restoration, or were simply completely run down and overgrown, or, as in the case of Mt. Ararat, not there being, completely obscured by smog. Bad Mother Nature! How could you be so inconsiderate? Visiting Armenia was definitely a worth while experience, working on both our ingenuity and our survival skills as underprepared travelers.Lessons were learned, and in fairness it was generally safe and enjoyable. I only managed to loose my shampoo, moisturizer, toothpaste and travel toothbrush to thieves. From now on the side pockets of my back pack shall be packed with dirty underwear. Let them take those instead!

The rest of our time in Armenia was spent propping up a bar, sampling Armenian beers and playing cards. I ended up losing my Lonely Planet Armenia book to Handsome Bob in a game of cards. Best use for it in the end. I did consider using it as toilet paper, but decided it wasn’t even up to that job!

I spent my last day in bed because I drank altogether too many of those Armenian beers. I have a vague final memory of being thrown around an empty dance floor by an Armenian ex-boxer with a somewhat squashed nose and no English, who wouldn’t let me leave without presenting me with his cigarette-smoke scented handkerchief as a gesture of his affection. I had to give him 10 AMD for the pleasure though. Tradition apparently!