Off the Wall

Distance in Mongolia is measured by time rather than kilometres, a direct symptom of the lack of actual tarmacadamed roads. Instead, the plains are crisscrossed with swirling tracks that intertwine and then span out in every direction like endless fingers.  Much like the deserts of the Middle East, you can’t help but wonder how people manage to find their way home?  Clearly the process is partly facilitated by an genetic radar that hones in on the 4th clump of bushes over the 5th hill, behind the eagle-shaped outcrop 210 paces east of the ovoo by Horse Skull Valley, then turns to the second star on the right and straight till morning.

We would drive for hours on end, hill melding with hill, ovoo with ovoo, callous building upon callous on my already harassed backside which had a tough time getting used to the  UAZ experience. The level of bump and shake often had me thinking that if I were a bottle of champagne, somebody was gonna lose an eye soon.

The Russian van had definitely seen better days. However, it was the best we could afford, and came complete with engine crank, a high wheel base and the capacity for 4-wheel drive which had to be switched to manually by virtue of unscrewing the wheel axle cover thingy, inserting some kind of metal-toothed gear yoke, and then closing everything off again. A wonderfully clear and mechanically correct description I realize, one completely commensurate with my expertise level.

Happily, our driver, who smoked a lot, smiled little and talked less, knew exactly what he was doing.  Just as well considering the fact that we would break down at least once a day and find ourselves atop some hill in the middle of the middle of nowhere, passenger seat plonked on the grass, watching his little behind wiggling side to side while he did another MacGyver on that ancient engine.

The trip west was long and tortuous, broken only by occasional stops in frontier towns for lunch meat. Meat, meat, meat, or should I say fat, grizzle, “bleargh”. By the time we reached Kharkhorin my innards were not happy with me.

‘Dysentery’ is a manageable thing when you are in the outback, where the privacy of the wilds and the calming whispering of the wind shaken leaves hypnotized slightly, taking your mind off the insatiable cramping, and a cool breeze would wipe your sweating brow and quivering backside.  In the outhouse of a central Mongolian town, it’s a whole other scenario.

My first experience of an outhouse was somewhat misleading and came about 9 hours outside UB near the monastery of Amar Bayasgalant. We stayed the night beside the monastery, within the half-heartedly picket-fenced garden of a ger lodge. The garden was filled with curiosities from a simple outdoor sink freestanding in the middle of the garden, to a bread bin that stood atop a fence post at the end of the garden.  At first I thought it was an inventive kind of letterbox, but when I opened it, discovered it was a tad more industrious than that, housing a bar of soap, a toothbrush and a tube of paste.

Of course the biggest curiosity was the wooden outhouse at the end of the garden. In my pre-malfunctioning bowels state, it wasn’t such a bad experience. It  had a wooden floor with a simple hole cut in the middle over which one had to balance, and try to aim with consideration.  It even had a door! It was a cold night, it had been raining, so the aroma was certainly not craw grasping. To be fair, I had been on worse squatters in my time.

As the days passed and my intestines turned into a gurgling mass of slime, the outhouses became less and less savoury, each visit leaving me counting the ever increasing costs of the therapy I was going to need when I got home.

In its more common appearance, a Mongolian outhouse is a barely 3 walled box, occasionally with a roof, and two four by four planks laid over a minimum two metre deep square hole. Now I say two metre deep, but that depth is approximately measured, and only to the top of the layers of human waste that you try to pretend is not there.

They often come in twos.

Leaving the black market area of Kharkorum, and overcome by urgency, I found myself running through the shanty and backstreets, following the stench to my nearest and only hope of privacy. I thanked God that he blessed me with balance as I dropped my pants at speed while precariously teetering on the two planks that stretched over the generations of excrement.   I spread out my arms to the spaced slat walls on either side, steadying myself before the impending explosion. I held my breath and closed my eyes trying to separate myself from the aroma of rotting lunch meat permeating up from the abyss, and the excruciating, cascading wave that was rapidly making its way through my belly towards my rear end.

“There’s no place like home! There’s no place like home!”

My whispered repetitious attempt at self-hypnosis was temporarily broken by the sounds of exertion followed by relief . Still clinging on to the walls for dear life, nails embedded into the wood, I turned to see a squatting local through the gaps in the slats on the adjoining outhouse. A little vein pulsated on his purple temple as he pushed and parped. My desire to plug my ears against his inner workings with my splinter imbued fingers was swiftly overtaken by my own personal Vesuvius.

The rest is a blur.

I came round to the sound of my neighbour loosing a final sigh of contentment, zipping up his pants, and passing me by with a whistle, and not so much as a ‘How do you do?’

I wiped the sweat from my brow with the sleeve of my jacket, crossed my arms over my knees, resting in my squat while I caught my breath and thanked the sweet baby Jesus that I was still alive. I felt a cool breeze about my quivering backside, but the associated  buzzing soon made me realize it wasn’t the wind.  I nearly lost myself in the pit as I pulled my pants up while simultaneously throwing myself out of the horror chamber.

Picking myself up out of my stumble, squinting in the sunlight, the sound of buzzing fading, I brushed myself down, pulled on my sunglasses, and did a walk back to the UAZ of which John Wayne himself would have been proud.

While standing by our van waiting for our guide, Soyola, to make his way back, a passing drunk stopped dead in his tracks. With a somewhat shocked look on his face, he bent his knees slightly and pointed at me. “Michael”, he said hoarsely, looking around him as if for clarification and then back to me. I knew I looked a tad dishevelled after my ‘personal moment’, but couldn’t for the life of me figure out what was up with him. He continued to point and in my paranoid state I attempted to refix my black hair back into its ponytail.

“Michael, Michael”, he shouted again and then walked at me, his drunken body bent at an almost a 45 degree angle and his arm outstretched for a handshake.  “Sainbano”, I said as I held out mine and he grabbed it. Shaking it vigorously with his other hand clasped over our two, he began to babble at me in Mongolian. My arm was almost loosed from its socket by the time Soyola finally made his way to us. The drunk let go of my hand and excitedly turned to our guide, babbling and pointing at me with little drunken giggles, occasionally separated by more Michaels.

Before shooing the drunk away, Soyola managed to translate his ramblings for me. Between the sunglasses, black hair, and diarrhoea exacerbated paleness, the poor man had thought me Michael Jackson, alive and roaming the dirt tracks of Mongolia.

I began to laugh, wondering when exactly Michael had invested in a boob job, but then my belly started to growl at me again. Unwilling to put myself through another outhouse experience that day, I managed to persuade everyone it was time to leave.

“Pedal to the metal MacGyver, fast as you can to the second star on the right and straight on until that 4th clump of bushes over the  hill there, if you please!”

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.

Once Upon a Hutong (July 2009)

There was a big hole outside the door of my hostel. It ran the entire length of the hutong. It was quite mesmerizing to watch, and somewhat of an obstacle coarse to navigate. A persons width had been left on either side of the street for that purpose. The trench was a little shy of 2 metres deep, and filled with incredible little men of all ages, excavating by hand. I had no idea what the end goal was, occasional questions to local voyeurs often only met with a polite smile and nod of the head. Some attempted to reply, but I didn’t understand a word they said either, so I just politely smiled and nodded my head back at them.

After a little bit of asking around I discovered that the work in the hutong was not unique to that particular street, but part of an ongoing process, mirrored throughout the city, to ‘modernize and clean up’ the traditional neighbourhoods of Beijing. For those who live in the hutongs, this process is one that has left many of them homeless and without their businesses. With shovels and picks these men battered away layer after layer, removing the spoil, via two men and an empty coal sack, to the other end of the hutong. They carried the bricks five by five with their bare hands, and hoisted scaffolding and rubber piping along the entire length of the street on their shoulders. The only machinery on site was a mini-digger which sat at the entrance to the hutong. Day and night these little doozers beavered away with an impressive amount of good-temperedness, despite the obvious wearying physicality of the work at hand. They made excellent models, often insisting on a picture as soon as they saw the camera hanging at my hip. I nearly lost my head in the process of making one such picture when some random rubble got loose and tumbled from the roof above me. I felt the breeze of it as it whipped past my ear after being abruptly pulled to one side by one of my hard hat wearing friends.

Trying to make my way to and from the hostel was a daily expedition. Any concept one might have of health and safety practices did not exist here. The street was still open for business. There was no clear walkway through most of it, just an apocalypse of broken rubble, varied rubber and plastic pipes, the occasional board or piece of metal sheeting laid down in an ad-hoc manner to provide a shaky bridge crossing over the troughs and pits that peppered the street. Where the excavation was deep you found yourself weaving and ducking the veritable climbing frame of metal and wooden scaffolding that hugged the sides of the route. Navigation was a skill in itself, never mind trying to do it simultaneously with the footwork. Add to that the frequent missiles in the shape of 4 metre long chunks of metal that seemed to appear out of nowhere at speed from around corners, precariously balanced on the a workman's shoulder, and you had a daily adventure along the strip that was worthy of an Indiana Jones sequel in itself.

Beijing is a great city for walking, and when I tired of my building site playground, I walked the little size 4’s off myself. Making my way through the new wide streets towards Tiananmen Square, it became clear very quickly that the real tourist attraction was not the city, but me! The quizzical look of amusement on the faces of local people as I bounced along with my cowboy hat side-cocked on my head and camera swinging by my hip, reminded me of how I used to look at the bevy of Aran sweater and check pants wearing Americans that used to descend upon my island when I was a child. However, one of the wonderful things about this place, is that looking is a national occupation. People do it without embarrassment or malice. After a while, I became comfortable with the attention, posed for the requested photographs, and accepted their unspoken permission to look right back.

Random people liked to come up and just say ‘Hello’. For most it’s the only English word that they know, and they appeared to enjoy using it. When I responded with a ‘…and how are you?’, they nodded their heads furiously and simply rattled back, ‘Hello, hello!’

Looking across Tiananmen Square, I couldn’t begin to imagine how many people it would take to fill it, but it’s vastness was clear. I felt like an ant in it, and people looked like ants at the opposite side of it. Across the road at the northern end, Chairman Mao’s portrait was a strange kind of magnet under which it seems every visiting Chinese needed to stand with peace sign hand, to have their picture made. Crossing the bridge and going through Mao’s gate finds you within walking distance of the Forbidden City. It wasn’t long after I arrived there that the harassment began. I’d read all about the various tourist scams involving English-fluent students trying to ‘invite you for tea’ or to ‘cast your eye over their artwork’, and once lulled into a false sense of security, ultimately unburden you of large amounts of your travelling dollars. Solo tourists are often the main target. Once I realized that I had been marked, I started to play crazy lady, waving my hands wildly and shouting at them in bad Irish. My persistence outlasted theirs, and I walked away unscathed.

The rickshaw drivers were a little more hard sell, and tended to stick to your side like glue, trying to draw you into a haggle. ‘No’ is always no with me, and it was amusing how agitated they got when I stuck to my guns. “Two legs good, three wheels bad!” I think the subtlety of that line was quite lost on them. Eventually, they fell away seeking other quarry, leaving me to work on my blisters.

This city is a voyeurs paradise, abounding in quirky things and quirky people. Of course to the Beijinger, they are just going about their normal lives in an every day way. To a barbarian watcher like myself, they were just pure entertainment. Beijing parks are among the best places to be entertained. Morning and evening, the neighbourhoods flock to them to socialise and exercise.

Dusk in particular is the best time to just wander and watch as mixed generations make their way to the appointed part of the park, many indulging in some post-meal belly rubbing to aid their digestion. They break away into little social groups to play shuttlecock football, or a competitively friendly game of cards. Outdoor gymnasiums, which at first glance look more like a children's playground, fill with with elderly Chinese who pull up, push up, sit up, cross train, wheel spin and twist with great intent and surprising dexterity.

At the open space entrance to the park, a smoking man collected Yuan from wannabe ballroom dancers, who then happily allowed themselves to be orally abused by the strictest of ladies for an hour while she tried to teach them the finer points of the Cha Cha.

In the decoratively pillared corridors that run along the sides of the Temple of Heaven park, small groups gathered for free choral lessons. Middle-aged men and women huddled around their accordion playing master, following his lead while diligently monitoring the wide-openness of their mouths with little hand mirrors. Further on, a much more relaxed and advanced group belted out operatic numbers just for the sheer joy of it, watched by an audience of peers fanning away the humidity of the day and drinking tea from jam jars. As I meandered and watched, an old gentleman wearing an under-vest, striped shorts and swinging a cane, passed me by taking his caged song-bird for a walk, all the while trying to persuade it to sing with his whistles.

It is possible to sit for hours just watching. Oft times your watching doesn’t go unnoticed, and you find yourself being pulled in to joining. It’s hard to drag yourself away, but eventually my grumbling belly did just that. Heading back to the building site, I would stop into a neighbourhood restaurant for a bite.

One particular eatery drew me in, partly with its smells , partly by the fact that it was chock-filled with locals, and partly by the western couple sitting in the middle of said locals with a table full of empty plates. The​ fuwuyuan handed me an English menu while myself and the western couple exchanged nods and smiles. I ordered a 10 Yuan beer and perused the picture list of dishes. For a short moment, I was interrupted by a teenage set of Chinese twins eager to have their picture taken with me. They were sweet as nuts, and I of course obliged.

Decision making on the food front was a chore when faced with delicacies such as sautéed pig lungs, stir fried dogs meat, and plain old flesh lump on the menu. However, I finally found something to suit my taste in the shape of some broccoli, steam fried corn bread, and sautéed pork in sweet bean sauce.

I chopsticked my way through the marinated pork, greatly doubting that it was the fillet I’m used to eating. The texture was sufficiently ‘bouncy’ for me to suspect some kind of innards, but melt in the mouth and tasty enough for me not to care. Slurping in the shredded pieces and facing the open door, I couldn’t help but continue my watching. A middle-aged man and youngish woman stumbled into the restaurant. He was very drunk, and she may well have been, but was holding it together enough to pass. They sat at the table beside me, shouting for the waiter who chose to ignore them. The man soliloquized, smoking a cigarette. She bore it and listened, pretending to smoke a cigarette. She soon tired of the pretence and quenched it right there on the table. Finally, their drink came and I returned to my broccoli.

My attention to the broccoli was snatched by a hawker. Two tables from the open front door, scratching his bared and sweaty victory pouch, he decided to ‘khawkh’ and ‘pichew’ right there. Good job I was done with the meaty innards.

The youngish woman moved to the same side of the table as her date. Almost immediately after sitting, her head was grabbed in an intoxicated whisper. Judging by the flushed cheek and nervous laugh, I suspected that 'Drunky Boy' had made an indecent proposal. I wasn’t wrong. He followed it by making a not so secret dive with his hand into the shirt of the lady in question. I rounded off my meal with a cigarette and made my way back to my hutong.


Once more in the floodlit semi-organized mayhem, the doozers flitted past me going about their business. I was stopped in my tracks by a man shouting in what appeared to be anger. Thinking there was a row brewing, I halted just in time to realize it was an order to lift. In unison, and with chain gang precision, they duly picked up a long length of thick rubber piping. I quickly jumped out of the way, only narrowly avoiding being lifted and carried along on the pipe myself.

After making their way a few yards down the street, another yell was let loose. They dropped the pipe, squatted, and waited for their next order. I squatted down beside them and watched, finishing the night with a final cigarette while trying to pick out a piece of innard from between my teeth with a toothpick I had taken from the restaurant. Puffing away beside me, the wrinkly faced workman smiled and nodded.

"You must begin by knowing that you have already arrived ..."

When I was a child, my father would raise me on his shoulders as we would walk, and fill my head with stories of adventure and friendship. The stories revolved around two characters, a seagull and a doll I owned called First Love. While the house was empty, the seagull would come to call on First Love, she would climb on his back and off they would go on their great adventures to far flung corners of the world. Of course, when I would return home, I would go to check on First Love to see if I could catch sight of a sign of life or movement in her, but, ultimately, she was unyielding, laying in the same spot where she had been abandoned when we last played. Nonetheless, the magic of these stories would fill my head and the dreaming began.

As I grew older, Dad continued to build on his 'reach further, fly higher lessons' with simple lectures while we drove around the countryside in our old car. "Why be a nurse when you can be a doctor? Why be an air stewardess when you can be the pilot?" During one of these conversations my younger brother, not much more than 9 at the time, piped up with "Yeah! Why be the jockey when you can be the horse?" I remember us laughing till we cried, but you know, regardless of how funny the analogy sounded, the message remained the same. If you can think it, you can do it!

Until my mid-twenties, I believed that my father had created the character of Jonathan Livingston Seagull. Imagine my surprise when he said my idea to put the stories to paper might be a copyright infringement. Shortly thereafter, and by pure coincidence (if you believe in coincidence that is), a fleeting acquaintance handed me that understated little book by Richard Bach. It's message was simple yet powerful, and one that had been informing my philosophy on life long before I ever turned the pages in the book itself.

Over the years the paths I've taken and the choices I've made have ultimately led me to becoming a kind of outcast in my own right, the black sheep. I am no-one special, I'm just a dreamer. In the process of following one dream, I discover another and follow it. I think people just don't get that sometimes. Why don't you settle? What about a family? What about your career? Why do you keep taking yourself further and further away from home? How can you build a life like that?

When the mountaineer, George Leigh Mallory was asked why he wanted to climb Mount Everest, he answered simply "Because it’s there!" Jonathan gave a similar response to his mother, when in the book, she asks him why he cannot be like the rest of the flock, why he was so obsessive about testing his flight abilities.

"I don't mind being bone and feathers mom. I just want to know
what I can do in the air and what I can't, that's all. I just
want to know."

I may never be a doctor or a pilot but then, those are not my dreams. My dreams are much simpler than that. I want to see, I just want to experience and see. This summer, after some 10 years of dreaming, I finally found myself in Outer Mongolia. I rode a horse, I fired a bow, I lived in a Ger, I met many wonderful people and, while my pockets may be empty, I feel full. Another level has been reached in my understanding of how things work and of what I can do, and a new dream uncovered in the process.

My brother hit the nail on the head when he was 9. Why be the jockey when you can be the horse, riderless, unfettered and free. It's not the easiest of choices to make. Nothing about climbing mountains is easy. Your legs can let you down, you can stumble and fall along the way, altitude sickness can ruffle the feathers a little, but if you follow Chiang's advice to Jonathan and begin like you have already arrived, it can be conquered. There are no limits. And there is nothing, absolutely nothing more beautiful in this world than silently brushing off your bloody knees and enjoying that view from the top when you finally reach it.

Remembering The Bus Journey

We arrived into Cambodia at lunchtime via Phnom Penh airport, from Vientiane in Laos. Time was tight, but we were anxious to get to Sisowith Quay to see if it were possible to catch a bus straight to Siem Reap. All indications were that we were chasing rainbows, but luck presented us with a wonderful Tuk Tuk driver who pumped his lawnmower engine to the max and tout de suite, took us to our destination.

Of course, as any guide or forum entry will tell you, our planned route was such a popular one that it was necessary to book seats in advance. All the tourist buses were full to the brim. Nonetheless, our tireless driver went from point to point around the Sisowith area to try to find us some seats. Ultimately, a spot was found for us on a local bus. While we knew it would probably take us anything up to 7 hours on one of these things, we were simply relieved to be on our way. We gratefully thanked our driver with an extra few dollars, worth it for the smile alone, and got on board leaving him with our names and regards.

Surprisingly, the bus journey was smooth and much quicker than anticipated. The vehicle itself was half empty, unlike the tourist versions that we had been trying to board. The leather seats were pockmarked and the faux Victorian-like fringed curtains faintly musty, but, ignoring the local persistently staring at us from behind his surgical mask, the passage was still surprisingly comfortable. The Cambodian countryside was a picture of quiet simplicity, peppered with farming fields and stilted houses under which families gathered to eat and socialize. After a while, it began to pass us by in a bit of a haze, as our heavy eyes fell from the exhaustion of our earlier journey.

We paused at a couple of road stops along the way where I was amused by Una and Ruth's horror at the boiled, upturned, kumquat decorated turtles, and locals chowing down on deep fried crickets. The toothless old guy sitting in front of us seemed to be enjoying the bugs as he turned around to gives us grin while sucking in and gumming down on a grasshopper leg.

People got on, people got off, fruit sellers advertised their wares and small children tried to get a dollar out of you for the pleasure of using the squatter, everything on sale was four times what the local beside you was paying for the same thing, but then that's capitalism for you.

Back on the bus I watched the world go by and its colour change as the day moved on. Motorbikes are the main mode of transport here and minute by minute they passed us by carrying saffron wrapped monks or complete families. Every house had a squared sump pond, some full, some dry, and in most cases a cow and some foul. Flowers decorated each garden, and every 400 yards or so was a blue banner advertising the Peoples Communist Party.

After 5 hours of counting the dates above the doors of the stilted houses, we arrived in Siem Reap, just as dusk was settling in across the sky. The bus meandered its way up and down the red dust roads of the town which was much bigger than I expected, eventually pulling into a gated depot of sorts.
The gates were closed behind the bus while we got off and reclaimed our bags. When they were opened however, a sea of Tuk Tuk drivers swelled in on top of us, each trying to take out bags and insisting we go with them. Like a ray of sanity within the madness, miraculously, a kindly looking man appeared out of the cloud holding a sign with my name on it.


What a clever chap our Phnom Penh driver was. As soon as we had pulled off in the bus, he texted his buddy in Siem Reap with the bus number and our names. Believe me, right then and there, surrounded by a herd of over-eager and over-heated Tuk Tukkers, our new friend, Kosal, was welcome. The familiarity may have been fake, but it quickly freed us from a very surreal moment.

Happily, Kosal did not have any interest in trying to sell us a particular guest house. On the night we arrived, the town was particularly busy, but he patiently drove us around to more than a few different places of our choosing to try to find a bed. Eventually, we found a spot about 10 minutes walk from Bar Street, comfortable and clean, where we threw ourselves into a much overdue shower.

Kosal ended up becoming our guide and driver for the next 3 days we were there, and a fantastically patient one he was at that.