My Boy Notch
Part 3 of my Mongolian diary…
Notch has become my horse. Pujay, the camp herdsman (who looks about a hundred and eight but is apparently only forty), brings him over to me straight away now when I go to get a pony from the line. I called him Notch because of his ear. In Mongolia ear-snipping is a way of marking ownership, much like our branding, but the camp owner has bought so many horses from all over the place that there is no uniform mark; some have an ear snipped, some have both ears snipped, some have brands; it doesn’t seem to make much difference. Poor old Notch has three marks. I think as horses go, Notch looks like a rock star. He’s not the biggest horse at camp but he’s a beautiful fudge colour with a wicked two-tone mane. I wish my hair was that
naturally funky.
Usually if I try to commune with the horses whilst they’re free-range, they just swish their tails and wander further away to graze; I don’t think they really understand the concept of being friends with people. The first few times I spotted Notch grazing up on the hillside and tried to go and say hi he did the same, but after a while I think he just got curious about this strange human who didn’t seem to be trying to catch him. We had the most magical afternoon on the hillside amongst the wild flowers which I will treasure forever. For once he didn’t wander off and instead he just stood looking at me intrigued and suffered me to take a few snaps. Eventually he let me get close enough to give him a good scratch behind the ear which must have broken the last of his defences as we spent the rest of the afternoon playing on the hillside.
He was so relaxed with me that he was quite happy to doze off standing next to me and in the end we both hit the ground and shared a nice nap in the flowers like a scene from a fairy-tale. Best nap ever.
To ride, Notch is kind of crazy. A more perfect pony you could not imagine at walk, trot and canter; ask him for more speed or less speed and he’ll immediately obey, it’s the gallop where he gets a bit bananas. He’s faster than I would have thought possible for a pony his size and his sturdy hooves hit the ground quicker than a drumroll when he’s galloping. He is not a pony that needs a lot of encouragement; one utter of the word ‘choo’, the Mongolian command for ‘go’, and he’s off. If Pujay sneaks up behind you and whistles through his teeth the way he does when he rounds them up in the morning then you’re on the horizon quicker than you can blink too. I am a total speed-freak and I love nothing more
than the feeling of the wind rushing past my face so I love my speedy golden boy. That said though, I’m still a bit rusty and out of practise and I’m not completely at full-confidence again yet; I’m still holding onto the front of the saddle when we gallop. I’m not sure how anyone could let go on Notch; I can do it for short periods but he’s so excitable and such a sharp-turner when he’s going flat-out that he can fling you off at a split-second’s notice. Not intentionally of course but he just has his own way of turning. If the rest of the group is veering towards the right, he’ll continue dead straight until he decides to turn and then he’ll corner sharper than a cat to get himself back on the same trajectory as them. The skin on my fingers is ripped to pieces from trying to stay on during his high-speed surprise turns. He’d probably be the best gymkhana pony ever if someone brought him to Britain.
Still, I would far rather have my Notch with his speed, eagerness to please and shared siestas than a steady, slow horse that has to be asked thirty times to do something.
The Horses of the Mongolian Steppes
Here’s the second installation of my Mongolian Diary:
The life of a Mongolian horse is incomparably different to that of your average horse elsewhere. As much as possible they live completely un-tampered with lives out on the steppes in natural wild herds. Nomadic horse people follow these herds and live their lives in total symbiosis with them. To a Mongolian person a horse is so much more than just a companion or leisure animal; it is the only effective means of transport in much of the country, a currency in its own right, a means of income, and also a food source in hard times – mostly for dairy products made from mare’s milk but also the meat of the animals too. This is pretty unpalatable to many of us of course but Mongolia, whilst beautiful, is an exceptionally brutal land. The infrastructure does not allow for very much at all by way of imports – especially out in the further reaches of the country, and the rock solid earth which sees very little rainfall and spends a big chunk of the year at a bone-chilling -40C, is all but useless for crop cultivation. Herd animals are pretty much it for food. Mongolian horses aren’t named and aren’t pets – with the exception of the greatest race horses and winners. Do your family proud and you just might get a name and stay off the dinner table.
Horrible bit out of the way, being a Mongolian horse is pretty sweet up until that point. A foal is born free out there in the infinite grassland with no fields, roads or fences, and it will roam wild with its mother and its family until it is fully grown. If it’s female it will be left alone its entire life and will only have interaction with people if it needs medical attention and in the summer if she has a foal of her own she might be caught and milked before being released again.
For boys life is a bit more eventful; colts will be rounded up and (cover your eyes gents) castrated unless they show good potential as racers. This is to reduce fighting, make sure only the best males breed and make it easier to keep track of whose foals are whose. These geldings will then be trained for riding, their manes will be partially hogged (leaving their forelocks and roughly 10 inches at the base) and they will be re-released into the herd. The hogging makes them more easily identifiable so that when the horsemen round up the herd in the morning they can tell which ones are trained and pick them out, in the evening they’ll be untethered and left to gallop off and re-join their family. During the winter they might go as long as six to eight months without much human interaction at all but once trained they stay trained and they will still be rideable in Spring when they’re rounded up again for a new haircut.
On the other hand, if a colt is particularly speedy and handsome he could be paired with a young jockey (typically 8-11 years old) and together they will train for the Mongolian horse-races, in particular the Naadam festival which is like the Superbowl, world-cup and Christmas all wrapped up in one for Mongolian people. If he’s really lucky and he does well he might get a herd of his own one day, in which case he’ll get to be like Boss – our palomino herd stallion. Never caught or ridden anymore; Boss spends his days eating, sleeping, bossing other horses around and having his way with the enormous herd of ladies at his disposal. At the moment two of his sons are preparing for the races and if they’re lucky they might get to retire in the same style in a few years too.
Mongolian horses are beautiful and come in a spectacular variety of colours, including a lot of ones that are quite rare elsewhere; buckskins, grullos, creams, duns and roans for instance. They also commonly have distinctive two-tone manes, dorsal stripes and vivid zebra bars on their legs; clues to the primitive nature of the breed and how close they are to the Przewalski Wild Horse – the first true horse. Wild Przewalskis are found only in Mongolia and are to horses what wolves are to dogs, which lends quite a lot of credibility to the strongly held Mongolian belief that they were the first to domesticate and ride horses.
Picking up the Pieces of an Old Life
“Why do you go away? So that you can come back. So that you can see the place you came from with new eyes and extra colours. And the people there see you differently, too. Coming back to where you started is not the same as never leaving.”
Terry Pratchett, A Hat Full of Sky
Where to even begin writing this blog entry – how to possibly put a year of life in Thailand and 6 months of adventures on the Mongolian steppes and South East Asian Peninsula into words now that the time has come. How to summarise so many different experiences and emotions in a paltry 1000 words? How do you write about your feelings when you’re not even sure what they are? I suppose that’s why it’s taken me so long to get round to it; TV and cider and generally being lazy has seemed more alluring than confronting this post since I touched down on home soil. “Did you have a good time?” “Yeah it was amazing thanks.” Utterly insufficient.
The first dizzyingly disconcerting thing that struck me upon landing in Europe after 18 months in Asia, was that everyone here is a giant. For the first time in longer than I could remember, at 5 foot 6” I wasn’t amongst the tallest people in any given room. The second thing, on leaving Berlin Shonefeld airport jetlagged for a long weekend reunion with my brother, his girlfriend and my best friend, was the traffic; so eerily quiet and safe and orderly – science-fiction orderly. I stood at the side of the road by a zebra-crossing; backpack attached, trying to get my bearings and find a taxi. I’m used to leaving an airport to 50 men shouting “taxi!” in my face, who I would then normally skirt before heading out of the airport to hail one where it’s cheaper. Here there’s a system. The cars on the road in front of me had slowed and come to a stop and their drivers were looking at me in annoyance. I stared at them baffled for a minute before realising it must be because I was standing at a zebra-crossing; those are just meaningless face-paint for roads in Thailand. I crossed the road and the traffic started moving again; it’s like friggin’ Blade Runner. So it goes.
A friend of mine told me that ending a period of long-term travel is like breaking-off a long-term relationship; even when you know it’s for the best it hurts like crazy and it takes approximately the same amount of time to assess it and file it away in your brain box as you spent engaged in it. A year still to go then. One of the hardest parts has been deciding what to do now. The last 4-5 years have been utterly devoted to travel; planning it, saving for it, writing about it, doing it. What on earth happens next? Well more of it hopefully but how, where and when? For now I have returned to the City Council, something I was dreading but which has actually been great – I’m very lucky to have been able to walk back into a decent job and I’ve been overwhelmed by how positive people have been to see me again and how many people have been following my exploits; thank-you to you all.
2014 is the year though; new year, new start – no more moping and being indecisive (how many times have you heard that before?). This year is a bit different though; today is the very first day of my masters in Professional Writing, which will hopefully lead to me one day being able to work from my laptop not an office – leaving me free to globe-trot at will. The masters has forced me to go part-time from the day-job; which also means I’m now broke and will be forced to finally put my money where my mouth is and make some income with creativity. Expect in the next few weeks some shameless plugging of Blue Fairy Art (the namesake of this little blog – you can find it on facebook) and finally the publishing of my Mongolian diary. Happy travels bloggers.
These Things Stay
And so it comes to pass that 437 days after I left the green green grass of home I find myself sitting in an Ulaanbaatar guesthouse in Mongolia contemplating my impending return and trying to figure out how on earth I feel about it. It changes fairly often; my conflicting thoughts seem to be caught in a ceaseless battle for supremacy, fantasies of propa’ British chips, a warm bath and a soft bed declaring war against agonising homesickness for Thailand and a wanderlust that doesn’t know where it wants to go but isn’t done yet. I’ve a zillion blogs to write once I have the time and internet connection to dedicate to them but for now the most pressing issue is that in 2 days time I will be out of Asia for the first time since I left and back on European soil (in Berlin for a reunion with my brother). One week from now I will be in England in the warm, safe and cosy embrace of my parents’ home. After that I’ll be back in the old pubs and the same office and soon it will all be just a selection of memories, souvenirs and photos. How strange it will be to be in a country where my face doesn’t immediately betray me as a foreigner, even stranger still to be in a country where everyone speaks my language and ordering food or jumping in a cab is no more complicated than a sneeze, albeit a lot more expensive. We drive on the left. Right? British pounds again, what do they look like? I can’t remember. I’ll be converting them to Thai baht same as I do with Mongolian Tugrik to work out how much things are. Will I slip straight back into straightening my hair and putting on make-up for nights out or will I remain the shabby, dishevelled thing I have become?
That’s a funny one; I seem to have completely changed appearance since I’ve been gone. Here’s me the weekend before I left; dark hair, fair skin – standard Celtic-blood girl.
Here’s me now – after a month in Mongolia with no mirror I did a double-take when I finally encountered one. Brown as a fresh-baked biscuit and barely space to put a pin between the freckles. Sun-bleached and chap-lipped.
Mongolia has been every kind of heaven but I shall save it for another day. One thing I will say is thank heaven for the Welsh. A very random statement I know but whenever I felt particularly conflicted about going home during my time here, Mongolia did a very good job of suddenly becoming exceptionally Welsh. Or rather my little network of valleys (a word invariably said in a Welsh accent) did. The Mongolian language sounds pretty similar – they have the same ‘ll’ sound, and the gently rolling hills and rugged meadows of the steppes could be straight out of R. S. Thomas (except for the yaks).
One day, shortly before I left, it happened to rain pretty hard whilst I was out visiting the neighbours with my ger-mates Uurnaa and another volunteer named Severigne. Thankfully it was only the second time it had done this but I was struck by the beauty of the valley’s thunderous grey skies, shimmering wet grass and pillows of fat cloud tumbling over the hills. “In some ways it’s even more beautiful when it rains,” I mused aloud to Sevi who gave a non-committal smile. “Maybe that’s just the Brit in me,” she laughed and agreed it must be. How much it looks like Wales in the rain though! And how that warms my heart and makes me dream of home. Tonight I share my dorm with 3 Welsh lads on an adventure – only the second Welsh accents I have heard since departing except from my visiting cousin. As soon as I heard them chatting an enormous grin spread from ear to ear, the Welsh accent just makes you feel better; it’s fab’lus. “D’you mind if I put this by there?” One asked, depositing his bag next to mine. “Tidy – cheers luv.” My heart grew three sizes. It’s almost as if they were sent to make me realise how much I love home. I’ve been singing Karl Jenkins’ Grey in my head ever since that day looking at the rainy hills; it sounds like home to me.
I think that all the lasting things are grey;
the clouds above the mountains when it’s late.
When all around you changes, these things stay.
The lichen where the quarry works decay,
the tides that fill the harbours in the strait.
I think that all the lasting things are grey.
The twilight in the coombe at close of day,
the ash the coal fire leaves within the grate.
When all around you changes, these things stay.
The mist that hides the slag-heaps’ scars away,
the winter rain that shines up on the slate.
I think that all the lasting things are grey.
The seagulls wheeling above Cardiff Bay,
the patient sea that bore a nation’s freight.
When all around you changes, these things stay.
The home we build the steel and stone today,
and blend our light and darkness to create.
I think that all the lasting things are grey.
When all around you changes, these things stay.
… from “Grey” by Karl Jenkins, words by Graham Davies
Galloping With The Hordes
The time for applying for visas finally arrived for Adam and I’s epic trans-Mongolian train ride home from Thailand. I was initially a little concerned about the Russian visa since I’ve heard it’s notoriously complicated to get one but I’d done my research and was pretty sure we were good to start putting things in stone and making them official. In order to get a Russian visa you must effectively provide the embassy with your life story, a detailed itinerary including all your train tickets and hostel bookings, insurance print-outs, invitation letters from Russian consulates – all that jazz. You also need to apply from your home country; unless you’ve been in the country you’re applying from for longer than 6 months. No Problemo; been here 13.
So, the day arrives, I walk up to the counter with my lovingly compiled tree’s-worth of paperwork that I’ve spent an entire year organising and planning and pass it over the counter with my passport to a lady with a face like a pissed-off stork. Clenching my sweaty palms I try and stop the excited grin from spreading over my cheeks as she flicks sullen-faced through the pages of my passport before closing it, placing it back on my pile of paperwork and pushing it back towards me. “Can’t give you a visa” she says and starts filing her nails (she doesn’t actually start filing her nails but in my head she is actually now Ghost Busters’ Janine Melnitz but Russian and evil). The room seems to have gone very quiet and there’s a buzzing in my ears.
“Why?” I whimper nervously.
“You’re on a tourist visa.”
I grab at straws; “but look, you can see I’ve been here a year on work visas – I’m only on a tourist visa now because I’ve just left my job so that I can travel… to Russia!”
“We don’t issue visas to people on tourist visas.” Then as an afterthought she adds, “your country and Russia have a… difficult relationship.” Well shit now we do! Daydreams of Russian ballet, tzars, Siberian tundra, lakes, palaces and vodka bubbled up in my head and unceremoniously popped. I stood there dithering for ten minutes unable to accept that the dissertation’s worth of work I’d put into organising that trip could be invalidated that quickly and easily.
In the end Adam and I spent an afternoon crooning into beer bottles and trying to work out an alternate fun way home that doesn’t involve Russia. The two options were; all the Stans and the middle east (not wildly appealing at this particular moment in time) and going the old Raj route and taking a boat around India, Saudi Arabia and through the Suez canal before crossing Europe by train (wildly appealing but also wildly unaffordable). Game over.
One of the things I’d been most looking forwards to was horse-trekking in Mongolia and I started to plan going as far as there and then flying over Russia to Europe. However – magic happened; Captain Planet never closes a door without opening a window etcetera. Whilst researching places to go trekking I stumbled across a job vacancy in Mongolia that called for horse-riding experience and teaching English as a second language experience. My little ears pricked up. Tentatively of course, didn’t want to get burnt again. There was a Skype interview and flights to sort out and… shudder… visas. However (drumroll please), I am very pleased to finally announce officially that as of this week I have obtained all of these things and am moving to Mongolia for a month! Ta-da!
I will be living in a proper Mongolian ger (tent) right out on the steppes, riding horses all day as an instructor for trekkers, drinking round camp fires in the evening, fresh air, no internet, no mobile phone, no nada – just me, my trusty steed and nature. Can’t wait! Eira Morgan-Jones: winning at travelling right now.
Farewell Ling Lek
And so it is that my long year of being an English teacher for Kindergarten 1 at Anuban Lop Buri draws to a close. It’s been everything I thought it would be and yet also nothing like. Saying goodbye to my 300 pupils was very hard but I’m so glad I stayed with them for the full year. I suppose we’ve had oddly similar experiences; my 300 and I started school on the same day, nervous and excited and not really knowing what to expect and we’ve progressed from there. Getting to know our teachers, making friends, finding our way around and in the end having to say goodbye.
I’ve cuddled them when they cried, played with them, taught them and dealt with their occasional puddles, projectile vomit and attempts at armed take-over. I’ve loved them so much it ached a little bit and I’ve been more frustrated by them than I’ve ever experienced. Most of them have changed quite a bit over the course of the year, some for better and some for worse sadly. Chick-Chick for instance – the first lesson I taught her she was vivacious and engaging, constantly doing chicken impressions every time I sang Old MacDonald which is how she earned her name. Her class has the bitchiest cliques of girls however, who slowly ostracised her from their groups and now she sits at the back of the class and rarely raises her hand or speaks up. Little mouse however has had an opposite transformation. He has a face that always looks sad and to start with he would never get involved or open his mouth. After a while I brought him up to the front of the class for a game though and deliberately asked him questions I knew he could answer, slowly his confidence grew and now he’s reaching for the sky every time I need a volunteer and if he gets things wrong he just laughs at himself and tries again.
On the last day of school I thought I was holding myself together pretty well but as my favourite little group of girls were playing their best game and racing up to tickle me and then dash I felt tears start to threaten. I held them back until the children had filed to the bathroom to brush their teeth after lunch and then let them spill over right there in the corridor. One of the teachers walking past smiled at me and then ducked into a class room, barely a second had passed before there was a rousing chorus of “awwwwwww” from all the TAs so she’d obviously just told them about the sobbing farang in the hallway.
I decided to have all my children do British colouring-in sheets for their last lesson since Teacher’s going home there – and explained about England, Ireland, Scotland and Wales not all being the same thing (something which has driven me nuts whilst I’ve been here) and despite putting up pictures of all the images for them to see and stating unequivocally – “the dragon is red, the leprechaun is green etc…” I got some fantastically coloured zombie/smurf queens which amused me greatly being not much of a royalist.
Just as an aside, Thai 4-year-olds trying to pronounce ‘leprechaun’ is always good for a giggle. They all found it hilarious when I pointed to the picture and said ‘ne si mai dee!’ which means bad behaviour and is what I say to them when I catch them stabbing each other with pencils or trying to round-house kick their classmates in the face. For all that they’re lovely; classes with 40 4-year-olds, hardly any mutual language and teaching assistants who spend 90% of the lesson outside on their iphones do have a tendency to get a little out of hand.
One thing I did discover along with fellow teacher James was that it helps to say goodbye if you bring sweets for all your pupils in your last lesson. Then – whilst you’re trying to say a heart-felt goodbye and express how much you’ll miss them – they’ll be fighting over who got which colour, moaning that they don’t like the one they got and can they swap and shoving the ones they have in their pockets so they can come up and pretend they didn’t get any. That makes saying goodbye to the ling lek (little monkeys) much easier.
The Versatile Blogger Award
It’s been a good few days for me; I submitted my first visa application in Bangkok for my impending adventures (1 down, 4 to go), managed to find reasonably-priced farang-sized trousers in the land of size zero (wish that had happened 6 months ago so I wouldn’t have had to wear patched rags that are falling to pieces for so long) and then came home to find myself nominated by the lovely Karla of Traveller Soul (www.travellersoul76.com) for the Versatile Blogger award. The sun is shining on Eira! Although I wish the actual sun would chill out a bit – I’m pretty sure it’s trying melt my metal roof right now. Anyway, to the task at hand – thank-you so much to Karla for having followed me since I started and always having been so supportive!
So as a nominee, here are 5 very versatile facts about me:
- In addition to teaching, since I’ve been in Thailand I’ve also been re-designing an Indian restaurant and struck up a bit of a partnership with a
local tattooist that’s seen me designing tattoos for half the farangs who pass through Lop Buri.
- My general philosophy in life is that if something terrifies you then you should probably do it; see previous blogs on descending Mt Sinai, getting lost alone at night on Malaysian hills, galloping at 40 miles an hour with my hand in a horse’s mouth, drinking with Yugoslavian gangsters and …shudder …performing karaoke. Ranulph Fiennes said something along the lines of “should you find yourself at the edge of a roaring river where a little dingy is tied up; get in the dinghy immediately and set sail. Don’t wait and ponder, you’ll only psyche yourself out. Just get in the dingy and see where it takes you!” Granted the man has lost half his fingers on his adventures and is probably certifiably insane, or at least undiagnosed ADHD, but I like his style.
- I am a part-Welsh, part-English mongrel and I like to refer to myself as just British. One of my biggest pet hates when travelling is this sentence; “British? So English right?” No-no.
- I am really looking forwards to getting back to my art business (www.bluefairyart.wix.com/eira) and finishing all my projects. Particularly a graphic novel I am currently part-way through and I get to work on with my brother and his magical computer skills.
- In precisely 1 month and 3 weeks time I will be leaving Bangkok from Hualamphong Station and taking the train all the way to Paris via 11 different countries. Then it’s just a nice relaxing ferry crossing to bring me home the night before my birthday after 443 days away from all my nearest and dearest. Don’t worry – it won’t be the end of my adventures though!
Here’s the 5 fabulously versatile bloggers I nominate:
- Rarasaur (www.rarasaur.wordpress.com); marvellous observations on life, the universe and everything.
- Toemailer (www.toemail.wordpress.com); bonkers pictures of happy toes across the globe interspersed with art and photography!
- Eating Kent (www.eatingkent.blogspot.co.uk); one woman’s amusing quest to do the locally-sourced, seasonal food thing. It’s not often a blog makes you hungry and laugh.
- Clotilda Jamcracker (www.clotildajamcracker.wordpress.com); dreamily illustrated blog full of colourful musings.
- Sotardalen Nokota Horses (www.nokotahorse.wordpress.com); probably my favourite blog ever – makes me happy every time I see a new post! But that’s mostly because I’m a horse nut. It’s been beautiful following these wild horses settle down in Sweden.