First day in the Tuwa camp

In the afternoon we get the first visit of Purvee, the wife of the shaman and the 20-year-old Monkoo. “Do you want tea or coffee?”, asks Tanja being glad about our first visit. “Coffee”, they say both like from one mouth. Tsaya who speaks perfectly English explains later that here in the taiga people drink every day tea. “Coffee is something special for us”, she says. We talk rudimentary to our guests and have a lot of fun with from ourselves often wrong pronunciation of Mongolian words. The women have a curious look at our ger and the equipment. They say “ger dulaan”, (“ger warm”). We find out, that in a tepee which they call Urtz, it is much colder. “In the front warm and behind near the tarp cold”, they explain.

After both women have gone Tanja starts to collect snow for our water consumption in the taiga. It was in Erdenet and in Mörön already quite extravagantly to get water with buckets by the water issuing houses. Later at Tsagaan Nuur we had to scoop water out of the frozen lake. Here we have to collect snow for our water consumption. To win one bucket water we must fill three buckets snow. At the moment there is not much snow, so it is a time-consuming work. As Tanja the first snow brings we pour it in the wok which we put in the opening of the stove to melt it.

In the evening visit Tsaya and her husband Ultsan. They enjoy fresh pressed coffee with milk and sugar and biscuits. “It is nice in your ger”, believes Tsaya. “Yes, really comfortably”, means Ultsan. “We also feel very well at our home. Only the fire we do not control yet. Sometimes it is warm up to 36 °C and then it is cold again. The right mixture would feel well. This can go on the circulation. Shagai has pulled a tent square over the ger to protect it otherwise the reindeers nibble the felt. This additional cover makes it even warmer inside than before. But I think in a few days we know how much wood in the stove must burn to hold the temperature consistently”, I tell our new neighbours, the log cabin of the both stands beside our ger.