Lonely – Blizzard

Day: 306

Sunrise:
05:16

Sunset:
21:22

Total kilometers:
1361

Soil condition:
Ice, snow

Temperature – Day (maximum):
15°C

Temperature – day (minimum):
5°C

Temperature – Night:
minus 9°C

Latitude:
51°39’155”

Longitude:
099°21’977”

Maximum height:
1858 m above sea level

Since Tanja left, I feel like a hermit who doesn’t live in a cave but in a tepee. As already mentioned, I am not visited by the Tuwa in my tent and, surprisingly, I don’t feel the slightest need to visit the inhabitants of the valley. So being alone is fine with me. And yet this state triggers a strange sensation in me. I am aware that being an absolute loner contradicts human nature as a social being in constant communication. When Tanja is there, we talk a lot about our experiences, about the people we’ve been living with for six months, about the past and the future and try to clarify the question of the meaning of life, among other things. We philosophize and analyze. It gives us great pleasure to get to the bottom of things, especially our own nature. But these days it’s quiet in my Indian tent. No conversations, no radio, no television, newspapers or magazines, simply nothing to occupy or drown my brain. Only the incessant call of a cuckoo penetrates the tent wall. The boiling kettle on the stove also hums quietly to itself. Sometimes one of the reindeer trots past to drink my urine from the hole behind the tepee. I got into the habit of always leaving water in the same place and thus created a reindeer drinker. At first there was just a small bush and some gray grass. In the meantime, the reindeer have dug a small pit about 30 centimeters deep with their hooves, which gets a little deeper and wider every day. In this way I help to ensure that the dear little animals get enough minerals and salt.

As I don’t have much to do at the moment apart from my work at home, I’m probably only really becoming aware of being alone. I sit in my chair, look out of the opening of the tepee at the mountains, which are at least as beautiful as the movie trailers of the Walt Disney productions, and let my thoughts flow.

“Is that boredom what I’m feeling right now?” an intuition crosses my brain. For a moment, I think about whether the current sensation has to do with monotony, monotony and ordinariness. Do I really feel bored? I have come to the conclusion that this is not the case. Nevertheless, after six months of living with the Tuwa, I would like to move on. Bilgee’s plan to leave us early and the poor care our horses were given during the winter interfered with our plans and ideas. This triggered the current situation. And who knows? Maybe it’s a good thing?

During the quiet days, my mood barometer plummets, which is why I feel listless, almost a little depressed. “I’m not going to get psychotic, am I?” I say, startled. Then I put my state of mind down to being a hermit. I miss Tanja. I wonder how she’s doing right now? In the evening I go online with my satellite phone to check whether Heinz has sent me a message. In fact, I discover a text message from Tanja forwarded to me as an e-mail; “Night still Tsagaan Nuur. Took longer than I wanted. Back tomorrow. About 2 nights on the road. Bought a lot of food. Hang in there! Miss + love you.” I’m feeling better at the moment. Of course, this is not only due to the news that we will soon have something decent to eat again, but mainly to the fact that Tanja is doing well and has survived the ride through the raging meltwater rivers, through swamps, over mountains and the trip across the Tsagaan Nuur on the dilapidated little wooden ferry.

Blizzard

In the evening, the wind picks up, which soon becomes constant. The gusts make the teepees shake and rattle. Suddenly it starts to snow heavily. I go outside to check the wooden poles that are lying on the tarpaulin to stabilize it. The snowflakes whip into my face like pinpricks. I reattach the solar panel, which has come loose and is flapping in the gusts, then hurry back into the shelter of the tipi. Mogi, who is lying at the entrance, looks up at me anxiously. “Everything’s okay,” I reassure him. Suddenly the camphounds start behaving like crazy. They bark and howl as if a bear were roaming the camp for easy prey. At first I don’t think much about the frenzy of the dogs, but after a few minutes I am struck by the frightening thought of whether one of the most dangerous predators on earth is using the favor of the storm to strike prey? Mogi is now also behaving like a madman. Suddenly he squeezes through the closed tepee opening to jump outside. In an instant, the ever-increasing storm blows the finest snowflakes inside. “Stay here!” I shout commandingly, but Mogi doesn’t take the slightest notice of me. I immediately rush after him. Not without stumbling over the large thermos flask. In the heat of the moment, the important piece of equipment falls over, spilling two liters of hot water on the floor and flooding gloves, rags and other items. “Come back inside right now!” I yell at my dog, who is wagging his tail and barking to support his colleagues in the terrible barking concert. “Get inside or I’ll tie you to the peg outside in this filthy weather! Then you can bark at the storm for hours,” I scold him, grab the leash and drag him back inside. Only now do I realize the mess the flooding has caused. “Man Mogi, now you’re allowed to sleep in the tent with me and what’s the result? Everything is under water. What a load of shit,” I curse, wipe up the water from the plastic floor and place wet shoes and horse blankets near the stove to dry them again. It’s a good thing that I don’t know at this point that the inside of the thermos flask has been broken during this action, which is why we won’t be able to store any more hot water for the next few days. If I had realized that at that moment, I would most likely have turned Mogi’s collar. However, he looks at me with his big eyes, which clearly reveal how uncomfortable the situation is for him. A few minutes later, his expression changes. “Why are you looking at me so reproachfully now? You did this shit, not me,” I ask him. “Who tripped over the thermos flask? You or me?” he seems to be trying to make me understand with his whimper. “I only fell over it because you jumped into that bad storm and didn’t close the tepee behind you,” I reply, still angry, to which he buries his head between his front legs without comment.

Meanwhile, the fine snow blows into my realm through the tipi’s flue to dust everything. The heat melts the frozen water immediately, making it wet. Even, or I should say especially, my sleeping area is covered in the penetrating white. I am now forced to move the sleeping bag away from the stove to spread it out at the end of the sleeping area. But even there, the snow blows in and thaws instantly. Meanwhile, the gusts are hammering so hard against the tepee that I think it could collapse at any moment. The snow now penetrates through every crack into the interior, putting an end to any fun, if it was fun at all. Now nervous, I check the canvas for cracks with a flashlight. In fact, the storm has shifted or slipped the tarpaulins in some places. I get up and bring them back into position. My gaze falls on some of the sensitive electronics lying on Bilgee’s bed. It is also coated with a light white layer. I immediately dry the power supply unit and chargers with a tea towel and pack them in waterproof bags. Then I lie back down on my sleeping bag and look up at the open crown of the roof through which the storm seems to be reaching for me with its icy, sinister hands. Some of the gusts hit the groaning tent with force nine to ten winds (75 to 100 km/h). It can’t be long before the plastic sheeting that we have installed over the entrance as a light trap is simply shredded. Seriously worried, I now shine my headlamp around every few minutes to detect any cracks in the early stages. If the wind were to push through a hole, the tipi would inflate like a balloon in a fraction of a second and be blown away by the wind.

The rattling and drumming is deafeningly loud. Mogi looks frightened. “It’s all right. If the place collapses or flies away, we’ll fly to our tent,” I reassure him. No sooner has the thought of our tent crossed my mind than I am startled, jump up from my bed, rush to the door, open the fabric and shine my headlamp through the thick drifting snow to the outside. “Thank God,” I say quietly as I realize that our fabric house has weathered the storm so far. I quickly close the door fabric again, which is actually one of our horse blankets that we have repurposed for this purpose, and slip into my sleeping bag. But even when I move to the outside wall of the tepee, I get soaked by the penetrating snow. It won’t be long before the sleeping bag is soaked with moisture. Soon desperate, I look around to see if there is anything I can do to protect myself. Then my eyes fall on a blue plastic sheet on which Tanja’s things are lying. I immediately pull it out and cover the bed and my sleeping bag with it. “Now I’ll stay dry,” I think to myself contentedly and try to get some sleep despite the raging blizzard. Because of the noise, I fall from one short nap to another. I keep checking the tent wall. Meanwhile, everything in the tipi is white. Even Mogi is covered in snow. However, the tent canvas and poles hold out. The roar lasts all night and doesn’t end until the next morning. In the morning I learn that some of the Tuwa tepees were covered last night and that hardly anyone in the valley slept a wink.

Tanja tells me later that she and Bilgee had left Tsagaan Nuur the evening before the blizzard. “It didn’t take long for us to realize that something fierce was coming up. Bilgee said we needed somewhere sheltered from the wind for the night. We rode until 22:00 at night and actually found a sheltered spot for our tent in a valley. We had just fallen asleep when the inferno broke out above us. The tent was shaking so much that I thought it would just be torn apart. Snow penetrated through the ventilation slits into the tent and thawed immediately due to our body heat. Unfortunately, we forgot to close the slits, which allowed the snow to make its way inside. It was a bad night. At about 1:00 a.m. I went out to put a blanket over Naraa and adjust Tuya’s coat, which had slipped out of place. I tell you, you could hardly see your own hand in front of your eyes because of all the snow. It really was a bad storm. The next morning, our awning was full of snow and our equipment was buried under it. And that was at the end of May. Imagine that. A really tough country,” she reported.

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