Mogi’s hunting instinct and traveling with the time machine

Day: 46

Sunrise:
06:36

Sunset:
19:40

As the crow flies:
25,22

Daily kilometers:
30

Total kilometers:
579

Soil condition:
Meadow

Temperature – Day (maximum):
24 °C

Temperature – day (minimum):
18° C

Temperature – Night:
0° degrees

Latitude:
48°58’121”

Longitude:
102°27’258”

Maximum height:
1491 m above sea level

Time of departure:
11:50

Arrival time:
18:30

A beautiful cloudless blue sky welcomes us this morning. There is no sign of the sub-zero temperatures at night. On the contrary, the mercury rises to almost 30 degrees in the sun. That’s a temperature difference of 38 degrees between day and night. This stark difference between warm and cold alone shows what a tough country Mongolia is. Everything can change in an instant. From beautiful to unsightly. From hot to bitterly cold. From sunshine to snowfall. From friendly to dismissive. From hospitality to hostility. It simply has it all. As soon as we feel safe and everything goes according to plan, something happens that we never dreamed would happen. Flexibility, composure, openness and acceptance are fundamental virtues in this country.

I’m sitting in the saddle, looking at the almost indescribably beautiful landscape and letting my thoughts wander. Your head is finally free again. The stress of everyday life in our industrial age is making us more and more ill every day. More and more often I notice a free spirit. A mind that is not flooded with an immense traffic of thoughts that causes only one thing – stress. Nonsensical stress. Although life out here in the wilderness can often be exhausting, massively exhausting and uncomfortable, life takes on a deeper quality. Every day is so full of experiences and emotions that I feel like I’ve lived a week. A week, on the other hand, has the life content of a month. If we are lucky, things happen during this period that influence our lives and have a lasting impact. As I have often experienced during a trip, some moments feel as if I am traveling back in time with a machine. It feels like my life is being extended many times over. As if I were catapulted through space and time with my body and mind to experience stories for which I would need many incarnations in a normal life. It’s a strange feeling, but often a nice one. But it is also a torn between desired comfort and any form of discomfort. A hot bath and freezing miserably in his unwashed body God. Clean, fragrant clothes or dirty, smoky laundry from the campfire. Eating something familiar or shoveling in unfamiliar fatty goat meat or offal to satisfy an overwhelming hunger. It’s being torn between a nice bed or one and the same sleeping bag that you spend months in. A supposedly safe roof over your head or a damp canvas tent flapping in a storm. Perhaps it is precisely the friction between the two opposites. The contrasts of comfortable and uncomfortable that make my life more intense. Who add the salt in the soup to my life. They provide me with a thousand and one unforgettable stories and experiences that I would never experience if I were sitting at my desk at home. Even though there are times when I wish I could get out of here and let my system anoint my body, mind and soul in the western world of consumerism, I usually prefer life out here. It simply offers more fullness and is many times longer and more intense.

“Denis look! Is that a sheep over there?” Tanja’s call snaps me out of my thoughts. “Looks like it,” I reply and watch the animal, which has obviously been abandoned by its herd. Mogi has now also discovered it and races towards the lonely woolly animal like an arrow. “He’s not going to attack the sheep!” I shout. As soon as I close my mouth, he reaches the sheep and chases it in front of him. “That doesn’t look good!” yells Tanja, whereupon we gallop after the sheep to protect it from our crazy dog. We watch in horror as Mogi pulls the poor animal to the ground and bites it. “Mogi! Mogiiiii! Will you stop!” we shout without any success. I get off the horse and hand the reins to Tanja. Then I run after the dog. The sheep managed to get free again, but this time Mogi got it on the neck. Ulzii storms past me and shouts at Mogi too. “Hold the sheep! Hold the sheep for God’s sake!” I shout out of breath because then we have the chance to protect it from this dog. Ulzii reaches it and takes it between his protective legs. He kicks at the madly behaving dog. However, Mogi tirelessly tries to bite the woolly animal again. With rattling lungs, I reach the scene of the unequal battle. “Mogiiii! For fuck’s sake! Leave the sheep alone!” I yell, grabbing him by the collar and flinging him through the air so that he flips 360 degrees. As soon as he is back on his feet, he attacks again. He seems to have gone completely mad. His hunting instinct is obviously so strongly developed that he no longer perceives the outside world. I give him a few kicks and then grab him by the back of the neck. He looks at me and seems to come to his senses. Ulzii and I examine the animal. It is injured under the right front armpit. But it doesn’t look life-threatening. We leave it free. It jumps away, bleating and completely terrified, while Mogi whines with excitement and wants to chase after the animal. “If a shepherd sees this, he shoots Mogi,” explains Ulzii. “Hm, it’s a dog that grew up in the city. He doesn’t know sheep, goats, cattle, horses and everything else that runs around here. I have no idea how we can get him to stop hunting,” I reply, my lungs burning and aching. “We can’t let him run free anymore,” Ulzii reflects. “Who knows, maybe the thrashing we just gave him will teach him a lesson?” I hope.

At lunchtime we take a break in the sun at around 28 degrees. We sit down together on the dry grass, drink hot tea from the thermos flask, eat peanuts, cookies, a jar of cucumber and a few slices of cheese. All supplies that we will soon no longer have in this form. “It’s fantastic how warm it’s gotten again,” I enthuse. “Yes, it can still be warm during the day in September. That’s normal here. Only the nights are often cold. There is also little rainfall in the fall. That’s why this is also the time of forest fires,” explains Bilgee. “Well then, we’ve had a strange fall the last two weeks. It rained a lot and wasn’t exactly warm during the day either. It would be fantastic if that improved,” I hope with a laugh.

Due to water priority, we don’t find a suitable camp until 18:30. After 30 kilometers of riding and six hours in the saddle, we are all pretty tired. Although we are setting up camp here for two days, Bilgee wants to continue riding tomorrow. His main motivation for being on this trip is first and foremost the hunt. The money comes second. “We’ll reach good hunting grounds tomorrow. It would be nice if we took our rest days there first,” he says. As the success of this expedition depends to a large extent on the motivation of our men, we are happy to agree.

In the evening, we all sit together in front of our horse-drawn carriages, looking into the crackling fire and drinking hot tea. The thermometer is at zero degrees, giving us a relatively warm night. As the moon rises, it bathes the valley and the nearby mountains in a wonderful cold light. A herd of horses comes to visit us. Their snorting and whinnying make Mogi look up. He barks to show us that strangers have come to the camp. “It’s just horses, Mogi,” Tanja reassures him.

We look forward to your comments!