Oblique tones

Day: 338-339

Sunrise:
05:06/05:07

Sunset:
21:37

Total kilometers:
1540

Soil condition:
Grass

Temperature – Day (maximum):
25°C

Temperature – day (minimum):
18 °C

Temperature – Night:
0 °C

Latitude:
50°55’844”

Longitude:
100°15’005”

Maximum height:
1654 m above sea level

As there are supposedly no horse thieves in this area either, we refrain from the guard shifts, much to the relief of Khurgaa and Bumbayr. They use the rest days to play cards with a friend of Bumbayr’s who lives in a yurt not far from here. They whoop, cheer and romp around so much that we are worried that they might dismantle the small tent we have provided for them.

As always on rest days, I am busy recording our experiences when suddenly I hear loud, really awful, remarkably bad Mongolian rock music. “What’s that?” I ask, startled. “Khurgaa and Bumbayr listen to music on their MP4 players,” says Tanja. “I don’t believe it. So Khurgaa didn’t need the battery to make a phone call after all,” I reply and I’m sorry to have charged the thing for him. Because I am unable to write a single line in this noise, I jump up, go to our companions’ tent and ask them to turn down their playback device. “We will,” they promise. As soon as I sit in my folding chair, the weird notes once again roar the birds out of the trees, the grasshoppers out of the grass and me out of my chair. “Turn down your music. Please! I have to write. That’s my job. I can’t concentrate with the noise,” I explain. “Okay,” they say, whereupon the sound is really only muffled. Breathing a sigh of relief, I sink into my chair, open my laptop again and gaze at the beautiful lake landscape surrounding us, with the old gnarled larch trees stretching their branches into the sky.

After the long winter, I am delighted by the lush green, the endless carpets of flowers stretching out before us, from which the white-yellow plumage of duck-like birds peeps out. My gaze glides to the nearby mountains over whose snow-covered peaks storm clouds are approaching. I squint my eyes at the powerful rays of sunlight that make their way through the cracks, crevices and valleys of the clouds and ensure that dead trees are reflected in the clear water of the lake. “A dream”, I whisper as I am about to put my observation into words when the tranquillity of this extraordinarily beautiful nature is once again disturbed by terrible noises. Now really angry, I get up again and walk to our horse boys’ vacation tent. Turn that thing down or you can ride home tomorrow, I’d like to say. Meanwhile, I ask them to allow me the peace and quiet I need to do my work as calmly as possible. “We’ll do it,” they promise again and turn down this little box, from whose tiny loudspeakers these terrible sounds that Khurgaa and Bumbayr call music are hammering out.

During the course of the day, the noiselessness usually only lasts for 20 to 30 minutes and then steadily increases. “Do the boys want to challenge me?” I wonder, which is why I’m seriously toying with the idea of sending them home straight away. But what sense does that make? We’ll be in thieves’ territory in 20 kilometers at the latest, and that’s exactly why they’re there. So I calm down and force myself to remain calm. What can we expect from a 15-year-old boy and his uncle, who has never had anything to do with foreigners in his life? This calls for our tolerance and understanding. After all, we are not in Germany but in a remote province of Mongolia.

At lunchtime, Khurgaa prepares his rancid cow fat soup, which he always offers us generously and openly. “There’s no fat in it today,” he says without mentioning that he has emptied a quarter of a bottle of our sunflower oil into the pot. As if it were the most natural thing in the world, he gets to work on Tanja’s kitchen supplies, picking up spices, stock cubes and whatever else he thinks he needs to round off his dish. Once the broth is ready, Bumbayr and the master chef sit down by the campfire and slurp and munch the food with a considerable amount of noise. This is followed by black tea with a generous amount of dried milk. As is customary in Mongolia, the tea is prepared in the bowls from which you have just eaten.

The atmosphere is relaxed despite the occasional noise pollution. Our boys organize races where I have to keep time with my wristwatch. In the afternoon, Chichierbaad, the father of Bumbayr’s 14-year-old friend Gahai, rattles into our camp on his moped. In his new uniform jacket, he gives a formal impression that does not match this lovely landscape. “I am the ranger for this region. You are in a national park and you must each buy a ticket from me,” he suddenly explains. I look at the ticket booklet he holds out to me. “Looks official,” I say. “And should we really buy tickets like that? Who knows if he hasn’t had them printed somewhere to supplement his salary with the few tourists who come here in the summer?” asks Tanja. “Maybe,” I reply and turn to the ranger. “We don’t need such a wipe,” I say firmly, laugh amiably and hand him back the booklet with the numbered cards. He looks at me a little puzzled for a moment. Then he, Bumbayr and Khurgaa also laugh heartily. Tucking his tickets into his uniform jacket, he gets on his moped and rattles back to his yurt. Just ten minutes later, he arrives again. This time without a uniform jacket. He pulls a small dried fish out of a plastic bag and gives it to us. “Tschin setgeleesee bajrlalaa” (Thank you very much), Tanja says happily. “Strange, first he wants to sell us his tickets and after we refuse, he gives us a fish. Someone should understand the Mongolians,” I wonder.

As the paint on our horses had been faded by the sun and half washed off by the rain, we used the break to re-paint them. Even if the sun signs are no guarantee for deterring horse thieves, they will make it more difficult for a thief to sell the animals.

In the evening, our boys get a net from the ranger to go fishing in the lake. They borrow my head torch and promise to return it to me intact. They actually wake me up at 1:00 a.m., give me back the lamp and proudly show me their catch. Their prey consists of at least 40 fish about 20 to 30 centimeters long.

When I want to film Khurgaa the next afternoon as he hangs the fish on a rope to dry, he says, “No photos.” “What? Not again. Why not?” “No photos,” he replies gruffly. Once again I explain that I want to document this country and our trip in pictures and film, whereupon he raises his hands in front of his face and says, “No photos!”

“It can’t go on like this. With all due tolerance, I’ve had enough of Mongolian companions. They’re loud, they moan when they run out of meat, there’s not enough fat or something else is missing from their usual diet. They do whatever they feel like doing, are unpunctual, often dishonest, selfish, self-centered, want to push through their damn lacing technique and now we are not allowed to photograph these two greenhorns for a reason we don’t understand. It’s just hair-raising,” I curse indignantly. “Why do we even have these guys with us?” asks Tanja. “Because of those fucking thieves,” I reply. “We should seriously think about going on alone. Thieves here, thieves there,” she ponders. “That would mean more harmony and peace,” I agree with her. “If the situation doesn’t improve by tomorrow, they will force us to make a decision,” Tanja concludes.

Then I suddenly run out of energy. The laptop and batteries can no longer be powered. On closer inspection of the expensive solar panel, into which I have burned new retaining holes with a red-hot nail, I discover an irreparable loose contact in the welded-in cable. “I guess that’s it for our energy production.” “What? Why?” asks Tanja. “When Bor lost his load, not only did all the eyelets break, but the cable was also damaged.” “Can’t you repair it? You’ve always come up with a solution,” says Tanja. After a further, longer examination, I realize how to bend the cable to avoid the wobble. I fix the cable with fabric tape. “We’re no longer allowed to tie it to the load during the ride, but we can use it at camp in the evening. If it hangs quietly on the tent, we should still be able to use it to generate solar energy,” I explain.

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