Ulzii, a spiritual challenge?

Day: 48

Sunrise:
06:40

Sunset:
19:37

As the crow flies:
04,79

Daily kilometers:
7

Total kilometers:
616

Soil condition:
Meadow

Temperature – Day (maximum):
27 °C

Temperature – day (minimum):
15 °C

Temperature – Night:
minus 2

Latitude:
48°56’211”

Longitude:
102°04’063”

Maximum height:
1384 m above sea level

Time of departure:
11:15

Arrival time:
12:45

After the short night, I wake Ulzii up at 8:00 a.m. as agreed. He barely makes a sound. 10 minutes later I try again. All I hear is a grumpy grunt. “Come on Ulzii, get up. We have to keep going,” I call out kindly. It then takes 45 minutes for him to leave the tent and stand around like counterfeit money. His facial expression and charisma are bad, to say the least. We don’t know what has happened to him because he doesn’t talk to us about it. “My God, he’s in a mood,” says Tanja. Bilgee, on the other hand, is balanced and friendly as always. However, he boils water on the last gas cylinder even though he has gathered enough firewood. “Ulzii, can you please tell Bilgee that we have hardly any gas left and that this bottle is our iron reserve. We can only use it in an emergency.” “I told him,” comes a curt reply. Because I can’t count on his translation this morning, I try to explain it to Bilgee myself using sign language and a few Mongolian words. He immediately turns off the stove and tells me to ask in the tourist camp store if there are any gas cartridges for sale. As soon as he has left the camp, Ulzii follows him at a pace that can hardly be described. If he didn’t put one foot in front of the other, he would fall over. “Why is he going to the tourist camp now? He’d better clear out his tent and put it back together,” I say, feeling angry inside. It doesn’t take long for Bilgee to return without success. We understand that the store is closed.

When Tanja calls for breakfast, Ulzii takes two horses to lead them to water. “Ulzii, let’s have breakfast first. Otherwise I can’t clean up my kitchen box if I have to wait for you,” Tanja asks him. “I have to give the horses water first,” he replies, ignoring Tanja’s invitation, and wobbles off in slow motion. “Ulzii, there’s no water here. The river is too far!” I shout, but he doesn’t seem to hear me. After he leaves the camp for a long time, as expected, I clear out the tent with Bilgee, roll up the sleeping mats and take down the tent with Bilgee. Ulzii reappears ¾ of an hour later. “The water is very wide,” he says, to which I just shake my head. After Ulzii’s mood is almost unbearable, I get up the nerve to talk to him. “What’s wrong Ulzii? Why are you in such a bad mood?” “Everything’s okay.” “Ulzii, please tell me what’s wrong? Your mood isn’t okay, is it?” I ask again, whereupon he simply ignores me, turns around and pees. Really shocked by this reaction, I make no further attempt to speak to this man. His behavior shows me what he thinks of my question and has hurt me at the same time. These Mongols should be understood. An old part of me calls for Ulzii to be relieved of his duties immediately. I’m thinking about whether we can do it alone with Bilgee. But Tanja and I are aware that Bilgee needs a Mongolian man with whom he can talk, with whom he can make jokes and who comes from his own culture. We can imagine that Bilgee wouldn’t be able to manage such a trip on her own. He needs a bit of familiarity around him. It’s not easy for Tanja and me to live in isolation here. But at least we have each other. We can exchange ideas, talk to each other, express our needs and wishes. We can talk about homesickness, about the sense and nonsense of this journey. We talk about the pros and cons. About learning and much more. What must it be like to have no one to talk to? Bilgee only speaks Mongolian. So he only has a limited opportunity to exchange ideas with us. We need Ulzii for that alone. Apart from that, you’re allowed to be in a bad mood on a trip like this. Ulzii doesn’t have the chance to explain his emotional life because of his poor command of English. With a rudimentary language facility, there are endless opportunities to mispronounce or be misunderstood. It’s not his fault that it annoys me when he ignores my requests, moves as if in slow motion or is in a bad mood. On the contrary, it’s my psyche playing tricks on me. It is my own mirror that causes anger in me. It’s the legacy and above all the educational patterns of my background that make me resentful when someone is slow. We like to call such people lazy, just because we in the industrialized nations are constantly overtaking ourselves and nothing can happen fast enough. In Germany, we people often work like mad just to accumulate as many luxury goods as possible around us. We all know by now that these goods, this luxury, in no way makes us happy. On the contrary, it creates dependencies that can lead to deprivation of liberty. Or, how else can you look at it when a manager works 16 hours a day and spends the weekend not with his wife and children, but somewhere far away. Somewhere on an airplane or in a hotel room. Then when he is 65 years old and burnt out and ill from his job, he can no longer turn his life back. It has run until then. The clock has run out by then. The children are grown up, often had nothing from their father, the wife has cheated or run away. But the man or woman has made a career for themselves. This is supposedly important in the life of industrialized nations. The question is not even whether this is worth striving for or not. The case is obvious. Such a life is in no way worth striving for. The saying less is more applies here. Which can also mean leading a life with your family and not rushing from one meeting to the next. Through my profession as a documentarian and writing adventurer, I have dealt with many executives and know what I am talking about. These lines are not an isolated case. To be fair, however, I must also mention here that we humans quickly slip into a relationship of dependency without initially realizing it. Once you are involved in the cycle of a system, it is extremely difficult or almost impossible to get out of it. Some make it. Sometimes strokes of fate, health problems, a heart attack or a serious accident help us to wake up again. Some people use these setbacks as an opportunity. An opportunity to become aware of the madness and to devote oneself to the essential things in life. Life itself. The joy, the enjoyment, the happiness. A beautiful sunrise is a gift in itself. It costs nothing but a little attention. And this is precisely what often gets lost in the stress of everyday life. Ulzii with his slowness reminds me of that. Makes me think and prompts me to write these lines. I should really be thanking him. But for that I would need to be the size of a wise man. Who knows? Maybe in this life I will manage to take things calmly while they are still happening. Then life will be easier, less complicated and even more beautiful.

Ulyti’s behavior has also made us aware of the relationship of dependency in which we find ourselves. “We really need to learn a bit more Mongolian,” I decide in order to communicate better with Bilgee. Bilgee has a Mongolian English translation book and we have a German Mongolian translation book. I use these two books to exchange ideas during Ulzii’s absence. We discuss today’s itinerary. In how many kilometers we can expect water, how long we will stay in the camp and whether it will be good for his hunting. So the little incident was also a little kick in the butt to learn more of the language. Another reason to thank Ulzii.

When we set off at 11:15 a.m., a blanket of silence lies over the tour group. Everyone has their own thoughts. Yesterday was undoubtedly a challenge for everyone involved. For me too. The stress with the greedy shepherd may have cost me more energy than I would like to admit.

Bilgee leads Sharga over the lava rock towards another pass. “Up there. There should be a spring where the white rocky peaks point down towards us. That’s our destination,” says Bilgee, pointing to the ridge. “How far do you think it is to get there?” I ask. “Five or seven kilometers,” he replies in his usual friendly manner. “I really need to practise driving the horse-drawn carriage again. We also need independence in this area,” I say to Tanja, who is riding next to me. “Yes, and we have to learn how to harness the draught horses to the wagon without outside help,” she agrees. “After the next rest camp, I’ll ask Bilgee to teach me,” I tell Sar, steering around a boulder.

At 12:45 we reach a small stream that rises below the white rocks. “There used to be a monastery here,” Bilgee tells us, pointing to a memorial stone. Where should we park the horse-drawn cart?” he then wants to know. I see a reasonably straight spot on the long hillside and point to it. As soon as Sharga is unhitched, Bilgee and Ulzii set off to haul wooden beams for the fire from a demolished yurt camp nearby. I set up our tent again and stretch the solar panel over it so that I can feed enough electricity into the car battery for my writing. Tanja builds a fire pit and boils water.

When I join them, we talk about Ulzii and how we should behave towards him. We come to the conclusion that the matter should not be given too much weight. “I’ll talk to him anyway. It’s not acceptable that he just turns around and pees while you want to talk to him. That’s disrespectful. He should at least know that he can’t deal with you like that. I’d like his apology for that,” Tanja explains. When Ulzii returns from fetching firewood, she asks him to join us. She talks to him at length about the importance of expedition morale. Also that the ups and downs of the individual should not be left to others. We have to stick together and respect and accept each other. It is also important to recognize when we make mistakes and apologize for them. That’s why it would be good if you did this with Denis. He felt hurt by your actions,” she explains. Ulzii talks about how he was worried about the horses. That this was the reason for his behavior. He looks at me. Thinks and says: “I’m sorry Denis. I apologize.” “I accept your apology,” I say with a smile, whereupon we shake hands. At the moment, the mood in the camp is better again. Tanja’s mediation speech was an important contribution to the continuation of the expedition. As the leader of this small group, that would actually have been my job. In this case, however, it was good to have a reasonably neutral and developed mediator like Tanja speak.

In a good mood, I now try to repair our expedition stove. I completely dismantle him until I discover the reason for his failure. It is a defective small sealing ring that has been eaten away by the ravages of time. Fortunately, I find one of these rubbers in my spare parts kit. “Phew, if I replace it, the stove will work again”, I say happily, knowing what it would mean for all of us if this important piece of equipment were to break down permanently. When I pull the new sealing ring over the plunger in good spirits, it tears. “Oh no! That’s it!” I shout, startled. “What’s that all about? Surely you can still fix it?” asks Tanja. “No. We only have the one spare seal,” I reply, shaking my head. Bilgee hands me his lighter and says that it contains a sealing ring of the same size. Although I don’t want to destroy it, he offers to take the lighter apart. I do indeed find a small rubber ring in it, but it turns out to be unusable. “You can put the stove away. From now on, we’ll have to rely on firewood and won’t even be able to boil hot water for a quick cup of tea in the evening,” I say disappointedly. Due to the constant breakdowns of our technology on this trip, we are forced to look after ourselves more and more like the travelers of yesteryear. The technical luxuries we brought with us have now been reduced to a minimum. This situation also shows us how dependent we have become on civilization. How quickly we forget that we can do without it.

While I’m sitting there collecting the broken parts of the lighter, we get another visitor. As luck would have it, it is Bilgee’s older brother who stumbles out of a van, completely drunk, and greets us exuberantly. He shakes our hands. Above all, the man doesn’t want to let go of Tanja’s hand. Then he comes to me. He shouts in my ear that he has lost control of his organ due to his drunkenness. Saliva flies into my face. He grabs my right arm roughly and shakes it incessantly. Then he grabs my beard. “Man, how old are you? With a beard like that, you look like you’re 80 years old,” he laughs loudly. As Mongolians hardly have any beard growth, my gray beard, which gets a little longer every day, is something people like to talk about. “What great saddle do you have there? Can I have it?” “No, we still need it for our journey.” “But you’re a bad person!” he shouts in response, holding out the little finger of his fist towards me. Since I know that this sign is called “Mo” and is used for everything that is bad, especially that it comes from a drunk, I don’t take it seriously. After he’s insulted me a lot, shot his jokes and doesn’t get any vodka from us, he finally climbs back into his van. His wife, who has been sitting there for half an hour, seems to take it in her stride that the drunken husband gets behind the wheel and drives off across the steppe.

Towards late afternoon a storm comes up which makes it impossible to continue sitting around the campfire. The gusts get stronger with every minute. It increases so much that the horse-drawn carriage starts to wobble. We close it and put stones under the wheels for safety. “Look at Ulzii and Bilgee’s tent!” I shout against the wind. I immediately rush over to the deformed fabric house and realize that they have hardly put any pegs in. “Quick Ulzii! We have to pull the storm bracing or it will blow your tent away!” I shout. Then I hurry to our tent to secure it better against the storm. I fetch my anemometer to see how hard the squalls are blowing. “Wind force 10, unbelievable. This is a severe storm,” I say, pulling my head back into our den. “Can the tents take it?” asks Tanja. “They should be. If they collapse too, we’ll really have a problem,” I reply. “What does Bilgee say about the weather? Will it change?” Tanja wants to know. “According to him, it’s going to snow for the next three days,” I say, pulling my sleeping bag over my knees.

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