Things I Will Miss About Mongolia #1

With less than two weeks to go until I set sail for (much ado about)melbourne, it's time I recap on the wonders of Mongolia I have yet to 'big up' before now. This week's Things I Will Miss About Mongolia post is a shout out to...

MONGOLIAN MYSTERY MEAT GOODS

aka Meat I Have Eaten That I Possibly Should Not Have Eaten. This post is slightly more poignant given that I (very gently) embraced vegetarianism before getting on a Mongolian Airlines flight almost a year ago. As a general rule, when I go to a place that isn't Sydney/Melbourne/Brisbane, I like to eat the food that everyone else eats. In Texas I eat deer jerky, in Dandenong I eat Dandee Donuts and in Mongolia I eat mountains of mutton. Case in point below. Yes, that is one big, old, fatty sheep.

I like to sample the local delicacies, like bull penis in hot pot.

I like to support the manufacture of processed meat goods, particularly those with delicious gelatinous hearts.

I like to eat animals that possibly have the Bubonic Plague.

And, of course, I like to eat the animals most revered by the country I am visiting, particularly in curries or garlic soups. They go faster.

Marmots, Mountains + Mosques

A couple of weeks ago I hit the western-most province of Mongolia, Bayan-Ulgii, with my buddy Katherine. The area borders both China + Russia and is very close to Kazakhstan. Its population is largely Kazakh Mongols and as such, Mongolian isn't the first language for many people out there. It is many kinds of awesome.

We spent a night with a beautiful Tuvan family near the Tavan Bogd mountain range before riding horses to scope a glacier. We watched our driver (who spoke Mongolian, Russian, Kazakh, Tuvan, Uzbek, Kyrgyz + some Chinese but no English) attempt to shoot and kill a marmot. Apparently many have the plague (yes, the mutha trucking bubonic plague best known for its appearance in ye olde medieval England) but we ate one anyway that was cooked in the traditional khorkhog manner. Mmmm. Plague flavour. Delicious.

I got to shoot a gun for the first time and we also warded off potential serial killers and a whole lot of mosquitoes with pepper spray... the gun probably would have been more effective.

It's clearly obvious I have just discovered iMovie on my computer, so here's a video extravaganza of our trip:

And a few shots of the town of Ulgii + Tavan Bogd. Many more pics on Flickr.