Hospitality in a yurt

We reached the collection of yurts and a man came toward us. First he began to speak in Mandarin (I think) but quickly realized it was no use given our blank stares. So he switched over to hand signals, and welcomed us in. We were led into his kitchen / dining room.

He offered us some water, which we gratefully accepted and began to drink. After a handful of minutes, out came a couple of nibbles.

There were seasoned tofu disks, julienned potatoes with bean sprouts, and diced spicy green chillies. The chillies were tremendously hot, so much so that a small chopstick amount required an infusion of potatoes afterward to bring down the heat. All were tasty.

Next, a bottle of somewhat official moonshine appeared. With a wolf on the label, we knew this was serious stuff. Simon, the name of our host, shared that it was 38% alcohol. He had some 62% alcohol in a jug, should we want to graduate to that. We quickly said no, the 38% was great, thanks. He poured a small shot for all four of us (we were joined by the cook at this point), and with a quick "ganbei" it was down.

Then, we began to converse. Well, communicate as best we could. We shared our ages, 30 and 31 on our side and 46 and 54 on theirs. We told him about our walk and the perilous barbed wire fences we encountered. He told us they were a bunch of contruction workers building a small complex for the summer sports festival, when typical Mongolian sports would be played. wish we could have been there for that!

After a lull in the conversation, Max suggested we break out our playing cards. We did and it was a hit. We started with Blind Man's Bluff. Simple to learn and fun to play, we each placed a card on our heads. We looked at each others' cards but not our own. Then, we put them down and the low card lost. We graduated from that to Blackjack, a surprisingly simple game to communicate with your hands. Then, perhaps overestimating our ability to share new games, we switched to Russian Poker (where you have 13 cards in your hand and make one 3-card and two 5-card poker hands). That only sort of worked. But we had a great time, lots of laughing and traveler friendships.

Then it was time for dinner. The cook took me down to the meat cellar, and I saw various parts of lamb on hooks, curing for later use.

He hacked off a piece of lamb from the left leg and brought it upstairs. He began to cook it in a large wok.

I am sad to say that it did not taste very good. The method of cooking for this easy-to-be-gamey meat was boiling in plain hot water. It quickly got overcooked and dry, with little good flavor left to its name. However, there were a couple of interesting condiments to try topping it with. One was awful, little white cubes in a red sauce. I could speculate as to what they were but would rather not. The other, though, added a nice pesto-chilli flavor to the meat. We hung out with them for another handful of hours. It was a great and unexpected night!

Thanks to Simon and his friends for taking two weary travelers in and showing them some great Mongolian hospitality!