By Joscie Norris, of the University of Vermont
Horidol Saridag Strictly Protected Area range.
The night of October 3rd we were packing to depart base camp for our second trip to Battogtokh’s family’s haasha to continue our Daurian Pika research and conduct our migratory waterfowl surveys. It began snowing, like it did every evening before we had to leave, and by morning we woke up to over a foot of snow; without our ride able to reach us, midterms turned into a sledding party on tarps. The following day, just as we’d resigned ourselves to a sedentary life of writing papers in the ger (yurt), we departed in a Russian furagon with an hour’s notice. In two hours we landed at an unfamiliar camp. Mongolian herders live closely with their animals, and thus closely with the patterns of the seasons. Because of this, nomadic herders have three or more camps that they cycle between each year, and this was Battogtokh’s late fall camp, nestled near a few other families on the shore of a river.
Battogtokh’s camp.
When the sun sets on the steppe, the mountains glow crimson and long shadows draw out for miles on the pale grass. Most evenings Battogtokh’s family invited us in to their home where we crowded around their stove to warm and cook. Every time you welcome a traveler into your home in Mongolia, you offer them suutai tsai, hot milk with tea, and snacks such as fried bread, candies, bread with urum (clotted cream), and aruul, which is homemade dried yogurt. Since Chinggis Khaan’s empire, his basic rules have persisted throughout Mongolia’s history, including; don’t dirty the waters, welcome others into your home, and share your food. Thus no matter where one travels, they can always find a hot meal and hospitality. Unfortunately, our strange spicy foods of peanut sauce, tofu meat, and canned chicken (birds are not meat here) were not things our hosts would eat. In the countryside the meat is what trendy Americans crave, humane, grass-fed, and organic; thus, no one here eats compromised camp meals when their livestock provide real food.
Drawing lessons in the evening.
Sketch of Battogtokh’s family ger with everyone sitting on their beds and breakfast on the table in front of the stove.
After dinner each night, a group of us sat with Battogtokh drawing while his wife and daughter taught the others how to (not win) Mongolian card games. Earlier this semester when we worked with Battogtokh, he shared his love of drawing with us so this time we came ready to learn. His works are always of local domestic and wild animals. His drawings would tell stories of the rich herders with their millions of camels, how the snow leopard chases the ibex off the cliffs, the way the fox tricks the pika out of its burrow, and the eagle stalking the fox through the trees. They were always silly stories of smart animals with personalities. These stories had sneaky deep ecological and personal lessons in them, of relationships, hunting, and environmental change. Battogtokh himself is a trickster with a wild sense of humor. Whenever I’d sneak a peak at his work he’d snatch it away in secrecy, then try to spy on my drawings. Other times I would attempt to pronounce a Mongolian word and he would tease us with tongue-twisters; oos, Os, oves, jos, juice. Hair, water, grass, and my Mongolian name, Juicy. These quiet evenings always had us erupting in laughter. When we were finally sent to bed, someone from his family inevitably joined us stargazing, sharing stories of the constellations. Sometimes, Battogtokh would whisk one of us into a waltz lesson across the pastureland.
Bob the baby goat, a winter baby born early in the morning, was brought into the ger till she was ready for the sub freezing temperatures.
Mornings, we dragged ourselves from frosted tents, took a trip to the latrine surrounded by magpies, and were summoned into their ger. We frequently got sidetracked, not just because frisbee games ensued. One morning we received a swan anatomy lesson as Chris began to taxidermy the bird, killed by the electrical wires and discovered by Battogtokh, for the park’s visitor center. Another morning involved learning to Mongolian wrestle. While surveying waterfowl our second day, our driver bought a bag of fresh caught lake fish that we proceeded to cook directly on an open fire for lunch. While eating fish in a land-locked country isn’t always a good idea, this fish was the best I’d ever had. Our final day we watched the most humane slaughter of a goat, then had gedes (organs) for brunch. I highly recommend liver with wild onions.
Camp on the steppe with good neighbors.
To the field; we reached our survey sites each day via furagon over long, bumpy stretches of steppe. The Daurian pika research involved walking a 100m transect across the grasslands, squishing and tallying piles of pika poop and hay-piles to understand their relationship with livestock and how their populations change. We were psyched about surveying which species of waterfowl migrated via these lakes to see how important this area was, but counting birds is a wild time. We enjoyed many a blue morning, toes numb, learning to identify dim blobs of bird on the water. But no place could have been a better teacher. We learned the nuances of whooper and tundra swans, found a phalarope, and got to know the goldeneyes and mergansers by head shape. Unofficially we got to study the carnivore birds of the steppe; lammergiers and cinareous vultures; white tailed, imperial, and golden eagles; and red footed and saker falcons. Battogtokh has loved birds since childhood, and despite our language barrier, he would identify their blurred bodies at a distance and teach their names.
One Sunday we visited a soum (town) Rinchenlhumbe, to conduct pika surveys and get lunch. Of no surprise, everything was closed, so hours passed as our Mongolian research companions called up an owner that would open up for us and cook lunch for thirteen. Meanwhile, Battogtokh toured us through the local school to see an elk he’d taxidermied for a display.
The following day we headed towards the Russian boarder to Tsagaan Nuur where our furagon broke down. We spent the night, cuddled together at a lovely guest house that has since been closed for the season.
Our Russian Furgon crossing the rivers via ferry and bridge.
Another bridge crossing
Although we were supposed to return days before, we spent our final day visiting the Tsaatan people, commonly referred to as the ‘reindeer people.’ The nuances of this trip are hard to capture, but initially the Mongolians suggested we could meet them since they were friends and their winter camp was nearby. As we learned from our instructor Rebecca, the Tsaatan are a major ‘attraction,’ that due to their picturesqueness draw swarms of tourists. Unfortunately, visitors come to gawk and pose for photos, often trashing the camp or invading their homes. While tourism is important income, this behavior dehumanizes this culture because many Westerners see them as exotic and novel, people earthly and stuck in time. After much thought, we visited them in the hopes of bridging a healthy foundational relationship between them and our project. Relationship building is not a one time, said-and-done thing, though. It was certainty a humbling encounter to get to know their values, hear stories of wildlife, and see the touristy side of their world.
I came here for science, but left here with the dearest friends and values. I seem to step away from these wonderful, shenanigan filled, steppe research days and drawing lessons with fewer answers and full of more gratitude and curiosity.