My school was on break during January, so when most of my sitemates were headed into the city en route to SE Asia, I decided to join them and to visit my friend Luke at his work site in the Gobi Desert. Since the business was for pleasure, there was no free plane ticket on Peace Corps’s dime. It would all have to be local transportation at my expense. These “pleasure” trips are something I now realize I won’t do more than a couple times a year.
Luke’s site is a seven hour bus ride away from UB on relatively smooth roads and paths. Even so, the trip to his place was not a treat. We drew two of the worst seats on the bus. We sat in the middle of the long bench in front that faces the back of the bus. On these trips you find yourself getting mighty cozy with the people you’re sitting next to. I didn’t mind Luke’s arm around my shoulder for most of the drive and when I needed to lean forward, his knee was the perfect place to rest my hand. I didn’t feel the man-love coming from the old guy on my right. He was fat, not like a water balloon, but like a sandbag. He sat there in all his meatiness with his legs spread and his arms piled on top of his spherical paunch. The whole time crushing me against a metal rail on one side and Luke on the other.
Seems that having a person in the car to complain to makes these trips infinitely more tolerable. Saying “this sucks”, and being understood is a relief. Hearing “I’m miserable, too”, brings comfort. When there’s no one to bellyache to, and no one to share your discomfort, things suddenly become far less tolerable. A few days later, I left Luke’s and soon made the trip back out west to my work site. This time I was the only American in the car. Among the many awful things about this trip, the worst was that there was no one to tell how awful I felt, where I hurt, or how crazy I was going.
The first night they let me sit up front for a few hours because when they asked if I was cold I said, “Yes, I’m cold. My feet are freezing.” It’s something I’ve learned to say well in Mongolian. I felt awkward taking the warmest seat in the car, but figured I deserved it for a little while. The driver told me our car would leave the black market in UB at 3 o’clock, so that’s when I went to meet him. At 8 o’clock, when we actually left, my feet were already frozen through my fur-lined Mongolian boots and two pairs of socks.
While I waited restlessly those several hours for the car to move I also watched the driver’s passenger tally rise from the agreed upon ten, to eighteen by the time we left the city. The car we were in was a Russian microbus, the most common form of countryside transportation in Mongolia. It looks a lot like a cargo van, but perches up higher on it’s wheels. In the backseat I sat with four other adults and a child who often laid across us. On the middle seats, which face each other, were four adults apiece and one more kid. In the posh front seat were the driver, his wife (replaced by me for the last few hours of the first night), and his kid.
When the car finally moved and I thought we were beginning the long journey back west, we proceeded to run around one of UB’s ger districts for two hours doing mysterious errands. People were picked up and dropped off, goods were exchanged, goodbyes were said. This is all in the normal course of things, I know. These folks probably get into the city only once or twice a year and there are lots of things to be done, but I couldn’t step outside my American perspective on this one – If you have something to do, do it, but not on my time. I’m cold and tired and if we stop at one more ger I’m gonna shout at someone.– At around 10 we finally got on the road and I slept fitfully until we made our first food stop a few hours later.
We got out of the car circus-clown style, one after another for minutes until the last cramped legs hit the ground. The drivers mostly stop at the same places, so the little restaurants are open all hours of the night. I can handle most Mongolian food pretty well, but road food it is not. You have your choice of meat, lots of it, cooked this or that way, with more or less fat, and rice and pickles on the side. The food’s heavy enough to put me to sleep, but soon I start filling with a malodorous gas, and that is not delightful, not good for anyone.
I woke up the first morning, warm in the front seat. We stopped on the path for a bathroom break. Men just find a spot and take care of business. (As a side note, that goes for anytime. It’s not uncommon for me to look out my window and see a guy peeing on the corner of the next building. Broad daylight, people walking by.) Women use their long coats or dells to cover themselves up. When everyone was through, I took my place in the back again and we jockeyed against each other for position. It’s not a competition. We’re all on the same team. Everyone’s trying to give each other a little space here, a place to lean there. But, no one ends up happy or comfortable. No matter how uncomfortable, it was always a good moment when the car started moving again.
That’s the rest of the trip. Sleep, food, bathroom, stop for a girl to puke, and repeat until your soul is ground to a fine, grey powder. Forty hours after I got into the car at the black market in UB, I got out in front of my apartment. I b-lined up the stairs, put down my bags, undressed, got in my sleeping bag and put on a movie. I didn’t move for hours. I knew the drive was rough on me when I nearly started crying repeatedly while watching Grey’s Anatomy. I couldn’t bear watching people cling to life. And all I wanted was for Dr. Grey and Dr. McDreamy to get together dammit and stop playing with my emotions. Finally, I slept for hours with the feeling that I was moving slowly down a washboarded path crushed against strangers.