After a day spent eating most of Ulaanbaatar, we headed to the bus station to buy tickets and the worlds greatest matching hot pink bedazzled caps. They shine like disco balls in the sunlight, and tell the world that "black, you want your coffee, 65, mut, fashnioe". With a loose plan in our heads, we got on a bus northwest towards a big lake. The bus was reported to take between 15 and 30 hours, but the way the driver fiercely attacked each bump got us there in record time. The bus was crammed full, with a few people and boxes filling the aisles too. Peta and I were assigned the back seats, which sat nearly a metre higher than the rest, and were the bounciest seats on the bus.
Before we had even left the country's paved main road, a pot hole catapulted us up so hard my head left a 10cm crack in the ceiling of the bus. Coming down, I landed on the arm rest, resulting in one of my greatest ever bruises, which nicely complements the falling-off-the-great-wall bruise on the other side of my butt. With a little dance music in our ears, the bumps turned the ride into a giant dance party, the whole bus jumping and swaying to the beat.
The scenery out of the window was stunning, the picture perfect image of green rolling hills and steppe dotted with gers. Flocks of cows and horses and goats roamed free, not a fence in sight. The road soon ran out, and the full sized bus drove along bumpy tire tracks a through small rivers, nearly getting bogged often and the engine struggling over small bumps.
We stopped in the most beautiful places to pee, nothing but 12 sets of bumpy tire tracks and our bus to break the perfect emptiness of the vast land.
We arrived in Moron and jumped into a car towards the lake. The lake was beautiful, huge, ocean coloured and backed by mountains. The town at the bottom of the lake was infuriatingly touristy however, people offering us beds in tourist gers every few metres.
We jumped on a boat, with misguided idea it would take us north, but it turned out to be a tourist party boat that brought us back to the town we were trying to get out of. The boat ride turned out to be hilarious, as the only foreigners on a boat full of Mongolians, our hands were shaken and picture taken endlessly. I was pushed up onto the upper deck, the stage for the upcoming dance battle. Jiving my way through the heats, I ended up head to head in the finals, 26 seconds to shine. I went all out, shimmying my bum to the crowd, star jumping and hand stand kicking. The crowd went wild for my new age moves and bedazzled pink cap and zip off pants, their cheers deciding me as the winner. My prize was a fried whole fish, and I was a celebrity.
With none of our plans going quite the way we wanted, we made a new one. To jump out of a car at a random point of extreme beauty and walk in whatever direction we feel like. After not too much walking, a storm approached, walls of rain visible over the nearby hills. We walked up to a ger, and knocked on the waist high door. A tiny man came out, looking confused. We shook his hand, and mimed us sleeping in his get to escape the storm. He was surprised, but agreed quickly.
We helped him to patch up the whole in the top of the ger for the incoming storm, and went into the dark, warm an smokey ger. He made us some thick salty tea as we patted the lovely ger cat. He didn't quite realize how impossible gesturing was in the darkness, but we managed to understand we could share one of the child sized beds.
We went to bed before sunset, and a little while later the man came in from fixing his motorbike to throw an extra blanket over us, give us his jacket as a pillow and tuck us in under our feet and behind our backs. I love the overwhelming kindness of strangers.
