The Boy Who Cried Wolf
I wrote this piece about a bikepacking trip to Mongolia years ago for a magazine, but they didn’t want it so I though I would post it up here, no point leaving it rotting on my hard drive.
I could happily stay here all day, stretched out on the bed dozing, listening to the wood stove crackle and the poxy rain patter on the roof. That seductive voice in my head, the one that always wants five more minutes in bed or another beer, whispers
‘stay another night, this is supposed to be a holiday’
We are holed up in a ger camp near the Tuul River in Terelj National Park, Mongolia, halfway through a two week bikepacking trip. Gers, wooden framed tents with felt and canvas covers, have housed Mongolian nomads for thousands of years and are ideally suited to their harsh climate. The dark interior stays cool in the summer and the heavily insulated felt walls and wood burning stove keep them warm during the long winters. And they are very very hard to leave on cold, wet days.
If my companion Michael was to suggest that we stay another night I would agree instantly yet I’m not prepared to suggest it myself. I’m sure he feels the same way. This weird dynamic is a certain path to Type 2 fun.
We lazed the morning away, rationalising that it might clear, however by noon we can no longer prolong the inevitable and one of us blurts.
‘I suppose we better go’
And with that we quickly load our bikes, get the rain jackets on, cinch up our hoods and shut the door on the beautiful, dry, cosy ger.
The rain isn’t as bad as it sounded.
It never is.
Six days into our trip the big passes are behind us and we have only a few days of easy riding before we have to return to UB and fly home.
After a leisurely 40km day we stop in the early afternoon at a glade of larch beside the road. Even though the road is just dusty double track, it links two valleys and is positively bustling compared to some of the places we camped, so we decide to wait until dusk before putting up our tents.
We laze around soaking up the sun, reading and cooking dinner. Later, as the light begins to fade and the air cools, two figures – an old lady and a young boy – approach from the nearest ger. The woman speaks quickly in Mongolian, gesturing at ours tents, mimicking driving and then pointing to the hillside on the opposite side of the valley. We have no idea what she is getting at but she seems to be delivering a specific message. However as she isn’t that persistent we reason that it couldn’t be all that important. Nonetheless she leaves us with a lingering sense of unease.
Message delivered, if not received, she returns to the ger while the boy stays behind. We chat as well as two people with no common language can, then after a while he too begins pointing at the hillside. Eventually, after much gesturing and confusion, we establish that there is a wolf living in the rocks up on the hillside. They, assuming we had a car nearby, were trying to tell us that we should drive away and camp elsewhere as it wouldn’t be safe with the wolf prowling around.
In the fading light we quickly pack and walk the short distance over to their ger where we hope we can camp under the protection of their dogs. The old woman seems happy to see us and after we put up our tents she invites us into the ger.
It is very utilitarian, a stark contrast to the richly decorated gers in the tourist camps. The sole concession to the last thousand years is the LED strip light hooked up to a car battery that illuminates two beds, a dresser and a small table. The rest of the space is taken up with chunks of meat hanging from the roof poles and buckets of milk destined to become cheese.
Life is hard for the Mongolian nomads yet they have no hesitation welcoming and helping their fellow travellers. We were given bowls of suutei tsai – steaming milk tea – and some urum – a beautiful cream cheese – and bread to dip in it. We show the kids photos on our phones and establish that they are staying with their grandmother while their father, a soldier, and mother work in the city. It was sobering to see how little they owned.
After a very surreal game of darts, we say goodbye and step out of the warmth into a clear, cold night. Once I had put on every item of clothes I had with me I quickly fall asleep.
A number of times throughout the night I am woken by the frantic barking of the dogs. It seems the wolf is on the prowl. But content that the dogs had my back I fall back into a deep sleep. In the morning I realise that the dogs had discovered my food supplies while I was in the ger and scoffed the lot.
A small price to pay for a night’s protection.
After a frosty night camping just outside Terelj village we set off early the next morning. We are planning to link two long valleys by crossing a steep, forested pass and while there is a path marked on our map, it was surveyed in 1970, so things could easily have changed. The satellite photos aren’t that helpful either, it’s impossible to see if there is a path through the trees. Either way we are happy to give it a shot.
We make good progress following double track up the Terelj river valley. After a few hours we turn into a much smaller side valley. It is idyllic, splashing across small streams and crossing beautiful wild flower meadows, but the sense that we are making our way up a cul-de-sac hangs in the air as we leave behind all sign of civilisation.
As we make our way up the valley the path becomes fainter and fainter until it completely disappears. Up until this point the valley has been wide with only a very gradual incline but now the walls are starting to close in and the ground is getting steeper.
Ahead of us is a rocky dry streambed flanked on both sides by an impenetrable wall of willow. We haul our heavily laden bikes up the streambed but progress is slow and hard won. The ground is getting steeper and we will never reach the top of the pass at this rate, we need to find a better way.
We dump our bikes and split up, each of us traverses the narrow valley in the hope of finding a path. Michael finds a way though, on the east side, a narrow strip of grass where the forest meets the steep scree slope. As we push through the trees we meet a better trail for the final push to the top.
From the top of the pass forest and mountain stretch in every direction, there isn’t a single sign of the human hand, this is what we came all this way for. The feeling of being way out there is exhilarating, but also slightly unnerving, this would be no place for an accident.
A narrow track leads down into the valley and excited to be finally able to ride our bikes, we set off only for the path to disappear after no more than 100m of glorious downhill. It takes another two hours of pushing and dragging our bikes through dense forest before we reach open ground and the start of the track that leads down the valley. Exhausted, we set up camp, eat dinner and sit around the fire absorbing the silence of this beautiful remote place.
