Do you remember that saying, "I felt bad for the man with no shoes til I met the man with no feet"? Well, that's a bit how I feel now. Just when you think things are a wee bit uncomfortable, lo! you ride a horse for four days!!

We left Ulaan Bataar in our jeep; me, Joris, Carmen, the translator (Serge) and the driver (Miga). Serge and Miga are not their real names; we can't possibly pronounce them. Our translator was twenty years old and thought he was Axel Rose, complete with a skull tattoo, long hair, a bandanna and constantly listening to rock music loudly. Thank god for the driver who didn't speak English but knew the roads and the good spots. We left Ulaan Bataar and headed southwest, stopping at a beautiful monastery in the mountains. It was actually the remains since Stalin came not so long ago and killed a tremendous amount of the monks there.

Our first morning camping brought us rain, a flat tire and a dead jeep. Miga said it was because we took wood from the mountain and burned it; it s evidently bad luck to burn spiritual wood. We tried to be much more careful and respectful from then on. Luckily, Miga was a master mechanic because we broke down nearly daily. We stopped by Karakorum, the original capitol of Chinggis Khan. It is still in use today by the Buddhist monks. Chinggis encouraged Buddhism as the country's religion and today there is a peaceful blend of Buddhism and shamanism.

Everywhere are "Ovoos", which are mounds of rocks with offerings like blue scarves (for the sky god), bottles, crutches, money, tires, etc. You are supposed to walk around to the left, clockwise, three times and pray. If you drive by, honk three times and that will cover you. We continued south to the Gobi and, as expected, it was hot and desolate: Mostly rocks, sand and some tenacious tumbleweed type plants. We luckily ran into a young boy with his camels and caught some rides.

Camels are actually quite comfortable (at least I think so now after four days on a thin saddle and a bumpy horse). We stayed with a family in a ger in a beautiful valley in central Mongolia preparing for the horse trip. It was a late night as we were quite the novelty. The kids and younger folks stayed up to sing and take pictures; They do love pictures! And they have amazing voices! There are songs for everything: getting an animal to feed, give birth, etc, songs to the sky, the mountains, songs to make it rain, on and on. For such a quiet place these people sure can make a lot of noise!

One of the most noticeable things here is the tremendous amount of excrement. My god, it's everywhere! Most families have three or four gers. They have yaks, horses, goats, sheep and a couple of dogs. There are no fences so the animals just wander around doing you-know-what, and we walk, sit, eat, camp, etc. in it. And EVERYTHING is made from milk (a bit of a challenge for the lactose intolerant). Milk is used to make a really hard, and not so yummy, cheese, a runny yogurt and pudding, vodka, and the ever present yak milk tea with spice which, as far as I can tell, is just salt. And then, of course, there is airag (which is fermented mares milk). I must take a moment to tell you about airag: This time of year they capture colts with a lasso. The lasso is a long pole with a loop at the end, like those things dog catchers use. They chase the mare and colt around on horseback, then tie up the colt. The poor thing is flopping around screaming on the ground so the mom stays close, continues to lactate, and be milked. Anyway, they eat all this stuff with a really hard bread or biscuits and, of course, the mutton (you've already heard about that), and noodles. They, and subsequently we, ate this everyday.

So, after a late night of singing we got up to ride. The Mongolians use a hard wooden saddle with raised parts in the front and back, but they gave us "Russian" saddles that had a bit more padding. We found out that our jeep was going to follow us and were extremely miffed, having expected to carry our gear on pack horses. But I must say, I came to worship that jeep like an oasis in the desert!!

The weather was totally unpredictable! One minute hot blasting sun and gorgeous blue skies with huge fluffy clouds, then up over the mountain comes a big dark giant and WHAM, you get hail!! My God, HAIL!! There we were, alone in the valley (the jeep would go far up ahead and wait), soaked to our bones and freezing!! The horses wouldn't even move, they just jammed up together with their butts to the wind. Then, ta-da, sun again. It was crazy. The guides wore those long jackets with a sash (dels), and boots and they didn't seem phased at all by the weather or, for that matter, anything, just singing, smiling and laughing. You wanted to smack them sometimes.

The scenery made it all worth it. I have never seen sky so close, clouds so big, grass so green... And the flowers!! Billions and billions of them in purple, blue, pink, yellow, orange, red, and every size and shape... It was breathtaking. Really, the most incredible thing here, and the reason I came, is the utter lack of people and signs of people. There are no fences or electric lines or houses or cars or planes or roads or signs or sounds (except for the incessant singing). Now and then there is a clump of gers and the livestock associated with them. We had the occasional horsemen come by for a smoke, a chat or a sip of vodka.

Speaking of horsemen, these are supposed to be some of the best in the world. I don't know, I can't tell, but surely these are some of the toughest people I have ever met. The horses are really small and damned bouncy if you ask me. They generally trot. If you are not a horse person, that is the extremely uncomfortable gait between a walk and a gallop that just about knocks your teeth out. You are supposed tosit up in the saddle using your thighs and, well, you can only do this for so long (not to mention the thighs are already shot from peeing out in the wild). Of our group I was the only experienced rider, and must say, by the end of each day (seven hours), I was walking like Yosemite Sam. Oh yes, and speaking of peeing, this was the other great challenge for us girls. The inception of "penis envy," I'm sure, was women in the wild. Please imagine open steppes, nary a grass clump to be had, and try to see us finding an inkling of modesty or privacy... impossible. When you could find a "toilet" by some gers it was a wooden shack with a hole and two pieces of wood over the hole for your feet. Personally I preferred the open. It smelled better.

Needless to say, by the end of four days we were pretty darned sore and smelly (a mild word) so we went to a hot springs. Or should I say pure heaven on earth? This is why I love to travel: the extremes. One day ready to die, the next blissfully soaking in a hot springs, hot showers, toilet seats, a good meal and a bed. Then, back to the jeep. Now, I can't say as the jeep is much less bouncy than the horse. There are few paved roads in Mongolia, mostly dirt tracks zig-zagging around vast open spaces. I have no idea how the drivers know where they are going. I don't think they do, really, they just head off in a direction and eventually get somewhere. But bouncy just doesn't describe it; we are talking hours of huge pot-hole, rock, river-rutted, spine wrenching, teeth jarring, whip-lashing, flip-flopping around the back, hang on for your life, packs on your head, whoop-it-up-you-might-be-dead-any-minute kind of bouncing. Mostly it was a lot of fun, and, amazingly enough, eventually I could even sleep through it. That's pure exhaustion.

We dropped off Joris in Tsetserleg and Carmen and I went on to White lake. It's called that because we tourists can't possibly pronounce, much less spell, the real name. (Here it is just for fun: Terkhin Tsagaan Nuur. ) We stayed two days there, slept in a simple ger (a welcome rest from tent camping) and cooked over the stove (still with no toilet, shower or running water, but hey, it felt like the Hilton).

The gers were great; round, portable, warm and some quite homey. They have four seasons of gers; depending on the number of layers of felt. They all have a wood stove (oops, I mean cow poop stove) in the middle, small beds, a few brightly painted dressers, a table, two very teeny tiny chairs and lots of photos! Also you will find cheese hanging around and pictures of the Dalai Lama. These are really friendly people and there are all sorts of rules on how to enter the ger, where to sit and, of course, you have to take and try everything that is offered to you; I have even done snuff now... wow. Somehow, my stomach survived, I did not break anything and the ol' bum just went numb.

The last night of the trip the we spent on another lake and it was actually warm enough to swim. Everything was perfect until the flies came: Small white fluffy flies in huge swarms, I mean thousands, and they are all attempting to land on you to lay their eggs and then die. What a brief, annoying life huh? Really, was it necessary for Noah to count two of ALL the creatures? I think not. So, we sat around to watch a truly exceptional sunset, covered with our sarongs like Muslims. Lesson: nothing is ever truly perfect and therein lies the perfection (sigh).

It was a bit of a shock getting back to the hustle and bustle of Ulaan Bataar, but great to get a hot shower and a pizza with nary a blob of mutton on it. As ever, it is the extremes, the bittersweet comings and goings, that make travel so wondrous. Mongolia was everything I'd hoped for and nothing like I'd imagined. Just the way I like it.

Happy trails to all my fellow planet surfers and best wishes for miraculous adventures, big, small or smelly.