Deer Rocks and a Mongolian Barbeque

Goodbye to Khövsgöl Lake.

Another reindeer family by the side of the road for photos.

One of the vultures takes off.

The bronze age stone markers called Deer Rocks. 

Looks strangely Viking-like.

An ancient burial mound.

Deer Rocks have carvings of deer on them, hence the name.

Man waiting outside a grocery store.

Our dinner.

Buhuu helps with the butchering process.

All that is left.

The women drain the intestines to use to make sausages.

The Mongolian barbeque pot tended by one of our four drivers.

The family and drivers enjoying their food.

Saturday, July 7^th.

The convoy was off and running from camp by 8:00 as we began our trip south and back towards Ulaanbaatar. We retraced our route along the very basic roads from the lake back to the main paved road. That took about an hour and a half. A little later we stopped at another reindeer family along the highway so that the people who didn’t do the hike yesterday could see them. Shortly after that we saw four large vultures sitting on the ground and I got the driver to stop. As soon as I got out they took off one by one. I got a couple of decent shots.

Yesterday I got talking to a guide from a different group and asked where they were headed tomorrow, and he said Deer Rocks. I asked what that was, and he told me they were bronze age slabs of carved stone. I asked Buhuu if we could go and initially he said we didn’t have time, but later as we were driving he asked if I knew which road they were on, to which I replied how would I know? He took out is GPS on his phone and away we went. I’m glad he changed his mind as the site was in a lovely valley and there were 16 slabs of stone standing erect in a field. They were stone markers. There were also a number of burial mounds dating back a few thousand years. My favourite marker had a face that resembled a Viking on it. 

Then we drove to the town that we shopped at two days ago and we bought what we needed for the next couple of days and Buhuu bought all the groceries that we need for our Mongolian barbeque dinner and breakfast tomorrow. Then we had lunch at the same restaurant as before with wi-fi.

After that we made a bee-line for our homestay for the night. We had to drive 130 kilometres, but luckily most of that was on sealed roads except for the last ten when we turned off. Bukhbat had selected a nomadic family for us to stay with overnight. We drove up and met them briefly before driving a bit further to pitch our camp by the river. We off loaded all the tents, mattresses and sleeping bags while a thunderstorm blew up. Tony and I had some difficulty pitching our tent in the gusty winds, but with Buhuu and Fred’s help we finally got it up. Our tent was brand new and very similar to the ones in Africa, except it is made of light nylon instead of canvass.

After we got marginally organized we walked back to the family to have a cup of yak milk tea. When we got there there was a fenced pen with a few dozen sheep and goats in it. Buhuu and the man of the family went over to select the sheep that they were going to barbeque for us. You can’t tell me that the animals don’t know. They were milling around in the very crowed space and bleating and trying to stay out of the man’s way. Eventually, he got the one they had selected and carried the struggling animal to the edge of the pen and handed it over to one of our drivers. While everyone was inside having tea, I watched as they led it over behind the ger. I watched as they killed it. Buhuu asked us not to take any photos of the process, but what they did was pin it down on its back, make an incision about six inches long and then the man reached inside and severed the main artery. The animal didn’t struggle much or make any noise during this process as it quickly bled to death internally.

Buhuu had told us on the drive that a previous group had witnessed the slaughter and complained to GAdventures who then said we were not to see it or photograph it. Apparently, some of the women also said it turned them vegetarian. Buhuu said we could watch if we wanted but not to complain to the company. At that point I was not sure I really wanted to watch. But curiosity got the better of me as I know that people have been doing this for eons and many cultures still do. Unlike the Western world, not all people go to the grocery store for their meat. This is their way of life and they waste nothing except the small organ which produces bile.

At that point Buhuu said we could take photos. I videoed almost the entire process as they skinned and then butchered the sheep. The man and Buhuu were incredibly fast and efficient. It was obvious that this is something they have done many times. As he was skinning it he had to break each leg with a snap at the knee and cut the tendon. When the skin was completed separated from the sheep it served as a butchering table on the ground as they carefully cut the abdomen open and removed all the offal. It was all put in buckets and the man spooned all the blood out of the empty cavity and that too was put in a bucket to make sausages. All of that was taken away to the women who proceeded to empty the intestines of all the semi-digested grass, while Buhuu and the man cut up all the meat into fist size. Eventually there was nothing left but the skin lying there. The whole process was incredibly efficient with nothing wasted. It made me think of the plains Indians and how they lived off the buffalo. 

Meanwhile a couple of our drivers were removing the fur from the severed head and fatty tail section with a blow torch. The whole process from live to totally butchered sheep took about an hour. I was captivated and felt both initial revulsion and then fascination. I know that this was a authentic experience and I know that animals are killed back home for me to eat, but I have never witnessed it before, and this was in the most basic traditional way, a way that has probably been used for thousands of years.

We went back to the tent for a couple of hours and I typed up the last couple of days. Then we walked back for dinner. It turned out that it wasn’t really a barbeque, it was more of a stew, with the meat and vegetables put into a large metal milk can and then put on top of an outdoor stove. While we were waiting I watched the kids of the family play volleyball and Buhuu and one of the drivers play basketball. All around us were horses, sheep, goats, cows and their droppings. The mountains were in the distance all around us and we watched as the light played on them and thunderstorms rolled around and somehow missed us. Then we ate and had mutton, carrots and potatoes. It was very good, and the poor sheep was quite tender and juicy. My driver, the one with the bucket in front of him, painstakingly picked all of the meat and edible pieces off of the head of the sheep and clearly enjoyed every bit of it as he cracked it open. After we were finished, on the local’s orders, we all had a cup of tea to settle the stomach and then a large shot of vodka. As it got darker we wandered back to our tents where one of the drivers set up a large tepee shaped campfire. The Mongolians entertained us with some singing and then we got rained out and headed off to our tents.