Into the Gobi with the A-team

How do you write about people I wonder.. Do you start with a description of their character, the circumstances that brought you together or do you jump to the event that initiated this very need to share the acquaintance with the world? Mentioning this uncertainty is surely a bad start in itself but since they say writing does trigger ideas consider this a scribbled note on the margin. So let's start afresh.

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After returning from the Gobi desert after a cabin-feverish 11 day experience the late evening two days ago. I decide to change the safe grounds of my old guesthouse for a convenience of another one, closer to the city center and our drop off point. After sorting out the formalities I throw my backpack in the corner of a six-bed dorm and go to the bathroom to splash cold water on my tired face. I don't bother to shower in this late hour and choose to run to the net cafe instead to post a note on the net of my successful return to UB in case anyone cares. 10 minutes available are up in no time and for an hour or so I join the rest of the 'cabin inhabitants' for a late dinner at a local diner. It's time to recapitulate and draw a line after what's certainly been a little tour de force.

11 days with same people in an enclosed space test a person. I can tell you.

We'll all agree (at least I hope so for goodness sake!) on the first impressions being the accurate sum of persons' attitude most of the times. But there are those times when your judgment is hazed by sudden play of events which muddy up your critical receptors. That is precisely what has happened that day I have committed myself to the trip. I will have to go onto a short tangent here to explain the circumstances:

Sunday nine o'clock. I get up back to my hostel after a successful day of notice posting on the boards of multiple guesthouses and expat cafes. (A notice for fellow minded adventurers willing to endure the hardships of individual travel in Western Mongolia.) I am stopped by the guesthouse manager who points me to a note on the board from two French organizing a trip to Gobi. I did come across their 'ad' before and chatted with their friend about the possibility of me joining a similar tour (if all else fails) earlier that day but the thought has slipped my mind completely in the hours passed. The phone call to the number I am given connects me with a grumpy guesthouse manager whose English I find very difficult to decode but when the aforementioned friend takes over the phone and cares to explain I learn they are out in a restaurant somewhere in my area. No address, no name, just a mention that the restaurant is in the Lonely Planet guidebook. 

It's half ten now as I quickly weigh my options and give it a go. The lonely planet book is provided in no time from a local source and two restaurants fit the description given. I hastily walk out the door and within 10 minutes find myself entering the first one. Lucky guess or fate? The second group of foreigners reveals the aforementioned French girl and a boy and soon I find myself eagerly sweet talking to please my newly found best friends for life. We are going to do an independent (understand not organized by an agency) adventurous tour of the Gobi. What could be better?


So these are the circumstances. You can surely see how easy it is to misjudge a person in the excitement of these rapid developments and lucky chance. How can a not particularly good looking but the loveliest and super friendly and sweet looking girl with an enchanting mix of French and Oxford English accents turn into a controlling opinion-eating monster with a gift of no self-reflection whatsoever is probably harder to see but trust me, it is possible.


And thus on one fresh Monday morning I find my self in a van with the A-team: a patronizing little witch with integrity problems and/or inability to employ logic in argumentation, a very funny Frenchman lacking a back bone and at least one ball (of the two) and two relatively cute Dutch girls unsuitable for any sort of independent adventurous travel. And of course the jewelery man, our uneducated bad-tempered driver.

And so off we go, into the adventure we ride!

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The illusion of a Team team is scattered very quickly. The jewelery man - ehm, the driver - drives out of the city for 45 minutes in the rush hour before he is finally persuaded by the four that I am indeed not yet in the van and I indeed have yet to be collected. After a 60 minute drive back to my guesthouse where I've been scratching my body parts for last two hours he has no kind words to spare as I am loaded in and meet the rest of the bunch. I don't have to mention that another 40 minute drive out of the city follows but not before we spend some 20 minutes at a train station waiting for the French to buy their tickets out of Mongolia for when we return. Since I was truly the last minute addition to the bunch I have left all the shopping to the rest. Not surprisingly we discover there is no water and we should (probably) buy some.

Three and a half hours behind schedule and a year closer to the coronary operation of our driver we are finally leaving the outskirts of UB. -

I don't particularly want to relive all the aggravating moments of the trip in detail so I will cut the possibly interesting individual stories into a short summary of issues. So: the lack of normal food (apparently one egg for breakfast is enough when there is no lunch and why not fill our selves with the 10 kilos of biscuits during the driving), three women yapping constantly about boyfriends and exboyfriends and exgirlfriends of their boyfriends and boyfriends and girlfriends of their friends (honest to god: how doesn't 20 minutes cover it?!), the Frenchmen totally agreeing with me the Frenchwoman is a control freak but never backing me up when the shit hits the fan, and all of my fellow passengers preferring to sit on their asses when we're passing a fascinating natural scenery rather then getting out there and explore it on foot (regarding this I gave up pushing my opinion forward very early on so I could not really point fingers when we arrived back 'north' 2 days earlier with nothing really to poke into).

When I have learned to take my ego out of the equation in any decision making debate and ignore the patronising (which I have perfected over the 11 days, I tell you) the trip actually became quite pleasant. I did choose solitude most of the time, but rather naturally and never on wrong terms so no one's feelings were hurt. I was hungry for normal food most of the time - even when we bought new supplies - the girls don't need to eat eggs in the morning but once they're done they just smell too good.. I virtually did not do any trekking, I did ride a camel for the most touristy price ever (demanded by the girls who screwed up any chances at bargaining) even though the so called tourist traps were high on the Frenchwoman's list of evil never-to-do things. Oh well.

One thing I regret is not recording the fantastic streams of colloquial Mongolian our driver directed at me at countless occasions when our opinions on where to drive next differed and I happened to sit next to him. What a lovely man!

I would definitely say I would not do it again the way we did it. And I will definitely never go anywhere with three women and only one man. (Done that twice - three times would make me an idiot. No thanks. But I did see some really interesting places and have quite a few pictures to show for it. I will post them up soon, I promise.

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Never again! I give up trying to use the internet here for anything else then writing pure text! Pain in the arse is what it is! No pictures until I get to a civilised country i.e. China. And I'm so getting a laptop there..

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Now successfully in China, got the laptop and here we go:

All photos slideshow.