Fjällbonäs-FarAwayistan: 070622 Mongolian ”Ger”-sleep The landscape is constantly changing and this afternoon it changed into something like Mauretania, but with much higher mountains. The customs officer, letting us into Mongolia, was more like Saint Peter opening the pearly gates and giving us a VIP ticket straight into Heaven. Offroad riding of this quality is very rare. If Rikard felt he was in the garden of Eden or Hell, we will never know. I think even betting firms would have problems calculating the odds ? The vast views here make the Swedish mountains look like a backyard in the greater scheme of things, if we needed to compare them. Here and there we find a ”Hangaround” whose big dream seem to be a trucker. You must agree that the load on this little 150 would fit better on the back of a truck than on a motorcycle. When the evening came, Lukas and I had gone much further than the cars, who had the tents and the sleeping bags. After a short discussion we rode up to a Mongolian tent, locally called Ger. When the evening and the cold come creeping in underneath your clothes even a tent in the middle of the tundra looks inviting. We simply asked if we could stay the night there. We used body language only. It is a strange experience to ”talk” if you don’t know a single word of the foreign language. This is where we spent the night. After a while a woman turned up with a book that turned out to be a Mongolian-English dicitionary. It didn’t help much, but it kept us occupied a while. These tents are very beautiful and very functional. The people seem to live in them all year, which demands good isolation and an oven. The leathery skin we saw on children only about ten years old. The word weather-worn becomes a whole new meaning. The people here are very hospitable and live in total contact with Nature. We were the big entertainment of the evening and everybody just spent the evening watching us. I felt like an extra-terrestrial. This is an evening that will stay with Lukas and me forever.   << Previous All chronicles Next >> High Performance Riding www.pgdakar.com Per-Gunnar Lundmark Fjällbonäs 15 933 91 Arvidsjaur Per-Gunnar Lundmark Eva.PG.Lundmark@swipnet.se Updated 2007-06-23