chapter four - Wandering Aimlessly and Selling Milk

I remember it being dark. And I remember Jimmy yelling at us. It must be something hard-wired in people to increase the volume of your voice when speaking to either non-natives or deaf people. So when I say Jimmy was yelling at us, it was only so we could understand his Mongolian better. You’d be surprised to know that volume does nothing to help understanding. It just makes you grumpy.

Our problem now was where to find a new driver to get us from Murun to our last stop, Hatgal. Hatgal is a tiny town, much like Murun, that lies at the southern tip of Huvsgul Lake. But here’s the deal: zero people are conscious at 4 am, and to a certain degree that included us. We were informed that no buses would leave for Hatgal until 5 or 6 that evening. And Hatgal was only 4 hours away. Murun didn’t exactly look like the kind of hotspot that offered much outside of wandering aimlessly through the streets or selling milk. Besides, where were we to stay until that evening?

But good old Jimmy, being half businessman half rescuer, didn’t skip a beat. Although he hadn’t had a lick of sleep for 20 hours, he offered to drive us straight on through the morning clear to Hatgal, provided we let him stop quickly at his home in Murun to do whatever (change, wash, eat…). The price for this was haggled, discussed, haggled again and then finally agreed upon. A collective sigh of relief could be heard issuing from the back of the micro: thanks Jimmy. After getting gas we waited outside Jimmy’s home, or what we suspected to be Jimmy’s home, for a few minutes.

The sun came up enough to light up Murun while we waited. Murun is the place you land in and leave from when you are smart enough to take an airplane on your way to Huvsgul Lake. Murun is small and surrounded by mountains. And honestly, the part I said about wandering aimlessly or selling milk (for fun and leisure) is at least half true. I saw neighborhoods with houses rather than blocks of apartment buildings or poor ger districts. The neighborhood we were in that morning surprised me by its straight streets and high, well-built fences. I forget sometimes that not all cities and towns in Mongolia look like UB.

It wasn’t long before Jimmy was back in the driver’s seat, hunched over the steering wheel, chomping on the last bits of whatever kind of breakfast he must have found inside his home. Within minutes our little micro was hopping down the road towards Hatgal. We began passing fewer herds of sheep and goats and more herds of yaks. At one point we crossed a dry, impossibly rocky river bed. Jimmy told us something like 5 cars were suddenly swept away due to flash flooding as they attempted to cross this very same river bed not too many days before us. I looked up at the sky – not a cloud present.

Before you arrive in Hatgal you have to enter the Huvsgul Lake Park, and of course there’s a fee. At this point, we think were swindled. We didn’t’ know this at the time, but it should only cost 300 tugruk to enter – we were told, by Jimmy, that it was 3,000 - which we gave him, which he took to a guard shack. Moments later he was back with the guard who was incredibly disheveled and quite drunk (this was about 6 in the morning). The guard peeped in at us, mumbled something to Jimmy and then stumbled back to his shack. And that’s how we got into the park and an hour closer to Hatgal.