"Yurts and ponies"

The two top questions I get now that I came back from Mongolia are: "Do people live in yurts?" and "Do they ride around on ponies?" Well, no and no. But also yes and yes.

"Yurt" is a Russian word, and it's simply not polite to call their tents that. In Mongolian they are called "ger," pronounced with a strong "g," a short rolling "r," and an almost non-existent "i" that just barely bridges the two consonants.


They ones that are inhabited (not for storage) have stoves, a television, and very often a solar panel or two. Many of them have old motorcycles next to them, a wooden strucure for tying horses, etc.


On the inside there are usually Buddhist altars with pictures of Gods and family members, little prayer wheels, etc. The owner of this ger is not religious (the communists fought Lamaism early on, destroyed temples, and executed thousands of monks), so he has a bunch of pictures and horse riding medals. The container in the middle is full of airag, an alcoholic drink made from fermented mare's milk.


The little ger is the camp store. The big, ornate one in the back is the camp's recreation tent, and the miscellaneous stuff on the ground is another ger, which the storekeeper has taken apart to go back to Ulaan Baatar. It is easy to see in this picture how portable the whole thing is.


Many ger are built in semi-permanent clusters with hard corrals for wintering horses, gear storage, and hay. In this picture, my friend SGT Dirkes gets on a horse, and he guy with a yellow belt is wearing a traditional del.





Which brings me to the ponies. In Mongolia, they're horses (moir), and they're not small. People take offense when they hear that. They are really proud of their horses.

The Mongolian ministry of Defense convinced some local herders to wrangle some horses in the cantonment area. It was a real treat, and I got to watch the guys herd and catch horses fairly close. This picture shows the Mongolian lasso, at the end of a pole.


This man is trying to catch a horse from the ground:


Once the horse is caught, it is submitted by a man on the ground who twists its ears, and ridden bareback by a man (a teenager, often), who either falls or tires the horse.


Everyone in Mongolian horse families, young or old, rides horses.


The kids are put on horses pretty early, and by the time they're ten years old they'll be galloping around the hills.

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