The North Gobi

It took over two days to reach to Gobi desert and in that time I watched the landscape change - long grasses and shrubs over one hill, shorter grasses over the next. The smell of sage was strong as the grass disappeared and the shrubs sank to tiny knarly sagebrush. Then those disappeared too and all that was left was dry dirt and the occassional bleached cage of a dead camel.

Our guides as we headed south were large eagles. They sat along the road on rocks and seemed hardly bothered by our rattling van. A few honks from our driver sent them soaring (wings spread five feet wide) in front of us as if leading the way.

From the van windows we watched horses run by, sheep and goats huddle as black and white spots in the distance, vultures watch over a recently dead cow, and the sky fill with the wings of more eagles.

We drove for eleven hours that day and still the heart of the Gobi was ahead of us. The two small villages we past were dingy and dirty. Their stores contained practically nothing - one can of peas, a melted chocolate bar, a few cans of soda, and a bar of soap. The children running around outside were snotty and filthy. They extended both hands to accept my pieces of candy. The wrappers flew to the ground.

We passed two wells that day. One had a wooden board covering a hole. A rubber inner tube had been sewn into a bucket and was attached to a rope. The water we hauled up was yellow. The second well had a pump that was turned by a horse. The trough into which the water poured was crowded with goats and sheep. John had tiny, muddy, paw prints all over his legs before even half a bottle was filled.

The animals in the desert must smell the water. Within minutes of the trough filling, camels began appearing. Two came, then five more, then another four. They drank and shook their lips shaking water everywhere.

Heat waves still rose off the dirt when we finally stopped for the night. Butar had driven to the edge of a small sand dune. It was 8:30 at night. It was 98 degrees. It was too hot to cook so we opened a can of mushrooms, threw in a green pepper and carrot and said "Bon Apetite." We chased it all down with the last of yogurts, now hot and liquidy. But nothing we decided should be wasted in the Gobi lest we end up like the hungry camels we had seen with their wilted humps, or worse, like their poor bleached out friends.