Terelj National Park

By the end of the game of cards everyone there has either cried, thrown up or screamed like a girl. I have done all three. I am staying with a Mongolian family in the middle of the Terelj National Park near Ulan Baatur. I ended up here after meeting Temuchin at the station while I was trying to record announcements. Temuchin aided my cause greatly by going up to the station announcer and just telling her what to say. She plumped for "Welcome to Mongolia", which wasn't something she's ever said before or since over the tannoy but it worked fine for me. The family that Temeuchin knows do not live in one of the tourist camps that sprawl over the park with fancy restaurants, toilets, walkways, street lighting and even golf courses. Instead they just have their summer and winter gers. The ger is that round tent with a gently sloping roof that you've had some weird flavoured herbal tea in at a music festival. In fact, true to their nomad credentials, the family were not where they were supposed to be when we arrived and we drove backwards and forwards for a while in our tiny Japanese car to find the location of the camp.

The we rode horses. Quite a lot. We very rarely went on any actual expeditions, just shopping or to drop in to a friend's for a cup of tea. However, this being Mongolia, these involved several miles riding each time. Once we cantered out across a pale yellow plain between pale yellow hills, the grass not yet recovered from winter. A herdsman threw an expertly aimed rock at one of our dogs that had followed us out there, keen to protect his large flock of goats, then he galloped off in a cloud of dust to round up some strays. It was all very dramatic and then I realised we were just there to check on some cows. They were OK, so we went back again.

Mongolian shamans used to worship the sky, explaining the tall hats that bring the wearer closer to heaven like a television aerial. This is also the reason behind the ovos, piles of rocks stacked at high points throughout the country. Anyone passing an ovo should put three rocks on it, one for the past, the present and the future. This will bring you luck and ward off evil spirits. In the slightly faster paced modern Mongolia, people sometimes don't have time to find rocks (All the nearby good ones have already been put on the pile anyway) so it has been decided that honking your car horn three times is a fair substitute, a practical if noisy adaptation of traditiion. You can see why the sky here is revered, a clear blue heavenly roof soaring over the massive granite pillars. On one ride, after a long climb through a forest, we reach a ridge overlooking a valley with the awesome sky above. The horses are tired though, mine is particularly grumpy and twice sits down under me to be contrary. By the end of a day my thighs are aflame, having struggled to adapt to the somewhat basic saddle set up, that has meant some radical changes to a riding technique that was not so radical to begin with. The horses belong to Namchat's mother and father so in the evening we go and visit them, the epitomy of life in a Mongolian ger. We then stop off at various other friends and relatives on the way home, always being given a bowlful of whatever is on the stove. I only found out later that I was not expected to eat all of this, not before several evenings feeling incredibly full having forced down a big helping of liver noodles or some other delicacy.

After one such evening, Namchat suggested that she, her sister, niece, a friend and I should play cards. This seemed like a relatively tame proposition, so I agreed and we played several rounds of a civilised game until the niece emerged as the winner. Then we were joined by several young men and I was told we would now play a card game "for fun". This simple yet frantic game was harmless enough but the forfeits for losing were vicious. The first time I lost I was told I had to smoke a cigarette. Having resisted peer pressure for 23 years (Yes, 23 years, I'm sure I remember being offered a smoke in the post-natal unit at North Allerton Hospital) I decided this was as good a "First Puff" story as I was going to get. It didn't make me want to rush onto my second puff. Other dares included drinking several litres of water, eating an unwashed raw potato and having toothpaste and soot smeared all over your face. If you felt like it was all too much you could take the "easy" way out and put your hand, palm down, on the table. Then every other player would slap it as hard as they could. After cards had finished, this developed into a fully fledged game, where we went round slapping hands on top of each other, creating a never-ending hand pile. In some pain, I asked when this game would finish. The answer was apparently only when someone gives up. Not wanting to spoil whatever fun was being derived from this I gitted my teeth and kept quiet. Although the desciption of this slightly brutal sounding use of free-time may seem to suggest otherwise, the family was incredibly friendly and well balanced.