Mr. Joost in Mongolia

by Peter Joost

We arrived at Ikh Nart, the camp where we would spend the next two weeks in the late afternoon.  I shared a ger with the two other men on the trip, one English, one Japanese.  The three women had their own ger.  Settled in, several of us took a walk, our first, past a muddy spring, our water source, down the narrow valley from the camp.  It was exciting—our first glimpse of one of the animals we would be tracking, an ibex peering down at us, a hoopoe, several migrant birds (one a wryneck, my first sighting) and most stirring, flocks of endangered lesser kestrels, which roost communally.  They playfully chased each other about before settling in.  This was a scene repeated every evening.

The two weeks of the expedition were spent mostly accompanying one of the scientists or staff and tracking the animals being studied:  two species of hedgehog, argali sheep, and ibex.  Typically we set out at six in the morning, finished at three.  Along the way we took time to see other wildlife, including Daurian Hares, two fox species, many kinds of birds.  We monitored several nests of endangered cinereous vultures, once watching the single chick get tagged and measured; its wingspan: eleven feet!  In the late afternoons we checked traps set for resident rodents—gerbils, jerboas, and hamsters—and for the two local snakes.  (One trap yielded a lemming, a first for the project.)  Finally, several of the days were devoted to vegetation surveys.  (By far the most abundant plant appeared to be onion grass.)

There were two expeditions, one to a nomad family, where we watched the mares get milked and were served their milk and solid curd.  (I’ll invoke the Fifth Amendment.)  One evening everyone in the camp went on a dark and careering hour-long ride to visit a kind of dance hall, where some local hospital workers were being honored at a dinner.  We watched the dinner from the sidelines—gaily festooned sheeps’ heads were brought out.  There was a lot of presenting and singing and then many hours of dancing to traditional and pop songs.  It was impossible not to enjoy all this.

There were too many other highlights in this once-in-a-lifetime trip to give proper due, but the disco experience must serve to evoke the great appeal and spirit of the people I met, volunteers, researchers, and the Mongolians.  It was an experience that has continued to resound.