14 SAVEUR.COM
Left: The Bayraa family
greets the authors out-
side their camp of gers
(yurts). Below: A woman
pours airag (fermented
mare’s milk) from a
height to aerate the
traditional beverage.dry from the rafters of one
of the gers (yurts) belonging
to the Bayraa family of Mon-
golian nomads. The master
tent where we would sleep
was a wonderland of oil-
cloths, Soviet garb, and bright
cacophonous Asian fabrics.
We’d set out from Ulaan-
baatar, the capital city,
with our driver and guide,
Shatarbal Dugerjav, former
diplomat to Bulgaria, and a
single cassette tape of Mongo-
lian folk music that sounded
like horses whinnying and
eagles screaming. At the city’s
edge, the roads stop and the
tire tracks begin.
There are no road signs out-
side the capital. A guide leads
by memory, intuition, and a
thoughtful crawl of 15 miles
per hour. You rarely see more
than a one-story building
between minuscule towns.
But you do see Mongolian
families packed three genera-
tions deep into Land Cruisers
migrating through the coun-
tryside. Because many
Mongolians living outside the
capital are nomadic, they pay
no rent or tax and the gov-
ernment encourages them to
preserve this way of life.
After days of driving we
arrived at the Bayraa fam-
ily camp in the Arkhangai
region, 330 miles to the west
of Ulaanbaatar. Along the
way we ate instant Koreannoodles and kimchi, both
popular here. We saw horses
on the flatlands, a vulture
feasting on a fallen sheep, a
double rainbow after a rain-
storm. Beauty and brutality
and, for long stretches of the
drive, green pastures, blue
sky, and nothing more.
Inside the yurt, a woman
cut handmade noodles on the
bed. Three boys took us to
collect rocks from the river.
After we’d gathered a cou-
ple dozen smooth stones,