Early this morning it started to rain, and it continued steadily all day, and blew as well, so was really cold. We decided to make it an office data catch-up day, which we needed anyway, and had really planned for such a rain out. But I did not expect it to rain the entire day. Finally just quit after dinner time, and we could see the mountains covered by a dusting of snow; this is how summer begins here? Since it is so damp, and will be very cold tonight, we finally asked the camp manager to install a stove pipe, so he did, and then lit the stove, and the ger warmed up right away, so maybe we will be comfortable tonight. Expect to spend a solid day in the field tomorrow, so imagine it will be cold and damp. Lucky the rain began early today, or we would have gone out and have been stuck in steady rain all day, as we are now working far from camp and get a driver to take us out and pick us up. So it worked out all around. Just have to hope we won’t have more days like this.
The night was cold despite the fact we had the stove; after the wood burned (too quickly), the ger cooled off fast, and of course the wind was howling all night, so it was difficult to get up in the morning. It was gray and threatening when we did, and the wind was still severe when we headed out but at least it wasn’t raining. We took rain gear, anyway, and by noon the clouds were parting and the afternoon was comfortable, even though there was still some wind, so we had a good field day. We timed everything just right taking our office day yesterday and getting back out today.
Inquiring minds wanted to know about toilet facilities (because inquiring minds belong to campers/backpackers and know how you need a shower the most when you can't take one):
We have an “ablution block” as K calls it, with a number of separate rooms with showers and toilets; one of those is reserved for us, meaning the project supervisors. The shower usually runs cold water only, so showering in the evening is a real chore, just let water dribble, hoping the body warms it up as it trickles down. Tonight, however, I could get nothing but scalding hot water, so I had to resort to the same technique of turning the water on and off and using a minimum at a time. The toilets are not great, but at least they are toilets and do have a flushing mechanism (button on top of tank to release the tank water), and work OK.Let's head away from the head and onto the dining room:
A more serious problem we realized yesterday is that they ran out of bottled water. This is used for all drinking, mixing with tea and coffee, etc. Luckily we still had a few left over bottles for use in the field. So camp was without drinking water for 24 hours until someone drove back today to buy more cases. I hear that a truck load of supplies is on its way, but will probably be here tomorrow. It looks like they are also running out of some food items, so hope this will replenish all of those needs.
Tonight for dinner, us non-Mongolians actually got a small dab of vegetables, a “salad” composed of carrot pieces, pickles and red peppers. The rest of the plate of course had various items composed of meat. I had tea, about the only drinking option, but I’m not asking where the water came from; at least I know it was boiled. As for the apricots, I took a bunch of dried ones I had at home, so they have been useful; I have been spare with them, so still have some and some of the nut mix from Grammy.
They have a strange thin rubbery mushroom? item which we had for dinner both tonight and last night, and it was actually good. It’s dark brown to black, ruffly and thin, and looks kind of like some exotic pasta, but doesn’t taste much like mushroom.
All I can say is, What have you done with my husband? You know, the one who hates mushrooms and piles them up on my plate when we go out to eat, where'd he go?
No comments:
Post a Comment