I've got a curd in my pocket

The museum was underwhelming. Drew walked to the exit, and I veered toward reception to ask a question about a billboard that I had seen earlier that day. I only managed “hello” before the receptionist held up her index finger then called out apathetically, “Aami!” An English-speaking boy in his early 20s appeared and examined my photo of the billboard. It was more curiosity than anything that motivated me to ask about it. All that I could read was a date, and the date was today. Without answering my question, Aami told me that he would get off work in 10 minutes. “Can you wait?” Having just seen the only tourist attraction in all of Dalanzadgad, we could certainly wait.

We hopped into Aami’s car and drove 10 miles out of town, listening to his two favorite artists on the way: Adele and Bruno Mars. After putting enough space between us and the city to rouse my unshakeable (but obviously misplaced) stranger danger, we pulled into a parking lot. I leapt between the dry patches of the half-underwater lot, making my way to the row of tents at its edge. Beyond the tents, there were hundreds of archers dressed in technicolor deels and impressively decorated hats. It was the national championship of archery, Aami told us.

One of the criteria for the Bonderman Fellowship was to travel to places where I would "stick out like a sore thumb.” Here, we must have stuck out like a thumb glued to an air horn button because it didn’t take more than a few minutes for the president of the tournament to locate us. His name was Chinbaa. Kindly, he explained the rules of the competition to us. One thousand archers had traveled here from every province in the country. Today was the team event, where team members would rotate in shooting 40 arrows at a line of cowhide cups from 75 meters out.

In front of us, four archers stood in a line, their left shoulders pointed at the target. The first archer stretched his bow, made of moose antler and wood, and aimed it at the famous ‘eternal blue Mongolian sky.' He anchored the arrow so that the vulture feather fletching brushed his cheek, then lowered the bow level with the horizon.

With a swift release, the bronze-tipped arrow disappeared from his bow. It quivered in the air as the wind tried to intervene, but the elements were no match for the calculating archer. The arrow soared towards the target, which was flanked in close proximity by his teammates. The blow of the arrow scrambled 3 cowhide cups from the line. That was 3 points for the man in blue. The group raised their hands in celebration, and I smiled in realizing that the symbol for goal was universal. We watched them celebrate and I noticed that the teammates were singing. Aami said, "They sing of the mountains, the rivers, the sky."

The wind may not have succeeded at thwarting the archer’s shot, but it was certainly working a number on me. I buttoned my jacket and turned to Chinbaa, who began to speak again. Though his English faltered, I understood completely. “The wind is no problem. These archers know. They thinking, thinking the wind, and they know.” From my interactions with Mongolians so far, I already knew this to be true. In this country, there was no separation between people and nature. Mongolians do not view nature as some commodity to be controlled and contorted for personal gain. Rather, it is something to live on, live with, live from. The wind, albeit an added challenge, was simply a fact of the sport.

At the sound of celebratory singing across the field, I turned to see four leather cups missing from the line. Chinbaa continued, “Chinggis Khan was the great archer.” He paused, then swept his palm over his forearm, “It is our blood, since thousand years.” I believed it. After the four archers had finished the round, Chinbaa invited us into his ger.

We made our way to the massive ger behind the spectator tents. I gawked at the ornate wooden door but was quickly distracted by the splendor inside the ger; it was an incredible sight. The ceiling was buttressed by dozens of wooden poles, each hand-carved with scenes of horses, mystical animals, and cultural symbols. I looked at the giant ceramic centerpiece and watched a woman fish around the bottom with a ladle. Fighting the urge to take a peek over the rim, I instead took a seat at the U-shaped table and glanced around the room. I immediately spotted Chinbaa at the head table alongside coaches and other people of importance.

I, of slightly lesser importance, sat in front of a tower of cheese. This cheese platter was piled so high that I had to crane my neck to see past it. It wasn’t exactly cheese though, but cheese curds – the ones that we had eaten at Tamaa’s house during the horse trek a few days before. There were also plates of fruit, Fanta soda, chocolates, and other snacks that, altogether, fashioned a sumptuous feast. I popped one of the curds into my mouth to see if I had developed a taste for it yet. My tastebuds told me that they had not.

A woman came by and set a paper cup full of airag in front of me. “Fermented mare’s milk,” Aami told me as I accepted the drink, “from the horses on the mountains behind us.” I thought, oh no, not again.

But things could have been a lot worse.

The woman returned with an entire soup bowl of airag for Drew. It was customary for men to drink a few bowls of airag, or at least until they vomited. I sat there and sneered, grateful to only have to endure a few ounces of the sour drink. To his credit, Drew finished the bowl without a fuss. But as soon as it was empty, the woman walked over to the giant ceramic centerpiece, poured another bowl, and walked back to Drew. I snickered again.

I should have known that I wouldn’t be let off the hook so easily. She returned with three cups of vodka, one for each of us. At the sight, my stomach turned, still reeling from the horrendous hangover and water poisoning wombo-combo that followed a day of vodka tasting on horseback. I thought, no way. Maybe I’ll pour it in a plant. I just needed to find a plant.

Before I could locate any indoor vegetation, a coach stood up and made a speech. Next, Chinbaa stood and spoke in Mongolian, but looked at us. Aami nudged me, “stand up.” Chinbaa had his vodka in hand, so I picked mine up too. In English, he thanked us for coming. He wished us well in our travels and for happiness in our lives. It was all of the hospitality and kindness that I had heard Mongolian people possess, and I felt warm from his genuine welcome. Probably from the airag, too.

Then he raised his vodka in a toast and all eyes were on us. There was no escaping it. I reluctantly tossed back the drink and fought to keep my face from contorting; this vodka was not as smooth as Dalaat’s. Chinbaa repeated his words in Mongolian for the others to understand. He turned towards us again and said, “Perhaps you would like to share a few words about archery in America?”

Bad bad bad.

How was I to tell this kind, very important man, that I did not have the slightest clue about archery? The three archery-aware brain cells were doing donuts in my head. There’s a ringed board with a bullseye, right? Or is that only in darts? I continued flipping through empty cerebral file cabinets, only to keep coming back to a scene in 10 Things I Hate About You, where a group of high schoolers were practicing archery for PE. But I didn’t think that a late 90s rom-com was really what the most accoladed archers in all of Mongolia wanted to hear about.

I elbowed Drew and cartoonishly whispered out of the side of my mouth, “This one’s all you, pal.”

Drew hammered on about vague differences between Mongolian and American archery, like how the rigs are more mechanical and people often use archery for hunting. I thought it sounded pretty good.

Chinbaa thanked Drew and repeated it in Mongolian to the rest of the room, who nodded in approval. I leaned over and asked how he knew so much about archery. He said, “I don’t. I just heard about it a few times in a Joe Rogan podcast.” He had actually, legitimately, just explained American archery to these professionals based on snippets from The Joe Rogan Experience. A bit disgraceful, perhaps, but I supposed it was better than what I had in mind.

Aami, Drew, and I chatted in the ger until the other guests began to file out into the evening air. Aami stood, then picked up another cheese curd, explaining that it was polite to take one last treat before you leave someone’s ger. I smiled and nodded agreeably, saying “Oh yes, of course” and plucked one from the tower. As Aami turned to leave, I snuck it into my pocket.

We walked back onto the field where the archery teams were finishing the last rounds of the evening. Behind me, the mountains were smudged in gray where the rain fell in dense sheets. Thunder racketed in my chest, and I had to commend lightning’s attempt to upstage the sun. But the sun could not be beat. I looked forward, beyond the archers, into the unending plains. The clouds were bursting from the earth in these magnificent swirls, painted with ethereal blues and pinks and yellows. The sun pulled lightly at their edges, searching for an opening where it could pour its golden rays onto the plain. Where it succeeded, colors flourished impossibly; the deels of the archers glowed like jewels against a velvety green robe, and I did not think that they could not hold any more color.

I stood in complete awe of this moment and reflected on the fortuitous chain of events that brought me here. It had taken 52 hours to get to Dalanzadgad: two taxis, two buses, one dreadful slumber on a bus station bench, and roughly eighteen setbacks. After arriving in Dalanzadgad, our luck did not improve. Our plan to head to the Gobi Desert had been stymied by the torrential downpours that flooded the roads. During this unexpected delay, we walked to three different coffee shops to find decent WiFi. By all accounts, things were not going well. But in our wandering to the third coffee shop, we came across a billboard, which we couldn’t read except for the numbers, which happened to be today’s date, which made me curious.

I listened as the cheerful songs of the archers blended with the wind, watched them form a line to offer handshakes for a job well done, and breathed in the smell of grass and rain. I was overcome with gratitude for how lucky we were to have met Aami, to have been welcomed in with such warmth and appreciation by the archers. I inhaled deeply, put my hands in the pockets of my jacket and felt something brush against my fingers. I smiled when I realized what it was.

I still had the curd in my pocket.

A few notes:

I learned a hard lesson that day: always bring the camera– you never know where you might end up. I took a few photos of the sunset on my phone but as expected, they did not capture the colors as I saw them. We returned to the competition the next morning and I was able to take a few photos, albeit in the rain. I had the opportunity to talk to Narangarav, the woman standing on my right, and she let me take a photo with their team. A few hours later, they became the champions of the team event.

In Mongolia, the 13th-century ruler of the Mongolian Empire is known as 'Chinggis Khan.' The name was first transcribed in Arabic as 'Genghis Khan' because the 'ch' sound was not represented in that language.

Circular nomadic dwellings are referred to as 'yurts' in Turkic and 'gers' in Mongolian.