The excursion of the day turned out to be a two hour horseback ride to taller grasslands and what looked like someone’s house who offered us my first taste of “milk product.” This famous treat, found at each stop of my trip from the museum gift shop to the grocery store, is called “cheese” but is more like a mix between wax, chocolate, and taffy with an aftertaste of sour. Through no fault of my own, this “milk product” soon became irresistible to me, and I ended up buying four packages before I left.
I hadn’t ridden a horse is years, and I found the ability to use a living thing as transport, strangely exhilarating. The mountains and planes stretching as far as I could see also made the journey remarkable. What did not help the trip, however, was the biting cold. At the little milk product house, I made sure to put up my hood and wrap my scarf tightly around my face before beginning the journey home.
Most Unexpected Entertainment: Demonstrations of Mongolian wrestling, where two people put on leather, jacket-like armor which they grab as they face each other, trying to pull the other to the ground. When they asked for volunteers, a short-haired obvi-dyke volunteered, to the amusement and disbelief of Mongolian crew. The rest of us tourists watched as they wrestled for an uncomfortably long time, interspersed with grunting and groaning, until the girl was literally thrown to the ground and pinned by the body weight of her contender. Most unfortunately, I thought, “This is the closest thing I have to a community.”
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