I was not ready for the cold.
“It gets a bit chilly at night,” I was told. I thought back to the chilly nights of my childhood in MA. I thought of my apartment on the L.E.S. that had no heat in the NY winter. I figured that if I could survive those nights, I was more than ready to take on the chill of Inner Mongolia.
Packing became a seriously ambivalent inner monologue. My backpack could only hold so much. I packed all of my warmest clothing, and then, thinking of the second day desert trip, packed my sunglasses, sunscreen, and t-shirts. Convinced that I was being “too MA” in my approach, I unpacked my hat and resisted the urge to stuff my ear muffs into the little crevices of my bag.
We arrived at our lodgings for the night, a series of yurts, which are round, one-room huts. Ours had three beds inside, and, surprisingly, a TV. and a western toilet. (I assume, though, from the stench, that there was no western plumbing underneath.)
As our yurt had broken panes at the top, it was basically like sleeping outside. We decided to purchase some “bi geo” or liquor, to ease the pain of the cold as they did in the olden days before settling in for the night. I wore my regular socks, knee socks, and fluffy slipper-socks to bed. I tucked in my leggings and my stretchy pants. And there, inside the yurt, under two blankets, deep inside a sleep-sack, under my fuzzy hoodie, wrapped in my scarf, inside my pink fleece and my long sleeve shirt, under my t-shirt and white strappy tank top, with bi geo in my stomach, layered as a Russian doll, I finally fell asleep.
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