I rose from my lovely Mongolian bed, that is to say, the flies & I rose from my lovely Mongolian bed, for there are flies here in November, but at least they are November flies...lazy, half-hearted. Into the Jeep my guide, my driver & I went to search for Przewalski's horses, rare as unicorns. The landscape is vast & the horses few.
Over hills & ruts & valleys we drove, sometimes on a suggestion of a path, sometimes over the landscape itself, across sheets of ice & strange rock formations & hard, unforgiving ground, all without a single spin out, spill, or flip over. My driver loves his Jeep so much that he wears a Jeep hat.
By appearance, Przewalski's horses (called The White Horse by locals, though they are only white as newborns) are fat, squat, stolid horses...the sumo wrestlers of horses. Indigenous to this land long ago, they became almost extinct by the 1960s, with just a few demoralized, quasi-domesticated individuals in zoos around the world. Carefully bred, they were reintroduced into Mongolia, into this one park. They had to learn to reclaim their wild nature. By nature, they are shy, rarely seen. There are now about 500 here.
These are not galloping, wind-in-their-mane, light-footed streaks of powerful horseflesh like wild mustangs. They are cousins of the African ass & as such have a bit of donkey-ness about them. They mostly stand around & eat. But they have natural Mohawk hairdos, which give them a certain laid-back cool. Yes, by nature these are the James Dean of horses...sensitive, held-back, easy to shock. A single fright can kill them. Therefore the Mongolians are tender with them, not as individuals, as they never get close to them, nor try to domesticate them, but tender in their protectiveness & pride.
Along the way, we encountered a nomad, out about his daily rounds. He stopped for a smoke with my guide & driver.
Other animals of the steppes:
SO enjoyed reading everything!!!!
ReplyDeleteKeep it coming! Your fans want the content! Very cool!
ReplyDelete