KEY POINTS:
This horse we're going to eat," I said to Sanchir, "Is it dead yet?"
It was as discreet a way as I could manage of expressing my reluctance to be a spectator at the slaughter of my dinner. I was hoping the horse in question was already dried strips of meat, like the mutton - some black-red, most glistening slabs of marble-white fat - that hung from the ceiling poles of Baatar's ger.
Sanchir, my interpreter ("You can call me Sam," he had said when we met, his vowels showing the five years he had spent in Chicago and Virginia), repeated the question in Mongolian.
Baatar, the nomad herdsman who had welcomed us into his life for a couple of days, twisted in his tiny, hard saddle and shook his head with a disconcertingly gleeful smile.
My heart sank: having professed an interest in seeing the nomad way of life up close, I could hardly ask to be excused when the going got bloody.
We were heading up into the hills about 50km from the capital, Ulaanbaatar, where Baatar (surnames are unknown in Mongolia) lives with his wife, Unurtsetseg, and eight-year-old son Ichinhorloo.
I had agreed to accompany Bataar on horseback - the triumph of hope over some undignified experience - as he went up to move his flock of 300 sheep and goats to new grazing.
Several bowls of airag - the fermented mare's milk that tastes like fizzy yoghurt and is as digestible as it is refreshing - were sloshing round in my empty stomach, fortifying me against fear and saddle soreness.
As turned out, the horse had a few hours yet to live.
The livestock having been moved - Baatar said afterwards that I had not hindered the process though I rather fancy he was being polite - we sat down to bowls of suutei budaa, a sort of milky risotto flavoured with tea. It was adorned with several lumps of dried mutton that had been added near the end of the cooking process and topped with the pièce de resistance - a slab of mutton-fat twice the size of my thumb.
"You don't have to eat it," Sam mumbled. "I'll just tell them you're not hungry." But, having established my credentials as a crack horseman, I wasn't about to be defeated by lunch.
In fact, it was all quite palatable, just the kind of tucker you need after a hard few minutes riding the range. The lean meat was in fact the greater challenge, being hard and chewy and coming from an animal that had been killed more thoroughly than it had been skinned. The fat was an intense burst of flavour that reminded me of the mutton roasts of childhood.
If I had thought the nomad lifestyle laid back, a couple of days with Bataar and Unurtsetseg put paid to that impression. There is never an idle moment. The two dozen mares are milked every couple of hours, the 10 to 20 litres collected are all used to keep the airag barrel topped up. Dried cow pats are collected and laid out upside down to try in the harsh upland sun; they're excellent fuel for the fire and the sweet smoke they produce repels flies as well.
Bataar, who has trained as a vet, spends each morning extracting reluctant sheep and goats from the flock for a consultation, using an ingenious lasso that looked like Huck Finn's fishing rod.
The pure nomadic way of life survives in Mongolia but life is getting harder. The collapse of the Soviet Union and the beginning of a market economy persuaded many to sell their stock and seek - vainly as it would turn out - a better life in the cities. Then perishing winters in the first three years of this century claimed millions of livestock. Now, even government economists accept that 300 livestock (Bataar and Unurtsetseg have around 200) is the minimum needed to sustain a viable nomadic life. Nomads make up about 30 per cent of the population but about two-thirds of them have herds less than half that size.
Meat is to Mongolians as pasta is to Italians: particularly in the countryside, greens are virtually unknown, though an onion may add some tang to a remorselessly bland diet based on milk, flour and meat. But nomads do most of their meat-eating in winter when the animals have been fattened on summer pastures and, in temperatures that can drop below - 40C, animal fat's high calories are most needed. The summer diet is known as "white food" - yoghurt, sweet cream the consistency of cottage cheese, dried curds as hard as biscuits.
The slaughter of the horse might have seemed a gesture for an honoured guest but I can't accept the blame for the animal's demise. The family would be keeping little of the meat, most of which would be sold to pay for Ichinhorloo's school supplies and fees. Yet it was hard not to feel a little responsible when it was felled, drained of blood, skinned and jointed, all with a 10-cm kitchen knife and within the space of an hour. A ute showed up and Bataar and some other blokes headed into town with the three-legged carcass. Unurtsetseg sliced the rest of the meat into strips which she hung to dry like socks on a line. One strand was finely chopped and mixed with salt and onion to fill buuz, the dumplings that are a Mongolian staple. Concerned the buuz would be too lean and tasteless, she diced up a small brick of mutton fat and mixed that in too.
As she worked, she was keen to know some facts about New Zealand. Speaking through Sam, she wanted to know the ratio of humans to horses, how cold it got (she smirked at my best winter minimum) and how long it took to get to Mongolia (this did impress her). By the time the buuz were ready, it was dark outside, the clear sky full of an impossibly radiant starshow. Sam erected his small camping tent where we would sleep on the hard ground. But Unurtsetseg had a nightcap planned: the day's fresh yoghurt was ready. It was creamy, rich and so naturally sweet that the sugar she offered was quite unnecessary.
"She says it will help you sleep," Sam says. "A bowl of yoghurt is the nomad's way of telling you it's bedtime." As the wind whipping down from Siberia took the temperature down to zero, I was snug in the tent.
GETTING THERE
Cathay Pacific offers a daily service from Auckland to Beijing via Hong Kong. From Beijing, Air China offers daily non-stop flights to Ulaanbaatar. Check cathaypacific.co.nz for more information.
NOMAD VISITS
Tour companies will organise visits to nomads but there's nothing, apart from the language barrier, to stop you making your own approach. In remote areas your driver will intercede for you. Mongolian nomads are famously hospitable and will welcome, shelter and feed any traveller who turns up.
A guest should not arrive empty-handed. Practical gifts - D-size batteries, knives, heavy-duty sewing needles - are recommended.
As a last resort, give money: US$5-US$10 per person per night.
Nomads are relaxed hosts but a few formalities are worth observing. As you enter a ger, step over the threshold, not on it. Move to the left, the right is the family's space. Use your right hand to give and receive everything, lightly touching your right elbow with your left hand. Don't turn your back on the family, except when leaving.
* Peter Calder travelled to Mongolia with the assistance of Cathay Pacific and the Asia New Zealand Foundation.
