cross-eyed. They’re almost too loaded to check us in. I just walk behind the desk, snag a key off a hook, and shuffle upstairs into my chilly room, where I immediately collapse.
The sun rises entirely too soon, and I wake up feeling like I’ve been worked over by a baseball bat. At seven a.m. I limp downstairs, hunting for breakfast, and notice one of the kids from the front desk sitting alone in the kitchen chugging his morning Sapporo. Breakfast of champions. Outside, daylight reveals a grid of drab city streets that converge at a crumbling, dried-up fountain. The only residents I bump into are a few cows that pause to regard me with indifference as they amble through the center of town. There are entirely too many buildings here, considering the lack of people, which gives the place a feeling of abandonment. It’s like I just wandered into a George Romero movie.
We conduct a series of interviews with townspeople (once we find them), meeting one man in a surreal bar called The Gobi Bear. The walls are lined with bear masks and glass cases filled with dried bear dung. The bartender is playing checkers with himself, and there’s even a poster of Christina Aguilera holding her boob and giving the finger. The bar immediately jumps to number four on my list of world’s best watering holes (the current standard-bearer is a beach bar in Zanzibar with a chained monkey behind the counter that tries to bite customers).
The residents here are no less impassioned storytellers than their nomadic brethren, and we repeatedly hear that there have been sightings of the Worm in abandoned ruins to the west. We set off deeper into the desert to pursue the most recent accounts.
We leave the town in a trail of dust, driving past primordial rock formations and through vast valleys of sand, traversing the deserts between here and the distant town of Gurvantes, more than two hundred kilometers away. We eventually come across another group of yurts where a herder and his wife emerge in thick fur hats and old, colorful robes.
They invite us inside a tent so welcoming that it’s worth enduring the smell. A few snorts of the nomad’s snuff help to banish the cold. I share a meal of sheep guts with their seven-year-old daughter and her elderly grandmother. The warmth they exude starkly contrasts the icy weather around them. Though their entire world is contained within the sloping domain of this simple tent, these nomads are so full of character and pride. They carry themselves like royalty, the deep lines on their faces the beautiful evidence of lives spent hard at work.
Today they’re moving their home for the winter. We head outside, and I watch in amazement as the family breaks down their large, semi-rigid structure in less than thirty minutes flat. Every member of the family joins in the work. The seven-year-old hauls support poles, Mom breaks down the stove, Grandmother gathers up the heavy rugs, and Dad loads up the back of a Soviet-era truck. They will escort their material possessions across the desert to a winter camp offering better protection against the coming snows. The backbreaking work is enough to shame any American family who argues over taking out the trash.
While the last of their cargo is being tied down, the father tells me that, since I’m here hunting creatures, he wants to show me the remains of a “monster” that he’s discovered nearby. The man leads us up a rise in the sand to a seemingly anonymous spot. There, I crouch down and see that he’s camouflaged a patch of earth with a sand-covered tarp. I help him pull away the fabric and am confronted with an amazing sight: the fossilized skeleton of a dinosaur. We excavate part of the skull and jaw of what looks like some sort of raptor, although I can’t be sure. Our efforts are interrupted by the honking horn of the fully loaded transport truck below. We leave the remains in place, to be reclaimed by the shifting sands and lost again in time.
Eventually we
The sun rises entirely too soon, and I wake up feeling like I’ve been worked over by a baseball bat. At seven a.m. I limp downstairs, hunting for breakfast, and notice one of the kids from the front desk sitting alone in the kitchen chugging his morning Sapporo. Breakfast of champions. Outside, daylight reveals a grid of drab city streets that converge at a crumbling, dried-up fountain. The only residents I bump into are a few cows that pause to regard me with indifference as they amble through the center of town. There are entirely too many buildings here, considering the lack of people, which gives the place a feeling of abandonment. It’s like I just wandered into a George Romero movie.
We conduct a series of interviews with townspeople (once we find them), meeting one man in a surreal bar called The Gobi Bear. The walls are lined with bear masks and glass cases filled with dried bear dung. The bartender is playing checkers with himself, and there’s even a poster of Christina Aguilera holding her boob and giving the finger. The bar immediately jumps to number four on my list of world’s best watering holes (the current standard-bearer is a beach bar in Zanzibar with a chained monkey behind the counter that tries to bite customers).
The residents here are no less impassioned storytellers than their nomadic brethren, and we repeatedly hear that there have been sightings of the Worm in abandoned ruins to the west. We set off deeper into the desert to pursue the most recent accounts.
We leave the town in a trail of dust, driving past primordial rock formations and through vast valleys of sand, traversing the deserts between here and the distant town of Gurvantes, more than two hundred kilometers away. We eventually come across another group of yurts where a herder and his wife emerge in thick fur hats and old, colorful robes.
They invite us inside a tent so welcoming that it’s worth enduring the smell. A few snorts of the nomad’s snuff help to banish the cold. I share a meal of sheep guts with their seven-year-old daughter and her elderly grandmother. The warmth they exude starkly contrasts the icy weather around them. Though their entire world is contained within the sloping domain of this simple tent, these nomads are so full of character and pride. They carry themselves like royalty, the deep lines on their faces the beautiful evidence of lives spent hard at work.
Today they’re moving their home for the winter. We head outside, and I watch in amazement as the family breaks down their large, semi-rigid structure in less than thirty minutes flat. Every member of the family joins in the work. The seven-year-old hauls support poles, Mom breaks down the stove, Grandmother gathers up the heavy rugs, and Dad loads up the back of a Soviet-era truck. They will escort their material possessions across the desert to a winter camp offering better protection against the coming snows. The backbreaking work is enough to shame any American family who argues over taking out the trash.
While the last of their cargo is being tied down, the father tells me that, since I’m here hunting creatures, he wants to show me the remains of a “monster” that he’s discovered nearby. The man leads us up a rise in the sand to a seemingly anonymous spot. There, I crouch down and see that he’s camouflaged a patch of earth with a sand-covered tarp. I help him pull away the fabric and am confronted with an amazing sight: the fossilized skeleton of a dinosaur. We excavate part of the skull and jaw of what looks like some sort of raptor, although I can’t be sure. Our efforts are interrupted by the honking horn of the fully loaded transport truck below. We leave the remains in place, to be reclaimed by the shifting sands and lost again in time.
Eventually we
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