A homely ger

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SINCE arriving in Mongolia early yesterday morning, I had seen many gers, the distinctive white cylindrical tents the nomadic people lived in. The gers all looked the same whether they had been out in the remote reaches of the Gobi Desert, or clustered close together in the suburbs of Ulaanbaatar, or scattered around the bottom of the impressive valley of granite mountains here in Terelj. I had seen many, but not from the inside. What they looked like on the inside was still a mystery to me. I was just about to enter one of these fascinating structures for the first time.

The farm we visited

The ger seemed very small from the outside, with a tiny orange door in the otherwise off-white canvas circular tent. It was sitting on a circular concrete slab foundation on the gentle slope. Two short steps led up to the door from the lowest part of the slope. A green carpet was sitting on the steps.

Behind the ger were a few more gers, along with a timber wood shed full of firewood for the coming winter. It was quite a chilly morning, and out of the middle of the front ger rose a steel chimney with smoke coming out of it. I imagined it will be warm inside.

Dougie approached the door. All ger doors in Mongolia are either bright orange or blue and intricately painted. They always face south towards the sun to let the daylight in and pointing away from the prevailing Arctic wind.

Rather than knocking on the door, he called out “Nokhoi khor”, the normal greeting which literally translates to “hold the dog”. This is apparently as normal in Mongolia as pressing the doorbell in the West when waiting to enter someone else’s home.

Rugged terrain nearby

A few moments later a middle aged short woman with a very round deeply wrinkled dark face appeared at the door. We said “Sain bainu” (hello) and entered. The door was very short forcing us to stoop low, as if to bow to the deity looking over the ger. Doors of Buddhist structures seem to be either very low, or have a beam across the floor to step over. Both function to force the person entering it to bow the head in respect for the Buddhist deities.

The ger has a deeply spiritual connection to the Buddhist faith, even though it has only been around for a few hundred years. The word “ger” means home. The Buddhist population here build the gers in a style of the Buddhist monasteries, calling them uyangiin ger, meaning “home of melodies” or “home of lyrics”.

I followed Dougie into the ger, with Batu following me. Dougie had earlier mentioned there are all sorts of customary protocols in the simple ger. One being you need to walk around it clockwise to follow the direction of the sun. Once inside we walked around to the left following the clockwise direction.

Village

The lady’s name was Bayarmaa. She quickly headed around to the kitchen area as we explored the inside of the ger where she lived.

The floor was covered in a blue and white pattern lino. The walls were covered in patterned material against the four layers of felt and outer layer of canvas to keep the ger warm. A small cylindrical fireplace was roaring in the middle of the room. Its chimney rose through a hole in the top of the sloping ceiling. Two wooden poles a little over a metre apart held up the sloping roof, meeting it at a circular frame. Inside the circle the roof was clear plastic and the hole through which the chimney went through. Here in the middle of the ger the ceiling was more than high enough to stand up straight without hitting your head on anything.

Inside the ger

Outside the circular frame in the middle, the roof sloped gradually down to the circular wall. There the ceiling was less than one and a half metres above the ground, but all the furniture was sitting against the wall so there wasn’t any need to stand.

Three large orange couches occupied three sides, functioning as sofas by day and able to be converted to beds by night if needed. To the left of the door was the kitchen, with a refrigerator and a cabinet that appeared to be a food preparation area. There was no electric stove. Everything was cooked on the fireplace in the middle of the room.

On the other side of the door was a large wooden wardrobe-like cabinet.  Then the three sofas took up the rest of the wall, with an old television set sitting between two of them.

We took a seat at the sofa opposite the door. The ger is divided into three areas. The area opposite the door is the khoimer. This is where guests are seated. It is also the area where valuable objects such as a small Buddhist shrine and a collage of photographs of relatives and close friends are normally on display. Next to the tv cabinet was another cabinet with family photos and mementos displayed on it.

The western side of the ger (to our right when we were seated) was the male area. This is where he keeps his bridle and hunting gear. The eastern side of the ger was the female area. Here they keep their kitchen, and their own and children’s belongings.

This ger followed all those principles, as does every other ger in Mongolia. They say the ger as a whole symbolises the centre of the universe.

In front of us was a low table with a large thermos full of heated milk, and some local snacks, which Dougie explained were made from yak and goat milk. I tried each of the snacks. They were dried out and quite crunchy like crisps.

Food on the table

Milk is considered sacred here in Mongolia. Nearly all of their food acme from their animals. During the summer half of the year between April and October, most of their diet was based on milk. When the animals dry for the winter, they eat the meat. Although a milk diet may sound rather bland, it is not so. Their milk and meat comes from horses, cows, yaks, hainags (cross between cow and yak), sheep, goals, camels and reindeer.

They have an enormous range of recipes they have developed over three thousand years, different recipes from each animal based on the different compositions of milk. From their milk they make many forms of drinks, cream, milk skin products, butter, buttermilk, yoghurt, cheeses, sour cream porridge, kumis and even milk vodka. The range of recipes is far beyond the scope of dairy products familiar to westerners.

I was amazed they could even eat dairy products. Most Asians are lactose intolerant, unable to properly digest dairy products. Clearly the Mongolians have overcome this intolerance.

Valley floor

Today I was sampling a range of snacks made from goat, yak and camel milk. I thoroughly enjoyed them. They were savoury, very different from the cow-milk based products we have available in the west, and the snacks were free of the horrible processed sugars and salts that end up in most of our products resulting in the massive health epidemic we are currently facing. These were all simple natural products.

Fortunately the bowls were all very large and full, so there wasn’t any chance of me emptying them. Like in many other parts of Asia, when the Mongolians see an empty plate, they assume you are still hungry and fill it up again.

A ger in a museum

Seeing we had settled, Bayarmaa excused herself and headed out for a while. The three of us relaxed in the very cosy homely ger whilst the fire quietly crackled away in the middle of the room.

We sat there talking, with Dougie interpreting as I knew no Mongolian and Batu knew no English. He did a sensational job as interpreter, so patient with both of us as we made ourselves at home in this exotic Mongolian ger.