Curioso

We've just finished our bikepacking Figure 8 from Bilbao and will fly to Mongolia on Monday. We've talked with quite a few people about our plans while on this trip and they have asked, "Why Mongolia?" We've explained (actually Chris has explained because my Spanish isn't up to the job) I want to celebrate my 60th birthday in Mongolia (Happy 60th Birthday to me 3.5 weeks from now in Mongolia). Responses have generally fallen into two categories – the guys say, "Interesting," or "Curious." The women say something equivalent to, "Go, Girl."

We've laughed about, "Curioso," quite a lot. Although not as hard as we have laughed about Chris thinking the town of Vítoria-Gasteiz was called 'Alburgue', which means Hostel. Early on in our ride people asked where we were headed and Chris replied, 'Alburgue', because our route had a large red dot on the town labelled, 'Alburgue Catedral'. The people all looked puzzled. When we went to Vítoria-Gasteiz, Chris finally clued in as he expanded the map view to the point he could read the city's name. Then he felt extremely embarassed because he had been calling the capital of Basque country, 'Hostel'.

Anyhow, back to "Curioso"...we all have our likes and dislikes – including my dislike of slugs and my like of big open spaces and a lack of people and doing hard things. I might yet have a party for my 60th, at a date other than my birthday, but when I thought about what I wanted to do for two milliseconds, it was go somewhere interesting which most people will consider 'middle of nowhere'. I like middle of nowheres a lot.

Part of my like of middle of nowheres is that they are hard to get to. That's why not many other people are there. Such places are particularly hard to get to if they require cycling on a heavily loaded bicycle across routes that are not tar sealed roads. I like the feel of going somewhere special where, not only are there few people, many people can't get to...that's really special. It's a good thing a whole lot of other people don't like what I like, otherwise they would all be in far-flung regions of Mongolia which would immediately not be very special and be very crowded.

What I'm also really looking forward to is disconnecting – it's been 10 years since I disconnected for multiple weeks (when we were in the Pamirs of Tajikistan and Kyrgystan in 2015). For a lot of the time we are bikepacking from Möron to Lake Khovsgol then south to the Khangai mountains in Mongolia, we won't be able to get any sort of phone reception so we will be disconnected without effort. However, when we pass through towns, the only type of connecting I may do will be to post on TrackMyTour (how we document our trips for people watching), while not looking at anything else on my phone. I'm very much looking forward to not caring what is going on the rest of the world, good or bad, and focusing on simply being in the place where I am.

The other birthday present I have requested, beyond being somewhere special and disconnecting, is peanut butter (my greatest food weakness). As someone said to Chris, "That's cheap." I can guarantee peanut butter is going to taste AMAZING in the wilds of Mongolia. When you look up special Mongolian food on the internet, the most common hits are fried meat pies, meat dumplings, salty tea with sheep tail fat, and fermented mare's milk (which makes most westerners sick, as we learned in the Pamirs). Moreover, it's a long haul between places selling any food at all. There won't be much to have peanut butter on but that's okay, I am happy to eat it off a spoon!

Different cultures have different traditions of celebrating birthdays – I have read that in Mongolia you don't have a celebration unless you are a young child or seventy or over, at which point you are revered. I might have to return for my seventieth birthday if eating meat, horse-racing and wrestling are what I want to do at that point. Countries with a collectivist perspective either don't celebrate birthdays at all, or have a single day on which everyone celebrates their birthday, including Vietnam and Bhutan. China has typically not celebrated birthdays after childhood until people's 60th; perhaps I should have picked China rather than Mongolia as they have very big parties for sixtieths. A good thing I'm not staying in Spain for my birthday – one ritual here is pulling on a person's ear...once for every year of life!

My disconnection will be my first since I started writing a weekly blog – this has taxed me greatly. I want a break, but I like being consistent. So, to entertain you on Saturdays while I'm in the Mongolian wilds, I've written up a couple of stories from my travels which will be automatically published while I'm away. See you on the other side of July...I'm off to be 'curioso'.