Nagisa

Nagisa, from Sydney, came to the ranch on Friday.

On the train ride up, we got into a cabin with a Buryat family from Russia who had been visiting Ulaanbaatar. They started eating sausage and fat and bread and drinking vodka, and cheerfully forced us to join them, in that familiar Russian way. "Eat, eat!" the old women said. "Drink, drink!" We did.

It turned out the older son was a veterinarian, a happy coincidence, as Nagisa is a veterinary student. This, of course, deserved toasting. Also deserving of toasting was acquaintanceship, Lenin, and travel.

-Radigan

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View Nagisa's photos at the ranch - I

View Nagisa's photos at the ranch - II

Lasse and Lotte

Lasse and Lotte, from Denmark, came up to the ranch Monday to stay for most of the week and did some fishing and other things.

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View photos of Lasse and Lotte at the Orkhon River

Rain on the Mountain

This year has been unusually rainy.

I climbed to the top of the peak northeast of the ranch while the top was shrouded in clouds.

-Radigan

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View photos of Rain on the Mountain

wolf

Martin got an orphaned wolf cub from one of his clients, a Mongolian zoologist. A wolf expert, she has been to the States many times, as the Americans are reintroducing wolves into their national parks.

Elise's Poem

While out riding, we got threatened by a thunderstorm that rolled up from the south, and we raced its lightning flashes back to the ranch. Elise penned some free verse:

The slow motion of an infinite second
In between flying and hoofbeats
The ground below a miraculous green
The sky above gravid with ravenous clouds
Cold wind and rain on my face
I looked around, and there were mountains enveloping me
Tiny flowers embracing me,
Lightning driving me onward.
And the world moved again
Faster than I've ever known
On the back of a galloping horse
Riding the plains
Of Mongolia.

Elise

Elise, from California, came up to the ranch on Thursday and rode horses and milked cows and ate mutton and drank Altai and spouted exclamations (“It’s so beautiful out here!”, “This is like a movie!”) and very regretfully left on Saturday.