From one Yurt to another

Savoring

Ayin is taking us to a yurt where we are going to meet a family he knows well. In front of the yurt, on a motorcycle, a sturdy young man greets us. I eventually learn that he’s a wrestler. In each yurt, the front door is quite low. You have to bend over to not bump your head, but as expected I bump my head and can tell you that it hurts. I go into a yurt centered on a pot in which tea being heated. The two women taking care of the yurt invite us to have tea and eat a kind of hard cheese. Most of the nomad’s food is hard or frozen because they have to be able to preserve it while traveling. The food is then dipped in tea to make it softer and easier to eat. We settle in and taste these new foods and I find them quite good. It’s funny, I always think of mom and Marina who always say: “even if you don’t like it, you must always try a little, because the pallet gets used to it and eventually, it likes.” That’s probably why food that I don’t like is rare. When we are finished drinking the tea and eating this cheese the Mongolians call “gourout”, we get up and thank them. Dad sees that the two women are making fire by hand and he films them.