
“You must always go around clockwise three times,” Baagii explained as he jumped out, shaking his wet hands to dry them. “For a safe journey. It’s like a shrine and it is symbolic of the open sky and Tengger, the sky spirit Genghis Khan prayed to before he came to power. Also makes good reference point,” he added, admitting that he knew this ovoo.

“We all jumped at the opportunity to wash the twenty-eight layers of Mongolian grime off the limbs we could expose without stripping down.”

I’d be worried, too, with all these six year olds riding around like pros. Mongolians must learn to ride before they can walk, and it’s obvious that they really love their horses,I thought, thinking back on twenty-odd mounted kids between the ages of six and ten we’d seen practising for the Nadaam Festival.

Now we were stuck right in the heart of that sea/desert, surrounded by the burning cliffs. We all crawled out of the minivan and took our usual places. Mom jumped into the driver’s seat and moved the seat forward so she could reach the pedals, while the rest of us positioned ourselves at the rear of the van with our hands flat on the burning hot, hatchback trunk.