Panorama of lunch and fish murders in Darkhad Valley, Mongolia
No roads in Mongolia. Just tracks. Bone-jarring, informal, braided tracks wandering over slopes, boulder fields, and deeply potted glacial kettle terrain. After hours of driving, we’d invariably stop for lunch so we could depopulate the rivers of their fish. The adults were veteran, serious fishermen with trunks full of gear, complex strategic campaigns for each site, and the patience of saints. Roman, the amiable youth, therefore always caught the biggest fish, often on the first cast, then relaxed with dinner and an amble among herd beasts who came to our camps for drink and ford the river.
What is not obvious during the panorama is the spectacular jagged mountains surrounding this vast basin. Rivers meandered peacefully through the vast flat basin, with occasional herds of cattle, yak, horses, goats, sheep, and other horrors [including the odd lonely-looking Bactrian camel] ambling here and there,