An Ice Vacation

What do you get when you combine -30 degree weather, 0.4% of the world's freshwater, and a handful of wide eyed tourists?

If you guessed a kick ass way to spend the Mongolian New Year then you would be right. To celebrate the new year in style, 11 friends and I threw off the shackles of city life and headed north to Lake Khovsgol for its annual Ice Festival, now among the top 10 ice festivals in the world!

Khovsgol lake is a full 20 hour drive from Ulaanbaatar and houses over 0.4% of the world's freshwater. Called the little brother of Russia's Lake Baikal for its geological and natural similarities, the lake spends the better part of the year frozen solid, becoming a superhighway for Russian oil tankers and European speed skaters alike.

The trip out there was split between an overnight train and a beast of a car ride. Being the selfless man that I am, I offered my fellow passengers the opportunity to hear my epic and boisterous reading of Lewis Carrol's Alice in Wonderland. I made it through the first 4 pages and was almost down the rabbit hole when my lunch decided to go the other way. Family members will recall a similar experience I had in the Bolivian wild involving massive amounts of Cheetos. This time around I was smart enough to stand upwind.

Fool me once shame on you. Fool me twice - you can't get fooled again.

Following the most powerful puke of my life, and 10 more hours on roads that have seen little improvement since the days of Genghis Khan, we made it to the lake. For those of you that have never had the joy of riding a jeep across a frozen lake, it is definitely not for the faint of heart. Each second we drove further was accompanied by loud cracking noises. Our driver ensured us that these were normal, and he was definitely right, for we were driving on over one and a half meters of ice. Driving on the ice involved more 360s than a 100,000 point combo in Tony Hawk's pro skater. Even with my life flashing before my eyes at every turn of the wheel, I still thanked god that we were off of the dirt roads. We finally made it to our accommodations, which were humble and quintessentially Mongolian.

Sleeping in a Ger during the Siberian winter is an exercise in both survival and patience. The fire must stay stoked all night so as to avoid frostbite, but don't stoke it too much or your ger will quickly become a smoke shack. I dreamt more in one smoke filled night there than I've done in months, even having an out of body experience where I dreamt from someone else's point of view and saw myself through his eyes. I know now how hard it is to spend time with me, and for this I apologize.

But onto the Ice Festival! All I have to say about this is that I would not like to see the festivals that did not break the top ten. I don't know where they get off calling 10 ice sculptures, an igloo with full bar capabilities, and a few disheveled looking reindeer a festival, but they did manage to dupe almost 100 tourists and for this I commend them. Festival highlights included a slide made out of ice, ice tug of war, and ice wrestling, all activities where I perfected the fine art of falling on my ass.

We did not stay at the festival long but opted instead for more exciting activities: riding a one horse open sleigh across the ice, several 15 km skates, horse riding, and finally living my boyhood dream of ice fishing.

Why they call it ice fishing and not ice breaking I will never fully understand, but a chainsaw can aid in killing fish as well as killing trees and sexy teens, which is very good to know. Mongolian style fishing means leaving the lines overnight and checking them in the morning. Wanting to be a part of the big catch, I refused to buy into the Mongolian ritual, and went from hole to hole, breaking the ice, tugging the lines and sadly coming up empty handed every time. The Mongolians had much better luck, and I learned that a watched fish never bites.

For those of you that read my blog and enjoyed my send up of the Mongolian Toilet (the top result when googling Mongolian Toilet btw) you will surely enjoy this next tale. My original plan had been to hold my bowel movements for the entirety of the trip, but 6 days on a diet consisting primarily of yak meat and vodka threw a wrench into the whole operation.

I am not a big outdoors man.

I have not been on any week long back packing trips.

I have never held a grudge against any of my neighbours.

I had never taken a dump in the great outdoors before this trip.

I was going to lose my D card eventually, and what better place or time to do this than Siberia in the winter? There's really nothing like a howling wolf to give you the much needed incentive to perform this necessary and beautiful act. I liked it so much in fact that I returned for round two. And so on. And so forth.

Cross that one off of my "things to do before I die" list, and "places to take a dump before I die" list.

Talking about killing two birds with one glorious stone. (Not literally I hope)

Be real,

Genghis