Vehicles, Camels Included

Orjan is a Swedish PhD student who bought a one-way ticket to Mongolia to work at the base camp of our long-term research project.  These are his adventures…

The camp is being invaded by camels! For the last three days, a pack of 20-30 Bactrian camels have been hanging out in and around camp. They are a little shy but not enough to stay away from the little flower bed at the patio, bastards… I have discovered that camels are very hungry individuals that will eat almost anything, fast. I have always wanted a camel and I think that I wrote earlier that apparently one needs to have at least two camels, otherwise they will be unhappy. Well, I studied my immobilization guide book to see if we have any good drugs to knock down a camel. Midgi thought that it was a very good idea but I realized that it would be hard to hide the camels in case their owner would come looking for them. I will have to investigate how much a camel costs and if there are any requirements involved in owning and driving one (Tom said that it’s pretty hard to learn camel-handling).

I actually have a Mongolian driver’s license. There are some categories that we don’t have back home but I have not found camel so I think that I will be fine from a legal standpoint.

Sorry, this was suppose to be a vehicle post, I think that camels can count as vehicles though.

When we came here Tom said that when he worked here he had seat belts installed in his car and everyone who saw that thought is was funny since the first thing that most people would do when they bought a car was to cut the seat belts off and throw them out (assuming there were any, Russian vans don’t have any I think).

Well, a couple of days after our Delica (which is a fairly modern car) came Midgi asked me what the warning light on the dashboard was. I explained that it meant that at least one person in the car didn’t use their seat belt. He thought this was extremely funny and laughed for a long, long time. One time when we came to Gurvantes we passed a police and Midgi put on the seat belt immediately. I think that you can get a ticket if you don’t wear seat belts in case the car is equipped with them, which might be why they throw them out…

For avid Orjan Fans: Orjan goes on to talk about killing the motorbike on Mongolian mountain terrian, and mishaps with navigation. If you would like to read these stories and more (and some funny moments from Orjan’s past), visit his personal blog here.