One Heck Of A Ride

165 M y first expedition into Asia was in October 1987 when I hunted Gobi argali, Gobi ibex, Asian wapiti (maral) and a Hillier goitered gazelle in Mongolia. The hunt Bud Dyer and I booked through Safari Outfitters in Wyoming included airfare from San Francisco to Beijing and first-class round-trip tickets on the train to Ulaanbaator. Warren Parker, one of SCI’s presidents, had suggested we book our hunt late in the season when prices were discounted. The weather would be colder, he said, but the animals still would be there. (Discounted hunts in Mongolia are a thing of the past at this writing. Ibex hunts still are within reach of the working man, but the price of a sheep hunt has gone out of sight.) Bud and I were the booking agency’s last group of the season and the last of its hunters to travel from Beijing to Ulaanbaator by train. Beginning with the 1988 season, all of Safari Outfitters’ clients flew there on Air Mongolia. For me, the forty-two-hour train ride was one of the highlights of the trip. I saw things few will ever see, such as a Cossack in below-zero weather riding a shaggy pony flat out while standing up in his stirrups in the middle of nowhere. It could have been a scene from a movie. Rural China had not yet leaped into the twentieth century in 1987, and I waved back at traditionally dressed bright-eyed children as we rode past villages that looked as if they hadn’t changed in three hundred years. I saw very few vehicles from the train, and of those I did see, many had flags waving on their fenders to show everyone their passengers were VIPs. Those who weren’t walking rode bicycles, small horses, yak-like cattle and, as we approached the Gobi Desert, two-humped camels. What I saw when we reached the Mongolian border was Chapter 20 Asia Land of Fabulous Mountain Game downright fascinating. Because the Russians who built Mongolia’s rail system in the 1950s didn’t want trains carrying troops and military supplies on their tracks if China ever decided to invade the Soviet Union, the railroad tracks in Mongolia are the wide Russian gauge (4 feet, 11 inches), while the tracks and wheels for Chinese trains are the international standard gauge (4 feet, 8 1/2 inches). Instead of transferring to cars with wider wheels at the border, travelers waited at a roundhouse while crews of Chinese women changed the undercarriage, axles and wheels on every car continuing on to Ulaanbaator. Unfortunately, we had to get out of our car outside the round house. I tried to photograph the women who were knocking out pins and lifting the cars with a huge crane, but someone in a military uniform ordered me to wait with the other passengers. Being told I could buy candy or get my shoes repaired while I waited, only made me more determined to see the operation on our return trip. The director of Juulchin, the Mongolian government’s tourism agency, met us at the station in the capital city of Ulaanbaator and drove us to the Ulaanbaator Hotel, where we were issued firearms permits and spent the night. The multi- story hotel must have been a grand place when it opened in 1959. It appeared to have been designed by a European architect with a flair for luxury, but nearly thirty years of minimum maintenance had caused it to lose much of its grandness. The carpeting and furniture in the rooms obviously had never been upgraded, and the hot water in the bathrooms would suddenly turn cold when other guests were taking showers in their rooms. Bud and I walked around outside the next morning and watched crews working on a