Mindless banter, this one. And Peace Corps.

Erdenet. I just booked a ticket there, a gross industrial playland north-west of Ulaanbaatar, aboard an overnight train departing 20.55 tomorrow. They warn me it is a train laden with thieves that pose as crippled older men. All older men look crippled here, truly and non-posingly, such is the hardness of life on the steppes. But I will therefore pose as a poor man aboard the train - dribbly nose, threadbare clothing, minimal belongings; not such a departure from the norm, really - thus wisely deterring any untoward action from these notorious and wily thieves.

Once grounded in Erdenet, I'll leave. Its mechanical grate and grind will soften to a hum behind me, then a murmur, then nothing but a memory as I head south to Bulgan (pop. 11,500). The latter leg's transport remains unarranged, but that's the point. I'm gonna hitchhike, valiant Mark as I wish to be, the difficulty and drama of which should entail a proper hoot, unless I'm thrown in the back of a truck with skinned livestock, deadstock, and musty wood gatherings, Woodstock, in which case I'll leap overboard and begin forging a path to Bulgan step by literal step. This would also constitute a proper hoot, I think, unless of course it snows, in which case... there is no plan C.

Please leave suggestions for plan C in the relevant comment box.

If I make it to Bulgan, it will to be simple, peaceful, Mongolian. The day creeping by while I air my laundry by the hissing fire, fueled by dried yak excrement, the yaks staring at me from their pastures, bemused, as I wonder how the sky came to be so damn big here.

That kind of thing.

The Peace Corpers, numbers of whom have imperceptibly drifted in and out of my now very homely-feeling guesthouse over the past four-odd days, have converged in UB - this is what they so sensibly and economically call an otherwise tongue-twisting Ulaanbaatar, a tic I'll adopt herein - for their quarter-annual medical check-ups. They are a swashbucklingly fine bunch at large, on a personal and professional level, but were not and will never be nimble enough to retreat to their far-countryside gers without me solemnly interrogating them. I have managed thus far to glean stories, know-how, even the odd pearl of wisdom from of two of them, both female and 25. Will, the third known member, was also in the room at the time of interrogation, but unfortunately came across as immature and self-aggrandising, especially in recounting the tale of his near-death at age 18 of a sudden kidney-related seizure, which sent him to hospital for days and days and days on end, leaving him with a hideous scar that I think looks like a giant's winking eye, which scar we really did not need to see, Will, because it somehow also reminds us of mutton. Human mutton. Let's just forget about Will.

The other two Peace Corpers:

Sheila -

Sheila's from deep deep southern USA, and looks like she's from deep deep southern USA. Her hair is that strong gothic black, and if she didn't smile so often, I'd fear her as a witch. Instead I fear her mother. Sheila told us one enthralling rhapsody comprising her mother's religious persuasions. Her beloved mother is a Jehovah's Witness. She knocks on doors thrice-weekly to preach the word, and living where she does, consequently has guns drawn in the direction of her face more often than you and I do. The quip is: not Sheila nor her father subscribe to Jehovah (this is how I'm going to phrase it - Jehovah - unmockingly). Apparently a Jehovah's Witness cannot marry an infidel. There are no clauses preventing someone already married to an infidel converting to Jehovah, however, and thereafter maintaining that marriage. This is the model for Sheila's family. However, infidels don't exist in Jehovah's version of afterlife. So this means Sheila's mum will have no knowledge of her current-life's husband or daughter or family at large once she departs this world. This is the point at which Sheila's eyes started glazing over. When the rest of us started feeling like predators. Her father averred, upon her mother's swearing allegiance to Jehovah, that he'd file for divorce if she dared peddle Jehovah upon Sheila. Things have remained cohesive, if not a little awkward, within the household to this day. I think Sheila may have joined the Peace Corps to escape home, to add a sense of normality to her life, even if it entails two thoroughly abnormal years in Mongolia teaching uninterested students English.

Sheila is a strong and awesome girl.

Carrie -

Carrie's upbringing was more orthodox. Not worth mentioning really. She is a bespectacled nerd, a qualified journalist at home in Oregon, and is stationed right atop Chinggis Khan's birthplace of 700 hundred years ago, Dadal, for duty. A hundred miles from civilisation in every direction, and yet she seems to be in her element out at Dadal. Water from the river. Constructing her own ger. She is one steely and hardened nerd. She'd been only to Costa Rica, for two weeks, prior to coming to Mongolia, and that had been the only country on her travel resume. That was a delightful surprise to me.

Carrie recited all these great stories of modern-day marriages. Just prior to Chinggis' days, flirting and pleasantries and other futile formalities hadn't been, um, invented yet. They just kidnapped the girl they liked and forced her to marry them. Sound in theory, if not for the kidnappee's doting family, who'd retaliate by kidnapping her back, understandably. The two tribes would then be at loggerhead, conflict would snowball, and before they knew it everyone was at war across the country's entire expanse. Then Chinggis rose to power and united all the feuding cans with revolutionary methods, created an original script, imposed bold laws, and proceeded to conquer half the world without really trying. Anyway, Carrie said that where she's been working the past year and a half, the modus operandi of courting a wife via kidnapping is still effective! Thankfully though, the girls now have the prerogative to reject. Carrie says she sees, from atop the roof of her ger and with steaming cup of fermented yak's milk in hand, the occassional foreign horseman passing by at half-gait with head dangling dejectedly forward, mission failed, wifeless. She thinks Mongolia is the oldest place on earth.

I cannot disagree.

Also:
- Peace Corps receive 'allowance' each month, which they budget and spend accordingly. The Cass beers they were drinking were budgeted for.
- All three - Sheila, Carrie, Will - seemed unfazed but curious of everything; a testament to the power of travel, I thought.
- I wanted to join the Peace Corps for a while there, as a grasshopper, right up until I realised I had to be an American citizen to join, which I was and still am not. Last night, seeing and speaking and listening to these guys, reaffirmed my desire to join Peace Corps, or something like it. It is about the only time I have ever wanted to be an American.
- If you are in Perth on the 26th, go and witness the Zabiela show for me. He is the Chinggis Khan of the electronic world.

With love (and don't forget plan C) .... The end.