Undraa and the Blue Mongolia Collective

When you're planning a trip to Mongolia, 2 things become clear very quickly. 1. That you're going to need to go with a tour operator or at the very least a driver/translator because if you don't you'll probably die in the desert looking for a shelter from the wind or a meal and, 2. The information available online about the various tour operators is conflicting, confusing, and sparse. The best comparison I can draw is to real estate brokers in Manhattan; a large percentage are bogus and you know they're shifty as hell, but you probably have to deal with one if you want an apartment.

After much research and to-ing/fro-ing with several companies, we landed on Blue Mongolia. Things got off to a winning start with our guide, Undraa. Laughy laughy, jokey jokey, tell us about Mongolia, now you tell me about America, let's make friendship bracelets, etc. What became clear by Day 4 was that her knowledge of the sights we were visiting was limited to a small blurb memorized each morning from the Blue Mongolia Tour book. Also, that she was being heavily bossed about by the non-English speaking or understanding driver (let's call him Driver #1). #1 was surly and rude and lost most of the time. That last attribute was particularly frustrating and when we would inquire as to why a stretch of driving took 10 hours instead of the scheduled 5, he would angrily fall back on the Mongolian superstition that its bad luck to predict how long something should take or to give arrival times. Our suggestion that he ballpark it for us went down like a lead balloon and thus the triangle of conflict between us, #1, and Undraa had begun.

Undraa annoyed us in the initial days when she was trying, ineptly, to lead us. I've charted our experience with her thusly:

What happened on July 10^th, you ask? Why such low scores? Well, my trend-spotting friends, that was the day that #1 decided to test the Delica's 4 wheel prowess by gunning us through a flooded clay desert. We knew of the poor road conditions from other tourists in the camp who had complained of long detours to avoid it. So when we came to the vast expanse of foot-deep puddles we assumed there we'd go around. When #1 started to plow on through, we insisted we go around. At that point, however, #1 was no big fan of ours and we didn't go around. We got stuck.

That was the day that the balance of power shifted. It was clear that no thought or preparation had been given to an emergency. That, stuck in the middle of the desert with no humanity in sight Undraa, #1 and Blue Mongolia combined had no plan. Undraa was out of her depth and panicked. No chains, no satellite phone, no GPS, no compass, no flares, nada. At #1s instruction we collected rocks and pulled mud from under the tires. We dug and we levered and we pushed. We were covered in mud, soaking wet and sunburned, and sinking.

Ed and I user our outside voices with Undraa that day. We informed her that we were taking over the leadership of the tour and that she now reported to us. We took her phone and #1s, ordered her to ferry our belongings and lunches through the mud to shore, and taught her Chapelle-style cursing. Standing on the roof of the sinking van to get service, I gave the tour manager back at HQ some tips on how this day might have gone better. We demanded a new driver be delivered by morning, that a hotel be booked for the night, and that she remain available via cell 24 hours a day should anything else go wrong. All of this was agreed to and, thus, Undraa was demoted from tour guide to translator, cell phone holder and waitress.

Nomads were eventually contacted and came to our rescue. In total, we were stuck in the mud for 10 hours but the van was salvaged and we were on our way by dark. In the end the new reporting structure with Undraa worked well for all involved and Driver #2, who arrived the next morning, was just the best ever.