Some Essentials

Ticking off the Wish-List

Now after a fridge....

'Never eat the soul of a dead hunter'

The marmot. Marmota. Big Squirrel.

Before this trip none of us had heard of these little chaps; thinking they were some kind of misspelled sandwich spread, we soon unearthed the marmot to be the genus of the squirrel; a great, oversized, cuddly mountain mouse that runs across all of Mongolia, lives in burrows and knows how to look great in front of a camera. 

They're so cute! We could adopt one as a pet on the way! Or so we thought, until someone mentioned the plague. These giant relatives of the chipmunk are the great rally divider; other than being the pin-ups of the steppes, through history they have been known as the harbourer of death in the form of the bubonic plague. And they still carry the disease today. Marco Polo rather cannily called them the Pharaoh Rat. Ah.

Bubonic is from the Greek 'Bubo' - meaning swollen gland. The Bubonic plague interferes with the lymph glands (those vulnerable glands again) and swells up to a painful landmass under the armpits and groin. Without treatment, the bubonic plague kills about two out of three infected humans within 4 days. 

For centuries, marmots have worn the mantle of responsibility for all great swaths of plague to hurtle from the East through Europe since before silk found a route to our shores. Yet since these bubonic times, marmots have been eaten for supper in Mongolia. There's even a costume for the ritual of capture. Avoiding army camo, the marmot hunter dresses all in white, wears a white hat with long rabbit-like ears and a 'daluur' - a tassel made from a horse or yak's tail. The shaking of the daluur creates a replying cry in a marmot - a good indicator that it's safe to eat as infected marmots run silent. Once caught, the head and insides are removed, then the meat is stuffed back inside along with red-hot stones, sealed up again and left to cook from the inside out for two hours. This dish is known as 'Bodok'. What do they taste like? Some say beefy, others liken it to wild duck - but the general consensus is 'tastes of rodent'. They are seen as a delicacy, but the Mongolians will never eat the armpit of the animal because it 'contains the soul of a dead hunter'.

We'd like to not offer up the other armpit as being embedded with the 'soul of a dead Rallier'...So we're buying ourselves a daluur.

Alas, therefore, we may just stay away from the marmot and look at them from inside our ambulance, and hope that they stay the right side of shy with us. 

For Faraz Shibli - about to cross the Gobi desert on foot for Endurelief.  

http://www.shibliadventure.com/

We still can't convince him to give marmots a wide birth, so we suggest he looks out for these instead: the Jeroba - much safer.

A worthy Cause

By Alison Jean Baker


None of us knew what it was at first; larger than a pimple, smaller than a quail's egg, nestling alongside his neck on the right-hand side. We made fun of it; we called it names. Dad tried to cover it with his Victorian like side-burns, thinking in time he would wake up and it would be gone. But it didn't go. It liked the company far too much.

None of us had heard of 'cancer' before. Our youth and lack of internet at the time meant such a word, and the knowledge around it, was limited to ordinary folk. So he carried on as normal until a friend spotted it for what it was. He was rapidly diagnosed with Hodgkin's Lymphoma: a cancer of the lymph tissue found mainly in the lymph nodes. It's primary symptom is a painless swelling in the neck, armpits or groin; which is maybe why it took so long for my father to go in for a check up: it literally wasn't a pain in the neck. He was taken for treatment to the London Hospital, Whitechapel, and on visits me and my brother would go hunting for the bones of the Elephant Man believed kept in the basement, whilst the best nurses in England looked after our Dad in one of the warren of wards above.

My father was the youngest of ten. He grew up in Leyton, in the East End of London, with six sisters and three brothers in a house big enough for two. The son of a grocer, he would sneak his father's work horse out in the evenings and ride it bare-back across the neighbouring fields. They were 'truly man's best friend' he would say - 'more than a dog; treat them right and they'll do anything for you'. He vowed to one day have his own. He also loved cars, but he loved my mother more, so he sold his classic Triumph so he could marry her. And then me and my brother came along. 

Everybody thinks their dad is great, so of course I think ours was pretty special. He was a funny, generous, genuine man and liked by everyone. No one had a bad word to say against him. He was a talented footballer, but ended up a builder by trade; one with a gift for story-telling and a singing voice that could rival Bing Crosby's - something his co-workers were reminded of daily. He also loved a practical joke - something else his co-workers were reminded of daily. He always made me laugh. He was a cheery soul, even when he got sick, and he never felt sorry for himself, even when he got really sick. 

Thankfully I didn't inherit either his ears or his teeth. I hope I've inherited his sense of humour. One day I'll learn to ride a horse, and just like him: bare-back.

There's more I could say, but I think his old school report sums him up best. 

For Dad. 

Derek Raymond Bernard Baker

25th September 1931 - 8th May 1986

For more on Lymphoma and on ways to help please go to

http://www.lymphomas.org.uk/

For donations please go to


http://www.justgiving.com/yakkerouac-lymphomaassociation/

Alison AKA @MongolianAli

Thank-you.

A word from a sponsor.

So on this Rally we'll have NO support. That's right; if we fall in a ditch, lose a wheel or snap a fibula it's up to us to put ourselves back together again. And then there's the bandits. And the marmots (more on these later...)

Despite this, we decided it would be nice if you lovely people could follow our calamities, erm..we mean our successes, and find points on the map that they don't teach you in school. So a fine fellow called Nick Farrell at Yellowbrick Tracking saw humour in our campaign and thought we were daft enough to sponsor. 
He even sent us a picture for our Yak-album.

Thanks to Nick, we'll have an aptly named yellow, brick shaped thingy in our ambulance. It'll send out a beep every four hours into the universe, and then in seconds it'll come back down again via a fancy sounding 'iridium satellite network' to a map with our location! It's so trusted that proper adventurists and yachtsmen use them, including Sarah Outen - the youngest woman to row single-handed across the Indian Ocean and thereby a certified record breaker - as she circum-navigates the entire globe from London to London! www.sarahouten.com

We shall probably get lost daily. But the important thing is you'll know it before we will! Just don't tell our families.

                           www.yellowbrick-tracking.com
So Nick...thank-you

@MongolianAli

Welcome to the Social Yakwork

One day last year just as the last of the summer cider was draining, unbeknownst to each other, we all woke up one morning thinking 'just where on earth IS Mongolia?'

Others had found out. Some had reported back. Stories were circulating of how a few had even driven there, occasionally keeping all four wheels on the ground at the same time. We delved deeper. Strange pictures of wrestlers and yaks appeared, of camels with TWO humps not one, and a mighty place called the Gobi. It was the stuff of legend. Genghis Khan had sown his wild oats across it, and the plague was still alive and well and living on a marmot (more of them later..)We decided we must see this place for ourselves, to see that it did exist just like Timbuktu and Brigadoon.

But none of us had a team. The offers to join were met with indecision, fear and back-packing duties elsewhere. Until a bright spark called Josh sent out a message for fellow drivers to help him push an ambulance up a big road. And so a team was born complete with an Australian. Our Yak-Pack grew - there was Katie, then Alison, then Adam, then James. Then Adam had to leave to become a drummer in a bar in Nepal. Then Matt arrived, promising to build bridges and cook. Then Katie alas had to resign Yak duties. It was a tough call to make. But we continue on. For this is about being 'Between a Yak and a Hard Place'.


@MongolianAli