Crikey! You love fermented mare's milk too?

My name's Matilda Branson, and I think it's a bloody awesome idea to ride 1000km across Mongolia for charity. 

Welcome, bienvenidos and wilkommen to my blog- here you can join me, albeit virtually, on the emotional rollercoaster ride to the lead-up to the Mongol Derby and I would love it if you would share it with me. 

ABOVE: Matilda in Pony Girl mode. Pigtails ahoy!

My name is Matilda Branson.  I'm a 21 year old Australian student dabbling in International Relations and Anthropology.  On the 21st August this yeat I'm off to Mongolia to ride 1000km in two weeks across the Mongolian steppes in the Mongol Derby, the toughest, longest horse race in the world.  Riding hardy half-wild Mongolian ponies and living on mutton and mare's milk (the daily fare of Mongolian nomads who we will be living with in gers during the race), the race path will 'follow', in the loosest sense of the term, Ghengis Khaan's original pony express route, changing ponies every 40km, all in the name of adventure, and, most importantly for me, to raise funds for the charity Mercy Corps.

Dubbed the 'Mongol Derby', it is the inaugural race organised by Bristol-based 'The Adventurists', an organisation that hosts a plethora of adventure-based rallies and races in their fight to raise money for charity whilst at the same time creating an event like the Derby which caters for the hot-blooded adventurers amongst us.  With only 26 competitors selected from throughout the world including myself representing Australia, the Mongol Derby is going to be a race like no other, the ultimate test in endurance.

Being raised on a farm in central Victoria in the southern part of Australia, and having grown up around horses, I'm ready to race. Coping with saddle sores never seen before by mankind, living with Mongolian nomads and racing across the steppes in a manner similar to that of Hidalgo-meets-Seabiscuit, it's going to be, quite literally, one hell of a ride. 

Being 21, I fear that pouring a beer as a part-time job whilst at uni doesn't quite foot the bill for participating in the Derby and raising funds for the charity, Mercy Corps, so if you'd like to jump on board this adventure, just let me know!  You can donate directly towards Mercy Corps by going to http://www.justgiving.com/matildainmongolia.

Any questions, just send me an email at matildabranson@hotmail.com, or ring +34 685 594 955.

1000km.. 8 1/2 days.. Done!

Ridden 1000km across Mongolia in eight and a half day... Tick!  That's one more thing I cannot sign away on Life's Challenges Done and Dusted.

I'm writing this after just getting back from the Finish Line at Dadal, 15 hours from Ulaanbataar...  So everything is quite surreal and the novelty of a flushing toilet, fruit and a distinct lack of not everything tasting of mutton is freaking me out slightly after so long out there on the steppes. 

 The race was so epic, and so much happened, that I can't even begin to sum up what can only be described as an epic, fabulous adventure...  In my current post-hot-bath state (oh, you should have seen the ring of dirt around the bath), I can only really give you a brief run down of events..

The start was exciting- the couple of training days in Kharkorin were fantastic fun, getting the hang of the ponies, meeting the other eccentrics who decided racing across Mongolia was a great idea, and packing, packing and re-packing our saddlebags and realising all we really needed is one clean pair of undies and a sleeping bag for this adventure.

The first couple of days of the race were a real eye-opener to the reality of what it's like out there on the steppes, what's necessary, what's not, how to survive, dealing with saddle sores for 12-14 hours a day in the saddle... I started the first couple of days up front in the race- riding through a relentless sandstorm, scarves pulled up over the mouth, hunched in the saddle, urging your dwindling horse through sand dune after sand dune with wind and sand whipping up in my face was probably the moment when I took a mental take and thought, 'Gosh, this really IS an adventure.'

The terrain I've ridden through has varied so much- from dunes to valley basins, rocky craggy peaks and through tiny desolate ex-Soviet outposts that are inhabited by a couple of Mongolians who eke out livings in the middle of nowhere and drink a lot of mare's milk... It was a lot colder than expected- there were definitely some scorching days of course, but also some pretty average cold rainy days when you would get off your horse after 14 hours in the saddle and not be able to remove the buckle on your helmet because you were so cold.

 The Mongolian nomads and their amazing culture definitely made this adventure what it was- every horse station you arrived at, you would be greeted by a flock of Mongolians ready to ply you with hot milky tea and milk curds (later on when suffering from explosive bowel movements and queasy stomachs, the curds became known as the 'C' word, never to be uttered as the mere thought of them turn the stomach after awhile).  Everything you tasted had a distinct taste of mutton or goat to it.  Even the water.  I am slightly over mutton, just quietly.  Nomadic hospitality though- truly amazing.  My most memorable encounter was on the third day, I think... I had started off my 40km leg that morning- usually a leg should on average take around 4 hours, depending on terrain- however Lady Luck was against me and I had chosen out a chestnut gelding from the pony lines of the previous urtuu (horse station) who ran out of oomph only 15km into the ride, after only light trotting and walking... as it was approaching the heat of the day, I thought he might brighten up if watered, as the difference in a pony after giving it water and sploshing it down can make all the difference- after refusing to drink out of a river and two different wells (and wells are not easy to get water from at times if without a bucket and rope- this is when you need to employ the rock-in-bottom-of-sleeping-bag-cover-tied-to-long-rope approach to get water from a well).. After refusing to drink, my pony was quite exhausted, and would not go any further excpet at a walk whilst led- thus began an epic walk to the next urtuu.  Not able to make it before dark, I was forced to ask for a bed from a random Mongolian family who were lovely, fed me some rice pudding, then stripped off their gear and went to bed.  They thought I was very odd as I insisted on wearing my thermals to bed as it was FREEZING, and not to go for the naked approach they all went for.  Similar incidents to this include the little girl who followed me to the toilet and squatted down beside me despite all frantic attempts on my behalf to shoo her away whilst I was wrestling with bowel movements, and curious Mongolians who zoom up on motorbikes grinning at you madly when you're trying to take a quick squat by your pony.

 By day three or four, I had ended up riding with what became known as 'Team Australasia Plus Nick', with the two Kiwi girls, Charlotte and Hannah, and Nick Farnhill from the UK.  It was funny how you ended up riding with people- really, though, you realise very quickly out there on the steppe that riding alone is fraught with peril- the danger of falling off and your horse bolting away, hurting yourself, going coco loco just riding alone in the middle of nowhere- riding with the aforementioned guys above just made my whole Derby experience so much better- the most memorable moments perhaps being when I fell down a marmot hole (very common) and fell off, and my horse galloped away, and the two Kiwis streamed off after him to catch him for me- Nick also streamed away, in the opposite direction as his horse bolted- anyway the result of THAT fall was a broken girth, a loss of a stirrup and my saddle bags strewn all over the steppe which meant a massive delay- and my team mates, instead of continuing on racing as at that stage we were in a pretty good race position, plonked themselves down and set up a picnic on the steppe, at which point I could have cried at such an amazing show of what can only be termed ever so cheesily as team loyalty. Nick, Charlotte and Hannah were just fantastic to ride with and I can now tell you every last bodily function about any of them, after we all picked up an evil bug causing explosive bowel movements midway through- although what happens on the steppe stays on the steppe, can I just say that trying to hold things in on a trotting horse is truly a superhuman effort, and boy oh boy did we harden up time and time again.  Anyway enough of that.

 Scariest moment of the whole race was probably falling down yet another marmot hole and my horse cartwheeling over and pinning my leg down- getting up I had no vision which scared the living daylights out of me.  Luckily we had only three days of riding left, though looking back I realise I had a bit of concussion as result after a few woozy episodes losing my balance and the like and an amazing headache.

Best moment- well there probably isn't just one, but a definite highlight was one leg of the journey where all four of us had chosen fast, powerful, fit Nadaam racehorses for a certain leg, and had a fantastic gallop across some flat open terrain- the exhiliration of that gallop on such amazing horses will be scorched in my memory for a long time to come.

Coming into the Finish Line finally at Dadal, eight and a half days after beginning this adventure, I was feeling both exhilirated and sad to be ending such a once in a lifetime adventure.  Passing over the finish line abreast with the other members of Team Australasia Plus Nick felt brilliant. Being greeted with a bowl of airag and traditional Mongolian singers was fantastic.  And that first celebratory beer after finishing... went STRAIGHT to the head. 

I'll report back with a bit more as it comes to be over the next few days chilling here with fellow Derbyists here in Ulaanbaatar.  Thank you to all who followed my progress throughout the race and supported me- I think they'll be putting up final race places on the website in the next couple of days once they've sorted out time penalties and the finer details of everything.. 

Oh, and the mare's milk? Delicious! 

The steppes! The steppes!

Alright so a warning to blog readers... the following passage was written in a moment of extreme happiness... basically Mongolia has become my favourite country in the world in just 4 days... once you get out of the capital, it is just amazing... I really cannot use enough exclamation marks to convey my love for this country and its people!

So I departed for the Terelj National Park, to get a taste of nomadic lifestyle and ger-living.. Gers are the equivalent of 'yurts', if that helps you at all.. If not, a ger is a round tent, basically, that nomads live in, that is incredibly warm, beautifully decorated with carpets and the like, in which the whole entire nomadic family lives in... The fantastic thing about gers is that they're easy to dismantle and pop up again in another place, so when the grazing gets bad for your goats, cows, sheep and horses, you just up and move.. Hence the nomad-ness. 

 The steppes are beyond belief.  It's kind of like.. I don't know.. how I imagine Wyoming or the Frontier Country of the Wild West back in the day.. Great big wide open spaces... with no buildings, roads or fences ever, no boundaries. Lonely Planet does not lie when it says that Mongolia is just one big national park. Everything is so pristine and beautiful.. At night the sky is absolutely ENORMOUS and you feel quite small now I come to think of it... the ger life of nomads is so nice and lovely.. each ger has its cows, goats, sheep and horses as well as one dog that actually looks like a wolf, no joke, that guards the ger, and all the family sleeps in the one ger which would cramp the style of married life but is quite nice and family-ish...  the kids, suffice to say, are gorgeous and incredibly photographic- I mean, they look National Geographic front page-worthy just standing around next to a tent, for goodness' sake.

It's summer presently so the nomads eat ONLY dairy products... dried milk curds, fermented mare's milk or 'airag', bread made out of milk.. Just EVERYTHING is made of milk or cream or butter.. and the butter is so so so yummy.. For the first time in my life I understand what 'curds and whey' mean in the childhood rhyme of 'Little Miss Muffet', as I've eaten both in abundance in the last couple of days.  

I have had plenty of opportunity to find out about Mongolian ponies in the last couple of days... The Mongolian attitude to horses is pretty rough and tough- I've been riding the last few days in a  traditional wooden saddle which has absolutely no give in it and you have to stand up when trotting and cantering.. but the ponies are so docile but still willing to do whatever you want-  I hate to imagine Kilbert or any of mum's horses in one of them- most of the ponies actually have a white spot either side of their backs, where the rigid little saddles have broken open their backs at some point in their youth, then closed over again with scar tissue... It is difficult to accept the 'they'll be right' attitude towards ponies here, but then again they seem quite happy with their lot (the ponies) and spend most of their time grazing on the steppes and are used only to ride from ger to ger or during droving, which is great fun...  This morning I had to get back to the local bus stop in the Terelj township, to come back into Ulaanbataar.  To get there, I had to ride 35km, droving a herd of wild horses, with the herdsman of the ger.. I was basically in heaven, droving a mob of wild horses on the back of a plucky little pony that did whatever I asked... If you're reading this Miranda, yes, you should read 'plucky little pony' in the slow tones of the West Country in England the narrator uses in Black Beauty, film version when talking about Merrylegs.

My Mongolian is interesting... I have actually made an effort to pick up as much as possible.. Although it's so hard just to memorise a word, it's such an odd language.. Repertoire to date includes 'sun', 'rain', 'dog', 'call off the dog!', 'horse', 'I like to gallop the horse', 'mother', 'father', 'herdsman', 'milk vodka', 'thankyou', 'yes', 'no', 'my name is..', 'Australia', 'sheep', 'camel', 'ankle bone game', 'sky', 'road', 'big', 'small', 'OK', 'lost' and 'sorry'.  Surprisingly, these are extremely crucial words in Mongolia, and my most-used by far..

So now I'm quite excited about the race, and have a better idea of exactly what to expect out there on the steppes...  I now know it's darn cold at night.. I was literally sleeping in thermals, two shirts, a jumper and my raincoat every night to keep warm, and trying to fit yourself in your raincoat into a small sleeping bag is NOT easy, I can tell you!

 Only downside thus far is a case of red, sore gums which I suspect is an allergic reaction to the complimentary toothpaste I used in the dodgy block-of-wood-to-sleep-on hotel I stayed in when I arrived.  A few days of rinsing out my mouth with iodine (intended for water purification but deemed multi-purpose by Matilda the Self-Diagnoser) and a course of antibiotics (intended for emergency UTI's only, but Matilda the Self-Diagnoser strikes again), my poor old gums are screaming for an expert opinion, so definitely a trip to the medic before I leave UB...

So now, two more days here in Ulaanbaatar, then off for training with Richard Dunwoody at Kharkorin and some crucial information sessions with Daren the mapping guru of the Derby (he knows everything about everything I swear, bless him, and showed me how to use a GPS), then it all starts on the 22nd!  This is the last entry I'll make until after the race folks!  Bayertai! (My flawless Mongolian in action).

First night in Mongolia extremely hard, in the most literal sense of the term..

So the anticipated epic journey from Spain to Mongolia with the amazing Russian airline Aeroflot proved more epic than one could ever imagine - with an amazing combination of flight delays, rushes for connecting flights and a lack of expertise at reading the Russian Cyrillic alphabet in Moscow, I became within a 24 hour period an unintentional jet-setter of the worst kind, jumping from Madrid to Moscow, Moscow to Seoul (flying OVER Ulaanbaatar in the process and having the luck to be seated next to a zealous Russian Orthodox priest who delighted in reading me his 'Russian Book of Saints' in Cyrillic for a good part of the 8 hour flight), an amazingly long time in transit in Seoul (where I was informed in fact I did not actually exist in any known database of Aeroflot or Incheon, the Seoul international airport, nearly went to China then got pulled off that flight at the last moment) then, finally, finally, to Mongolia at long last.

 So, flights over, I feel I've journeyed enough and I haven't even sniffed a horse yet.

Impressions of Mongolia thus far are restricted to what I have seen in Ulaanbaatar, so really can't be representative of the true Mongolia.  However, I have noted:

That Mongolian men are all massive and are EXACTLY how you imagine Ghengis Khaan would have looked like- broad shouldered and not the kind of person you want to meet in a dark alley.  If you have trouble picturing Ghengis Khaan, then just picture any bouncer you see outside of a club, or one of the Huns from Disney's 'Mulan'.

 The language is not easy to the foreign tongue, the hardest being the, I struggle to call it 'word', glottoral grunting noise they make when agreeing with someone.  Sounds a bit like clearing your throat.  However agreement to things is easy, apparently, according to my kindly donated Lonely Planet Mongolian Phrasebook- you need only say 'zag' in response to people, and roughly translates as 'OK', or 'so..'  I used 'zag' once this morning when registering for a new SIM card and the kindly salesman smiled benevolently at me and asked in perfect English, 'I beg your pardon madame?'

 Beds- I am exceedingly unimpressed by beds thus far owing to the fact last night's 'mattress' turned out to be, upon closer inspection, a block of ply wood with a few centimetres of foam over it.  The sleeping mat is already in use.

 Oh yes - I am reachable by mobile for calls/texts on +976 9571 3775 and so I can send out the last will and testament of Matilda Jayne Branson by SMS, should the need arise.

 Off to the Terelj National Park tomorrow for a couple of days riding, then will be back to meet up with all the other competitors to begin the real stuff. 

Almost off, off and away!

Hi all!

So nerves are mildly frayed and there is a veritable swarm of unplesant butterflies whizzing about my stomach at this point in time.

 Training has gone well.. running, squatting, lifting things in interesting ways (or ´weights´ I´ve been told it´s called), accepting the fact that pilates is something that is not confined only to the realms of plastic Hollywood beauties and trophy wives, and is in fact an exercise even plebs like myself can find useful.. and, of course, riding like a madman under the hot Spanish sun.  The most interesting training sessions were the first practices with full equipment- using some small ponies normally employed to teach small children to ride at the riding centre Caballos de la Ribera, where I train and work here in Salamanca- once fully loaded, one helpful old gypsy observing me astride my noble 12.2hh steed noted you actually could only see the neck and bottom of the poor pony, he was so buried by saddle bags and the like.

Training revealed some crucial knowledge that will come in useful for the race- that my odour by the end of the race will win me no new friends- that it is imperative to securely lock and fasten ALL saddlebags- you strap them all on nice and prettily and then, suddenly, when you actually MOVE your pony, everything moves with its rapid jig-jogging paces and boings out of place, leading, I hear, to trails of muesli bars and medical supplies falling out of your backpack for kilometres and kilometres.  So I hear.

I head off tomorrow, August 11th for Mongolia.  I´ll be off pony training and living like a nomad from the 13th-17th August, then a day in Ulaanbataar meeting up with fellow competitors, then off to the starting line on the 19th for some intensive training with everyone competing in the Derby.

The actual race starts on the 22nd August in Kharkorin and finishes on the 5th September at Dadal, 16km from Siberia. Have a look at the Derby website to see any updates on the race.  There has been talk of being able to track riders on the website, but I haven´t heard any updates upon this at this stage, so check the website for details closer to the date.

If you would still like to donate, it is never too late- http://www.justgiving.com/matildainmongolia

A massive heartfelt thankyou to all of you who have donated to Mercy Corps- I can´t even begin to express my gratitude or amazement at how darn supportive you have all been over my crackpot scheme- so thankyou a matildillion (if my Grade 2 Maths memory serves me right numbers go on forever hence a Matildillion can thus be a number). 

Thankyou and I´ll let you know how it all goes when I get back!
Nokhoi khorio! (Mongolian for ´Call off the dogs!´ and the only phrase to stick in my brain thus far...)
Matilda

Mongol Derby Wine

Hello there dear followers!

I write to give you a brief update on events- preparation for the Derby is going well.  Equipment is being compiled, the use of a compass is being learnt as being not just a cool appendage of a fancy dress pirate costume and training is well underway (just ask my leg muscles).  With new sponsorship from Horseland on the cards (thankyou Judy at Horseland Bendigo!) and a bit more coverage (check out this month's issue of R.M. William's OUTBACK Magazine), it's all coming together.

In a bid to raise funds for the Derby, my main sponsor, Mount Burrumboot Estate Wines, are running a promotional wine offer at http://www.burrumboot.com/mongol-derby.htm

The Mongol Derby Daring Dozen!

More exciting than galloping across the Steppes!
More palate-pleasing than fermented mare’s milk! 
And a lot redder…

This would normally cost $368, but because we are keen to help Matilda raise as much as possible, we are offering this to our customers for $300, (plus freight), with $50 from each box sold going to Matilda and The Mongol Derby.

Check out http://www.burrumboot.com/mongol-derby.htm for more information on Mount Burrumboot and their awesome wines!

So get into it people!  It's good stuff! 

Extra, extra, read all about it..