Enough of work,” I said to my producer, James. “I want to shoot, fish and ride a horse.” For weeks, we had been in Mongolia, filming things: gold-panning, cashmere, karaoke bars, street children who lived under the streets of Ulaanbaatar to keep out of the polar cold.
Communism was a few years gone and the Stalinist statues were still standing. We travelled with a red-hat Buddhist monk and an Amazon in high riding boots, who said all Mongolians were born with a blue birthmark. Every store stocked 50 types of vodka, but they were all branded Chinggis Khan. At that time, Mongolians were consuming 60 million bottles of vodka per month. This was impressive, given that there were only 2.5 million Mongolians, including women and children.
In the Chinggis Khan…