The Further Adventures of an Idiot Abroad (15 page)

We got back on the train. It wasn’t as long as it had been at the beginning of the journey. They had detached a few carriages, as there didn’t seem to be as many people travelling
the last leg.

Stephen called.

I don’t know why I couldn’t do some Olympian activity in Russia. That country is full of Olympians. I’ve never heard of a Mongolian Olympian.

I met two Mongolians called Otgonbayar and Balag who picked me up and took me by horseback to their homes. They lived in nowhere land and had three gers, a type of big round tent. They were
really roomy. As far as I could work out one was a lounge, one was to sleep in and the third was for guests. They welcomed me in and I met the rest of the family. There were quite a few kids
knocking about, who I guessed belonged to them, as no one else lived round these parts. But then, I think if I lived in a place like this I’d probably have a few kids. I haven’t
bothered having them ’cos it seems like a lot of stress having them in Britain. I know people at home who have them, and they have to totally change their life to run around after them. They
get treated like gods.

You need a house with enough bedrooms and that costs a fortune, too. You can’t let them play out in case someone takes them or they get run over, which means you get dragged into sending
them to ballet or violin lessons to keep them busy and away from getting into trouble. You’ve got to get them into a good school, and there’s pressure for them to do well so they can go
on to get a good job, but they don’t seem to have any of those problems here.

I was given a cup of tea, but you’d never have guessed it was tea. They’d overdone it with the milk, and I can’t stand milky tea. Just writing ‘milky tea’ makes me
gag, plus I always worry about drinking milk abroad after having a tiny bit in India that made me almost shit out a lung. I drank a little drop and was hoping to get it to a level that
wouldn’t seem rude to leave, but the lady of the house kept topping it up. She had also brought out a plate of cheese, so many blocks of cheese I could have built them a conservatory with
it.

Otgonbayar passed me a leaflet with photos of wrestlers in it. This was the sport that Stephen was talking about. The village wanted me to represent them at the Nadeem Festival where the prize
would be five million tugrik, which is around £2,500. I explained through a translator that I’d done a lot of wrestling around the world and had never won, so it was a pointless
exercise, but he said Otgonbayar could no longer enter as he had a head injury from a motorcycle accident and they would be grateful if I accepted the challenge. I agreed to it. The family seemed
really happy, but I knew I wasn’t going to win.

They brought out more cheese in celebration. It always amazes me how welcoming some of the people are in these foreign countries (Pascha excluded). At home I don’t even know my neighbours.
Years ago, you got to know them from borrowing a cup of milk or a little bit of sugar, but since shops like Tesco Local are open virtually 24 hours a day it’s got rid of that little
interaction. Neighbourhood Watch to me is checking my neighbours aren’t outside their house before I leave the flat, to avoid getting into long discussions.

After a small amount of training for the wrestling they put the kids to bed and we sat indoors. A friend of the family did a little bit of traditional Mongolian throat singing.
I liked it a lot. He produced amazing sounds from his throat that I haven’t heard a machine or an instrument produce. He was making notes that sometimes sounded like they were coming from
someone/somewhere else. It was a proper skill. After a while I felt the urge to join in. I couldn’t get the tones that this man could but I produced some different ones. Otgonbayar and his
family looked impressed, and I thought I performed well, as I did it with confidence – a confidence that I knew I wouldn’t have at the wrestling the following day. If I lived somewhere
like this I’d spend time trying to learn throat singing. At the moment, I’m learning to play the ukulele, but I don’t practise enough, as there’s always something else that
needs sorting at home. There are so many things you can do when you haven’t got other things that need sorting. An example of this is the mimic octopus. It’s an octopus that’s
learned to do impressions of other stuff living in the sea. I’m sure it picked up these skills ’cos it’s got nowt else to do all day.

I slept well for a good four or five hours before being woken up by a rat-type creature scratching about on my rucksack. I then couldn’t get back to sleep. I wasn’t sure if it was
because I was nervous about the wrestling that faced me or from all the cheese I’d been eating earlier. I still wasn’t feeling too good, and my glands were swollen.

I got up when I heard movement outside. Otgonbayar’s friend was dealing with the goats. I had a wash in a sink on a nice wooden unit with a mirror placed in the open ground between two of
the gers. It’s at times like this I realise how mad all this travelling is. I’m miles away from home, far from anywhere, in a spot I’ll most likely never travel to again, brushing
my teeth. It’s an odd feeling.

The director said my wrestling clothes were on my bed ready to change into. I had never seen such a mixed-up outfit. There was a pair of small red shorts with beads sewn on, an odd
off-the-shoulder cardigan that mainly covered my arms and lower back, a pair of boots with curled-up toes like something you’d expect a genie to wear, and a hat that looked like it had the
neck of a champagne bottle on the top. These weren’t clothes designed to fight in. If anything, they were clothes that would start a fight. Lady Gaga would struggle to get a dafter look. I
was sure the cardigan belonged to one of the kids in the family and had become mixed up in my pile. I felt really irritable from the discomfort of the clothes. Maybe this was the idea, as they made
you feel more up for a fight.

We got to the festival where there were thousands of people. The Mongolian president launched the event, which featured singers and dancers of all ages, and I got my first glimpse of the kind of
people I would be wrestling. They wore the same outfit as me, which was a relief, as I honestly thought I’d been set up. These fellas were massive, similar in size to that of a sumo wrestler.
To make things worse, I had to wait five to six hours before it was my turn to fight. I had that feeling you get when you’re a kid and have arranged to have a fight with someone after school.
All day it preys on your mind. I won’t go into long wordy detail about what happened ’cos there’s nothing to say. I lost, as I predicted. Otgonbayar and his family didn’t
seem too bothered though.

And then, as if none of it had ever happened, I was back on the Trans-Siberian Express for the final leg of my Bucket List challenge. There were more Chinese passengers now. That made me look at
the guidebook for the first time since I’d been here. I saw the distance I had covered and noticed we were going into China. After visiting China to see the Great Wall, and not enjoying it, I
didn’t like the idea of visiting it again. I spoke to Ricky who said that was the reason he thought it was a good idea to go again – to give it another chance. Now, last time I got back
from China, I spoke to a mate who is into the same sort of odd things in life as me, and he mentioned a place that I was gutted I hadn’t visited. So I told the director about it. I was
worried about it being not very politically correct, but the place existed and ignoring it wouldn’t change anything. He began sorting out permission to go and film there. I thought it was in
keeping with the aim of the programme: meeting different types of people and seeing how they live. It was Dwarf Village.

It’s a proper village whose hundred or so dwarf residents run its fire service and police force. Some of the dwarfs had nothing before this place: no work, no money and nowhere to live.
But now, because of Dwarf Village, they do. They perform twice a day singing, doing magic and dancing. The show wasn’t due to start for another hour, so I had a walk around the place. I saw
behind the scenes where they all hung around in little mushrooms. One dwarf was doing some art by carving into wood. Dwarf builders were busy building an extra tall mushroom that would eventually
be flats (the number of dwarfs coming here is on the increase). A group of women were sat around chatting while repairing clothes. The mood was good.

I would prefer to be a dwarf than big like Stephen (Merchant). What are the advantages of being tall? Take away any health issues dwarfism may cause (which I don’t think there are many of,
as I’ve never seen a dwarf in a doctor’s waiting room) and I’d much rather be small than tall. I was the height of a dwarf when I was about six or seven, and I never struggled
that much. I would have been a lot happier on the shelf in third class as a dwarf. Other positives are that king-sized Twixes would be massive, clothing would be cheaper and there would be more leg
room on planes.