...a horse collapsed underneath me...

...twice.

To be fair though, it was a small and malnourished horse.

We were in Mongolia at the end of a particularly harsh and devastating winter, felt all around Europe and northern Asia. Whereas in England there might be a blizzard bringing two inches of snow, or delayed flights that slightly inconvenience travellers, Mongolian farmers had lost a ridiculous amount of livestock. There were piles of dead goats by the highway (a slightly paved road) and you could buy a pelt for about a dollar.

After a long week spent in the gritty capital of Ulaanbataar, we signed up for a van tour which Bob our friendly hostelier operated. We had been hanging around the Golden Gobi Hostel waiting for more people to arrive, who we hoped would be keen for a week long trip around the countryside. A Dutch couple arrived, and we talked them into the adventure and left the next day.

Zaya cooking up a feast in the
'kitchen' of a yurt

Our guide, Zaya, and our driver, Bayer (I think...) were awesome. Zaya was a Gobi girl, from a Nomadic family in the Gobi Desert in the south of Mongolia. She spoke perfect English and had a great sense of humour, asking us to tell her some jokes even before we were out of the city. And she was a very impressive cook, whipping up fresh food for breakfast, lunch and dinner, with the most primitive cooking appliances available in the middle of bloody nowhere, with no running water, on a gas cooker, often with kids or kids (baby goats - see what I did there) running around her ankles.


Bayer was a driver and a half - a big fellow with a bowl haircut and meaty hands who we're pretty sure represented Mongolia in some winter Olympics at some stage. He had limited English but loved trying to talk with us and tell jokes, pose for photos and have a bit of a rough and tumble at cliff edges. Our van was basically a Soviet tank on wheels, shaped like a pig but with the suspension of a billy cart. The roads through Mongolia were barely existent, especially now before Spring, when a good part of the country was still under ice and snow. Bayer handled the van with extreme skill, often stopping in the middle of a snow field with no landmarks visible in the snow storm, having a bit of a think, then driving off in the - always right - direction we needed. He would zip through fields of snow, ice, creeks and holes without slowing down, flinging us out of our seats, over each other or straight into the roof.

Our tank on wheels

On one day of our trip - and I'm gutted I don't have a photo of this - we were driving through a complete white-out. I don't know what Bayer was navigating with - there certainly weren't any hazard lights because there wasn't actually a road. We came across two men who were herding their goats around with their little shitty car (lazy) which had become stuck in a snow drift. The flock were getting away and, like us, couldn't see a thing so were basically stumbling blindly in the white. We stopped and Bayer hooked up a tow rope and got their car out of the drift, but it couldn't go. So leaving the flock and hoping they'd hang around together, the two men jumped in the van with us to get a lift to the next village. And they brought a goat in as well. A very cold goat who was scared shitless, whose eyelashes were frozen (so were the shepherds) and who found it very hard to get comfy in the back of a van with six human people. The two men were bundled up in traditional outfits - a long trench coat-style felt coat with bright sashes around the waist. They looked so cold and miserable; I wanted to get a photo but didn't want to embarrass or offend them. We dropped them off at what I thought was the middle of nowhere but must have been near somewhere.

We stayed for seven nights with various families around the region. These families were mainly semi-nomadic, in that they will set up camp for winter in a sheltered place, then maybe head 50 kilometres away to their summer camp in more pasture land. Their camps consisted of a couple of yurts - round tents made out of layers upon layers of felt, with a lattice structure to hold it up, a small door with a particularly hard top, and an intricate arrangement of furniture around the yurt, usually a couple of single beds, a kitchen corner with everything neatly arranged, a dressing table with all their personal effects and a kind of shrine, with photos and religious stuff and pretty little knick-knacks. In the middle of the yurt was a little fire place which burned either wood or shit, with the chimney going up and through a hole in the ceiling, often chimney-sized, often just a little bit too big so as wind and snow could sneak in.

Our first yurt camp - at Karakorum, the site of the
oldest Buddhist monastery in Mongolia

The families who we stayed with were set up for tourists, with an extra yurt free of all the clutter of a home, usually with four or six beds arranged around the outside and a plentiful supply of fire wood or horse shit. The fire, and I guess this is an international characteristic, had the potential to go out at the most uncomfortable hours of the night. It could be sweltering in there when we hit the hay (literally), but as soon as the fire went out it quickly became apparent that yes, it was in fact -25 degrees outside. Usually the mum or dad of the family would pop in during the night and re-stoke the fire, but if they (understandably) just stayed in their warm beds, it would be a war of attrition as to which of us tourists would do the job. I have been known to prefer to put on a pair of ski pants rather than take responsibility for the fire. And this is possibly the worst climate in which to have a small bladder and a large thirst. It's a tough choice between just holding it in and not getting back to sleep, or running to the hole in the ground 100 metres away in aforementioned freezing. Let's just say there's a couple of yurts out there that may have been weed on by a mystery weer in the wee hours of the morning. And that weer may have received a few weird looks from the resident yaks.

Guard Yak

As part of the selling point, these organised tours offered activities with the families, in order to partake in and appreciate the lifestyles of the nomadic people. We visited monasteries, had old folk sing to us, fed herds of scraggly cows, Bayer cooked us a genuine Mongolian hot pot, and of course, we rode around on horses. Oh, and a camel.

It seemed cruel at the time, and it seems even crueler now. I don't even like riding horses. My legs aren't built to be wrap around such a hairy chunk of flesh (zing!), and my knees are all knocked up. So why would I get on a skinny, mangy half-sized horse and expect it to not collapse under me? Phill's obviously a bit bigger than me, so sure, give him the bigger horse. But believe you me, under all these layers of thermals, my brand spanking new purple Chinese snowpants, and the traditional Mongolian overcoat that Mrs Horse Lady lent me, I'm not exactly small. I want a man-sized horse, dag nammit!

So, we saddled up and Mr Horse Man led the four of us on our total of two full-sized horses to Orkhon Waterfall, which was about a half hour horse trot away. I just googled Orkhon Waterfall, and pictures like this came up:

This, however, is what we saw (and, just quietly, is a bit more impressive, and not just because I made it extra large):

The beanie's a bit of a giveaway

So much water, and frozen! And shaped like that! It was a frozen waterfall! Crazy. Phill and I ventured down to the frozen lake with Mr Horse Man and dutifully threw rocks in to try and smash the ice.

So the horse I was on had fallen on the way to the waterfall. It was a bit shaky on the ice, it was a bit skinny after the harsh winter, and it had a big Australian girl in stupid fluffy purple jodhpurs on its back. I would have fancied a bit of a sit down as well. When we arrived back at the family camp, everything went into cartoon mode as my horse promptly collapsed under me, with its legs splayed out to the side. I felt very bad. This family had four little kids running around, helping feed the flocks and chop the wood. Then in come these big white fellas, who promptly burn all their wood, jump on their poor underfed horses and then ride them around like hooliagns until they collapse. That's not a genuine experience with a Mongolian family! They would have hated me!

Later, we rode camels.
They didn't collapse.

Where: Mongolia

When: April, 2010

...Simone was diagnosed with Multiple Sclerosis.

Some of my faves, New Years Eve at Darlo.
Was it 2005 or 2006?

It was exactly a year ago that I received a Facebook group invitation from my friend Joe, asking me to sponsor him in the MS Fun Run that was happening that weekend in Sydney. He went on to say that one of his closest friends - 'as good as family' - had just been diagnosed with Multiple Sclerosis at the tender age of 24. Joe is actually my oldest friend who doesn't happen to be related - there's a photo of us rolling around in a green barrel at Invergowrie play school, when we were about three years old. I'd gone through play school, pre-school, primary school and high school with Joe - then who was this closest friend who had been diagnosed with MS??? Had he found a new group of friends that he'd actually known for 20 years and considered like family??? Was he just trying to pilfer a bit of extra cash for that extravagant lifestyle he no doubt leads in Sydney??? Or was I, after 18 months overseas and 10,000 kilometres away in Whistler, just a bit out of the loop???

I was determined to find out who this person was, and went on a massive Facebook stalk. Besides some of my friends repopulating Australia single handedly, others planning weddings or precious two-week trips overseas, there was not much jumping out at me - as far as Facebook statuses can jump out. I went to Simone's page, knowing that I'd read something about a twitch in the last couple of weeks. Maybe a mention of imbalance, or exhaustion. I spoke to her on Facebook chat, starting with an emphatic 'what's going on???' Not as in 'hey, what's going on', but a furtive, panicked 'what's-going-on-who-is-this-person-that-Joe-loves-who-has-just-been-diagnosed-with-MS-and-do-I-really-need-to-donate-or-is-it-just-one-of-his-random-Sydney-friends-with-their-big-hair-and-their-fancy-high-heeled-shoes-and-their-Gucci-bags-who-think-Armidale-is-a-formidable-place-in-the-desert-where-we-ride-kangaroos-to-school-and-just-got-colour-TV-or-is-it-actually-someone-I-like???'

It was the latter. Big fan of Simone.

What came next was a hurried Internet search for any easy, layman's explanation of what MS actually is. I can guarantee there's at least six people who will read this whose first thought about MS was Mrs Hughes the Librarian, from St Mary's Primary School in Armidale. She had MS. She would zip around the library in an electric scooter called Phar Lap. Mrs Hughes ran that library single handedly, squeezing her big machine behind the counter (where she would sometimes let us scan the books ourselves!), re-shelving all the picture books and young adult novels (I just had a horrid thought - I really hope they don't have Twilight in there now) and commandeering the remote control in the video pit like a boss. Every year us kids would all take part in the MS Readathon, gaining sponsors from the family ranks and trying to beat each other in the amount of books you could read - at least that's what me, Ashlea and Kate Fitz did.

This medicinal marijuana in Amsterdam in 2005
only gave us the giggles

So when you find out that there's no cure for MS, that it affects three times as many women as men, that the average age of diagnosis is 30, and that the symptoms can vary from a loss of sense of balance, twitching, loss of sensitivity and tingling, problems in speech and fatigue - you realise that the possibility of getting a bit of medicinal marijuana is just not worth it. And to have that realisation at age 24 - it's not fair.

You know what else is super not fair? Losing your father when you are 17, and then being diagnosed with MS seven years later. Simone's dad, Ben, died suddenly of a heart attack in 2004, while away on a hunting trip in Goondiwindi. He fortuitously left three coins in his pocket - one for his wife and one each for his two sons and daughter - and Simone wears that five cent piece on a chain around her neck all the time.

The days, weeks and months that followed that unhappy time were an amazing banding together or friends, family and community to provide Simone and her family with the love and care they deserved. Our group of friends, the night Ben died, were celebrating Joe's 18th birthday at his family home - which involved a massive bonfire and the squeals of rabbits being smoked out of their barrows. Once Simone's aunty and uncle had taken her away into town to be with her mum, we huddled together to comfort each other and as news spread our parents came to collect us - with I'm sure a new found respect for the fragility of life.

We were born in the 80's.

Our group of friends - I'm just remembering this now - gave ourselves a day off school and hung around the park together, waiting to see if Simone was up for visitors. We eventually made it out to her place to join the throngs of well-wishers and help out in any way. I'll tell you this much for free - cooked chooks are worth their weight in gold, and so versatile! The Hiscox's friendship group is quite a spectacle - from old school friends of Ben's and Kay's, colleagues, so many relatives that you need to get some butchers paper to draw up a family tree, church friends, Jason and Mitch's rugby team mates, and school friends of, just quietly, three pretty cool siblings.

This same friendship group was shocked to learn about Simone's diagnosis, and we once again banded together to try and help out. Joe, as 'the absolute opposite to the picture of health' (see aforementioned extravagant Sydney lifestyle), committed to running the 2011 MS Fun Run which was eerily coincidentally the week after Simone's diagnosis. Picko, an old family friend, quickly organised a similar fund raiser in Armidale. Everyone Googled MS to find out what it is, what it does, and (at least I did this) how can we be positive and take Simone's mind off this?

Sorry Simone, but this wasn't
even the bad photo.
Note, we were at the beach,
so the no pants aspect of the photo
is a bit more acceptable

A month after all this, and with a sigh of relief that she was actually coming, I went to Vancouver airport to collect Simone and Gabi. No one knew if Simone was going to be able to fly - would she have to take stupid amounts of medication, what if she had an extreme relapse in the middle of the Canadian Rockies while fighting a bear, what is she has a slight unbalance while taking a jumping photo on a wharf and falls into the ice cold water (...almost happened), and ultimately - would she be up for it? Such a huge flight, away from home for over a month, away from your doctors and your mum and your whole support system. Luckily Gabi and I are pretty awesome, and we were enough to get her on that plane. At least that's what I think.

Simone's side-on approach to a jumping
photo is a bit more flattering

We had an awesome two weeks together. I hadn't seen Gabi or Simone for almost a year and a half, and we had alot of catching up to do - mainly gossip and speculation about who would get pregnant next (still winning!). We had a quick dash through the Rockies and I eventually learned that MS can cause exhaustion and fatigue, and to give Simone a break if she didn't want to do one more little hike, or go a little bit further.

Phill and I have loved getting visitors here in Whistler, mainly so we can be tour guides and show people how awesome our lives are and tell them stories about bears and beavers and poutine and caesars, and so Phill can explain the rules of hockey (or ice hockey as it's known in Australia) and I can show off my commute to work, or the tiny hut at the top of the hill that you can see from our balcony - that's where I make waffles! So to have this time with two of my best friends after so long apart was unbelievably cool. We used to see each other six days a week for six years, but now things were getting real and we had been living separate lives for seven years.

It's a special kind of friendship that lasts for twenty years, especially when you're only 25. That's alot of stuff to go through together - alot of ridiculous teenage angst issues, pimples and boobs and periods, first kisses, leaving school, going to uni, moving away, travelling, falling in love and getting engaged. Simone's one of those people who, it doesn't matter how long you haven't seen them for, is just going to be the same cool chick with the same loud laugh and big boobs hair and that way of tucking in her elbows when she laughs and awesome family and awesome friends who would cross an ocean - at least run eight kilometres - for her.

I know they're kidding.

This weekend is the MS Walk and Fun Run, to raise money for both research into MS, and for providing care, respite and support for those suffering from MS. Team Simo, comprising of Joe, Ciara, Kate Fitz and Sonya, has raised over $3,000 and just reading down the donations list makes me a bit homesick. So if you've got some spare cash, donate some money. If not, give Simone a hug next time you see her, or help an old lady cross the road, or put on a jumper instead of turning up the heating, or write a letter instead of an email, or swap a shift with someone who's desperate, or try some food that you've never had, or help out a lost tourist, or warn somebody about the dangers of drop bears, or go for a run, or pick someone flowers, or call you mum, or do a dance - something that's going to make this a happier and healthier place.