“Hey, Let’s Go out for Mongolian…”

The oddest thing about Mongolia popping up again in my life is that hours before I noticed my yurt write-up, I had been chatting with a real Mongolian.

Pipi and I had gone out for waffles at a neighborhood place we’d never been to, and I was feeling eccentric, so I was wearing a suede herdsman’s jacket that I had bought at a natural history museum in Ulan Batar. Our waitress noticed it right away. She told me she herself was from U.B.—she was quick to add that she’d been born in the urban area, and I got the impression she wanted me to know that she was a city girl, no more a nomadic sheepherder than I was.

Later Pipi chided me for leaving without asking the woman where we could get good Mongolian food in the Bay Area, but sadly, I don’t remember Mongolia as a place with really great cuisine. I liked a lot of the things I ate; I just don’t see salt tea and fried mutton dumplings really catching on here. But then, Northern Californians do like a good yurt, so you never know what’s going to find an audience.