Spotty's Little Known Facts

[Annoyed Grunt]

Little known fact?

Not really worth a new thread. Stuck it here.

[LeverEnd]

I didn't know about it Tango, and it is indeed a fact. Cheers.

[Lost Leopard Spot]

It's a little known fact but World War One is still directly killing people.
Only yesterday two construction workers were killed by unexploded ordnance at Ypres. A third worker is in critical condition.
Since 2000 I've managed to find newspaper reports of at least 15 other people killed in a similar manner.

[Prufrock]

Bruce Forsyth is four months older than sliced bread.

[TANGODANCER]

Where's Spotski. His location right now seems to be a little known fact?

[clapton is god]

Where's Spotski. His location right now seems to be a little known fact?

I've been wondering that as well.

[jaffka]

LLS, where are you?

Maybe its Dan who abducted him!

[bobo the clown]

Meanwhile ... on the little know facts front ; Richard Osman, the 6'7" co-host of 'Pointless' is brother of Mat Osman, bassist in Suede.

There ... that should get Spotty back on here.

[TANGODANCER]

Meanwhile ... on the little know facts front ; Richard Osman, the 6'7" co-host of 'Pointless' is brother of Mat Osman, bassist in Suede.

There ... that should get Spotty back on here.

I Like the Osman chap. I watch pointless most nights but a lot of them are repeats at the moment. I'd be no good as a contestant though; some weird and wonderful questions. Too much chemical elements, politics, modern pop stuff and people I never heard of, like Jack Black? films etc. Had a few pointless answers though.

[Montreal Wanderer]

Where's Spotski. His location right now seems to be a little known fact?

I've been wondering that as well.

For a guess (I'm not in the know) he got into a slanging match with another poster the last time he was on. His 'last post' was characterized as "lame, lazy, ignorant, presumptive bollox." I expect, not being a really gentle soul, he got a little ticked off and is taking a time out of indefinite length.

[TANGODANCER]

Just heard from Spotski. He's fine and has been away on a trip. He's back now which is good news.

[thebish]

For a guess (I'm not in the know) he got into a slanging match with another poster the last time he was on. His 'last post' was characterized as "lame, lazy, ignorant, presumptive bollox." I expect, not being a really gentle soul, he got a little ticked off and is taking a time out of indefinite length.

you guess/expect wrong...

he's fine and well and not at all ticked-off...

[TANGODANCER]

The name of the ship (according to a Pointless contestant tonight) that took Captain Cook to Australia was......"The Jolly Roger" (hey, if you don't know, you don't know, but......)

[Montreal Wanderer]

The name of the ship (according to a Pointless contestant tonight) that took Captain Cook to Australia was......"The Jolly Roger" (hey, if you don't know, you don't know, but......)

Trick question. He went to Australia several times and I'm fairly sure was taken by more than one ship. Maybe the specific voyage was mentioned in the clue.

[Lost Leopard Spot]

The name of the ship (according to a Pointless contestant tonight) that took Captain Cook to Australia was......"The Jolly Roger" (hey, if you don't know, you don't know, but......)

Trick question. He went to Australia several times and I'm fairly sure was taken by more than one ship. Maybe the specific voyage was mentioned in the clue.

Monty, monty, monty... the point is, which Tango's not pressing coz he felt no need, is that only a dick of the highest order - a number one dick, a person so thick they shouldn't reasonably be expecting to appear on a tv show related to knowing bits of knowledge - would ever give the answer The Jolly Roger. Really.

[TANGODANCER]

The name of the ship (according to a Pointless contestant tonight) that took Captain Cook to Australia was......"The Jolly Roger" (hey, if you don't know, you don't know, but......)

Trick question. He went to Australia several times and I'm fairly sure was taken by more than one ship. Maybe the specific voyage was mentioned in the clue.

Monty, monty, monty... the point is, which Tango's not pressing coz he felt no need, is that only a dick of the highest order - a number one dick, a person so thick they shouldn't reasonably be expecting to appear on a tv show related to knowing bits of knowledge - would ever give the answer The Jolly Roger. Really.

Well, after spending five months building a model of the Endeavour I might have thought he was maybe a teeny-weeny bit silly.....( The Jolly Roger chap, not Monty)

[Bruce Rioja]

The name of the ship (according to a Pointless contestant tonight) that took Captain Cook to Australia was......"The Jolly Roger" (hey, if you don't know, you don't know, but......)

Trick question. He went to Australia several times and I'm fairly sure was taken by more than one ship. Maybe the specific voyage was mentioned in the clue.

Monty, monty, monty... the point is, which Tango's not pressing coz he felt no need, is that only a dick of the highest order - a number one dick, a person so thick they shouldn't reasonably be expecting to appear on a tv show related to knowing bits of knowledge - would ever give the answer The Jolly Roger. Really.

So fecking good to have you back.

[Montreal Wanderer]

The name of the ship (according to a Pointless contestant tonight) that took Captain Cook to Australia was......"The Jolly Roger" (hey, if you don't know, you don't know, but......)

Trick question. He went to Australia several times and I'm fairly sure was taken by more than one ship. Maybe the specific voyage was mentioned in the clue.

Monty, monty, monty... the point is, which Tango's not pressing coz he felt no need, is that only a dick of the highest order - a number one dick, a person so thick they shouldn't reasonably be expecting to appear on a tv show related to knowing bits of knowledge - would ever give the answer The Jolly Roger. Really.

Actually surprisingly enough I understood that and even remember Tango building the Endeavour. However, as an advocate I always look for mitigation.... Perhaps I should have added a smilie. Welcome back.

[Lost Leopard Spot]

It’s a little known fact that I have gathered an eclectic bunch of friends over the years and amongst them are two people whose main jobs are ‘expedition leaders’ – it’s a hard life for some
One of them, Chris, has made a living out of living amongst ‘natives’. Back in the 90s you couldn’t open up a National Geographic without coming across one of his photos, but latterly he leads bespoke adventure expeditions into the world’s wilderness areas (it is a little known fact that I have some issues with that, but Chris himself is a very nice bloke). About ten years ago he finally settled down and lives in Mongolia with his wife, Bekte.
I was invited to his wedding, but due to work commitments, couldn’t make it. Indeed, similar to my wedding in Japan, only one friend of his managed the long haul out to Ulaan Bator to see him get hitched, and that was Andy, a mutual friend who also makes a living as an expedition leader – in his case based in the UK organising trips down the Grand Canyon, or up the Amazon. I was gutted not to be able to go, as seeing Mongolia, and more specifically riding with the nomads, has been an unfulfilled lifelong ambition of mine.

Anyway, it’s a little known fact that the seeds of my recent adventure were sown at Chris’s wedding, because (as you do at weddings) Andy got very pissed and extremely maudlin, and him and Bekte were waffling on about the joys of leading expeditions to wilderness areas when Andy complained that although he got to see beautiful scenery and had a sense of accomplishment when he got his clients through tough country he never got to experience the ‘soul’ of the people who lived in the places he adventured in (as I said above, a tough life ).
Apparently Bekte had never forgotten that conversation and was determined to show Andy the ‘soul’ of her people.

Bekte is a Mongol, more specifically a Khalkha Mongol. I’ve seen it spelled in all sorts of manners: Kalka, Kalkh, Kxalxa, Khalkha, Kaluka. Take your choice (although whichever you choose it’s a little known fact that it won’t sound anything like how they say it – Mongol is not a melodic language, it has a lot of noises that sound as if they’ve emanated from strangulated donkeys – the nearest I can render it is Ha-hak with the emphasis on the H and force it out like you’re coughing). They believe themselves to be the purest of the Mongols, divinely descended from Genghis Khan. The largest and most westward of the Khalka divisions are the Sain Noyon, who live in the far west of Outer Mongolia. To the north is Russia and the Buriats, to the west is Russia and the Tuvans, to the south is China and the Chahars and Zungari, and to the east are the other divisions of the Khalka and other Mongols such as the Naiman, and the no longer nomadic centre Ulaan Bator.

The Sain Noyon Khalkha are perhaps the last truly nomadic society on the planet. They live on the high steppe in an area roughly twice the size of France, and they move with their herds in search of pasture. They usually travel and camp in extended family or clan groups, but over winter congregate into larger encampments. Their lives revolve entirely around their horses – which are more large pony than horse.

It’s a well known fact that the Chinese year has an animal as a symbol, like year of the Tiger etc. It’s a little known fact that each of the twelve animals is associated with either Yin or Yang as a male or female principle. The Horse is associated with Yang or the male principle and the element that most naturally represents the horse in the Chinese five element system is Wood. Chinese years can thus be counted as a cycle of sixty different combinations of element and animal. 2014 is a Wood Yang year of the Horse, and therefore the most prestigious of the Horse years in each sixty year cycle.
Each and every spring, the nomads round up their horses and choose which will be their mounts, this roundup is called a yassa. They do this as extended families. Every twelve years (in each Horse year) the clans do a larger round up where they collect all the animals in their range together in clan groups. But every sixty years the entire ulus or tribal division does one enormous roundup – a virtual census of the tribe’s horse population. And 2014 is one of those years.

It is a little known fact that the last time before this year’s that the Sain Noyon Khalkha Ulus Yassa took place was 1954. Mongolia was then a glorious shining example of a Marxist People’s Republic. The yassa took place in exactly the same manner it did under the Mongol Empire back in 1234, only in 1954 it was labelled a state roundup and was another tick on some communist official’s five year plan.

It’s a little known fact that the yassa altered world history. Genghis Khan took part in it as a twelve year old in 1174 and later employed its principles, slightly altered, in warfare. It laid the foundations for his success and enabled the Mongol empire.
Here’s how it works: imagine an area roughly the size of France. All around the perimeter of this area you scatter small bands of people, and at a given time each of those bands moves on an arc inward towards the centre of the circle. This arc is followed anticlockwise and all the bands follow their own individual and different arcs (forming a pattern similar to the fully closed focal stop iris in camera lenses). Any horses that are encountered on the open steppe off to the right hand are driven onto the left hand. All horses on the left hand are driven forward and kept left (the wild feral horses naturally head away from the herders and the semi-feral either follow them or group with the herder’s mounts; the tame wait around and a tether rope is attached to head harnesses and the children of the band, eight to twelve year olds typically, tie them behind their own mounts on long lead lines, with sometimes one child leading over fifty horses. And that’s it: after three weeks on the steppe and approximately seven hundred miles covered, all the horses within an area the size of France are gathered into one vast herd in the centre of the territory, simple. The organisation of the yassa is a little more complex than that of course, the main encampments tended by the women have gers (or felt tents) and don’t cover as much ground as the herders as they move in straight lines going inward to the centre of the circle. The herders come across an encampment approximately once every three days, and it’s not their home encampment, it’s one further anticlockwise around the arc since the last one they stayed in. It’s only at the end when everybody meets back up with their home encampments.
How the feck they do it without maps or phones and just by observing the position of the sun in the sky I don’t know, but they do.

As you can work out yourself, the Sain Noyon Khalkha Ulus Yassa is literally a once-in-a-lifetime-opportunity… I’ll certainly be long dead the next time it rolls around. Bekte’s idea was that Andy (and one or two other of Chris’s friends) take part in the ulus yassa. She organised everything about Christmas time and sent out invitations to a few of Chris’s friends including myself. I kind of half-heartedly discussed it with my missus and due to many many small and inconsequential reasons (not least the fact I’d never gone on holiday without my missus and she was absolutely not going to spend three weeks on horseback on the steppe, plus my work frowns upon two consecutive weeks off, never mind three) I reluctantly declined.

Anyway, about four weeks ago now, me and my missus met Andy in the pub. He was very excited but as equally nervous about his upcoming adventure – it turned out only he had taken up the invitation (Chris couldn’t make it as he was leading an expedition elsewhere in Mongolia) and over a few drinks he persuaded me that I should go. When my missus said why the feck not? I was decided, and a few emails exchanged with Bekte and less than ninety six hours later (after an interminable wait in Moscow for my visa to be approved) Andy and I stepped off a plane in Ulaan Bator to find Bekte ready to drive us to the start point, her ger and our horses.

Here are a few other, random, little known facts:
The high steppe looks nothing like I imagined it to be. I thought it would be flat grasslands all the way to the horizon – far from it, there are long valleys topped by shallow sloped snow clad mountains, rolling hills, and sudden rivers cutting through the landscape with tree lined banks, as well as stretches of open grassland.
When travelling on horseback and the only water you have is what you carry, you brush your teeth by chewing on birch sticks.
You can communicate very easily with people who don’t speak a word of your language and you don’t speak theirs by smiling a lot and using exaggerated gestures.
One day the herders came across a horse with a badly broken leg. It’s a little known fact that every part of a horse can be used. It’s a further little known fact that raw horse meat steak cut into strips and placed under the saddle and ridden on for ten days or so is transformed into a gastronomic delight, no cooking required.

[TANGODANCER]

Sounds like the sort of adventure everybody imagines, but few ever have. The uncooked horse meat is not really an enticing thought, but well done to do for fulfilling your dream and many thanks for sharing it with us.

ps: one of the things that intrigueded me in the past about Mongols is their bow and arrow culture. I saw a programme once by a guy who also lived with them for some time and their archery skills were quite something. Did you see any of it?