Tour Part Two

After almost a week of puttering around Ulaanbaatar, I'm going out on a tour again. I kinda want to moving onto China, but I figure I may never be in Mongolia again, so why not get the most out of it? And it's certainly cheap enough.

I'm going to be doing a ger-to-ger trip around Terelj National Park, just outside of UB, and the surrounding area. This means I get on a bus, get picked up by a nomadic family, hang with them for the evening and part of the next day, and then ride a horse or camel to the next family, and repeat for four nights and days.

Adam's got rotgut, so I'm going alone. The price is the same regardless of how many people go on this little trip, unlike out last tour. I think having a few days of (near-) solitude in the hills will be nice.

Plus it snowed a teeny bit in UB last night, and if this city can look almost attractive like it did under the thin white blanket this morning, I bet the countryside will be even better.

What to do with all the free time I'll have? Besides obviously pondering man's eternal questions, I'll be able to work on some new songs to play on my axe, catch up on my epic travel ballad, and compose more song-riddle haikus.

Song-riddle what?

Haikus. I said haikus. With all the time we had in the van on our last trip, I came up with the brilliant idea of working song lyrics or references into a haiku form (thanks to Adam's interest in coming up with travel haikus).

Soon we even agreed upon a standard set of constraints: the first two lines must reference the song title or lyrics, and the final line must reference the artist or group.

For example:

It's oragami
And it's aerodynamic
Soldier gone from war

Or, one for those not so well-versed in recent pop music, here's one with a bit more of a classic answer (but note this one doesn't strictly follow the form restraints) :

Call him Anthony
Spring, summer, fall, and winter
But he's Italian

Got the answers? No? Well, I'm not telling, so tough luck.

Epic Travel Song

I generally hate what's happened to the word "epic" these days. Somehow it got bastardized to mean "cool" or "awesome", as in hearing some frat boy say:

"Brah, I did the most epic kegstand last night!"

It's an insult to the original meaning of the word, and as such has almost entirely eliminated the grandeur and scale of what the word "epic" is supposed to mean.

I, however, intend to write a travel ballad that truly deserves the title of epic. My idea is to write a five or six line verse about each place I go to, or about each Couchsurfing experience I have. I figure this will give me between 2-4 verses per week. Over a period of six months, that's a lot of verses; I'm not going to do the math.

All right, a rough conservative estimate is somewhere above 50 verses. I'll sing them with my trusty travel guitar which I still can't play very well. I don't think anyone will notice though, because I can't sing very well either.

Now you may ask, how does such a song truly qualify as epic, in the classical sense of the word, beyond being extremely long? Well, let me answer you, as per the above dictionary definition.

• the song will pertain to a long poetic composition. I intend to maintain a regular rhyme scheme, perhaps similar to Poe's The Raven, though my song certainly won't be as good as that masterpiece.
• it will focus on a hero and a series of great events. Well I suppose I'll have to be the hero, unless Adam really starts kicking ass, then I'll have to write about him.
• it will be written in an elevated style. I possess a degree in English, so that automatically proves I've practiced reading and writing and speaking English a wicked lot, and I will compose this song with the most impressivist of my finely honed abilities.

But I'm not finished yet! Allow me to elaborate even further upon more elements of classical epics not contained in the pedestrian internet-dictionary definition:

• a lengthy catalog of ships, or warriors, or other stuff. I'll probably only be on a few different ships, and I doubt I will encounter other warriors as noble and fierce as Adam or myself, so I'll stick with cataloging Couchsurfing hosts and other notable characters I meet.
• repetitive literary devices. Classic epics such as The Iliad and Odyssey were originally oral poems and contained repetitive elements of composition to make things easier for Homer and his homies who would recite it. I'll probably run out of interesting rhymes and imagery, so I'll just keep reusing old stuff in new stuff.
• a trip to the netherworld. A bunch of classic epics see their heroes making excursions to the land of the dead. No promises on this one...