Book Review – Golfé por Mongolia by Andre Tolme

While walking through a book store recently, I saw a book with bright red lettering on the cover that looked like a postcard. The title said Golfed Across Mongolia and the book intrigued me a lot. Written by Andre Tolme, the book is 262 pages long and easy to read. It is divided into eighteen chapters with fairly long words and well-spaced lines on each page.

Andre Tolme was a typical, well-paid civil engineer who lived in New Hampshire and had a keen interest in golf, which he tried to do every weekend. He also had a keen interest in traveling, having visited more than fifty countries in his lifetime. After traveling to Mongolia and seeing how the landscape invited golf, he decided to do something crazy; He would quit his job for a year and try to play golf across the country of Mongolia.

Most golf fans wish they could play golf every day, but work and family generally don’t allow us to play as often. Tolme felt the same way and asked his boss for a license so he could go on his golf expedition. His boss kindly allowed him to take a break from work and return to work when the expedition was over if he so desired. Tolme went shopping where he bought essentials such as walking shoes, approximately 500 golf balls, a sturdy tent, and a GPS system, and set off for Mongolia.

Overall, the expedition would take about three months according to Tolme’s calculations and would traverse more than 1,200 miles. He calculated that he could make between 120 and 140 shots every day with just a 3 iron and walk about 20 kilometers and meet his goal in 90 days. After a slow start, he began to meet his daily quota, sometimes even exceeding his expected number of shots and kilometers.

However, after a few days, he began to experience serious problems. The main problem was the massive blisters that formed on his feet. As you can imagine, walking 1,200 miles will take its toll on your feet. Tolme’s blisters were so bad that he was forced to cut them himself and salt them according to his friend’s instructions. His sore feet were a problem the entire trip, but he dealt with the pain and moved on. Additionally, he found that lifting his 40-60 pound pack 140 times a day was extremely exhausting. His back began to hurt so badly that he began to think of other ways he could carry his backpack from shot to shot without lifting it himself.

Tolme’s solution came in the form of a cart. He had considered horses, camels, vehicles, and other people, but his best solution was a small cart. Between shots, he simply placed his club on the cart and pushed it about 200 meters to where his ball stopped rolling. Almost immediately, however, he found that pushing the cart was even worse than continually lifting his heavy bag. The cart was caught in the brush of grass and was positioned at an odd angle, making it uncomfortable to push it up and down the hills. Therefore, he gave the car to a stranger in a different city and began to trust humans.

Andre Tolme hired two caddies on his trips to Mongolia. He found local men through people he knew who were happy to use their jeeps to drive him several hundred miles at a time. A man named Khatanbaatar was especially helpful. This local Mongolian man gave Andre pointers on which way he should hit his golf ball, served as a communicator with other Mongols, helped him find food and water, and protected him when windstorms and questionable-looking locals arrived. Tolme’s journey through Mongolia would have been nearly impossible had it not been for the help of men like Khatanbaatar.

Tolme finally meets his goal after 12,170 shots in a city called Khovd. When asked how a man she met on her travels and found him in Khovd feels, Tolme replies that he is simply “tired.” The journey took a great physical and mental toll on Tolme and I was very happy to be done. When asked why he embarked on the journey in the first place, he said, “To raise awareness.” This is a very vague answer, but this is how Tolme intended it. After completing his journey through Mongolia, he realized that he did not need a solid reason to embark on the journey. I knew that people now know where Mongolia is because of the publicity it gave, how decent its people are and that you can really learn a lot about the world and yourself by completely changing the pace of life.

Although this book is simple and silly at times, it is a very entertaining story about a country and people that many of us do not understand. Mongolia is a country that has basic people who will offer you food and water even if they themselves do not have much. The land is bare with periodic rivers and desert and largely uninhabited. Tolme constantly tells his readers how a random Mongolian would approach him or invite him to his tent and give him his best bits of meat and water. The hospitality he received is refreshing and the insight he received about humanity and how to step back from life every now and then is what I will remember the most from reading Golfed Across Mongolia. I rate this book 3.5 out of 5.