Insider : Baker Takes a Rare Detour to Unwind in the Wild Gobi Desert : The disciplined, all-business secretary shows his other side on a brief interlude in Mongolia.

You could almost feel the earth move. For a brief interlude here, on the vast, empty steppes of the Gobi Desert, James A. Baker III, the tightly controlled, all-business secretary of state, finally unwound and became a tourist.

Standing at dusk on a big open field, Baker demolished a kebab of grilled beef, then took his skewer and waved it in a circle at passersby, like a little boy playing D’Artagnan in the Three Musketeers.

“Here, try this camel’s curd,” he said, pushing the prized product of a Mongolian camel herder on some of his unwilling entourage. Some of them took a sample, then sidled away and unobtrusively spat out the malodorous offering.

Curiously, in the wilderness, Baker looks like the Ted Williams of the Bush Administration. He is a virtuoso at what he does, a tightly disciplined professional politician and deal-maker. Yet, like the former Boston baseball hero, Baker is also something of a loner and outdoorsman, a man who, it seems, can relax only when he is out of the stadium and away from the public whose approval he seems to crave.

Mongolia’s Gobi Desert might not be everyone’s foreign destination of choice. But to Baker, a Texas lawyer with a ranch in Wyoming, this was Shangri-La.

The Gobi has open spaces, few people, no politics and plenty of rare wildlife, including yaks, condors, wild goats and horses. “Smell that sage. It’s wonderful, just like Wyoming,” observed Baker at one point.

The secretary took his traveling road show on an overnight visit to the Gobi late last month. The trip was designed as a brief cooling-off point amid his Mideast diplomacy and last week’s summit meeting in Moscow.

It was like none of Baker’s other overseas stops. Ordinarily, the secretary rushes brusquely from capital to capital, demonstrating little curiosity in sightseeing, culture or rest. It is not uncommon for him to have breakfast in Saudi Arabia, lunch in Jordan and dinner in Israel. Veterans on Baker’s plane recall a brief March, 1990, stop of a couple of hours at the zoo in Kinshasa, Zaire, as his last overseas effort at relaxation.

The Gobi expedition was different. From the outset, it was labeled as tourism, not business. State Department officials traveling with Baker were required to pay $350 if they wanted to go; otherwise, they were required to stay behind in the Mongolian capital of Ulan Bator.

A couple of the secretary’s security guards put up their own money and came along on an off-duty basis, thus winning themselves a rare chance to shoot pictures and look at the landscape instead of watching out for possible terrorists and assassins.

Aides stockpiled fruit and bottled water for the trip. And a memo distributed in advance by Baker’s staff warned that the Gobi would not have all the comforts of home. “There are loads of flies,” it said. “. . . You may see scorpions in the area. It is advisable to either sleep with your shoes on the bed or shake them out in the morning.”

The memo included a shopping list. And indeed, in Kuala Lumpur, Baker’s last stop before Mongolia, State Department officials rushed off to a shopping center to stock up on such items as insect repellent, flashlights, army knives, toilet paper and granola bars.

Yet even on a trip into the wilderness, the secretary does not quite travel like an ordinary camper.

On the day Baker was scheduled to fly from Ulan Bator into the Gobi, the weather was foggy and rainy--raising the prospect that the secretary of state might not be able to fly back to the capital as planned the next day.

Baker’s entourage waited inside Mongolian vans playing tapes of the Eagles’ “Hotel California” as State Department officials quickly called Andrews Air Force Base outside Washington to get a weather forecast for Mongolia over the next 24 hours. From more than 10,000 miles away, the meteorologists back home gave the go-ahead to proceed with the trip.

When Baker’s party of about 30 arrived at a camp in the Gobi, the secretary and his wife, Susan, were housed like everyone else in a Mongolian ger or yurt-- the circular tent made of cloth that has long been used by the nomads of central Asia.

Baker was assigned ger No. 3, indistinguishable from the others and about 200 feet from the common bathrooms and cold-water showers.

Still, outside a nearby yurt, State Department communications experts set up a satellite telephone linkup, in case Baker needed to stay in touch with some world crisis. From there, one U.S. official could be heard testing the line to Washington. “State, Gobi,” he said.

The Gobi phone hookup caused one wag to quip: “When Israel is serious about peace, it can call us at 1-800-YURT.” (Last year, in one of his most-quoted lines, Baker gave out the White House switchboard number and said to Israeli officials, “When you’re serious about peace, call us.”)

That night, the secretary was the guest of honor in what might be called the Dining Yurt, a slightly larger tent, where Baker was serenaded until near midnight with Mongolian music and toasted with aptly named Genghis Khan-brand Mongolian vodka.

He and his party arose before 5:30 the next morning for a hike down a narrow, rocky gorge along a stream filled with ice patches. At midday, on a grassy field, his Mongolian hosts slaughtered a goat, removed its entrails, filled it with hot stones and cooked it. It was the sort of luncheon feast not ordinarily found on the diplomatic circuit.

The highlight of the outing occurred when Baker spotted a couple of ibexes--wild goats with long, curved horns--silhouetted against the craggy peak of a nearby mountain. The caravan stopped. Baker, genuinely excited, stared at the animals through his binoculars, then ran up and down the road looking at them again through two small telescopes.

“Look at that,” he said, offering his binoculars to others in his party. “Have a look.” As if to add to the panorama, another group of ibex appeared on the mountain on the other side of the road.

Baker’s public face, that visage of taut control and political caution which Americans regularly see on television news shows, had changed. In moments of relaxation, the secretary of state looks like an ageless coot, a gangly, grizzled fisherman. He is more awkward and off-balance at repose than when his guard is up.

To see that face is to realize how much extraordinary effort it must take for Baker to sit in on meeting after meeting, negotiation after negotiation, always controlling himself as he seeks to coax and persuade others to agree to the deal he wants.

The following day, it was back to work. As Baker’s plane soared across Soviet Central Asia toward the summit meeting in Moscow, a man who would allow himself to be identified only as an “Administration official” was asked what the trip to Mongolia had accomplished.

The official broke into a little-boy grin. “We have introduced bananas to the Gobi,” he replied. Then his face quickly tightened. “I’ll be serious,” he said.

Destination: The Gobi

The desert’s wildlife and remoteness attracted Secretary of State James A. Baker III--most often seen in a suit and tie.