"Why are you going to Mongolia?" a friend of mine wanted to know, "There's nothing there."
And that is precisely the point. There's nothing there--no crowded sidewalks teeming with pedestrians, bicycles, and scooters, no late night drunks howling outside of the window, no feral cats fighting in the alley, no blinking neon, no blaring car horns. Don't get me wrong, this isn't meant as an attack against Daegu, a city I've grown to love and have called my home for the past two years. All cities begin to get under my skin after a while. I grew up in the country and sometimes, I feel a powerful lust to escape the urban lifestyle. I want to sit on a hilltop and hear nothing but the breeze. I want to look in all directions and see nothing but green and blue. At night, I want to admire the Milky Way and track satellites, and count shooting stars. There were other reasons that I wanted to visit Mongolia, but none more important than the vast, seemingly endless, open spaces. What I did not realize was just how empty the countryside would be. It's very difficult to describe just how beautiful Mongolia was. Words, my words at least, hardly do it any justice.
Generally, I get pretty long-winded when I update this blog, I'm not going to do that this time. Instead, I'll try to briefly recount some of our experiences as we trekked from one nomadic camp to the next over the course of ten days.
The adventure began in the country's capital, Ulaanbaatar. I wasn't sure what to expect from UB before arriving, and I didn't bother to research it much because we'd really only have about a day and half there anyway. To our surprise, UB was a pretty nice place. The streets and the sidewalks were clean. There were plenty of dining options. The people were very polite, always smiling, and eager to lend a hand. The only real danger was crossing the street. There are stoplights at some of the intersections but most of the time, you just have to walk when the locals walk, and stop when the locals stop. There seems to be an understanding between pedestrian and motorist though, and while it's a bit unnerving at first, by the second day, I'd grown accustom to it.
Our guesthouse was located close to Sukhbaatar Square, which is smack in the center of the city. As we do in every city that we visit, we immediately located a bakery and a super market. A bakery is important for coffee and snacks in the morning. A super market obviously provides us with any last minute provisions we may have forgotten, but more importantly, super markets in new countries are lots of fun to wander through.
Ger to Ger
We'd spend the next three days at Terejl National Park, trekking across the steppe and lodging with nomadic families. We booked our homestay through the Ger to Ger organization. Despite a lot of questionable reviews, Ger to Ger ended up providing an excellent experience, even if the "cultural orientation" seminar-thing was a titanic waste of time, (Four hours spent mostly listening to the founder brag about himself. Topics included: How Much Can You Bench Press? Any Experience with Snakes? What's a Change-Maker?) Honestly, the whole orientation could have taken about 30 minutes and I was a bit annoyed that I had to pay to listen to someone's life history, but this ended up being the only bad part of the trip.
On our first day, we'd ridden the bus about an hour outside of the city. From there, a minibus taxied us deeper into the park, where we'd meet our first guide on the banks of the river. After fording the river by ox-cart, we made the 8 km journey to our first ger camp and settled in for a hot lunch and some tea. All was swell as we loaded up our bags, and prepared for our second ox-cart journey, an 18 km trek deeper into the river valley. The sun was out. The sky was blue and full of clouds. Gangs of horses congregated in the river shallows. Up in the hills, cows and sheep were out to pasture.
And then the rain came.
If I had to guess, I'd say we were about 1/3 of the way into our journey when the southern hills became shrouded in mist. As we watched the mist slowly pour over the slopes and into the valley, it became apparent that we were going to get wet. It was only a matter of time. The first heavy gust of wind blew my hat from my head. By the time I hopped off of the ox-cart to retrieve it, the rain was falling in torrents. After about 20 minutes of downpour, it relented to only a very steady drizzle--still enough to keep us all soaking wet and cold. When we finally reached camp, we shuffled into our ger and our two drivers lit a fire in the stove. I've never appreciated fire so much before. The small confines of the ger heated up very quickly, and steam began to rise from our wet clothes. Within no time at all, we were warm again.
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| Our digs. |
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| Our wheels. |
After changing into dry clothes and resting for a bit, we were invited to the family's ger for warm tea and snacks. Soon, Mr. Bolortogoo arrived with an ox-cart full of trees he'd chopped down with his brother. I couldn't believe that they'd been out in the woods, falling trees in the rain all day, but life on the steppe doesn't grind to a halt because of the weather. Things need to get done. The men in our group were invited outside to share in the wood-splitting responsibilities. We mostly just unloaded the logs, collected the split pieces, and carried them into the gers. I watched in disbelief as Mr B held the log with one hand and hacked it into four slivers using the hatchet he wielded in his other. I would have lost all of my fingers had I tried it even once. Inside, the women helped prepare dinner, which was a noodle soup with hunks of meat, potatoes, and carrots. After the meal we drank some milk tea, a staple among the Mongolian people both country and cosmopolitan. Suutei tsia is made by boiling together in a large bowl a lot of milk, a small amount of tea leaves, and a spoonful or two of salt. I'd previously tried the salty tea in Ulaanbaatar and I wasn't a very big fan, especially because I don't often drink milk, but after spending an entire day outside in the wet and the cold, the drink became like an elixir--delivering an instant shot of warmth directly to my core. After a few cups, we retired to our ger for the evening.
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| Milk Tea |
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| Firewood |
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| The Herd Returns |
We rose early the next day and rode the public transit (ox-cart) to the next nomadic camp after breakfast. The journey would only take about an hour and the sky was clear, with no threat of rain. Before departing, we took a stroll around the grounds, and said goodbye to our new friends.
Mr. Bold and his family would host us next. An accomplished wrestler during his younger days, Mr. Bold was the largest human being I've ever seen. Not that he was rounder than most people, or taller than most people, or even bigger than most people...he was just large. His hands were bigger then my entire torso. You could have landed a small Cessna along the width of his shoulders. They must have used barrels, plural, to construct his chest. Wherever he went, he garnered a noticeable level of respect, and not because people feared him, but because he was the nicest guy on the steppe. Mr. Bold would lumber into a neighboring ger, his voice booming, his barrel chest rumbling with laughter--the biggest thing about him was the smile he always wore.
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| The Bold Residence |
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| The Legend Himself |
By mid-afternoon the lingering drizzle had dissipated and given way to gigantic blue skies which cascaded all around us. After lunch, we hiked to the top of the closest hill. The view was staggering--we could count on one hand how many other camps were visible. The rest of the hills rose like green waves in every direction. Alpine forests lined their northern slopes in neat green patches. Every hour, a horse race streaked across the plain.
In the evening, we helped Mr. Bold's family milk the cows.
After dinner, we practiced our archery skills, which were severely lacking...
...before watching the sun go down.
The third day would be our last one on the steppe. After breakfast, Mr. Bold ox-carted us back through the valley and across the river, which was raging even higher thanks to the heavy rain. We'd make a pit-stop for lunch before heading back into Ulaanbaatar, (somehow, Mr. Bold managed to secure us a ride back into town, eliminating a 2 hour bus ride).
Our time with the nomadic families was short, yet memorable. Life on the steppe is simple but demanding. It was important for us to remember that these people were not our tour guides, their homes were not our guesthouses. There is little time to waste and although our hosts were eager to share their traditions and customs with us, they were more concerned with completing their daily responsibilities; responsibilities that I was glad to take part in.
I planned on writing about our trip in it's entirety but I slept in an airport last night so I'm tired. This post only recounts our first week in Mongolia. I'll try to write something about the seven days we spent traipsing across the Gobi in the coming days...or weeks...or months...
