The Global Guy

This past weekend I went out with my co-workers on a 5 day countryside trip. Most of Golomt bank shuts down for long weekend and the whole company goes out on a team building exercise. The staff was divided into about 5 teams each with their own matching outfits and backpacks. I was expecting it to be a nice trip out with a few days of doing day hikes. WRONG! It turned out to be 5 days of backpacking with 40 pound packs for about 15 miles per day.

Luckily the scenery was amazing. We trekked up and down mountain passes, across streams, and through beautiful valleys. Our final destination was a small completely isolated lake in the middle of nowhere. This lake was beautiful with crystal clear waters, and fish that practically jumped out at you to catch. We spent about 24 hours swimming, fishing and just being lazy. The hike back was more of the same, except we found the lair of the Mongolian horse fly. For nearly two days we endured constant attacks from these guys, and no one had thought to bring any insect repellent.

We finally got back to base camp where the army trucks that the bank had rented were waiting for us. Of course before we headed back we had to have a party. Lots of vodka was consumed, and since I was the only westerner there, they had to see me ride a horse. I’m glad I’d been riding a good bit during my time here, because several of them told me that they were impressed with how well I was able to handle the animal. Coming from a Mongolian that’s high praise! We didn’t leave base camp for UB until about midnight, and between trucks getting stuck in the mud and other mechanical problems we didn’t arrive until about 4am. I was awfully glad to get back to my apartment and a hot shower, and I slept for almost 20 hours afterwards.

From July 11th thru 13th the city of UB shuts down for the annual celebration of the “Three manly sports”. These include Archery, Horse racing, and wrestling. We went out to see a little bit of all of these, plus the 4th not so manly sport of anklebone shooting. The festival starts on Friday morning with a parade thru the streets where horses and people dressed in traditional costumes march from the main square down to the main stadium. The opening ceremonies were incredible. They featured fireworks, skydivers, acrobats on horses, shamanic dancing and speeches from the Mongolian government. I’d seen Mongolian wrestling before, so after the main ceremony we headed over to the archery stadium. It was impressive to watch the archers in their traditional costumes, but I wasn’t as impressed with the skill. The arrows tended to wobble in flight, and seemed very unbalanced. Hitting targets seemed to me to be more luck than any real skill.

The next day we went to watch the finals of a horse race. The horses race up to 26k, and usually have 4 or 5 year old children as their jockeys. This is done to insure the winner is the best horse, and not the best jockey. The event seemed to be a lot of sitting around, until all at once the crowd started to get excited. We pushed ourselves to the front of the crowd and got to see the first horses arrive. Some of them were barely walking, and a few even died at the finish line. There were two or three horses that arrived without their riders. Apparently one or two children jockeys die every year during the races from falling off of their speeding animals.

That Saturday night we went out on a Hash pub crawl. The evening was a blast, and we accidentally saw the closing ceremony parade. We were crawling from one bar to another when suddenly the streets were filled with the costumed riders carrying the ceremonial horse tails and flags back to the statehouse for another year of storage. It was a great way to end the weekend!

Brrr! Our last night camping was also the coldest one we’ve experienced so far. Every night we’ve been able to stay in either a ger campground, or in our tents near a river. We’ve always had plenty of firewood laying around to easily keep ourselves and our food nice an hot. Tonight we had to camp on the open steppe with no trees or wood anywhere to be found. Luckily, it being Mongolia, there is always plenty of alternative fuel everywhere, if you just look for a few minutes. As soon as we’d set up our tents, Oogi taught us the basics of finding good yak dung. It had to be dry, easily crumbled and the older the better. It didn’t take long at all before we had collected a nice sized pile of the stuff. While it lit and burned, I can’t say much for the amount of heat that it put out. I think we were all glad that we only had to deal with one night of this!

The next day on our way back to UB, we passed a small car that was being driven by some sort of police official. He didn’t like being passed, and waved us over to the side of the road. When he got to the driver’s side window, immediately Oogi and the cop started nearly screaming at each other. Oogi stepped on the gas, leaving the cop to hang on to the outside of the van for a few meters before he decided to let go. He ran back to his car which was filled with his family and started chasing us. We outran him after a while, but we spent a good bit of the way back practicing the Mongolian phrase for "I want to talk to my embassy!"

Finally we arrived back home, tired and smelly but really happy with the outcome. It’d been a great trip, and I was going to be sad to have to return to work the next day.

Heading towards the end of our trip, we stopped at the site of Mongolia’s biggest waterfall situated at the halfway point of the Orkhon river. It’s fed by runoff from melting snows, and apparently even three weeks ago it was completely dry. We spent several hours hanging out near the falls, just walking around, being lazy and soaking up the wonderful weather.

One of the highlights of the trip was a visit to the Erdene Zuu monastery located on the site of Chingis Khan’s capital city of Karakorum. The city was founded in 1220 by Chingis, and completed by his son, Ogedai, after his death. The city was abandoned by Kublai Khan when he expanded the empire and moved the capital to present day Beijing. Nothing is left of the former capital except for the rocks and bricks that were used to build the Erdene Zuu Monastery, and three of the four stone tortoise statues that marked the borders of the city.

Today the monastery is still active, although it is nowhere near it’s former glory. In fact, it is the only monastery that was allowed to stay open during the communist era, although it was just allowed to be a museum, and not an active place of worship. In its peak, it had over 1000 monks in residence, and 60 to 100 temples inside its walls. Physically, it is still quite impressive, with 108 stupas lining the massive white walls. Outside the walls, craftsmen and souvenir hawkers have set up stands waiting for the horde of tourists that haven’t come this year.

This is one of the few places in the country where the old Mongolian script is still quite visible. Looking around we saw many examples of the old writing in artwork, and carved into the temples themselves. While it’s completely incomprehensible to me, I think it is a lot more aesthetically pleasing then the more modern Cyrillic.

Finally before we headed off for our campsite of the evening we stopped to see what’s been named the phallic rock. Apparently this rock was carved to remind the monks of their vows before they headed over the nearby hills to entertain themselves with the local village daughters!