Well, the last few days in Mongolia were amazing. Monday and Tuesday I spent exploring the museums I’d never gotten a chance to visit. Mongolia won again when I was at the National history museum. Gin was giving me a tour and we’d gotten to the last of the Khans when the power went out in the museum leaving us in complete darkness. Luckily the Thai restaurant down the road had power, so the day was saved.

Last Friday was my last time at the Steppe Inne. I never would have thought that an embassy could be so much fun. I’m glad to see that the Brit’s still have a sense of hospitality!

Last night after my final hash, we moved to the local amusement park. Drunken roller coasters are a blast, although I can’t imagine how a place like that stays open. Safety was a joke, but apparently not that many people actually get hurt. Lawsuits would have closed that place down years ago if it was in the states. After that we ended up going clubbing and dancing till the early hours of the morning. Finally there was a sad farewell to Gin, and my flight to Korea. I’m sorry to be leaving such great folks, but I’m really excited about Africa!

So now I’ve finished my official project in Mongolia. That means I’m outta here in 5 days…it’s going to go by quickly. There are a ton of things I have to do between now and then, including sightseeing in all the museums I’ve been putting off. I’ve also got to go to the black market to look for fabric samples for my Mom, and I also need a new pair of shoes.

Hopefully before I leave I’ll be able to squeeze in at least one more hash, and one more visit to the Steppe Inne. I’ve had a blast at both places, and I’m really going to miss them.

I also just went out to Terelj national park one last time with Virgina. We’d been wanting to get out to the countryside together, and this was our last chance. We had a blast racing each other, and our 14 year old guide. He was riding a horse that had taken 2nd place in Naddam a couple of years ago, and still had a lot of spirit to him. We ended up near a private ger camp that focused on dinosaurs as it’s main tourist draw. Coming into the valley that its in from a certain angle can make you think you’re approaching an offshoot of Jurassic Park.

]]> http://theglobalguy.com/world-travels/asia/mongolia/done-with-work/feed 0 -90.0000000 1.0000000 http://theglobalguy.com/world-travels/asia/mongolia/death-march http://theglobalguy.com/world-travels/asia/mongolia/death-march#comments Thu, 24 Jul 2003 03:43:28 +0000 Henry Malmgren http://www.theglobalguy.com/mongolia/death-march/

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!

Besides seeing lots of countryside, we also stopped in quite a few cities for supplies along the way. All the towns we stopped in seemed to be one of two types. Larger towns were very Soviet looking…a few apartment blocks, some rundown factories, central pipes above ground, and usually a market of some kind. Smaller towns were just collections of ramshackle houses usually with no central plumbing or heating. Electricity seemed to be around most of the time, although it wasn’t always available 24 hours a day. I got the impression that the smaller towns were actually the most fun. People seemed friendlier and more outgoing. In one town we stopped in, they were having a mini Naddam festival (the real one would be in two weeks in Ulaan Baator) and we got to watch some of the kids racing their horses. One thing I thought was interesting were the entrances to a lot of the cities. Usually there would be a monument or something similar, with an ovoo next to it. A lot of times, the monument itself would even be decorated with the blue streamers. One thing that cracked me up was an abandoned plane sitting near the airport of the town of Moron. It looks a lot like the Anatov biplane that was abandoned at the South Pole by the Russians a couple of years ago. I guess they don’t fly well no matter what the climate!

Our driver Oogi knew a family near an extinct volcano at the edge of a beautiful lake. He asked if we wanted to go visit them, and of course we jumped at the chance! We had no idea what to expect, but it turned out to be one of the highlights of the trip. This family had about three gers that they lived in, and as guests we were put in their main living quarters. We felt a little bad about this, but they were extremely insistent (and of course we paid for the privilege). We spent a day just hanging out, playing with their kids, and riding horses all around the area. We hiked up to the extinct volcano, peered in the old crater, and then the head of the family took us to a nearby cave that was one of the strangest things I’d ever seen. The entire floor of the cave was covered in about six inches of water, but underneath the water was solid ice! We never did find out if it ever completely melts, but it wouldn’t surprise me to find out that there was always permanent ice there.

That evening we were fed fresh mutton for dinner. In fact it was so fresh that we got to watch the sheep being slaughtered and prepared. Mongolians don’t like to waste any part of an animal, so they’ve developed a unique way of killing their animals that preserves everything, including every drop of blood. You start by catching the sheep, and then rolling it over on it’s back…then you take your trusty Mongolian army knife and make a slit in the sheep’s chest, just below the rib cage. Next, reach your whole hand in there, feel around for the aorta connecting to the heard, and rip it in two. The sheep will bleed to death internally, only taking about 45 seconds to lose consciousness. We’d thought that our driver might have been a bit of a city boy until we watched how expertly he went about helping the family. The whole family helped, doing everything from skinning the animal, to emptying the intestines out. They cooked most of it for our dinner, and then the rest went into the refrigerator…or as they call it, under the bed in the guest ger!

So July 1st is Canada day…I never would have thought about it. Sarah, our trip’s resident Canadian, wouldn’t let us forget and treated us to pancakes for dinner. Why pancakes? I have no idea, but I just figure what do you expect from the same people who brought us Anne Murray and Strange Brew. Our campsite tonight had a resident bird who was very protective about his nesting spot, which just happened to be near the only convenient place to use as a toilet. It’s kinda hard to do your business when you’re being dive-bombed! We’ve also got a nearby cow carcass that’s luckily past the stinking stage, but it makes for some interesting speculation about what happened.

Today was mostly a driving day, but we did get to see a couple of interesting sights. One was the "belly button" of Mongolia. Supposedly this particular ovoo marks the geographic center of the country. My GPS disagreed, but who am I to argue with local tradition. The other thing we saw was supposedly a hundred year old tree. Our guide said that he can remember seeing this as a boy when it was completely green and covered with leaves. Today its just a pale shadow of its former self. In fact, the main attraction seemed to be the colony of squirrels who have taken up residence in the root system.

As I mentioned in my previous post, there are no worse roads in the world than a Mongolian highway. Our vehicle for this expedition was a 4 wheel drive Russian van called a "Yaz". The ladies of our trip named it "Ivan", and later after we it had proved itself worthy, gave it the title of "Ivan the Conqueror. Let me tell you, conquer it did! The journey was over everything from paved roads (the last 50km leading back to Ulaan Baator) dirt tracks, no tracks, mud tracks, and even full blown rivers. I was amazed at how well this little van did, especially considering it had the weight of 7 people plus their gear in it. Our driver, Oogi, was a master at handling this thing over the roughest roads. We got to witness exactly how good he was when it came time to cross a rain swollen river. Apparently an hour or so before us another van had tried to cross and gotten stuck. Oogi took one look at the situation, moved slightly downriver, and crossed like the van was on dry land. On the other side we tossed a chain to the stuck van, and pulled them free. As a testament to how tough these vans are, as soon as they were on dry land, the motor started up immediately!

Luckily not all rivers required such heroics to cross. Others like the one above just required a bit of insanity to actually venture onto the bridge. The one above had the helpful feature of a toilet attached to it, presumably so you didn’t scare the crap out of yourself while crossing.

We’ve just come back from a 10 day trip out to western and central Mongolia. Babak, Bec, Josie, Sarah and myself hooked up with the worlds best driver and the worlds worst guide/translator for the obligatory big trip out to the countryside. The main destination was to Lake Khovsgol, which is the largest lake in Mongolia. It contains about 1 percent of the world’s fresh water, and is so pure you can drink directly from it. Of course getting there isn’t the easiest thing in the world. I had thought that Cambodian roads were horrible, but they are luxury compared to the dirt tracks that pass for major highways in this country.

We decided to try to reduce some of the driving by taking a train from Ulaan Baatar to a copper mining town called Erdenet. The train was typical Russian style, with four berths per compartment. Poor Bec had to share a bed with three strangers in the compartment next to us, but she did get to hang out with us until we decided to go to sleep.

Once we got to Erdenet, our driver and guide met us and the trip started properly. We bounced around for 8 hours or so before finally finding a nice camping spot near the Selenge river. I volunteered to do the job of fire lighter which ended up being a lot of fun. We cooked dinner, and sat around drinking vodka and chatting. Eventually some local kids came up to us and the girls went off to talk to them for a while.

The next day we finally reached the lake. Apparently it had just finally thawed out from the winter the previous week, and it was still COLD! Josie and I went horse riding for a few hours, checking out some of the scenery. We got caught in a massive thunderstorm and ended up sheltering with a local herder family. They fed us hot tea, and plenty of cheese and bread to keep us warm. Later that day the whole group went out on a boat ride to see some more of the lake. Unfortunately the lake is HUGE and we only saw a small portion of it.

One of the things I’ve been introduced to down here is the group called the "Hash House Harriers." It’s been described best as a drinking club with a running problem. For the past three or four weeks, we’ve gone out on Tuesday nights to some location near UB to hike and jog in the hills and forests surrounding the city. This weekend was our first out of town hash where a bunch of us went out to Terelj national park. During the communist days this was the local summer retreat for the higher up party officials. Now it’s more known as one of the most beautiful spots to travel to that is still close to UB.

Anyway, we had about 20 of us go out to one of the ger camps, and spend the next two days doing a combination of hiking, drinking, running, drinking, rock climbing, drinking, horse riding, and drinking. Did I mention the drinking? We did three different hashes over the weekend, including a final one on horseback. I lost count the first evening of how many mountains we climbed during the hikes!

The scenery out there was amazing. There were tons of wildflowers, and wild rhubarb growing all over the place. Brigitte, the owner of one of the local cafes in town spent a lot of time picking this, and all the next week served the best rhubarb deserts and pastries.

It was on this weekend that I got my first hash name "Trustdriver". There is a great story to go along with it, but in order to protect the guilty, I’m not going to reveal it on here!

It’s so cool to watch the changing of the seasons around here. In the past two weeks, the countryside and the city have both gone from a depressing brown to a vibrant green. We’ve been getting a little bit of rain, and that’s been the driving factor for the change. We haven’t seen snow for over a month now, so I’m convinced that summer is truly here. This is the first spring I’ve seen in a couple of years. It’s nice to watch the trees and flowers blooming, but it brings back a nemesis I hadn’t had to deal with in quite a while…seasonal allergies! I’ve spent the past week with a stopped up nose carrying tissues around everywhere I go. It’s a pain, and the wost part is that I don’t have access to the simple pills that would take care of it. It gives me a huge appreciation for our medical system back home.

The other day we got to experience an annual rite of spring in Ulaan Baator For up to five days, sections of the city will have their hot water turned off while crews perform maintenance on the pipes under the streets. About a week ago, all heating was turned off in the city for the summer, and we’d been told that that meant that they were getting ready to do the water work. Luckily enough of our group lives in different neighborhoods so that we can go over to each other’s apartments to take showers.

As a good bye to the winter, the local brewery sponsored a 10 mile hike thru the countryside last weekend. About 96 locals and ex-pats gathered for the 2nd annual Khan-Brau challenge. It took us about 5 hours to finish with a very leisurely pace thru the woods, as we hiked to the Manziin Kiir monastery on one of the city’s sacred mountain peaks. It was great to get back to the outdoors again! Babak had injured his knee the week before, so he couldn’t go. I met up with a group of Australian volunteers, and we started off. Most of them chose to take a conservative pace, but Josie and I decided that we wanted some exercise, so we headed off up the hills. We ended up having the trail mostly to ourselves, and were treated to some fantastic views of valleys and streams. When we finally got to the monastery, there was free beer and food, along with medals for everyone!

Actually, they can. From the urban settings of Ulaan Baatar, myself and 6 other friends headed out to Khustai Nuruu Reserve last weekend. This reserve is about 65 miles west of UB, and the main draw of the park is the presence of Takhi horses.

These horses are distantly related to modern horses, but are actually genetically different. They’re completely wild, and legally protected from being domesticated. The Takhi are native exclusively to Mongolia, and live in the open plains, and semi-desert of the Mongolian landscape, living off grasses, leaves, barks and buds. They are typically about four feet in height to the shoulder, with distinctively large heads, pale colouring, and dark, erect, zebra-like manes. In the winter they are an unusual beige colour, which blends into their steppe environment, with a white back, which fades to a darker colour in the summer as the snow on the mountain tops melts. They are still an endangered species, and prior to re-introduction programs none had been seen in the wild since 1968, though a significant number still survived in zoos all over the world. Breeding in captivity has made it possible for reintroduction of the species into Mongolia to take place.

We spent the weekend driving and hiking around the park checking out all the different types of wildlife. As a bonus, we had one of the owners of the Chingiss Brewery on the trip with us, so we had plenty of beer to go around.

Besides the horses we saw a lot of other wildlife, the most notable being the marmot. These look like large prairie dogs, and are hunted by the nomadic Mongolians for food. They can do this for only the late spring and early fall season..during the hottest part of the summer, the marmots tend to get infected with the bubonic plague! Yep, the same thing that wiped out half of Europe is still alive and well down here.

On our way out we stopped at a historic site where we saw examples of Turkic man stones. These are thousand old gravestones that were left by the Turkic (not Turkish) people of central Asia during their migrations ages ago. They’re not marked at all, and unless you knew exactly where to go to find them, you would miss them completely.

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