The Global Guy

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!