Mongolia

We arrived in Ulaan Baatar, the capital of Mongolia, feeling a little tired after the 36 hour train trip from Beijing. Ulaan Baatar isn't the most attractive city. While it has plenty of facilities like supermarkets and restaurants it feels a little down at heel, with lots of shabby concrete buildings and broken pavements. After dark it doesn't feel entirely safe either...

The day after arriving we signed up with three other tourists for a four day trip in a Russian jeep to the countryside around Ulaan Baatar. On the first day we went to the supermarket at the State Department Store in the centre of town to stock up on food. Wary of what Mongolian country side fare might taste like to fussy foreigners like ourselves, we packed our trolley full of food.

Mongolia is not a country of urban sprawl. Once we passed the outskirts of Ulaan Baatar the Mongolian steppe started. There was an almost infinite expanse of grassland fringed by hills, with a clear blue sky stretching out to the horizon. The only signs of human activity were the occasional ger, which is a tent like home used by nomads, and passing horse riders herding cows.

It was a very peaceful feeling to be in the middle of a beautiful and empty landscape. The only distraction were the very bumpy dirt roads. After a couple of hours driving we arrived at the Gorkhi-Terelji national park, where rocky hills rose up out of the steppe. Our destination was a tourist ger camp, which had very comfortable gers with clean sheets and a shower block.

After our guide mysteriously disappeared for three hours, allegedly he was looking for camels for us to ride, we went on a walk up the nearby hills with the son of the ger owner and his Korean girlfriend. The views were great and the air felt incredibly fresh.

The next morning we went on a horse ride around the nearby village and saw a new born yak as well as the women going about their daily task of milking the horses (yes I did say the horses). We were invited into a ger to try a bowl of fermented mares milk. I don't think that I have ever seen a less appealing beverage. It was mainly white but with big globules of yellow fat floating in it. I tried a sip and it didn't taste totally unpleasant, a bit like sour yogurt. Nonetheless I wasn't tempted to have any more!

That afternoon we went to the Manzushir Khiid monastery which was a bit disappointing as it turned out to have mainly been destroyed in the Stalinist purges of the 1930s. Our guide told us that the monastery had been destroyed by angry locals because the Buddist monks used to sacrifice young virgins to the gods. I wonder if that's what they used to teach in school history lessons in Mongolia...

Our next stop was the Khustain National Park where we spent two nights. This area has been set aside for the conservation of the wild horse, which is actually a different species from the domesticated horse. We were lucky enough to be able to get quite close to a group of wild horses, which looked a little like zebras without the stripes.

Again the countryside was very empty and beautiful. On our second night we went to stay as guests in a family ger. Every inch of the ger was used, with meat hanging from the ceiling to dry and cheese being prepared on the roof. The family owned a second ger, which was vacated for the five of us to sleep in. It had very pretty painted wooden ger furniture and a lined floor.

We thought we were living like the locals, having to go outside on to the steppe to go to the toilet. However later in our time in Mongolia we realised that we had actually been staying with very properous nomads, who had two lovely gers, their own Russian jeep and a large herd of yaks.

It was nice to hang out with the family who were very friendly and kept offering us unappealing looking Mongolian snacks. In addition to the yaks they also had a cute kitten, lots of dogs, a puppy and a baby goat that fell asleep under our van.

Back in Ulaan Baatar the Naadam festival was getting started. Naadam is a two day celebration in which Mongolians compete in the 'manly' sports of wrestling, archery and horse racing. This year the festival lasted three days in order to celebrate the 800th anniversary of Chinggis Khan founding the Great Mongolian State.

We had tickets in the stadium for the opening ceremony which was very impressive. It was the first time that I had heard Mongolian music. The melodies are all in minor keys and are haunting in a way that seems entirely in keeping with the Mongolian landscape.

A whole traditional Mongolian orchestra, dressed in traditional Mongolian coats and hats was present for the opening ceremony. The ceremony also included a lot of excellent traditional dancing. The best bit though was when horse riders dressed as soldiers of Chinggis Khan appeared and galloped around the stadium in armor. Chinggis himself also appeared on a great white stallion and proceeded to lead a troupe doing acrobatics on horse back!

For us the opening ceremony was definately the best bit of Naadam. It was fun to watch the archers but the wrestling was a little difficult to see as the stadium was so big. Before long we were planning another trip to the country side, this time to go further west for six days.

One of the problems with travelling in Mongolia is that the lack of public transport and poor roads mean that you really need your own 4x4 with a driver to get around. As the drivers don't speak any English, you also need a translator to communicate with them. We weren't keen on joining an organised tour and so close to Naadam none of the tour agencies were able to find us a driver and translator.

In the end we left with a young student that we had met on the street as a translator. He spoke excellent English but had very little experience. He had found us a driver who had a good jeep but who was also young and inexperienced and seemed a little grumpy from the outset. We also agreed that our translator could bring his wife with him!

On the first day we drove to Karakorum, a town to the west of Ulaan Baatar. We arrived at dusk at the Erdene Zuu Khiid monastery. Although most of the monastery buildings were destroyed in the Stalinist purges of the 1930s, the walls with their 108 stupas and several of the temples had been preserved. It was certainly a very atmospheric place. It even had a Buddist ger, complete with robed monks chanting prayers.

That evening we found a quiet spot to camp by the river and settled down for the night. However, just after dark the group of Mongolian campers next to us started to blast music really loudly from a sound system. Our translator went over to chat to them and was told that they worked for the government and that no they wouldn't turn their music down.

We ended up having to unpeg our tent and walk with it in the dark as our jeep drove forwards to provide light. Unfortunately the light attracted hundreds of insects and I soon had moths and flies in my face and beetles crawling over my pyjamas. Eventually we pitched around 100m away from the noisy campers. With the aid of ear plugs we were finally able to go to sleep, only to be woken up by an exceptionally loud blast of hardcore gansta rap music at 7:00am. Not exactly the tranquil Mongolian camping experience that I had been imagining!

The next day it turned out that a countryside Naadam was taking place in Karakorum so we went along to take a look. In some ways it was a lot more interesting than the Naadam in Ulaan Baatar. Hundreds of herders had come into town on horse back, many of them dressed in traditional Mongolian outfits. They sat on their horses outside the small stadium, where they got a good view of the opening ceremony and the wrestling.

In Ulaan Baatar the horse racing takes place outside town but in Karakorum the finsh line was right next to the stadium. The horses ran for 25km from the starting point and we waited with a large crowd to watch them come galloping in. In Mongolia the jockeys are small children, some as young as five. They often ride bare back without stirrups to further reduce the weight on the horse. Despite this some of the horses still collapse and die during the race. Oh and none of the children wear hard hats either!

Later that day we drove to the waterfall of Orkhon Khurkhree along a bumpy dirt track, where we spent the night. The waterfall itself is Mongolia's largest and is hidden in a pretty wooded canyon. It rained for most of the night and the next day when we set off for the Tovkhon Khiid monastery the roads were really muddy.

Tovkhon Khiid was rebuilt reccently but it has a very beautiful setting high amongst forested hills. It soon became apparent that our jeep was not going to make it up the muddy slope, so we got out and walked up the hill to the monastery.

It was getting quite late as we left the monastery, mainly because our guide had disappeared on a long walk up the mountain with his wife. The plan was to drive to Tseterleg, the provincial capital, about 100km away where we would check into a hotel and have a shower. Unfortunately as we drove on it started to rain again and the roads became more and more muddy. In the end perhaps inevitably, our jeep got stuck in the mud.

Fortunately the place where we were stuck was right next to a mound of small stones. The driver started jacking the wheels up to place stones underneath and Steve and I built a small road of stones in front of the jeep. In the end it took 3 hours to free the jeep, by which time we were all soaking wet and covered in mud!

After navigating our way through some more horrendous road we came to a stop at 10:30pm just before dark. There was a Russian jeep stuck on the muddy hillside. The tourists on board had some how managed to light a fire in the rain and were standing around having a chat while they waited for a tractor to arrive and pull out their jeep.

A local nomad came by on horse back and mentioned that there were three gers where we could stay just over the hill. It was pretty obvious that the jeep wouldn't be going any further that night so we loaded ourselves up with cooking equipment to make a hot meal and we set off walking in the dark.

Funnily enough there aren't any street lights in the Mongolian wilderness. Our torches lit up the ground in front of us but we couldn't see the gers. Eventually we came to a stream where the sound of dogs barking identified the location of the gers. I was wet, cold and hungry and the thought of approaching a ger in the dark surrounded by unfriendly dogs almost sent me hysterical.

It was at this point that our translator proved invaluable as he offered to jump over the stream and move forwards shouting 'hold the dogs' in Mongolian. Fortunately a lady came out, the dogs stopped barking and our translator shouted that we should come up to the gers. The first ger that we went to already had six children, two adults and a calf living in it. They had already gone to bed and looked more than a little surprised to see two tourists turn up.

Fortunately the ger next door had a little more space and they were able to offer us some accommodation. This was not however the sort of family ger that we had stayed in on our last trip. The air was filled with smoke and the sour smell of fermenting mares milk, dung was burning on the stove and bones were hanging out to dry. There was also an exceptionally cute new born goat sheltering from the rain. The fact that the new born goat was suffering from diarrhoea, did however detract slightly from its charm!

At this point I realised that I was desperate to go to the toilet. An old man accompanied me outside 'to hold the dogs'. After a brief struggle with my pride I did in fact go to the toilet in front of the old man, it was very dark and he was busy smoking a cigarette in any case! The dog stood half a meter away looking at me curiously but I guess he realised I must be harmless as I was accompanied by his owner.

Dinner was clearly not going to be an option as people were already sleeping in the ger so we ate some cheese and crackers and went to bed. I didn't get a very good nights sleep. The dogs kept barking and the cows mooing. Even the new born goat kept bleating to its mother outside which bleated back.

In the morning the whole situation seemed highly amusing. All the kids came into the ger to get a good look at us getting up. Our hosts did seem genuinely entertained by the fact that some tourists had come to stay, though obviously we paid them for their trouble. Our driver had also made it up the hill during the night and so shortly after getting up we all set off for Tsetserleg.

The last leg of our journey to Tsetserleg was happily uneventful. We arrived in town and checked into a hotel, ready for a shower at last. Unfortunately at this point we had an argument with our driver. There had been some damage to the jeep in the mud the day before which he wanted us to pay for. We on the other hand had thought that he would be responsible for any repairs to the vehicle. In retrospect we really should have agreed this in writing and made sure that the driver had proper insurance before leaving Ulaan Baatar. Fortunately in this particular case the damage was quite minor but if he had crashed the jeep we could have been facing a demand for thousands of dollars...

Pretty quickly tempers became frayed and the driver announced that he just wanted to be paid up to that point and leave us in Tsetserleg rather than complete the trip. The translator's wife pointed out that we were probably only arguing about $15, but sensing that our relationship with the driver which hadn't been very good from the start had pretty much broken down we decided to part company.

There didn't seem a lot of sense in staying in Tsetserleg if we were unable to continue to the nearby lake, Terkhiin Tsagaan Nuur, that we had been planning to visit, so we went to the market place to arrange a lift back to Ulaan Baatar. Fortunately we met a nice farmer with a jeep and two little boys who was quite happy to earn some extra dollars driving us back to Ulaan Baatar. Very unusually, he had been learning English during the winter and had learned to speak it quite well. The boys were very well behaved and sang along beautifully to the Mongolian music playing on the tape recorder. Despite the things that had not gone to plan we had really enjoyed our second trip into the countryside.

We have now spent a couple of days in Ulaan Baatar relaxing and making arrangements for the next stage of our trip. Tomorrow we get the train to Russia.