I haven’t said near enough about Mongolia and our adventures there… there was too much to do and too little internet access. Now we’re in Korea (yes! miracles happened and we made it), and there will be new stories to collect. To give you a flavor of Mongolia, I’m posting several photos, but stay on the lookout for Flickr albums coming soon…
Landscapes
Mongolia is all about the land, and there’s one stunning landscape after another on any drive or flight between here and there. This image was taken on our journey between Olgii and Hovd towards the end of our trip. And because there are few paved roads in Mongolia, and the terrain is so rugged, no trip is complete without the requisite breakdown or flat tire.
Food
The most common type of restaurant found outside of Ulaan Baatar is called a guanz (canteen)–perhaps the origin of the term ‘hole in the wall’. And withing the guanz, the most common food is, of course, mutton-based and greasy. Buuz (steamed mutton dumplings) and kuushuur (fried mutton pancakes) are pictured here.
The public shower
Most hotels or ger camps don’t have hot water showers (if they have a shower at all), so if you want to bathe with something other than ice-cold water, a visit to the public bath/shower is in order! For the equivlanet of $1.00, all the hot water you can stand is yours. Never mind the aesthetic of the place–Mongolia is a time capsule of Russian Bolshevik architecture and glum aesthetics. Because it’s not convenient to go every day, we spent much of our time in Mongolia between showers.
Strawberry Ger Camp
Our last few days in Mongolia were spent at the Strawberry Ger Camp in Hovd, run by a school teacher named Amarraa, who’s set up a few gers during the summer break on the school’s grounds, and charges tourists a little over $4.00 per night. Nomads live in gers, so they can be erected and dismantled quickly. We discovered a plate of ankle bones under our bed one morning–perhaps a shamanistic ritual or misplaced keepsake? Who knows… bones are a common sight around Mongolia–walking anywhere there always seems to be a discarded bone (or hoof or skull) in the dusty street or sidewalk.
Traditional clothing
Amarra keeps traditional costumes on hand for tourists to play dress up.
The Hovd airport
The tiny airport in Hovd, as experienced on our arrival to a flight on August 7 that had departed 5 hours early. The first image is a view back to town (Benjamin’s 5km walk)
It usually takes a a week or so to get “That” feeling. You get over your jet lag, lower your expectations of everything, adjust your gut to the local fare, downshift into the low and slow gears, and in most cases “That” feeling arrives with mixed company in establishments that serve beer and the local version of meat on a stick. A day after arriving in Olgii is when I knew I was officially on the road.
Olgii is located in the far west of Mongolia. The borders of China, Russia, and Khazakstan are all within a days driving distance. The main spoken langugage Khazak is followed by Mongolian and Russian. The people are a mix of Sufi Muslim and (insert here) mostly herders and their traditions have probably not changed for hundreds of years. Time in Olgii creeps along, unlike the wind and dust that relentlessly eat away at the soviet era buildings that populate the town. It is still pretty “wild west” out here, which seems to draw adventurous characters from all over the globe.
“That” feeling came while making friends in the local beer garden. Beer garden is a loose term here. It is more a place that the local young couples or groups of young people come to escape the very close living quarters that most families share in their Ger. It is also a place for families to come to with their children to talk, eat, and drink (the Sufi’s are a little loose and slightly tolerant with alcohol consumption) with friends. There are small pavilions scattered around a walled-in garden with a swing-set in the middle and various plastic children’s riding motorcycles or cars and some music playing. There are also 5 or 6 very small Gers that couples can rent out for maybe a little more private time, and backpackers can rent out (yes, odd as that sounds you can stay in a Ger in the beer garden). From what I could tell it was not quite a love hotel thing, the culture is fairly conservative so more a Ger of our own for a few hours kinda thing.
Back to “That” feeling. I could write pages about all the details of each eccentric character I met but it seems more fitting to just throw them out like the lost hollywood casting director’s face book that fell from the sky and blew into Olgii: the bohemian Italian pizza maker hallucinogen inspired oil painter; the Lithuanian linux head-cum-Mongolian Altai guide with a penchant for vodka and beer; the Swiss-French 21 year old girl with a hidden penchant for the Russian Soul who had hitchhiked through Russia to Olgii to try and scan the eclipse with a camera-obscura,; the professor of Botany from Moscow with his two muscle bound Russian equivalents of the Navy SEALS (these three brought out the hidden penchant of the former); the Dutch-English girl who went to high school in Saratoga CA who was taking a break from a road trip gone awry; the Australian Cambodian Ger merchant who was spending the summer ferreting out new Ger to export while staying with a local family; a tech geek from SF who worked some magic for a Khazak TV documentary film maker who happened to be filming in the area; a certain girl from SF who’d come all the way to stare at the sky for 2 minutes to see why eclipse-viewing is so addictive and found she was our eclipse expert. There are a few more characters, but that’s another night in a Ger camp down the road, and includes 4 naked men and 1 woman (yours truly, Ben and Cheryn) in a Russian Banya.
All of the above found sitting under the abundant stars around a few plastic tables and chairs in one evening in the middle of nowhere Mongolia. “That” is the warm feeling of being on the road.
