MONGOLIAN LAYOVER

The endless hills and skies of Mongolia.

Mongolia was a mandatory stop in our itinerary. More specifically, we were heading to Ulan Bator to take a breather on the way to China, and meanwhile to take care of my Chinese visa, which I still didn’t have at that point. The visa business turned out to be easy, but time consuming and very expensive. Heading to UB, it didn’t occur to us to check if the Chinese consulate was going to be open when we got there. Of course, due to the National Day of China, all public offices were on leave for a week! So there we were with 10 days at our disposal and with nothing to do.

Ulan Bator.

Ulan Bator turned out to be a city out of the soviet nineties. It is a strange mix of few awkward modern buildings mixed in between rumbles of half built structures, traditional gers and soviet colorless box-like apartment buildings. Nonetheless, according to a number of people we met there, they say that the city has exploded in the last few years and is now one of the fastest growing cities in Asia. Apparently, it is mostly due to foreign investment and exploration of copper, oil and natural resources hidden in Mongolian hills. Some also say that Ulan Bator is losing its character and is becoming like any other modern city with all of the same name brand shops, restaurants and shopping malls. May be it is true, but from what I can see, the locals are only happy about the development, which is finally giving the city a face lift of a sort. Some peculiar things that we have seen in the streets are the long gone and forgotten public wait stands, where for a penny or two a “wait assistant” is happy to let you know your know current wait category. Apart from these street “wait watchers” there were also mini what-not stalls that offered anything from peanuts to cigarettes, which were neatly arranged around a telephone. I guess that one of the services offered were telephone calls from a land line phone. How in the world was it connected and to what I have no idea, but the phones were not cordless of cellular, and there were a few of them down the main city drag.

The Migjid Janraisig Temple.

Besides the central square and a couple of main streets, there city also has to offer a number of excellent museums and temples. The ones that stood out were the old temple of Choijin Lama Temple, the National Museum of Mongolian History, and the Migjid Janraisig Temple. The Choijin Lama Temple one was special because of its beautiful interior decorations, its textile collection and also because it was the first Asian structure I have seen. The National Museum of Mongolian History captivated us for a few hours with its wonderfully comprehensive collection of historical artifacts and excellent information boards. The Migjid Janraisig Temple was probably the highlight of the three. It was a classical Buddist temple structure with the trapeze white stone bottom level and a dark wood top floor. Inside, there was an enormous 26 meter, 20 ton Budda statue towering in the middle of the temple surrounded by the prayer drums constantly rotated by the belivers. I thought that later on I was going to think of that temple as just one out of hundreds that we were going to see in Asia, but it really is one of a kind and I have not seen anything similar so far. Besides being a tourist attraction and a historical monument  it is also an active temple with monks chanting the prayers at the lowest pitch of their voices, and people kneeling down to warship and meditate.

The giant Migjid Janraisig Budda.

There museums and other sites were great, but there were only so much of them and we were left with nothing else but sitting at the hostel writing our blog. All of a sudden, one evening the hostel door flung open and we heard: “Well, hello, hello there!”. It was Liza, the German student, who was our generous host in Ulan-Ude, our last stop in Russia. It turned out that Liza came to Mongolia to shop for winter clothes to survive the cold season while she was in Siberia for her semester abroad. After the fun night of catching up and befriending another German traveler we all decided to take off to the near by Terelj National Park, where I had found a local nomad family to stay with.

Mongolian gers.

In reality, I found a Mongolian girl who ran a small scale tourism business, who arranged for us to stay with her family in a village within the National Park, and where she and her daughter spent almost every weekend. The four of us, Daka and her 1,5 year old daughter dressed in traditional clothing, got on the local bus and 3 hours later were in a ger (or yurt) village, hidden in a wooded valley between the mountains. Our ger appeared small from the outside, but surprisingly, once entered it opened up a common space which could host at least 6 people. There were 2 large beds, several linen chest type pieces of furniture and an iron stove in the middle. It gave a cozy feeling and made you want to stay there.

Life inside a ger.

During one of the days with Daka’s family we saw how gers are moved and put back together. The structure is amazingly strong and weatherproof, while at the same time it only takes several hours to take apart and put back together. A typical Mongolian ger consists of 7 parts: wooden structure, interior cover, felt, canvas, exterior cover, crown cover, and ger ropes. You can read about ger assembling and ways to own one here http://www.happymongolia.net/ger-export.html. There are relatively few families in Mongolia that still live like true Nomads, moving their homes every season. Nonetheless, there are still a few that maintain a semi-nomad style of life, moving only once or twice a year, but still living in their gers with their horses, sheep and dogs.

Almost like Chenghis Khan warriors.

Another thing that we absolutely had to do was, of course, horseback riding. They say that a “Mongolian is born in a saddle”, and I don’t think that it is an exaggeration. We saw children as small as 4 or 5 ride horses by themselves, while we barely managed to stay on the horse when it wasn’t even galloping. One reason for that could be the Mongolian saddle. It has a different shape and appears to be shorter than its western cousin, which makes it quite challenging for tall westerners to stay in comfortably. On this trip, however, the more discomforts we had the more jokes we heard from our new friend Marco.

A silent visitor at our ger.

This character is the kind of traveler that you read about in some adventure magazine or a travel novel. Marco moved to California when he was 21 and has not stopped living the free spirit life since then. He has travelled on a bicycle from Alaska to Ushuaia, he lived in Sequoya forests, he has climbed volcanoes in Kamchatka and has crossed practically uninhibited areas of northern Siberia in a tank. It was fascinating to listen to the stories about his countless whereabouts, especially sitting by an iron stove in a warm ger in the middle of a Mongolian National Park. It’s during these moments when you realize that these type of connections only happen when you get out of your everyday routine, leave your home and embark into the unknown.

The guardians.

After several days filled with hiking, drinking coffee, riding horses, hanging out with local kids and eating plenty of wonderfully made mutton dishes we were back to UB, the capital of the Chingis Khan Empire. It was a surprise to my ignorant self to find out about the size of the Mongolian Empire when it was at its prime in 1279. It occupied the territory from Vietnam, China and all of the “Stans” in the south to half of Russia in the north, including Moscow and arriving to Venice in the west. It is the most powerful and extensive empire that has ever existed, and yet now it is one of the poorest and less populated countries in the world. The population of modern day Mongolia is less than 3 million people. Mongolia now might not have too many Mongolians living there, but many of us might be somewhat Mongolian to an extent. According to the National History Museum of Mongolia, one of the 200 people on Earth have some genes from the great Chingis Khan. Apparently, Temujin (the real name of Chingis Khan) had more than 500 wives and thought it pretty important to spread his seed.

The Choijin Lama Temple.

My Chinese visa was ready and it was time for us to get back on the road. Beijing was our next destination and we were on our way. There are many places that we did not see in Mongolia and so there is still plenty to discover one day when we go back there. Mongolia felt very real, authentic and untouched to me and is a place worth exploring.