The Wrath of Khan - 22/07/2007

Not many people know much about Mongolia but most have heard of Genghis Khan.  In the West we see him as a bloodthirsty marauder but in Mongolia he is the number one hero.  The Washington Post declared him “Man of the Millennium” in 195 a fact that passed most of us by but is known by all Mongolians and is even used as a marketing slogan for his personal brand of cigarettes!  They celebrate the fact that he created the biggest empire the world had seen at that time, which stretched as far west as Ukraine and as far south as Vietnam.  He introduced a written script to the Mongolian language, practised religious tolerance and opened up the first direct contact between east and west.  On the other hand he introduced the Plague to Europe (it is still prevalent in Mongolia today) and destroyed many historical centres, including Babylon, along the way.  Now Mongolia is sandwiched between two barely less evil empires in Russia and China, so is it surprising that they look to their history with pride?

We arrived in Mongolia at the border town of Zamyn-Uud.  We spent the day waiting for the train to Ulaan Baatar, playing ping-pong in the station games room and becoming acquainted with Mongolian food, which at first taste seemed to owe more to eastern European influences rather than Asian.  We were relieved as Monika’s cousin Martin, who had been studying here for nine months had filled us with scare stories about the food, or rather lack of it.  Most tourists complain about the food in Monglia that they could not eat for their whole stay.  They are obviously not trying hard enough!  My favourites include Teftel (meatballs and rice), beefsteak with egg on top, and a Mongolian version of Shepherds pie, not to mention kushur (pasties) and buuz (like Chinese dumplings).  OK, in the countryside the choice is normally Tsuivan (home made noodles with gristly meat) but even that is fairly tasty.

Boarding the train at Zamyn-Uud

The people here seem to hate China, telling you how bad China is and how one should not eat Chinese noodle soups whilst they pile their imported Chinese crap outside the train and then proceed to pack it into every available space on the train.

Martin met us at the train station in Ulaan Baatar.  His mother, Vera had flown in a few days before and now we were all ready to explore Mongolia.  We climbed Chingeltei mountain, visiting the Shamanic shrines on top and visited Dambardajaa monastery, a low-key monastery housed in an old hospital (which was built by the communists on the site of an old monastery), people came to buy prayers, they get a receipt stating which prayer and to which god they aid for.  It was perhaps the most genuine religious ceremony I have ever witnessed.  Martin has a friend who is a monk at this monastery, Puje, and he showed us around the various buildings and stupas.  Before leaving Ulaan Bataar we had a small party as it was Martins birthday.  We celebrated with Alena, A Slovakian who works at the Czech embassy here, and a Mongolian lawyer who works in Prague as well as a few new students.  It was an interesting mix.

Ulaan Baatar from Chingeltei mountain

With thick heads we took a train the next morning to Darkhan, 8 hours north of Ulaan Baatar.  We visited a new Buddhistic statue on a hill nearby and camped there  The local lama was in attendance and he gave us security guards to protect against the “hooligans”.  The next day we hired a car to take us to Amarbayasgalant monastery.  It is one of the top 3 Buddhistic institutions in Mongolia.  Built between 1727-1737 it is mostly intact, surviving the Stalinist purges.  It is totally isolated, just the monastery, a handful of yurts and a second smaller monastery with a few stupas and a giant pile of vodka bottles on a nearby hill.  Our driver did not seem so impressed however and speeding back to Darkhan he managed to hit two goats.

Amarbajasgalant monastery

Heading further west we took an overnight train to Erdenet, putting up with the usual drunks, where we had time to visit another small monastery, this time with a price list on the wall, before taking a bus to Moron.  This journey was probably the worst I have ever taken.  It was supposed to take 10 hours but took 17, the roads were non-existent we squeezed 22 people into a Russian UAZ off-road minibus), the weather was awful, creating mud traps everywhere and we seemed to get constantly lost on the step in the middle of the night.  If only we had known that this is all very normal in Mongolia!

The Lonely Planet guide to Mongolia describes Moron as “a rough town (where) disgruntled locals have a habit of taking out their angst on foreign visitors” (pg. 139).  Needless to say we only stayed long enough, still about half a day!, to find a bus to Chatgal on the shore of Lake Khovsgol. 

Coast of Khovsgol

On Khovsgol we trekked three days around a small part of the lake.  It seemed really tropical with beaches and crystal clear waters.  Six seconds swimming however convinced me it was not so tropical!  At a small ger (yurt) camp we passed a “Reindeer” festival hosted by the Dukla, or “reindeer tribe”.  They are reindeer herders that are even more nomadic than the Mongolians, living not in yurts but in orts, resembling north American teepees, always in harsh conditions.  The few that are left are under threat from invasive tourism and pervasive missionaries.  We did not attend the festival and were satisfied enough just devouring the delicious smoked fish that was on sale outside the gate.

Reindeer at Khovsgol

Returning to Chatgal there was another celebration, the village nadaam leading up to the main Nadaam in Ulaan Baatar.  Whilst I suspect the whole event was manufactured for the large groups of rich American tourists hat had just arrived, it was still nice to see the local traditions such as archery, wrestling and horse racing close up.  Although, as Vera said, it felt a bit like if a group of tourists would come to photographed the local fishing competition in a Czech village!

Back in Moron we hired a private UAZ for a five-day trip back to Ulaan Baatar.  The first day we drove through beautiful scenery to Jargalant.  The second day we stopped at Terkhin Tsagaan Nuur (Great White Lake) where we stopped to wash and relax, much warmer than Khovsgol!  Just over a pass at the eastern end of the lake is a lava field and an extinct volcano, Khorgo Uul, which we climbed.  At the top Martin bumped into a Polish friend of his also studying in Mongolia.  At first I thought she was OK but then, at he base, she told me that because I did not want Mongolian tea I must be “disgusted by all things dirty and unsterile” so I realised she was actually demented.  The reason I did not want the tea is because it is made from water, milk and salt, so it is about as nice as Tibetan yak butter tea.  Neither of which are exactly my cup of tea.

Road from Moron to Tsetseleg

The third day we headed to Tsetseleg where the highlight was a monastery under construction and an English cafe where I ate beef in ale sauce with chips (not fries).  Next we head on to Khakhorin to visit Erdene Zu, Mongolia’s oldest monastery.  Construction began in 1586 and took 300 years to complete, after which it was attacked by the Manchurians and destroyed during the Stalinist purges of the 1930’s.  During this time 27,000 people “disappeared” in Mongolia, 17,000 of them were monks.  Thankfully it is now being restored.  Khakhorin was also the site of Genghis Khans ancient capital although nothing is left of it now, although there is an audacious bid to make it state capital by 2020!  The final sight in Khakhorin is the ‘Phallic rock’,  a statue of a penis pointing to a hill known as a ‘vaginal slope’ apparently installed by the monks to prevent them having impure notions. 

Erdene Zu monastery

Moving on from Khakhorin we visited a set of stupas under construction, with the monk installing the holy fragments inside and we camped near Rashaant, under some small sand dunes.  In the evening Martin and I went to buy water and biscuits.  As we started back the night suddenly fell and we were lost in the middle of nowhere.  After a long while we found ourselves between a pack of baying dogs and a muddy river.  We chose the river and eventually found our way back to the camp.  As Martin said, it would be very easy to die in Mongolia.

In order to give Martin time to pack and prepare to leave Monika, Vera and I went with another Czech guy, Tomas, to Terelj national park, just 50km from Ulaan Baatar.  We trekked by a river camped overnight and the next day trekked around the rock formations that make the park famous.  We also experience some real Mongolian hospitality.  We could not find anywhere to eat until a little old man invited us to his house and fed us a banquet of homemade dairy products – milk, cheese cream yoghurt butter and dried cheese.  He showed us some photos and spoke to us in Russian, which did not help me much but the others can almost understand.

Terelj National Park

We hitched back to Ulaan Baatar and got dropped off at Gandan monastery, the third important institution.  Again it suffered from the purges being used only as a “show monastery” for visitors until it recommenced full ceremonies in 1990.

Outside Ganden monastery

Alena had organised a leaving do for Martin in the Czech pub.  We ate smazak (fried cheese) and knedliky s vajce (dumplings with egg) two of my Czech favourites.  We thought we were just going for a quite drink but there were lots of people there, including Petra Hulova, a Czech writer on her honeymoon.

Martin and Vera left on 1th July, Nadaam.  We managed to get tickets for the main events after a cancellation.  The opening ceremony included a lot of colourful masks and costumes, floats and motorbikes.  The main events of Nadaam are wrestling, horse racing, archery and ankle-bone shooting (a game of flicking sheeps anklebones at a target).  Over the two days we saw most of the events but missed the horse racing and the closing ceremony where the winning jockeys were given their prizes of school satchels (jockeys in Mongolia tend to be around 7 years old).  We also had time to visit some sights close to the ceremony including a portrait of Genghis Khan on a mountain, an ugly communist monument and a Korean-funded golden Buddha.

Opening ceremony, Nadaam festival

We had met a Czech couple, Petr and Lucie and together we organised a trip to the Gobi desert.  In the end we were ten people – Petr, Lucie, Monika and I plus Honza and Andrea (another Czech couple we met at Nadaam), Viktor and Mira (a Polish couple) and Alena (from Liberec Czech) and Marieka (from Berlin) who had been at Martins leaving party.  The owner of our guesthouse, Gan, found us an experienced driver with good car” and we set off.

Getting water from the well, Gobi desert

Our driver, Jigy, picked up his father, apparently as translator or guide, nobody was, or is, sure.  The first day we travelled south through the steppe and semi-desert before camping at the rocks of Baga Gazrin Chuluu.  It seemed to take longer than we thought.  The next day we loaded up with supplies in Mandalgobi before heading into the desert proper.  Now we realised our drivers had no clue where they were going, they had never been here.  It took twice as long as it should to reach Dalanzagad, even counting the stop to help a motorcyclist with a puncture and the stop to remove our knackered rear shocks.  In Dalanzagad, population 15,300, they could not find their way out of town.  Eventually we found somewhere to camp.  In the morning we reached the valley of Yolyn-Am, the last part by foot after three bolts on one of our wheels sheared off.  Yolyn-Am is a narrow valley in the Gurvan Saikhan national park.  For much of the year there is a glacier on the floor of the valley and indeed we saw the last remains of it.  It was very impressive.

Yolyn-Am

Our next stop was the giant sand dunes of Khongoryn Els.  It took a lot of effort to get there.  A group of Korean photographers helped us to find the way and to push our van up a hill that it could not manage.  They felt sorry for us being lumbered with our idiot driver and his useless father, in a vehicle not designed for the desert.  Eventually we found the dunes and spent two days camping there, although the second night it rained non-stop.  They are huge some up to 300m high.

Atop Khongoryn-Els

The Korean group also helped us to get to Bayanzag the next day, despite being told the directions three times our “driving team” still could not manage it by themselves.  Bayanzag too was stunning, a giant red canyon stuck in the middle of the desert.  The canyon at Bayanzag is actually the area in which the archaeologist Roy Chapman Andrews discovered many dinosaur remains and other fossils in the 1920's.  His finds included about 100 different dinosaur skeletons including Protoceratops Andrews, a bunch of Velociraptors (of Jurassic Park fame), Oviraptors, and a Tarbosaurus (closely related the Tyrannosaurus with 15cm long razor-sharp teeth).  The remains, including the virtually complete Tarbosaurus as well as the unusual remains of two dinosaurs killed whilst fighting each other, possibly from a sand dune which collapsed as a result of their fight, can be seen in the Natural history museum in Ulaan Baatar.

We spent a couple of hours scrambling over it.  Later the Koreans agreed to lead us to Ongin Khiid to camp on the final night and along the way we had to pose for many photographs for them.   Our drivers were too scared of getting lost and drove too fast in order to keep up.  Inevitably, we had an accident.  The driver could not turn quick enough and we got stuck n the soft sand totally severing our front axle.  Completely unfixable, stuck in the middle of the Gobi desert.  Luckily the Koreans were close by and returned to camp with us.  In the morning they took Petr and I to Ongin Khiid (a ruined monastery with stunning surroundings) to find a new car.  We found one going to Khakhorin, better than nothing, and set off.  Of course the idiot drivers father was with us as well and on our return he got us lost again, three times, despite us telling the drivers where to go, they were naïve enough to believe him instead.  So back at the camp we were out of petrol, and the ruined car took diesel, so we had to wait to siphon some more from a passing car.  They were too stubborn to leave their vehicle there so we left them with food and water and wondered how long they would wait for. 

It took us two days to get back to Ulaan Baatar.  In Khakhorin our new drivers lost their tourists so they agreed to take us instead.  The new vehicle was in a bad state with no brakes and a chronically overheating engine so it took us 13 hours to cover the 330km.  All that was left was to get the money back from our guesthouse, they reluctantly agreed.  The original drivers had already called them and lied to them in order to be sent money to recover their car.  I hope they never take any tourists anywhere ever again.  Again, it would be very easy to die in Mongolia, without their help.

Road to Ulaan Baatar

All that was left was to get a night train to Sukhbaatar and cross the border to Russia.  Inevitably our berth was occupied by two paralytic guys who drunk a further litre of vodka along the way.  Eventually a wrestler beat them up and threw them off the train!

We did not want to leave Mongolia and indeed left on the last day of our visa. On our last day in UB we only had time to see the dinosaurs in the Natural History museum and the excellent Choijin Lama monastery museum with its colourful masks and models.  We tried to see the National history museum as well but we were ushered out after a power cut!  It is a wonderful country with thriving wildlife and nature and beautiful scenery.  The abundance of wildlife and nature includes wild horse, that vastly outnumber humans in Mongolia and the Bactrian (two-humped) camel, which we were able to study very closely as they were not shy to visit us whilst we were camping in several places.  There are also thousands of different species of insect, some of which are more welcome than others!  Apparently micro-biologists always visit Mongolia when searching for a cure for a disease because you can find any disease or bacteria in Mongolia with the exception of ebola.

The people are highly creative and communicative meaning the language barrier is non-existent even if they only speak Mongolian and a little Russian.  I would love to return to visit the Altai region in the far west, but it will have to wait as the last month has been equally rewarding and exhausting!

Finally, my favourite three things from Mongolia:

1. Having my passport taken by police for weeing on the wall of the French embassy.   Did not realise it was the embassy, I just jumped behind a bush when I got caught short! Luckily Martin convinced them not to arrest me!
2. Our driver (from Moron) bringing a whore back to the camp in Tariat (near Great White Lake).  He was so quiet and didn’t smoke or drink so it was a surprise.  I wonder how much she cost?
3. Our “drivers” in the Gobi getting upset because someone translated what we had written in dust on the side of their van – “Donkey Tours – Kamikaze”.  Is that why he was speeding?