One month in Mongolia. Part 1. Of Many...
In which Chris couchsurfs the Ger district...
Where do I even begin? With a sentence like this? How can I possibly sum up 29 days of wild experience here, like this? The first few days alone could fill this. Perhaps they will. It's been a wonderful month, no doubt. Highlights and shadows and more jumbled impressions and memories than my mind can hold, never mind recall and evoke online.
To continue the story from where we'd left off, I'd booked a last minute plane from Berlin, with the still vague plan of travelling on to China and Japan. Settling into the seat of the half empty MIAT flight, I gradually changed my mind.
Just as I had no idea if I'd manage to get a flight, I had no idea of what to expect. I mean it's Mongolia, right? One of the last great wildernesses on Earth. The only thing I knew about it was, well, something to do with Genghis Khan and Coleridge or something. And even that turned out to be wrong. Lulled into torpor by the unbelievably inaccurate scenes of 10,000 BC, the inflight movie, I finally opened the one guidebook I had for my entire trip: Mongolia. Avidly absorbing the sections on history, culture and general travel tips, I'd soon decided to simply spend a full month in Mongolia and forget about the
rest. I'd book a flight home when I got to Ulaanbaatar and do my best
to explore, rather than just pass on by. 10,000BC came and went and the inanity of Fool's Gold convinced me to carry on reading. I was half way through when we finally touched down at 6am in Ulaanbaatar. I never did finish it.
I'd managed to arrange a host in Ulaanbaatar, and what a host he was. The man woke up at 3:30am, to cycle for an hour and a half across the city to be able to pick me up. Heroic. The buses didn't start until 8am, so he said we could walk a little to pass the time and see the Ger district of south of Ulaanbaatar. What he didn't mention was that he was going to quickmarch me 10km into town.
It was, quite possibly, the most dramatic arrival impression I've ever experienced. A grey drizzle covered everything and a taxi driver, apparently concerned (I never did work out if it was genuine or not) at a foreigner being accosted by a small man who was marching him about the place before heading off into the mist, followed us doggedly for a kilometre or two. As the mist cleared, I found myself walking red-dirt roads through a ramshackle suburb of wooden shacks and traditional round felt gers (yurts), a neighbourhood unlike anything I could have imagined. Mangy dogs trailed behind us, hoping for scraps maybe, and a few surprised locals watched as I heaved my backpack up the hill after Begz, my host. We passed through the district and down a hill towards the river. Here we picked up a little puppy that had decided to follow us. Since it was a male, it was good luck, and we let it follow us, even going so far as to give it a ride in the bicycle's basket (bringing a female dog home is bad luck).
We dropped adventurously down from the hillside over a small muddy cliff and onto the flat river plain. In the distance the city could be seen, a road leading to it a couple of kilometres ahead. Twenty minutes later we scramled up onto the pot-holed road and turned left into town. Bemused drivers of ancient Russian trucks passed by , bemused at the sight of the disparate pair of us walking along a highway miles from anywhere. Mongolia is the only country I've ever seen where right and left drive
vehicles appear in equal numbers, it's weird. I couldn't work out why,
though it doesn't matter because only in town are there actually roads,
never mind sides to the road. We'd been walking an hour now and the extreme pace, the weight of my backpack and a night with no sleep whatsoever were beginning to take their toll. I resolved not to say a word however, as when Begz had asked if I minded walking and I'd replied with a no, he'd then answered something along the lines of, "Well you're a young man, so you should be able to walk more than me anyway". Hmm. Considering the guy had once spent twelve hours carrying coal across the city for winter fuel (summer fuel would turn out to be dried cow dung), I wasn't so sure of that at all. Anyway. After two hours the first buses had begun to appear. By this time I am pretty sure we'd covered 10km without a break and my resolve was beginning to rebel. Luckily the right bus eventually appeared and I had my first taste of urban Mongolia - a mixture of half-built blocks of flats, open tracts of empty grass and derelict buildings and communist built offices and concrete boxes.
The bus took me through the heart of Ulaanbaatar and on to the northen Ger district where Begz lived with his family. Getting off at the 11th stop as instructed I waited for him to catch up on his bike. Two minutes up the hill and I was home.
I spent the next three days with Begz and his delightful family. He and his wife had four children, three girls of 1, 3 and 7 and a boy of 9. I have never met such incredibly happy, goodnatured and well-behaved children in my life. Truly, they were amazing. The little one grizzled occasionally, but the others were quick to smile and always happy to help. They seemed unconcerned that a strange man had turned up at 9am on a Saturday morning, totally unable to understand them and only able to communicate through smiles. At least he'd brought German biscuits though, which means a lot in any language.
My days there were wonderful. My mind is full of flashes of memories. The clear, fresh air on top of the hills North of Ulaanbaatar, the entire city and all it's ger districts spread out beneath my feet, empty hills running off to the South, to the North and East. Herding the family's cows with Begz and his boy and the old woman from up the hill with her cows. Learning how to read sheep's ankle bones to foretell your prospects for the day and trying to remember the myriad games you could play with them. Drinking thick milky tea and watching how to make öröm, one of the infinte numbers dairy products that Mongolians eat during the summer (in the countryside, nomads eat almost nothing but dairy products all summer, drinking airag - fermented mare's milk - and eating enormous amounts of cheese, and then nothing but meat, mostly boiled mutton, in winter). To do this, take unpasteurised fresh milk, straight from the cow. Heat it until reasonably hot and then seive repeatedly until a layer of bubbles is formed. Leave to cool and scrape off the top. Eat with bread and resist the temptation to simply lick it off, leaving a pile of milky, half-licked slices of bread, as the children tended to do.
What else? A traditional hair cutting ceremony and all the festivities that accompanied it - the entire extended family gathering to watch as a young boy's hair is cut for the very first time. This happens sometime after the children turn two and is a very important event. Everyone present snips a little of the hair, yes, even the random Scotsman in the corner, which is then kept. Presents and blessings are given before everyone gathers for the requisite boiled goat and airag. An entire goat, skin and all, is carved up and placed in a metal container with a little water and a lot of hot stones - a very traditional dish called khorkhog. This is sealed, placed in a fire and left to cook for some unknown length of time. It's actually pretty good, though the blackened, leathery skin with two centimetres of white fat below it proved a bit much for even my adventurous mood. Songs, vital to all Mongolian occasions, were sung by every member of the party and much airag was consumed, though not by me. You can also make this at home. Simply take one part of full fat milk and mix with one part of vinegar. Drink straight up. Really, it's that bad the first time you try it, though it becomes almost tolerable after a month of politely sipping it - whilst trying not to gag too much - in various gers around the country.
To be honest, though, most of my time was spent playing with the children, from basketball to making scary faces and throwing them up in the air and then chess in the evenings. This game inspired my first, unknowing, Mongolian sentence. One evening I heard the three year old making a sound similar to the Woo-whoop that I made whilst tossing them as high as possible (and usually catching them again). I assumed that she was just copying a noise she'd heard, but it turned out to mean something along the lines of "What's going on?". Which is really a rather apt thing to say to a small child you're throwing into the air. Somewhat surreally, they also had an electric keyboard (this in a single-room, two bed homemade wooden house for six people with no running water) which meant I could play scraps of half learnt Chopin to the delight of the children.
After three days though, I'd soon realised that attempting to plan the rest of my time in Mongolia whilst based in a single-roomed wooden hut 30 minutes from the centre of town was going to prove difficult. The guidebook basically informed me that independent travel was technically possibly, but frankly not worth. Hitching would get you so far (actually hitching is a very common way of getting around, even in the city, as public transport is practically nonexistent) and then you'd be in the middle of nowhere in a nothing town and you'd still have to hire a jeep to go somewhere interesting. So I headed into town...
