The Land of Blue Sky, Part 2: Into the Mountains

The next part of our Mongolian journey took us to the Gorkhi-Terelj National Park, about two hours' drive northeast of Ulaanbaatar. We were met at our hotel by Ariuntsetseg and two men in a Russian four-wheel-drive minibus called a UAZ. We loaded our backpacks into the bus and took off for the mountains.

As we left the heart of Ulaanbaatar and got into the outskirts of the city, we could see Mongolia's past and future, side by side. New apartment complexes were being built next to "suburbs" consisting of dozens of gers, the felt-walled tents that Mongols have used since before the days of Chinggis Khaan.

Our drive took us into the mountains and across several rivers, including the Tuul, the main river into Ulaanbaatar.


Our first stop, about 90 minutes into our drive, was at Turtle Rock. In the lower right of this picture you can barely see Ariuntsetseg and a young boy with a horse, who moments earlier rode up to Patrick and said, "Murindoo!" [Let's ride!] Closer to the center of the picture is an ovoo, a ritual mound of stones used in shamanistic worship, much like a Buddhist stupa. We added our own stones to the mound and walked around it clockwise three times to ask the spirits' blessing for our journey.


Turtle Rock was also our last opportunity to use a flush toilet for the next five days, so we enjoyed that last bit of luxury and proceeded on.

Soon our UAZ left the paved roads and moved onto dirt roads, which became goat tracks shortly thereafter. We lurched along for a while, then drove across multiple creeks and a significant stretch of river that was swollen with rain from the previous week. The water was easily knee-deep and the banks steep and muddy, but our driver expertly navigated the UAZ across every obstacle. This was the first -- but certainly not the last! -- time in our trip that saw us look at each other and wonder whether we'd stepped into an Indiana Jones movie.



We drove into the small village of Terelj, which was enjoying a small festival, and met the rest of our crew -- our horse guide, our ox cart driver, our ox and our horses.


Here we learned that the second man in the UAZ was to be our cook for the week. This meant that the two of us would have no less than four people looking after us. Nomads Tours accepts up to twelve people on trips like this, but we were the only two to sign up.

Part of the festival in Terelj included horse races in preparation for the big races at the Naadam festival the following weekend. The horses were all young -- between two and five years old -- as were the jockeys, most of whom were under ten years of age. Mongolian horse races are long, sometimes up to 20 or 30 kilometers (12-18 miles), and always cross-country. The girl in the first picture was easily ten minutes behind the winning horse, but she was screaming her lungs out for the last two kilometers of the race, urging her horse to finish with spirit.




We later found out that our horse guide had trained several horses for the race. One of his horses placed fifth, another ninth, in a field of sixty.

By the time the races were over, the ox cart was loaded. The horse guide, a wiry, weathered man with an incredibly strong grip, asked about our experience with horses. Based on what we told him through Ariuntsetseg, who interpreted for us, he gave a calm, gentle horse to Jennifer and a "very strong, very fast" one to Patrick. We were duly introduced, mounted up and headed off:



Mongolian horses are much smaller than the horses we see in the U.S., but they are tough. Extremely tough. For example: Mongols leave their horses outside all winter. In January and February the average temperature is around -20 degrees Celsius (-4 Fahrenheit), with lows often reaching -40C (-40F). They scrape away ice and snow with their hooves to find grass to eat. So we were definitely respectful of our scrawny little mounts.

We asked whether Mongols named their horses -- they don't, really, but they do identify them by color. John Man, in Genghis Khan: Life, Death and Resurrection, claims that Mongols have 169 different color designations for horses, from light bay to grey (for example, "elegant-while-running-from-a-far-place light bay"). So to follow suit, Jennifer named her horse "Caramel" and Patrick called his "Rusty."


Rusty liked to be in the lead, so Patrick often ended up riding at the head of the group with the horse guide. The horse guide wanted to Patrick to know that he'd given him a fast horse. After about half-an-hour's riding, the horse guide spurred his horse into a canter. Patrick followed suit and kept up … until the horse guide went to a full gallop. Again Patrick followed him, until they were both charging along, side by side. Patrick had never ridden a horse that fast before, especially across open ground pocked with stones and marmot holes. The horse guide looked over at Patrick with a keen, appraising eye as they rode. Finally, as they slowed back to a trot, he said:

"Tomorrow … we race. You and me."


After a couple of hours' ride we were already at our first campsite. It was the most beautiful campsite either of us had ever seen -- a lovely flat riverbank, screened from the wind by trees, with a low range of hills rising from the other side of the river. Astonishing.






We had a dip in the cold, fast-moving river and wandered around to take in the landscape. Ducks and kites flew overhead while grasshoppers buzzed around our feet. A nearby ger had a pen full of curious calves.


When we returned to camp, we sat down for tea with our whole crew and got to know each other a bit. One of the first things we discovered was that everyone understood more English than we realized. The ox cart driver, Dolgoon (which means "gentle"), was a 20-year-old on summer break from school, where he is studying to be a computer programmer. He was eager to practice his English in preparation for the Test of English as a Foreign Language (TOEFL), the world standard for English proficiency. His favorite basketball player is LaBron James. He was a bit bashful about being the ox cart driver, but he had a sense of humor about it, too. We agreed to name the ox "BMW."

Our cook, Batsaihan ("strong and kind"), was a very quiet guy. Happy to be with the crew, but also happy to stay in the background. He blushed every time we told him how much we liked the food. We would soon learn that he was indefatigable -- the hardest working person in the entire group.

Ariuntsetseg ("pure flower") has been working with Nomads for many years, but this was also a summer job for her -- she's a secondary school teacher of English, married and a mother of one child. She had worked with our horse guide once before, several years earlier. Her English was excellent and she patiently and cheerfully answered every single question we asked.

Our horse guide was named Altanhoyeg. We soon learned he was a man of great humor and strong opinions. He was constantly cracking wise in Mongolian, which got the other three Mongols in the group laughing, often uproariously. As we talked about our travels in Southeast Asia, he said (in a mixture of English and Mongolian), "Thai, Japanese, Chinese, Cambodian … they are not proud. Always bowing and smiling [here he simpered and cringed mockingly]. I am Mongol -- I do not bow!"

We tried to explain that people from these countries are proud, but that smiling and bowing is a form of politeness in their culture. He scoffed.

"What meat do they eat?"

"Mostly chicken and pork," we said. "And fish and shrimp."

He threw his head back. "Ha! Then I can beat them!"


He was a Mongol straight out of the storybooks -- rugged, proud, solitary, and a brilliant horseman. And get this: Altanhoyeg means "golden armor." As Tim Wu wrote in his excellent series on Mongolia at Slate.com, Mongolia "is like a country of Daniel Craig impersonators … it's probably the most macho place I've ever been."

All of the depictions of Chinggis Khaan and his horde in the media (including every other commercial on Mongolian TV) show big, beefy guys, and there are certainly plenty of those in Mongolia. But Patrick thinks that many of the Great Khaan's warriors were more like Altanhoyeg: lean, rangy types that could truly be described -- to quote a Persian chronicle -- as "ravenous wolves."

There was one thing that truly impressed Altanhoyeg: Patrick's beard. While Jennifer was off bathing in the river, he pointed at Patrick's face. "How do you do this? I try long time! Five days -- nothing!"

It was true -- he had a little stubble on his upper lip, but that was it.

Altanhoyeg stroked his bare chin and smiled. "Oh, yes -- I like this. You show me how."

"Well," Patrick said, "you teach me to ride like a Mongol, and maybe I can teach you to grow a beard."

(One impossible wish deserves another, after all.)


Our first meal was a lovely surprise, as we realized just how well we would eat during our trip. Every meal had three courses -- a soup course, a main course, and a dessert course. The cook had brought along a cured side of beef and a big bag of potatoes, carrots and onions, so pretty much every meal featured those ingredients in one form or another. He also had canned fruit, UHT milk, cookies, juice, tea and instant coffee … definitely a step up from the freeze-dried meals-in-a-bag we usually eat on camping trips!

As we finished our meal, a beautiful full moon rose over the river.


The first night in a tent is always a little difficult, so we didn't sleep so well our first night out. The horses and ox were tethered right outside our tents, so we were treated to a chorus of snorts, nickers, grumbles and whinnys all night long.

The next morning, we packed up in the rain and mounted our horses for one of our longest rides of the tour. Jennifer was already comfortable with Caramel -- Patrick was very impressed with her confidence and patience.


We rode north along the valley for three hours. The day was hot and the air was still, so it was a long, slow morning. We passed a number of gers and herds of sheep, goats and horses. Summer is the time for flocks to fatten up, so they were all busily grazing on the grass of the open valley. The whole morning featured vista after vista, with the valley opening up to gentle, grassy hills on our right and rocky slopes to our left, with the river meandering through trees and bushes on its banks.





As promised, Altanhoyeg and Patrick had their first race -- which started when Altanhoyeg cantered past Patrick and whispered, "Go." Patrick and Rusty caught up to Altanhoyeg, and ran neck and neck with him for a bit, but Altanhoyeg took his horse to a wild, flying gallop that Patrick just couldn't match. Altanhoyeg won by three lengths. At the end, he just looked back at Patrick. No smile, no comment -- just a look. His people have been riding for centuries.

For lunch we stopped at a ger. Altanhoyeg rode ahead and asked permission, which was granted with typical nomadic hospitality. While the cook cooked lunch and Altanhoyeg and Dolgoon worked on tightening a loose hub on the ox cart, we sat in the ger with Ariuntsetseg, where we were served warm, salty milk tea, dried curds and fresh cream. We'd heard terrible things about the food in Mongolia, including the salty milk tea. To our relief, we found that we really liked it. The cream was out of this world -- like egg custard or buttery whipped cream. The salty, chalky curds weren't our favorite, but since they were the delivery system for the fresh cream, we were happy to eat them.





Hanging in the ger was the lead rope, which is sacred. This family also had a khadag, a blue silk prayer scarf, tied to the roof of their ger.


After lunch, we were invited to have a nap in the ger while the crew repacked the ox cart.


We bid farewell to the nomad family, leaving gifts we'd brought from Thailand: a big bag of dried mangoes and some stuffed elephant toys for the girls.


Our course turned to the northwest, and with the change in the direction came a cool headwind, which blew the flies away. The horses quickened their pace and everyone was in a great mood. As we crossed stream after stream, Altanhoyeg sang a tune that sounded like "Wayfaring Stranger" in Mongolian.

We made it to our next campsite a little over two hours later. Dolgoon and BMW arrived about an hour after we did, with Dolgoon leading BMW on foot. "You walk slower than that ox!" yelled Altanhoyeg in Mongolian.


We were on a low ridge above a wooded creek, with hills behind us and a tourist ger camp a little distance away.





After we set up our tent, we went wandering in the hills, where we found purple coneflower (Echinacea), hibiscus, and wild rhubarb.


We also found flies. Altanhoyeg and Ariuntsetseg had warned us that the flies would be bad at this campsite, which was to be our home for the next two nights. The crew lit a few horse and ox patties on fire -- dung smoke does a great job of driving the flies away, and it doesn't smell too bad.

Ariuntsetseg busied herself by telling fortunes with the aid of a ring and a length of string. She claimed 100% accuracy with her method. Meanwhile, Batsaihan was busy with dinner.



Having worked on a horse farm for three years in college, Patrick was impressed by Altanhoyeg's care of the horses. He simply unsaddled them, watered them at the creek, and then just turned them out to graze. No elaborate brushing down or fancy horse feed -- just a roll in the dirt and fresh, green grass.


Ariuntsetseg made sure that they were tethered a good distance away from the tents, in the hopes that we all would sleep a little better. BMW the ox stayed close to our tent, but we didn't mind. His grunts reverberating through our tent reminded us of our adventure as we fell into a hard, welcome sleep.

Drive-By Blessings and Paparazzi Prostitutes

We spend almost ten hours a week walking the dog on the streets of Bangkok. So we get to see a lot of … interesting stuff.

Recently we were walking in our neighborhood when we were gently splashed from behind. We turned our heads to see a pickup truck drive past. Sitting in the back was an elderly Buddhist monk with a bowl of holy water and a mischievous grin. He giggled and waved as they drove off, leaving us to contemplate the karma of drive-by blessings.

Even more recently we walked out of our apartment building at 6:00am and got no more than 50 feet down the street before we heard:

"Oh! Oooh-ooh!" [excited foreign language, followed by kissy-kissy noises]

We live between the Playboy and Penthouse hotels, so you'd think we'd be used to hearing this sort of thing. As it turns out, though, it was directed at us. And by "us," we mean Sarawat.

Across the street, walking in our direction, came two vaguely Eastern European-looking women, wearing alarmingly heavy makeup and alarmingly tight clothing. We nodded, smiled, and started to move on, but then we heard:

"Excuse me? What is name?"

We stopped again. "Sarawat," Patrick said.

"Oh, Sarawat! Sarawat, Sarawat! Sarawat, Sarawat, Sarawat!"

Eventually they came across the street to pet the dog and pose for a few mobile phone pictures with her. It was fun, but also a little sad. We're sure those women don't really enjoy what they do, and maybe seeing our little white dog after a long night was just what they needed.

The Land of Blue Sky, Part 1: Ulaanbaatar

We’re finally ready to start trying to describe our amazing two-week trip to Mongolia.

Some of you may be asking, "Why Mongolia?" In fact, some of you did ask. Our Mongolia obsession started with our trip to Beijing in August-September 2001. There was a Mongolian restaurant in our hotel. One night we went there for dinner and were the only customers, so our waiter -- a Mongol who had moved to Beijing -- gave us lots of attention. We got to talking (as best you can when neither of you speaks the other's language) and slowly became fascinated with the idea of visiting Mongolia.

The next summer we watched a BBC series called Edge of Blue Heaven in which explorer Benedict Allen crossed the length and breadth of Mongolia by horse, camel and his own two feet. That sealed the deal. Every once in a while we'd refresh our Mongolia obsession with documentaries about the Mongol horde or movies like The Story of the Weeping Camel. Now all we had to do was figure out how to get there.

Last fall we saw a program that featured Julia Roberts living with a nomadic family in Mongolia for two weeks. It was a great program, and we watched the credits carefully to note down the companies that helped her organize the trip. The most prominent name was Nomads Tours and Expeditions. We contacted Nomads last April to inquire about tours, looked at our household budget, and booked our trip.

So, almost eight years after that dinner in the Sino-Swiss Hotel, we made it.

On 3 July we flew from Bangkok to Ulaanbaatar through Beijing. The Chinese authorities are taking every possible precaution against people bringing H1N1 influenza into China. We were individually scanned with forehead heat sensors while still on the plane, then walked through a quarantine line and full-body scanned before we could finally pass through to our transit terminal. While on the airport shuttle bus to the next terminal for our flight to Mongolia, we were surprised to see the Sino-Swiss Hotel and the little grassy area where we jogged in the last few days before our half-marathon on the Great Wall in 2001! A nice omen to start our trip.

After that five-hour layover, a three-hour flight on Mongolian Airlines got us into Ulaanbaatar around midnight. We grabbed our backpacks -- each carefully loaded to weigh less than 20 kilos (44 pounds), as instructed by Nomads -- and met our tour guide, Ariuntsetseg. She was charming from the start: "Oh, you are young and energetic, so I think we will be able to complete our trip successfully!"

The next morning, we stepped out of the Bayangol Hotel, an old Communist-era hotel with clean sheets and friendly service, and began our explorations of Ulaanbaatar. Our tour with Nomads didn’t start until the next day, so we were on our own. The day was cool (around 15C/60F), windy and overcast -- a definite change from heat and humidity of Bangkok! Ulaanbaatar is also about 1,310 meters (4,300 feet) above sea level, which makes it one of the highest capital cities in the world.

This is Sükhbaatar Square, the heart of Ulaanbaatar. At the center is a statue of Damdin Sükhbaatar, a serf-turned-military hero who helped liberate Mongolia from Chinese domination and Buddhist theocracy, with Soviet help. In 1921, Mongolia became the world’s second Communist country.



Like Tienanmen Square in Beijing or Red Square in Moscow, Sükhbaatar Square is great for families, amateur artists trying to sell their wares, and young couples out to enjoy the day.


The other dominant feature of the square is the Government Palace, where the Mongolian parliament -- the State Great Khural -- sits. Also sitting there, in case you haven't noticed, is the Great Khaan himself, Chinggis.


This statue, as well as the statues of Khubilai Khaan, Ogedei Khaan, and two of Chinggis's generals, was added to Government Palace during a renovation in 2005-2006.


After roaming around this part of the city for a while, we went to the State Department Store. Before Mongolia's democratic revolution in 1990, the State Department Store was Mongolia's equivalent of Beijing's Friendship Store -- a state-owned and -run enterprise. It’s now in private hands and serves as one of the main department stores for the people of Ulaanbaatar. The fifth floor specializes in Mongolian handicrafts and souvenirs, so we spent some time checking those out.


Mongolia is famous for its cashmere, wool, fur and felt products. The capital is full of interesting shops with all manner of sweaters, jackets, hats, slippers ... if you can make it from hair that used to be on a sheep, goat, camel or yak (or fox, or wolf, or sable, or ...), they've done it.

Mongolia also has a great art scene (more on this later), so we browsed through a few art galleries. At the Xanadu Art Café we saw several large-format paintings by an artist we particularly liked. We got his name -- E. Naidandorj -- and telephone number from the gallery and promised ourselves that we’d give him a call when we came back to the capital the next weekend.


That evening we had dinner at Los Bandidos, a Mexican-Indian restaurant. Our friend Molly had eaten there several years earlier and recommended it to us as a unique experience. After all, how many people do you know who have eaten at a Mexican-Indian restaurant in Ulaanbaatar? Our chicken fajitas tasted oddly like chicken tikka, but that’s all right. Happy Fourth of July!

The next day Ariuntsetseg met us at the hotel for a day of sightseeing. Our first stop was the Gandantegchinlen Monastery, a Tibetan-style Buddhist monastery.


The Communist revolution in the early 20th century overthrew a theocratic system in which Buddhist lamas and their dependents held most of the property and political power. Once the Communists tightened their hold on Mongolia, Buddhism was harshly repressed and thousands of monks were killed. Since the 1990 democratic revolution, Buddhism has once again begun to flourish in Mongolia. Some of the lamas at Gandantegchinlen were active in the democratic movement, and Ariuntsetseg told us that the monastery itself is seen as "a symbol of freedom and democracy."


We bought some juniper incense and drank some juniper tea at the temple to serve as a blessing for our time in Mongolia.


Our next stop was the Winter and Summer Palaces of the eighth Bogd Khaan. He was the emperor of Mongolia from the early 20th century until the Communist revolution, when he became a figurehead. Once he died, the Communists had sole power over Mongolia.


We don't have our own pictures from this area because there was a $10 charge to take photos, but Wikipedia has lots of good pictures. We've borrowed a couple of them here (thanks, Brücke-Osteuropa!). The Summer Palace was full of Tibetan Buddhist iconography, and Patrick had a good time spotting similarities and differences with the Tibetan Buddhist temples he knows in Nepal. The Winter Palace was built around the same time that our house in Asheville was.


While we don’t have musical chairs from Czar Nicolas II (when you sit on them, they play music) or a ger covered in leopard skin, we still like our little place in Asheville better.



Our next stop of the morning was the Zanabazar Museum of Fine Arts, featuring Mongolian art from ancient pictograms to modern impressionists. Here we learned about Zanabazar, the ruler, holy man and artist who created the Soyombo, the national symbol that adorns the Mongolian flag.


We also saw one of Mongolia's most famous paintings, "One Day in Mongolia," painted by B. Sharav. Sharav was famous for his sense of humor -- in the painting you can see naked men chasing sheep, curious camels investigating the secrets of amorous couples, and the unfortunate aftereffects of drinking too much fermented mare's milk.

The Museum has a gallery selling modern art; we asked the curator if she'd ever heard of Naidandorj, the artist we liked at the Xanadu Art Café. She knew him, she said, and would try to give him a call on our behalf.

After lunch, Ariuntsetseg turned us loose for a free afternoon while she got things prepared for the next part of our trip. The day was much warmer and sunnier, so we had a couple of milkshakes on the terrace at the Grand Khaan Irish Pub near our hotel and did some great people-watching.



That evening we met Ariuntsetseg for dinner at the tourist-oriented Modern Nomads restaurant (motto, from a Mongol proverb: "Meat is for men, grass is for animals"). We also met Naidandorj, the artist! He was much younger than we'd expected. He brought his portfolio with him, a collection of snapshots of his paintings. His work draws on the subjects, colors and composition of Mongolian traditional art and blends it with the clean modern lines of Japanese anime. There were so many paintings we liked, and we inquired about two of them. He agreed to meet us the next weekend to show us those two in person.

After Naidandorj left, the three of us dove into our khorkhog, mutton stewed with vegetables and cooked by means of hot stones. Ariuntsetseg then told us about the next part of our journey, a five-day horse trek through the Khan Khentii mountains. Jennifer was excited, but also a bit nervous, about the prospect of riding a horse she'd never met through the Mongolian wilderness. Ariuntsetseg tried to reassure her, but didn’t quite succeed:

"The horses ... they know. They know."


* A note on names. Mongolian is written in both the Mongolian and Cyrillic alphabets. Transliterations into the Roman alphabet and into English phonetics vary. We’re using the system that most academics who specialize in Mongolia seem to prefer, and that (from our experience) more accurately reflects local speech. So, for example, "Genghis Khan" becomes "Chinggis Khaan" in this system.