Four seasons in three weeks

A rambling and largely impressionistic account of my recent  three-week long trip to Mongolia.

I really did not know what we were in for when I signed up for a three-week long trip to Mongolia this August – I knew nothing about the place so whatever we do will be new and special, I told myself. For some reason I had always wanted to travel to Mongolia, sandwiched as it is between two big  countries, Russia and China, and still holding out and trying to chart its independent path at least after the fall of communism in the last decade of the 20^th century. Mongolia was also the home of the legendary chieftain Chengis Khan who had conquered such large swaths of land in Central Asia and Europe in the 13^th century, just on the strength of his not so large but fiercely brave army of armed horsemen. What else did I know about Mongolia – yes, that the erstwhile capital was a wonderful city of Karakorum which was totally lost but the present capital had a most unlikely name starting with u -- Ulaan Bataar and that there were ferocious wild horses there. That was it.

We were five of us who had signed up for the trip -- four women and one man. Two retired teachers from Bayern, an Osteopath from Berlin, Kumar from Munich and me. Of the five, I knew only Kumar from before. By the end of the three weeks, we had made friends not only with each other but also with Micky, our guide and Nara, our pretty and sweet cook. The two drivers, Hasha and Boldoh were a bit more difficult to befriend as they knew no other language except Mongolian and Korean. But we managed fine, with Micky’s help, and sometimes with long distance conversations with the travel organizers Frank and Odmaa. It was a big bonus that one of our group, Irmi, was a retired school teacher of geography and she had a vast active knowledge of all kinds of stones, plants, rocks, birds and flowers. She had travelled extensively around the world, had a formidable active memory, and was happy to share with us her knowledge and her understanding of the amazing natural rock and soil formations that we saw on our trip.

The trip was supposed to be for 20 nights, of which only the first and the last were in a hotel in the capital city to facilitate arrival and departure. Of the remaining 18 nights, 9 were supposed to be in ‘ger’ camps and 9 in tents. We were supposed to bring with us sleeping bags and camping gear. We were told that the weather might vary between very hot (45 degrees) in the desert during the day to very cold (10 degrees) in the hills during the night for a tent. But still no freezing temperatures, so I packed in one pair of woollen socks and a sun hat, but left behind my warm cap, my gloves and my winter underwear. Little did I know what was in store for us and how wrong the temperature estimates would prove to be.

The first impression as we drove out of the capital Ulaan Bataar was of incredibly wide open spaces without any vegetation, any human habitation or any noticeable features. The hills were undulating but bare, the plains looked green but devoid of grass, there were no houses, no people and no roads, no road signs, in any direction as far as one could see. So how did we know where we were off to? There are roads, our driver insisted, pointing to the tracks made by cars on the dry barren land. But how does one know which one is the right one – well, one just knew it, he said. A combination of knowing to read the sun’s location and having done the journey before was all that was needed to find one’s way in the wide open expanses, I was told.

 

And since there were no roads, there was no problem with overtaking or having to give way to another car at a cross road. We rarely met another car coming in the opposite direction, and when we did, both cars quickly made sure they were on adjacent but not the same track, and hence there was no question of a collision. So the cars sped along in great speeds creating great clouds of dust behind one. And they drove simply everywhere, over dry river beds, across flowing rivers and rocky inclines, up and down and along, sometimes following the straight line made by the electric posts extending across wide plains, sometimes crossing them.

 

Only the 15^th day of our trip our car overtook another car. The other car was a Russian-made rickety ‘Purgon’ (which were the favourite mode of transport of young Korean tourists); we were driving along a narrow single-lane mountain path where there was really no space to overtake. When we saw what he was about to do, we panicked and asked the driver to wait, but there was no stopping him. He could not bear to be driving his smart 4-wheel drive Lexus behind a ramshackle Purgon, even if it was only for a few hundred metres till the road widened and flattened off. It was only when the act was accomplished that we realized that this rash action of the driver had put in danger not only the lives of all those in the two cars but also of a shepherd on a horse who was riding up hill in the other direction! It ended well but I was not sure we needed any more of such daredevil acts.

We saw isolated ‘gers’ belonging to nomad families from time to time, the average distance between them in the countryside was not less than several kilometres. These nomad families lived all by themselves in the countryside along with their stock of cattle, horses, camels, and higher up yaks and reindeer. And we did visit a few nomad families too – their entire lives seemed to be centred around milking their cattle and then putting the milk produced to some use – to eat either straightaway or later during the harsh winter. With each family owning several hundred animals to milk every day, life is very hard for most nomads, especially the women, who also have to take care of their children as well as cook and clean and keep house, besides milk the animals and process the milk produced.

Still the nomad ladies were warm and welcoming and had time to sit with us and offer us whatever they had to share. Everywhere we went we were greeted with cups of milky salty tea kept in huge thermos flasks. That was the first thing one needed to get used to. Then came the dried cheese and yoghurt (aarool) that was offered everywhere in large quantities. The other thing was flour fritters which seemed to be a very popular snack although it was hard to know what taste it was supposed to have. To drink one was given the fermented mare’s milk called airag. They even made distilled alcohol from the fermented milk – some sort of homemade vodka. I wanted to stay with a nomad family if possible, but quickly realised that being a tourist is quite different from doing ethnography in an unknown land. I told myself that I would have to postpone my ethnographic curiosity for another time, if at all.

As was to be expected, food in Mongolia means either some sort of meat or some sort of processed milk product. Everything else was an exception. As a European group, our cook did make it a point to serve us salads (of cucumbers, carrots, tomatoes and paprika, and sometimes also cabbage) with our meals but I’m not sure that the Mongols ate salad at all, in any case, they did not relish it. Most of the time, some dried and bottled meat was opened and cooked to produce a meal, either with noodles, or with rice, buckwheat, or as a kind of gyros to be eaten with mashed potatoes. Besides milk and yoghurt, we were treated to at least 20 different milk preparations including the thick and tasty cream from yak’s milk. For snacks there were sushi-like rolls that the Mongols called Kimbab, and a kind of fried Turkish bread and a momo-like ravioli preparation called Borzuk which is either steamed or fried.

 The land of contrasts:

Weather:

The first highlight of our trip was the ‘Singing Dunes’ in the middle of the Gobi desert. We went down south towards Gobi and the climate and landscape became more and more arid till we actually arrived at the narrow strip of shifting sand dunes, around 12 km wide and 100 km long, that created a magical landscape of dunes that kept moving but were still there... we all had a go at trying to climb the highest dune which was around 300 metres high, but only Sylke and Irmi managed to reach the top. The rest of us gave up at various stages along the way because it was really hot and the sun was beating down full force even at that early hour. The reflected heat of the sun in the sand was unbearable. We somehow survived drinking lots of water and trying to find whatever little shade we could. The camels in the desert landscape completed the picture...

As we made our way up north from the Gobi we spent a day walking into a deep gorge called the Vulture’s Mouth with the rocky cliffs covered with Weihrauch, a sort of frankincense. There are various birds and animals that are to be seen as we made our way along a little waterway which started just there and grew in strength as we kept climbing down...We walked about a couple of kilometres along the narrow canyon before returning... it was a lovely walk.

The painted desert and the flaming cliffs were the next highlight of our trip. It was hard to imagine how such incredible rock formations had come to pass and that too in such brilliant colours.

So far everything was as per plan. But nothing had prepared us for the snow blizzard that we met as we  made our way over a high mountain pass as we travelled from one lake the Tsagaan Nuur to the lovely but much smaller Zu Nuur. Suddenly the rain gave way to snow and before we knew it, the whole landscape in front of us was covered in a white flaky snow sheet... with the wind blowing hard against our cars it was really a very strong snow blizzard that hit us in the middle of August somewhere in the heart of Mongolia. We were only happy that we had requested for a change in plans at the last moment and were staying in a camp and not in tents that night. That night in a tent in subzero temperatures would have been very tough. I thought I was well prepared for the trip but I wasn’t. Just a glance at Sylke’s belongings told me how ill-prepared I was. I hastily bought myself a cap in the black market in Karakorum at the last minute and tried to keep myself going with several cups of warm tea to ward off the cold. At the end of it all, this trip was also a rather tough test of my physical fitness; I did not fare too well, although by Indian standards I thought I was quite fit.  Now I know my limits....

If summer and winter was not enough, in a camp we saw some lovely pansies (Stiefmütterchen)  blooming that bloom in our parts in early spring. And then, not to be left out, autumn showed us its face too in the form of red carpets along the hill side of plants turning colour before going underground to weather out the tough winter. So there we were, all four seasons from the warmest summer to the coldest winter, to rain, to sleet, to snow as well as the lovely colours of autumn and spring were all in display in the space of our three weeks there.

 

Landscape:

The landscape here changed every few minutes as we made our way from point A to point B during our travels. And that although most of the time we were driving through flat plateaus where one could see for miles and miles on end.... It is hard to describe... but at least the barren rugged landscape of the hills, alternated with the dry sandy landscape of the Gobi; we went to see a Saxaul forest from the ‘Flaming Cliffs’ but seeing them only made us realise how hard it must be for trees to survive under those soil and climatic conditions. We had not seen any proper trees at all since we left Ulan Bataar. We sighted our first real tree, a Elm (Ulme) on the 8^th day of our travels in the verdant Ongii valley where we also saw a river with a lot of water. The one or the other tree gave way to dense forests of Larch trees as we made our way up north, but before that we also crossed a landscape of volcanic material, black rocks and lava. The black pumice stones gave way to the multi coloured pebbles along the banks of the lakes and rivers which had sparkling clean water. It was just amazing how much variety nature put on display for us during this trip. And birds we see many kinds as well as animals --- marmots (erdmaenchen), rabbits and hares, even a few light-footed gazelle and the elusive mountain goat/ibex, besides the usual stock of birds, vultures, red kite (Milan) and many other sorts.

The landscape became greener and a little more like what we know from Europe as we moved up north, with trees and rivers and hills and flowers.... First the grass grew longer, then the shrubs became taller and gave way to trees. As we did the rounds of the national parks around the two pretty lakes in the north towards the end of our tour, we realised that we had seen it all – the incredibly vast open spaces with nothing at all, the rocky formations, the stony expanses, the volcanic areas, the huge sandy dunes, the pampas and steppes with low bushy overgrowth and then the hilly areas and fertile valleys with agricultural fields like those back home. And from barren, hot and dry, to lush green, moist and cold – it was all there. Whatever you wanted to see you had seen it all in the space of that one trip.

 The land of the modern and the prehistoric:

Ulan Bataar – a haphazardly growing city housing more than half of the total Mongolian population of 3 million; Very Russian looking stolid government buildings and massive squares compete with slick skyscrapers with neon hoardings that define the city skyline. Karaoke bars, smart cafes and pubs, and Nice 2CU supermarkets compete with banks and other business establishments on the main streets where smartly dressed managers in suits and high heels seem to be ubiquitous. The vast Sukhbatar Square with the huge Chengis Khan statue is in the heart of the city next to Parliament House and the National Museum. As we drove towards the airport, Our driver pointed out a posh private school where the fees for a year for beginner students were as high as 25000 dollars. Seemed completely out of the world, when one compares it with the fact that teachers of state-run schools are paid roughly 400 dollars per month. There seems to be a lot of new housing coming up in the outskirts of the city with high-rise apartment blocks at various stages of construction to be seen everywhere. Of course there is a shanty township as well at the edge of the city and the distinctive round gers are also visible beyond the main city area.

So much for the new and modern in Mongolia. The old in Mongolia goes back a long way, right back to the prehistoric. For we also visited the area called the ‘Flaming Cliffs’ where dinosaur bones and eggs were excavated in 1922 by the palaeontologist Roy Chapman Andrews. Some of the best known dinosaur fossils have been excavated from that area, witness to a time about 70 million years ago in the Gobi. The model of the famous 'fighting dinosaurs' that stand at the entrance to the area says: 'Two animals locked in desperate combat, both in a desperate bid for survival."

We also saw Bronze age painted stones called deerstones and sacrificial altars in another part of the country west of the bustling city of Mörön. They date back 2500-4000 years.  We saw enough to convince us that Mongolia must really have been centre-place when life began on this planet ages back.

 Shamaans and Monasteries:

We saw cairn-like stone heaps called ovoos everywhere, with a pole on top on which were tied numerous Buddhist scarves in many different colours. Any time one came across one of them one is supposed to go around them three times adding a stone to the heap at each round. In northern Mongolia, the stone ovoos gave way to pointed tippee-like structures made of sticks. And in one such tippee we found many skulls of horses…The government is actively promoting shamanism, we were told, especially in the north of the country, after religious freedom was restored to the population in the 1990s and the Buddhist monasteries started functioning again. Almost everyone we met was Buddhist and it was very nice to see how Buddhism is practised in everyday life. Normal people went to the Buddhist temples to offer their prayers, often doing the full-length bow 108 times on wooden boards that were set up outside the temples. They also paid to get certain sacred books read by the senior Lamas depending on the reason.

The Buddhist monasteries were the centres were the Lamas lived and practiced their religion; they also instructed the younger Lamas on the sacred books. We visited at least three wonderful old Buddhist temple complexes on the trip, the bustling Gandan monastery in Ulaan Bataar, the oldest Erdene Nu temple complex in Karakorum and the amazing Amarbayasgalant Temple complex near the second largest city of Erdenet, north of the capital, which is very difficult to get to. Even just from the outside, these temple complexes are amazing specimens of architecture – many in the Chinese Minchu style and others in the Tibetan style. Large parts of these temples were destroyed in Communist times. Most of what remains have now been converted into museums housing huge Buddha statues and other figures related to Tibetan Buddhism, intricately designed Tankhas and wall paintings, and other religious paraphernalia.  Almost everywhere there were photos of the present Dalai Lama and we were told that many monks went to Dharamshala to pursue their higher studies or take lessons from the Dalai Lama himself. Dalai is a Mongolian word, we found out, meaning ‘the ocean’ signifying its vastness. There was something very special in the ambience – there was peace and quiet and something strongly spiritual about those places. I sensed the same calm in the grounds of the ruins of a splendid monastery in the Ongii valley that had been completely destroyed during the communist period.

 

 On the left is the very pretty Gelenkhuugiin Suvraga, an old stupa built in 1890 by a local hero [p.137 Lonely Planet 6th edition]. There was something very charming about driving past this little stupa which stands really in the middle of nowhere...

The magic of Karakorum

The old city of Karakorum has disappeared. There is a only a museum there as proof of everything that is no longer there… But there is a beautiful monastery complex there –the Erdene Nu – the oldest monastery complex in all of Mongolia which had a eerie peace and attraction. The three beautiful Pagoda shaped temples, the Tibetan monastery at the far end, and the ruins of the many other temple structures strewn around was fascinating… and added to the charm of this lost city of Karakorum… there was nothing left to see, yet it was fascinating and really did give the feeling of being a charmed place… I let my imagination run wild and let it settle where it wished to… and it was hard to not be affected by the significance of the location, and I let myself imagine the old glories of the city as we stood before a scale model and the lady at the museum tried to explain to us how wonderful it all was…

The different smells and sights of Mongolia

There were some special things during this trip. The first thing one needed to get used to was the sight of discarded antlers, skulls and skeletons of animals, in fact, corpses of animals in different stages of decay strewn everywhere along the countryside. When one thinks of it, it is clear that since most nomad families own hundreds of cattle, it is only normal that some of those cattle would eventually die. At first we were rather shocked whenever we came across one such but over the three weeks we got used to the sight. In fact, on the first day out in the country, Kumar found a skull of a horse and wanted to take it along. The drivers refused to carry it in their cars – they believed it could bring them bad luck. By the end of our trip, we were so used to seeing them lying around that we would not have wanted to take a skull along even if the drivers had agreed to.

 But there was something else that I still haven’t managed to get my head around. On our very first day as we made our way out of Ulaan Bataar we saw a vast cemetery on an incline of a hill just outside the city. Numerous little white tombstones dotted the hillside and gave it a somewhat unreal polka-dotted feeling. Then one evening, several days later, just as we were arriving at a place where we would halt for the night, I thought I saw a similar picture – many white and not-so-white dots along a vast hilly expanse. I wondered which big city we were nearing for it to have such a huge cemetery. But I thought I would postpone asking till the next day and got busy with pitching my tent. The next morning to my intense surprise, however, the entire cemetery had just vanished. There was absolutely no sign of it at all on the hill where I thought I had seen it. I rubbed my eyes in disbelief. I felt a bit stupid to ask the others but eventually I did. Sylke was the first one to figure out what had happened. The cemetery I had seen the previous evening was nothing more than a huge flock of sheep and goats that were grazing on the grassy hillside; they had moved back to their enclosures for the night and with them my cemetery had also vanished! Later when we saw another such flock of cattle on another hill, Sylke called out – here is another ‘moving cemetery’ for you!

The smell of wet animals is something very special and which city-dwellers do not find very often. That smell followed us everywhere. That and the smell emanating from the many different kinds of herbs, low bushes, and shrubs that grow abundantly in Mongolia. The smell of wild chives (schnittlauch) was the first that greeted us as we set out on our trip from Ulaan Bataar. We saw entire fields filled with blossoming schnittlauch plants and there was no mistaking the familiar smell in the air. Our guide told us that there is so much schnittlauch that the cattle eat that even their milk begin to smell of it. As we gradually made our way towards the south to visit the Vulture’s Mouth Canyon, we could smell frankincense (weihrauch) everywhere, in the hills, in the valleys and even on rocky terrain. Small wonder then that in all the monasteries, we could smell frankincense being burned at the altars. One day we were on the lookout for a suitable place to put up our tents. We came to a beautiful flat valley which we thought would be perfect. But the moment the Mongolians in our group got down from the car, they grimaced. The valley was full of absinth (wermut) plants growing everywhere with a nice, but intense, smell. But the Mongols do not like the smell. So we really had to look for another place to put up our tents as the Mongols would hear nothing of having to spend a whole night smelling in absinth. And by the time our trip was at an end, we had discovered many other herbs and rare plants on our tracks – summer savory (bohnenkraut), thyme (thymian) and even garlic at certain places.

Irmi, the plant expert in our group recognised many more plants and herbs that I had never heard of before, many with medicinal properties. For me the real surprise was that the locals do not care very much about those valuable herbs and plants and rarely use herbs in their cooking. The only real cultivation we saw from close were the flaming orange buckthorn (sanddorn) fruit (berry?) bushes from which they made a kind of thick concentrated juice that was available everywhere. We also saw some agricultural fields around Karakorum and some others while driving past in the north, but on the whole it did seem that most of the countryside was barren, and at most served as grazing fields for the cattle.

 In conclusion

There is so much more that I could write about. The trip was just so rich and fascinating. Chatting with our Guide Micky, who is a teacher in the German-Mongolian School in UB and who spoke very good German, as we sat around together in the evenings waiting for our dinner to be served, we came to know of many other facts of Mongolian life. She has just one son who was presently studying in Germany. That meant she would have to work till she was 55. Mothers with 4 children are allowed to retire at 50. In a country where life expectancy is very low (somewhere in the mid sixties), that was quite a big deal. Men retire at 60. The government was actively promoting larger families since Mongolia is one of the least populated places on earth. Each family gets child allowance of around 100,000T per child. Everyone gets a basic pension (of about 500,000 T) after a certain age, irrespective of whether they have worked or not. The government even provided an amount of about 1 million T to cover the burial costs when any citizen died. The government is actively implementing welfare schemes – school education is free in Mongolia. The state waived electricity and water bills for everyone for two years during the Covid period.

 Micky also told us that the two years following the fall of communism in Mongolia in 1991 were the hardest in her life – people could buy only salt and bread, that too in rationed quantities.  But things have become much better since then. The mines with cobalt, gold and copper and tourism were the principal sources of revenue for the country. People still went around wearing their national dress, the ‘deel’ which is both festive and functional as it helps to keep people warm. Our drivers would quickly wear their ‘deels’ once the day’s driving was done and the heat of the day gave way to the cold of the nights. The sight of old people, with incredibly peaceful and kind faces,  wearing ‘deels’, carting water in small wooden trolleys from the closest water-sources, will remain my abiding memory of this land.

For me it was important to go to Mongolia, also because I wanted to see for myself how a country that is sandwiched between two world powers – Russia and China --could still hold out and forge its own identity different from both its more powerful neighbours. True, Mongolia was still dependent on Russia on many fronts, especially in the mining and in the energy sector, which is one of the reasons why they did not want to take sides with respect to the Russian aggression in the Ukraine. They were rather mistrustful of China and its ambitions and claimed that their southern boundaries to China were officially sealed as they did not want to consume the pesticide and fertiliser based fruits and vegetables that China produced. Among the tourists, Mongolia seems to be the favourite destination of S. Koreans who we met everywhere, driving around in groups in those small-bus vans called ‘purgon’.  Many Mongolians go to Russia, China and S. Korea to seek employment or for further training, we were told. The western areas were dominated by the Kazakhs who were related to the Kazakhs across the border to Uzbekistan. And in the east, vast tracts of land had been leased out to the S. Koreans to grow their vegetables even while providing employment to many local Mongols.

One doesn’t know what the future holds for this fascinating country, one does not also know whether the nomads in their gers strewn over the countryside will survive as such. There are sure signs of change and development – for instance, at many nomad homes, we found that they have bought themselves camping vans which makes it easier for them to move in winter to warmer climes with their herds of animals. The nomad shepherd on horseback is slowly also being replaced by the nomad shepherd on motorbike. Almost every nomad home we went to had at least one motorbike, one camping van and a family car (mostly Toyota Primus). And many of the children are going to study, not just in school in the nearest province headquarters but also in university and in engineering and medical schools in Ulaan Bataar. \

As such it is not clear whether the nomadic way of life will continue in its present form for very much longer. But it was heartening to see a daughter of a nomad family who was studying construction engineering in UB helping the mother with the milking and with the many different ways of processing of the many different kinds of milk that they got every day. We also met many children of nomads doing summer jobs at the camps that we stayed in. University would begin again in September after the summer break; by then the main tourist season would also be over. We actually saw some signs of that with some camps already dismantling their gers and putting them in storage over the winter months. 

I will never forget Bymba, the 17-year old nomad girl who was helping out in the camp we stayed in near the lake Zu Nuur. She was working in the camp through the summer months to earn money to pay for her education as well that of her younger sister. I chatted with her and gave her a few small things and some chocolate, she asked me if she could have a photo with me, the next morning she came back with a few pieces of chocolate as a return gift and a sketch of me that she had drawn overnight. She also wrote me a lovely little note in her very neat Mongolian handwriting which Micky translated for me -- she wrote that she loved meeting me and that she hoped to meet me again. What an amazing girl and what an incredible meeting that was.

By the time we got back to UB we had clocked an unbelievable  4500 kms and had seen, at least got an impression of, this incredible country. For Mongolia is almost half the size of India. We had been to the south (Gobi) only some kilometres from the Chinese border, we have been in the central parts as well as up in the north close to the Baikal lake close to the border with Russia. We had driven on riverbeds and across small rivers, we had gone over hills and dales. experienced all kinds of temperatures, we had gone to the singing dunes in the Gobi and up to the Orkhon pass and hill where (at about 2500 mts) it had suddenly started to snow in the middle of August. We had seen varied types of landscapes and met many nomad families who warmly welcomed us and shared their food with us.

And to add to the enchantment, we had seen the new moon and the full moon and the milky way in all its incredible glory on many clear nights that we had spent in tents under the open sky. And the naughty smile of that 10-year old lama apprentice at the Amarbayasgalant monastery in between striking the gong while the senior lamas recited from their books was completely out of the world. And that last night outside UB when all 7 of us (excluding the two drivers) slept in one large Ger and that incredibly delicious post-dinner feast of ‘Horkhog’ that the two drivers and Nara conjured up for us of huge chunks of meat cooked with pre-heated glowing red stones put in their midst and then left to cook in a air-tight pan over the fire in the wood-oven of the ger (usually used for heating the ger).

All those images but the three new friendships that might have started during the trip will remain the abiding result of this amazing journey to an enchanted land.

Bye Bye Mongolia... you will not be easily forgotten!

[With photo inputs from most of my co-travellers, with thanks.]

[If you want to know more about travel to Mongolia, do get in touch with our travel organiser Frank Riedinger at Odkha Travel www.frank-riedinger.de. His website contains some fascinating videos of Mongolia too.]