Mongolia — exploring the Gobi Desert and beyond
As a teenager, I read Roy Chapman Andrews’ books about his expeditions to Mongolia in the 1920s and 1930s and dreamed of someday traveling there. That became a reality when I joined the MIR trip “The Gobi Desert and Beyond” in July ’03.
What makes Mongolia unique is that its small population (about 2.5 million) lives in a country with virtually no fences. Even in or near towns, most people still live in gers (round tents) and most people are nomads. Children learn to ride before they walk, and horses’ milk supplies the main source of vitamins. Hospitality is a way of life.
Ulaanbaatar
Compared to the Andrews expeditions (read the excellent new biography “Dragon Hunter” by Charles Gallenkamp), my trip was quite tame and relatively comfortable.
In Ulaanbaatar we stayed at the Ulaanbaatar Hotel ($70 for a single), a comfortable, clean place. There is no air-conditioning in Mongolia, but this hotel had a fan. The hotel is in the center of town within walking distance of museums, government buildings, the department store and numerous restaurants.
The city has many foreign restaurants and you can easily get a meal with beer for about $5.
The streets of the city were blessedly free of street vendors. The only people selling anything on the street were photographers. They sat in the hot sun with various props (kiddie cars, etc.) and sample pictures, hoping to take family portraits. Almost everyone was wearing modern clothing, and very high heels seemed popular, even with policewomen. (Traditional clothing is more common in the countryside.)
Into the desert
On the second day of the trip we began our Gobi Desert odyssey. (I had chosen MIR because they offered the longest time in the desert.) Early in the morning, we took an AN-24 (Antonov) Russian prop plane to Dalanzadgad, a town in the South Gobi near the Chinese border.
Flying on these planes was a bit of an adventure. Runways were often dirt. Just before taking off, our copilot threw a sheep’s carcass in the space between the passenger cabin and pilots’ area. A woman sat with her husband, who was on a stretcher, in the cargo area.
For fans of wide-open spaces, the scenery of the Gobi is heaven. There were no real roads, just dirt tracks. (This is not a trip for anyone with back problems!) However, the drivers never got lost and unerringly chose the correct fork of a dirt track or sometimes just took off cross-country. (Just in case, they did carry accurate Soviet ordinance maps and GPS devices.)
Unusual accommodations
We stayed in five different ger camps. The gers were lined with felt and were well insulated, keeping us cool in the heat and warm at night. To increase ventilation, the lower part of the felt layers was lifted up to expose the latticework frame.
Washroom facilities at the camps were on par with those of a state park. Food was basic Russian.
However, I give the Three Camels Camp, where we stayed three nights, five stars. The camp grows its own vegetables, obtains electricity from solar panels and has beautiful kitchen and dining facilities.
Local family visits
One of the highlights of the trip was meeting nomad families. At one family ger camp, an older woman and her daughter greeted us and welcomed us to sit on the beds. She served us fermented mare’s milk in bowls (our drivers drank it all and requested more) and hard bread and cheese. The milk, which tastes a bit like yogurt, is about 4% alcohol. The older woman also offered to brew tea and cook lunch, but of course we declined.
The younger woman’s husband appeared and took us outside to show off his horses, including the mare that provided the milk. We gave the family some small gifts, and they gave us some curd plus sheep bones carved to resemble the heads of mountain sheep.
Later that day we visited the family living near our ger camp by the sand dunes. They raised camels and goats, and we enjoyed watching the baby camels.
Evening entertainment?
Entertainment at night was virtually nonexistent. Our drivers played basketball with camp staff (the women usually won), sometimes as late as 11 p.m. I went through 12 books on this trip. In one case, we read in our gers for four hours while waiting out a sandstorm.
At the Three Camels Camp, our guide asked if we wanted some of the kitchen help to perform songs for us after dinner. We did, of course, and they were not just any kitchen help. They were classical music students at the university in Ulaanbaatar who were working at the camp for the summer.
Two women and two men dressed in Mongolian costume played several native instruments: a horse fiddle, other string instruments, a type of xylophone and percussion instruments with slate pieces. One of the men did throat singing, a strange, vibrating singing of several tones at once.
Some unique sights
Frequently on our drive we stopped to see an ovoo, a mountaintop cairn, walking around each one three times for good luck and adding a rock to the pile. Although Mongolians are predominantly Buddhists (of the Tibetan Yellow Hat variety), they also incorporate many shamanist practices that predate Buddhism. Putting your horse’s head on an ovoo (we saw one with a number of heads) is believed to facilitate reincarnation of the horse as a person.
One of the sights I had traveled to Mongolia for were the Flaming Cliffs, one of the world’s most famous dinosaur sites. Here, the Andrews expedition discovered the first dinosaur eggs ever found. We also saw another famous paleontological site, the Tugrigiin Shiree tableland. Here, the “fighting dinosaurs” (now in the Museum of Natural History in Ulaanbaatar) were found.
We also visited several monasteries. Most had been destroyed in the Stalin purges and are slowly being rebuilt. At the Shankh monastery, past the town of Arvaiheer, the monks offered us bowls of fermented mare’s milk after finishing their chants. Outside, curious locals gathered around our vehicles.
The map showed that the road we were following crossed Mongolia through Arvaiheer. In actuality, it has been crumbling since Soviet days. Parts of it were being repaired and we saw many road crews. However, equipment is primitive and so progress is slow. Sometimes we drove on the road and sometimes we drove off as huge holes and piles of sand loomed ahead. The road was far worse than the dirt tracks we had driven so far.
Day-tripping
Until we arrived at Kharkhorin, a one-day trip out of Ulaanbaatar, we saw almost no other vehicles. Kharkhorin marks the site of Genghis Khan’s 13th-century Karakorum, from which stones were used to build the main attraction here, the Erdene Zuu monastery. The complex has a large number of temples and is surrounded by a wall with 108 (a lucky number) stupas. All that is left of the great capital of Karakorum are two of the original four turtle rocks, which marked the boundaries of the city.
Hustain Nuruu National Park, where we stopped the next day, is one of the few places in Mongolia that is home to the Przewalski horse (known as takhi in Mongolia), the only true wild horse in the world. The wild horses died out in Mongolia due to hunting and a lack of pasture. However, some survived in zoos and preserves, and 16 horses were reintroduced to the wild by a foundation in the Netherlands. Today they number about 150.
After a night back in the city, we saw an entirely different part of Mongolia, the area around Lake Khovsgol near the Siberian border. Near Muron, where our plane landed, we walked among the Bronze Age stelae carved with deer figures and human heads while two boys on horses watched us.
From the ger camp, we enjoyed hiking along the shore of Lake Khovsgol and canoeing. The water was crystal clear and a cold 40°F.
A colorful celebration
Friday, July 11, was the beginning of Naadam, the Mongolian independence festival. To get seats in the shade, we needed to arrive around 9 a.m., two hours before the 11 a.m. starting time. We got there at 10 a.m. and broiled in the sun.
The opening ceremonies were very colorful. Archers waited on the left. Riders came in, followed by soldiers bearing Mongolian standards, which they placed in a circle and then guarded. Shamans danced and were joined by a colorful ensemble of hundreds in all sorts of costumes. A flag bearing Genghis Khan’s picture was unfurled, then the president of Mongolia, clad in an orange robe, spoke. Wrestlers circled the standards, doffing their pointed hats. Judges, dressed in blue dels (the Mongolian robes), entered last.
We watched archery for a while before heading to the horse races. The horse race covered 25 kilometers (about 16 miles). Riders used to be as young as three years old, but after a 5-year-old girl was killed last year, the minimum age for jockeys was raised to seven years.
A final day out
Due to flight schedules, I had an extra day in Ulaanbaatar after the tour ended. This gave me the chance to see the Museum of Natural History, some monasteries and the Museum of Fine Arts.
At the latter, the woman taking the money got confused when giving me change. I knew I had given her too much but did not want to haggle over five dollars. As I was viewing some tapestries, she came running in breathlessly and very apologetic, bowing several times. She indicated she had made a mistake and was sorry and could I, please, forgive her as she was not the usual cashier; they were all at Naadam. She was the curator. I told her I was honored to meet the curator of such beautiful art.
Summing up
The 2004 price for MIR’s “Mongolian Explorer: The Gobi Desert & Beyond” is $2,895, land only (single supplement, $175). This is one of their “exploratory” trips, with a maximum of 10 people. (We were five women.)
I made my own air arrangements. I purchased the Dallas-Seoul flight on Expedia.com and the Seoul-Ulaanbaatar flight on Travelocity.com. The combined cost of $1,200 (including all taxes) was much cheaper than the price offered by MIR.
The tour cost included all but one meal. In addition, I stayed an extra night at the Ulaanbaatar Hotel ($70) and paid for museum admissions ($5 each) and meals on the extra day.
Luggage on internal flights was limited to 10 kg. (approximately 22 lbs.). I carried a large backpack and left a carry-on bag with items for the second part of the trip at the hotel.
For more information, contact MIR Corporation (85 S. Washington St., Ste. 210, Seattle, WA 98104; phone 800/424-7289.)