Mongolia part 7--Final reflections

Mongolia- Part 7

So, now that you have read this blog should you go to Mongolia?
Would I recommend that you go to visit? I think that entirely depends on what you are like. Can you live without a flush toilet, running water and instant electricity for a few weeks? Can you survive on a wholesome but boring diet? Are you reasonably able-bodied and adaptable? Can you travel large distances over bumpy roads for the pay-off of beautiful scenery, no crowds and an insight into a fascinating life-style?

If yes, then you should definitely go –and soon--and do contact Jessica Brooks of Eternal Landscapes to arrange your trip. http://www.eternal-landscapes.co.uk/ or contact Jess direct jess@eternal-landscapes.co.uk

It will take you a while to adjust to the Mongolia so I suggest you spend at least 10 days there and preferably 3 weeks as we did. And do travel overland for at least part of your visit—if you just fly in and out to the various “sights” will entirely miss the point and quite likely be disappointed in Mongolia as a result.

And do avoid the corporately owned “tourist ger camps” which is where most tour groups end up. They are ghettos with rigid rules, poor quality or phoney ger accommodation, and where you will end up listening to fellow westerners talking about their mortgages or about how they are going to “do” Bhutan next. 

Try to stay in the family run gers— that is the best way to understand the country and its people. But pay fairly for your accommodation and do not expect room service; this is not free; this is not a hotel; some freeloading backpackers take advantage of the well-known hospitality of the Mongolians.

You will quickly realise that you do not really need a lot of the things you take for granted in your everyday western life. You will also come to savour the small pleasures: an outhouse with a western style toilet instead of an Asian squat; a hot solar-heated shower in the town shower house every two or three days; a chair with a back rather than a low stool; a change from the diet of mutton; a mattress without lumps; an electric light in your ger; butter, bread that isn’t stale. You will surprise yourself at how well you manage.

But you certainly do not need to worry about health. The air is fresh and unpolluted. The water is totally pure, there are very few flies or mosquitoes, and although the food is bland it is freshly cooked and healthy.

You will not be cheated or treated like a “tourist” whose only function is to be milked and ripped off. You will be met with personal respect and dignity and you will not be surrounded by sycophants who see you as a “mark”.


Memorable moments

When you are visiting such a fascinating and unusual place as Mongolia picking out specific memorable moments is bound to be unsatisfactory. But here are a few ones which stuck with me in particular. Refer back to the other parts of this blog post for photos:

• Coming out of our isolated ger at night (to go to the outhouse!) and seeing above me trillions of stars in the velvet sky and in front of me in the light of my headlamp hundreds of bright eyes of the herd of goats and sheep that had decided to spend the night keeping watch over us

• Herds of gazelles bounding lightly over the spring-green slopes of the northern Gobi

• Climbing down the walls of the Flaming Cliffs into the baking valley with it the strange sandstone pillars where the skeletons and eggs of previously unknown species of dinosaurs were found in 1920 

• Helping to prepare and eat a khorhog feast with the family we stayed with on the shores of White Lake, accompanied with much vodka and laughter. 

• Driving through the high passes and over the vast volcanic fields of the Juniper Mountains as the thunder crashed, the lightning lit the sky and the heavens opened with rain, making treacherous muddy slopes and rivers where there had been tracks 

• Stopping for a picnic lunch in a wide valley where a group of local horsemen and trainers were trying out their best horses for the upcoming Naadam races(see earlier explanation of Naadam)

• Listening to a group of school-age children at a music summer school in Bulgan learning to play the traditional horse-head fiddle led by two enthusiastic teachers

• Horseback riding through the flower-filled meadows on the slopes beside White Lake

• Listening to the local holiday-makers singing around their bonfire on the shores of Lake Khovsgol

• Sitting on a fallen tree amongst the wildflowers in a clearing in the larch forest watching a pair of demoiselle cranes pick their way like ballet dancers through the grasses beside a mountain stream

• Sitting in the courtyard of a Buddhist monastery quietly observing the monks and local people going about their religious observances in a quiet, relaxed and unselfconscious way

• Stopping at an isolated ger corral to watch the entire family shearing their sheep, the woman covered from head to toe to preserve her complexion but doing a far better job at shearing than her husband!

• Drawing water from a well in the Gobi to fill the water troughs as the baby goats and sheep exuberantly jostled and baa’d and butted each other and us in an excited effort to be first at the trough 

• Watching ibex silhouetted against the evening sky on top of the cliffs surrounding the Yolyn Am canyon in the Three Beauties Mountains in the Gobi

• Climbing a hill in the Orkon Valley at dawn to find the large stone turtle sculpture that used to guard the gates of ancient Karakorum, the royal city of Ghengis Khan’s clan

• Planting an Asian elm tree at a small tree farm on the edge of the Gobi, which has been lovingly nurtured for over 30 years by a local family 

• Washing my clothes in a tin bowl beside White Lake in a hailstorm

• Stopping in on isolated high plain at the intersection of two wide valleys, reached only by a faint unmarked track and with no habitation for miles, and finding bronze age deerstones, exquisitely carved with enigmatic stylized figures of reindeer 

• Stopping beside a large pond to watch the brightly coloured shelducks, when a herd of horses with their small foals came galloping over the hill with their manes flying and into the pond to drink, followed shortly afterwards from a different direction by a ponderous herd of cattle with their calves