Stepping Out, Reaching Out

Clockwise:
Traditional Mongolian tents, or gers in Mongolia, a livestock of 40 million outnumbers a human population of two million.
Mongolian sweets prepared for the Naadam festival, during which local folk pit their skills against one another in archery, wrestling and horse-racing.
A typical Mongolian meal.
Orkhon Valley, one of Mongolian’s only two World Heritage sites…was the centre of traffic across the Asian steppes. Its gently rippling Orkhon River is where numerous archaeological remains have been found.

“You could well imagine Genghis Khan galloping through the Asian steppes and surveying his mighty Mongol empire. Time seems to stand still in this vast region largely untouched by modern civilisation.”

The Business Times Weekend Saturday/Sunday, July 11-12, 2009 [Travel section, Page L12-L13]

“ Look at how clear the clouds are here – you can even see the outlines, with no pollution getting in the way,” said one member of our group aloud, gazing serenely at the sky as we made our way from Ulaanbaatar, Mongolia’s present-day capital, to its ancient predecessor Kharkorin – where Genghis (or Chinggis, in Mongolian) Khan plotted the expansion of his Mongol empire in the 12^th century.

There were nine of us, none of whom had been to Mongolia before. We were there under the banner of Habitat for Humanity, looking for an off-the beaten-track travel experience and little did we know that this still untouched land in North Asia would meet our expectations, and surprise us even more.

Ulaanbaatar is the average Mongolian’s idea of big city living – shabby architecture, haphazard streets, dusty and hectic traffic not unlike any other developing city in Asia taking its first rough steps towards modern civilisation. We were glad to hit the city limits and travel down the only road heading West in what may as well have been an uncharted road (to us).

Chugging sedately along a straight paved road flanked by grassy flatlands and low rolling hills, our sense of well-being was duly tossed out the window as we suddenly hit the untarred trails and our driver’s inner F1 track instincts kicked in. Without so much as a “yee hah”, we were tossed and bumped around for a good part of the six hour-plus van ride to Kharkorin, as the cool gritty wind smacked our faces and the driver took pains not to get stuck in one of the many puddles and mudpools lurking in wait.

Then finally, we were there. Kharkorin – the land where you are more likely to meet a cow or a goat before you see another human being. (After all, Mongolia is four times the size of France, with 40 million livestock and just two million people, half of whom live in Ulaanbaatar).

This is a land where people draw water from a well and cook over wood-fired stoves. Here, a good slap-up meal involves cooking an entire goat (with entrails) while little children drink from mud puddles and pick up bits of cow dung to snack on as their parents look on unperturbed. But before you freak out – it’s perfectly natural to them and you’re on their turf, not yours.

For all its links with the great Genghis Khan, modern Kharkorin looks just like a nondescript small town, dotted with little log houses surrounded by makeshift walls of planks. It turns out that Mongolians can get land for free just by asking the government for it – the fences are probably there to demonstrate one’s plot of land.

While the Mongolians are taking tentative steps towards modern housing, travellers wanting to “go local” would do well to book themselves into the US$15 a night per person Anar get camp, which reproduces the experience of living in a traditional Mongolian tent, or ger. But you do get the luxury of modern plumbing – don’t expect ensuite bathrooms but dormitory style toilets and bathrooms housed in a building just a few steps away. We were thankful just to find seated toilets there.

Even for settled Mongolians, the ger-with its felt wool wrapping – still features in their home life. Most house owners seem to have a ger in the garden – which they move into during winter when the temperatures drop as low as -20۫C. That’s when an uninsulated wooden house turns into an ice box.

As far as gers go, ours was quite comfortable. And there’s nothing quite like waking up to a historically significant national park at your doorstep. We were smack in Orkhon Valley, one of Mongolia’s only two World Heritage sites – a beautiful grand valley dotted with ger camp-hotels like ours. In our free evenings, and even in the early mornings (the sun rises between 5am and 6am during the summer), we did a fair bit of walking over the hills and along the gently rippling Orkhon River, where numerous archaeological remains have been found.

The Orkhon Valley was the centre of traffic across the Asian steppes, with the fresh river water a key requisite for its role as a staging post on ancient trading routes across the steppes. It was first the capital of the Uighur empire (8^th/9^th centuries) and later the Mongol empire in the 12^th/13^th centuries.

The beauty of Orkhon Valley lies in how unchanged it seems to be, so much so that when you’re standing on the hill peaks, next to the ovoos (a mound of stones with a stick wrapped around with sacred blue cloth) and looking down at the valley, you can imagine Genghis Khan galloping through the valley and the plains, chowing down on boiled goat ribs and entrails washed down with vodka (or whatever they were drinking before someone came up with vodka named after him).

We had a taste of the Khan’s diet on the last day of our build – we had completed about two-thirds of three red brick walls and one with concrete blocks – when the owner generously treated us to a whole cooked goat. The Mongolian staff went straight for the entrails while the homeowner was discreet enough to know that entrails were an acquired taste, serving us noodles in soup flavoured with dried mutton jerky.

For dinner, we had the goat meat, cooked with a whole cabbage, in hot stones. The meat is as natural as you can get – Mongolian cooking uses few spices or sauce, but surprisingly, the meat was hardly gamey. We warmed our hands first with the hot stones, and then daintily separated the fat from the meat. Our Mongolian friends – who must have thought us silly to cut out the best part – swooped in on the fat, cartilage and tendons we left on our plates.

For some tourist activity, we managed to visit the 18^th century Erdene Zuu monastery in Kharkorin – comprising a few desolate temples in a large field surrounded by a wall of 108 white stupas. But the best experience was our impromptu visit to the local community’s Naadam festival preparations, and a local horse race.

It turned out that our translator’s husband was one of the organisers of the Naadam festival, a midsummer festival that sees local folk pitting their skills against each other in archery, horse-racing and wrestling. On the drive back to Ulaanbaatar, we went off track (Mongolians must have some inner GPS because there are no road signs) to watch some young boys horse-racing.

The jaded traveller might see this as some kind of blatant tourist attraction, but watching seven and eight-year-old boys expertly controlling their high-spirited horses – surrounded by their doting parents and grandparents in their doting parents and grandparents in their traditional robes – was an amazing sight.

Back at the festival site, the locals mingled around in their traditional finery, the men exchanging snuff bottles while young women served horse milk and yogurt cookies. Young men not on horses were dressed in fitting leather jackets and slouched on gleaming chrome-framed motorbikes – in the quintessential youthful expression of rebellion.

Continuing our way back to Ulaanbaatar, we saw the boys on horses again, this time being herded by men on motorbikes – back to the starting line. We joined in as our van driver blasted his horn to get the horses moving in the right direction. Finally, once they were in position, off they went, a dizzying sight of majestic animals stirring up dust as they thundered past us.

For an exhilarating hour or so, we felt completely immersed in Mongolian culture (since we were part of the herding team), and it was this sheer freedom of open plains that we missed most once we got to the dusty city. In many ways, Mongolia feels like the last frontier – unsullied by human activity (unless you count the goat droppings and cow patties on the plains). The Land of the Blue Sky it’s called, but it’s the Land of the Free Spirit that we won’t forget.

By Sharon Cheah (our Team Leader)