Started my tour today in an old non air-conditioned gray Soviet van that we named Igor. Long drive through basic flatlands. We did see a few giant hawks, some heron-type things (cranes) and horses, goats, sheep, cows and dogs. Mongolia has 18 times the number of farm-type animals as it does people.
Igor held eight people; Ekra, the driver, Selonga, the "guide"/cook, and six tourists; Jenny, a Korean girl, Vicky and Craig, British Doctors, Bert and Giselle, an old German couple, and myself. At around four, we stopped at Baga gazariin chuluu, a temple that was destroyed by the Soviets in the 1930s. It was decent, with pretty scenery, and blessedly, only one other group of tourists- even smaller than ours, and a Mongolian father and son were there.
While waiting for Selonga to make dinner, I went for a nice walk around the rocks, then went back to our ger. A ger (known in the West as a yurt) is the traditional Mongolian home. It's a short, round wooden structure, padded by a thick layer of wool and covered in canvas. Usually, there is a shrine on the far wall facing you as you enter the door, though you'd trip over the stove, which is kept in the middle of the room so the chimney can exit through the circular hole on top that is generally half-covered. The beds, or more typically, mattresses, are pressed against the walls as if from centrifugal force. The toilet is an outhouse outside, though sometimes it's just a hole in the ground, covered with a few wooden slats to stand on while you squat.
7/3
Today was another long day of driving (350 km), though at least my lunch was excellent today (though not markedly different- more meat, vegetables and potatoes all fried together, served with rice). We saw our first group of camels and drove to Temeen shavar (the Flaming Cliffs), which were very nice, but (and I feel a bit bad saying this), I'm starting to think I could've done an off-road trip from part of California through the Southwest and had essentially the same experience. Trade gers for a few scattered houses or cabins and temples for churches and that's pretty much it. Both have blue skies and vast emptiness, people herding animals, and not a whole ton in the way of culture.
I think I can go one more day without a shower before I start to feel really gross. I'll likely have a babywipes bath tonight. Apparently much of the area we've been passing through on our way to the desert is known as the Steppes (pronounced steps) and is basically just endless flat, slightly green plains.
After I'd written all this, at about 10:30 p.m., my germates and I noticed a lot of noise coming from our next-door neighbors. Jenny came by and told us they were watching the world cup inside. Vicky and I had remarked on the satellite dish upon arriving at this ger camp, which was an odd enough sight in such a remote site, but to actually see a small newish looking but black and white t.v. playing the Germany-Argentina World Cup game inside a ger in the middle of complete nothingness in Mongolia was surreal. The bright white light illuminated the almost exclusively white faces inside, the Mongolians who actually lived in that ger (save two sitting in the very front), had abdicated their seats for the foreigners and so a Mongolian grandmother, mother, two men and a child sat watching through the door and refused stools when one of the foreigners offered to give up theirs.
It was a bizarre experience, all the more so because I was watching part of the World Cup without beer. We later agreed that they should have charged admission and had beer available for sale and they would've made more money than they did selling the handmade woolen items (toy gers, camels, hats, purses). It was also amazing to think that the World Cup actually reached that far and made me feel more inclined to watch it and helped me understand its relevance was real- I'd always assumed that the idea of rural people in poor countries watching the WC and the world feeling united was pure propaganda, but seeing it actually bring together people of different cultures and places was almost...well, let's not go that far- it's still soccer.
7/4
Even though this post won't actually go up until later, I still feel obligated to write a patriotic post in honor of Independence day, especially since I won't get fireworks, sparklers, a beach or a barbeque, though I might get beer.
Things the U.S. Does/Has Better Than Anywhere Else:
Movies/ Movie Theater Experience
Customer Service
Individual Rights
Road Trips
Directness
Medical Care (IF you can afford it)
Better Than Most:
Cheese
Ice Cream
Mexican Food
Quality of Higher Education (ignoring all the many problems with it)
When, that is, if, you think of Mongolia, you probably think, as I did, of vast deserts (meaning the Gobi) and little else. Today, in the Yol Valley of the South, I saw an Ice river/ glacier. We'd driven a few hours this morning to get there and arrived at the museum near the entrance around noon. The museum was just a few smalls rooms, all except one filled with indigenous stuffed animals. The other room had four glass cases and a table in it. Two cases contained small dinosaur bones and remnants. One contained a partially exposed small dinosaur skeleton, remarkably preserved in a way so that you could see its basic shape still. The last glass case contained several dinosaur eggs, some almost whole, some broken into a few (though not many) pieces. Most interesting to me, however, was the table. On a basic, small rectangular card table, without any covering whatsoever, were dinosaur bones. The sign didn't say what kind, but there they were, just sitting on the table like sewing machines at a garage sale, waiting for someone to pick up and ask "How much for this one?" The sign did say not to touch them, but I'm a rebel, so I stroked one giant dirtied-ivory colored bone, thicker than two soda cans. The part I touched was fairly solid, but most parts looked splintered, like wood while it's burning. I did learn one thing in the museum however: Mongolia has snow leopards, though they're very, very, very rare (according to Vicky who said she watched a documentary on it, it took the BBC team three weeks to spot one and that was using the latest technology with several people, filming 24 hours a day).
Igor has not been happy with us and our poor comrade has overheated often, forcing us to get out, pour water into his engine (which is inside the car in the front seat between the driver and shotgunner, under a leather covered compartment), wait around for a while, and try again. He made it to the parking lot for the walk out to the glacier and we had lunch Selonga had prepared that morning (over-oiled fried rice with a tiny bit of mutton inside and carrots). It was only a 2 km walk to the ice and it was a very nice mostly-flat walk by a stream that became a river, through green grass that climbed onto hills that turned into small rocky mountains. Most of it reminded me of the Seven Sisters near San Luis Obispo. The ice river was rather random and seemed to just come out of nowhere so that was cool. I slid along it a bit and watched it melt away, drip by drip. It'll be gone by the time I put this post up. It was pretty but mostly just impressive because it was so surprising and random, just there. A big chunk of ice in the Gobi Desert.
While we were gone our guide Erka had taken part of Igor's engine apart in an attempt to fix it and we had to wait for about an hour and a half after we got back for him to put it back together, and it only seemed to work marginally better.
Since we were so far behind schedule, we decided to stay nearby for the night. It was a fantastic decision as the place we found was a lovely, tiny village with a population of 50 or so. It was the sort of country, self-sufficient area Mao probably had wet dreams about. One interesting thing was that this tiny place had a basketball court and a basic elliptical with some other basic exercise equipment. In Northern Asia, I've noticed that in general, they seem to pay much more attention to their youth and old. For the young, there are many more options for things to do at night and on weekends like; video arcades (ubiquitous and larger and more extensive than in the U.S.), jimjillbangs and manga libraries/ internet cafes (again, better than those we have in the West). For the geriatric set, I've particularly noticed that several of the parks that have areas and exercise equipment specifically set off for Seniors (I know this because they have English signs) to keep them active and encourage physical and mental activity until they die.
Anyway, it was a lovely little area. After dinner and a walk around, I saw a group of men leaving the largest house (likely a school/ community center) who were dressed in red and blue briefs. They got into cars and drove off. Soon afterwards I left too and walked back to our ger camp.
As I walked over the hill, I could see that the cars had stopped just in front of our group of five gers and that all the tourists were sitting in about a third of a circle and the men in briefs were inside the part of the circle they'd created.
My guide said they were going to do a show for us, and that it was 4,000 per person (about $3) to watch. It looked interesting, so I said I would and sat down. They'd already started a bit but when they started a new round, the two men would stand from about fifty feet back, then slapped the front of their thighs twice, then slapped their butts then slowly jogged over to their referee (there were always at least two). Just before reaching their designated referee, they'd start to do this very slow movement of flapping their arms up and down, in a way that was supposed to represent a hawk. I imagine it was supposed to seem elegant and smooth, but it just managed to look idiotic. They'd "swoop" around their referee three times and then the referee would pat them on the shoulder and they'd go to dance circles with the other fighter. At some point, they'd embrace and be locked in a hug for ages until one finally made some movement that knocked the other off balance. You lost when your hands, knees or elbows touched the ground. It wasn't very active and most of the time the wrestlers weren't really moving, which is why they had two or three fights all going on at the same time. It seemed to be a bit of a psychological game in a way, but it also seemed that the men who looked the worst in their briefs, chubby bellies overhanging them, did the best. It was really neat to watch, and I got a picture with them afterwards, though not a very good one. Two of the tourist guys tried a match and one of them, who said he'd had some karate training, did okay. The other one was flat on his back in about ten seconds.
