Into Outer Mongolia

(Pictures below, if you're impatient)

Mongolia is, as you might imagine, like nothing we've seen before. We spent two days in the city of Ulaanbaatar, visiting museums and exploring the downtown area. The highlight for me of those first two days was a visit to a school of traditional music, where a very talented young throat singer demonstrated his singing and playing the horsehead fiddle for us. After the performance, he gave me a lesson in throat singing, and I was able to achieve the first stage! It sounds harsh, but really feels open and easy when you get it. On the way out of the school, we met two little girls who had arrived for their Mongolian harp lesson. They gave us an impromptu concert in the lobby. One turned out to be from Ireland; her parents send her back to her grandparents in Mongolia every summer to learn her culture. 

On the third day, we headed out into the countryside in six four-wheel-drive trucks to begin our 2,500km odyssey. After a stop at the ger (yurt) camp where we were to spend the first night, the plan was to go to Hustai National Park. Hustai is one of three places—all in Mongolia—where the wild Przewalski horse runs free. We also planned to visit the Neolithic Ongot monuments, 4,000-year-old grave-marking statues. We had seen some replicas in the UB (Ulaanbaatar) museum, and they are truly awesome, smaller but reminiscent of the Easter Island heads. The day started out uneventfully. We had lunch and a nomad culture demonstration at the ger camp in drizzle, but by the time we drove on to the national park, the rain had become torrential, and the sandy roads were slippery and rutty. As we drove toward the area where the horses are, the trucks slid and splashed as we diverted to avoid deep water. Finally, we stopped, defeated by the complete washout of the road (track) ahead, with an uncrossable gully between us and our goal. After some discussion (could the drivers really be considering an attempted crossing?) we turned around. The park rangers closed the road behind us, and we drove (slid, bounced, splashed) our way back to the "main" Mongolian highway, a two-lane rutted road through the steppe.

Yesterday we drove seven hours into the steppe to the traditional capital of Ghengis (Chinggis) Khan. We helped to build a ger when we arrived, and were able to see how it is constructed of wood and poles and wool felt—easy to tear down and move when the herd (horses, camels, cows, goats, sheep) needs fresh grazing. Gers are well insulated and cozy, and we are enjoying staying in them. 

So, enough of words. You want pictures. Yak rides (camel rides are tomorrow), a demonstration of the moving of a nomad camp, and more music have taken us from wow to wow. What an amazing trip this is! 

(We have so little internet, I can't edit the order of these pictures, and am not sure they will get sent out before we return to UB, but here's hoping! 

Greetings by the nomad group

Joe on a yak

Demonstration of traditional nomad camp moving

Our first ger

The washed out road in Hustai Park

Horses enjoyng the aftermath of the storm

Grazing camels in the countryside

A ger settlement 

Ominous clouds bringing storms over the hills

The wild horse we didn't get to see

Singing teacher in UB

At the largest Buddhist temple in UB, 
the future Buddha, just completed this year. 
Buddhism was banned and the monasteries 
destroyed under Soviet rule until 1990. 





 

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