Traveler's really experienced story in Mongolia

author by Shaun Della Vedova

My introduction to Mongolia involved a broken leg. Not my leg, or anyone on the tour's leg, but the leg of an Australian lady who was taking the Trans Siberian railway, with the same tour company, but in the other direction. She had been putting the sheets on her bed on the top bunk just after leaving Ulaanbataar (that will be the only time I type the full name, forever henceforth to be known as UB), when she fell and broke two bones in her right leg. This lady looked to be about 60 and somewhat overweight, so why she was on the top bunk I will never know, but I digress. They had put her on the next train back to UB (the train we were on) and took her to our hotel. Why am I tellilng you this story, you ask? Because the doctor in UB told her not to get the leg set, but instead to wait a day, fly home (through Beijing) and then have it set. That should tell you all you need to know about the state of the Mongolian healthcare system. And I was planning on horse riding the next day. The only good thing about this episode was that I got to talk to mum for about a minute as we tried to get a message to her son back in Queensland. The other thing that I have to say about this episode was the the tour company I am travelling with, Intrepid, handled it, from my perspective, as best as could be asked and I commend them.

Before we crossed the border into Mongolia, the landscape had started to change. As we got frther south of Lake Baikal, more hills appeared and things dried out. For each of the previous train journeys there had pretty much been constant standing water within eyesight and now, as we entered the steppes, there was little water to be found, which meant few trees and instead vast plains of grass (which is good scenery for Uno playing). Unfortunately we travelled through the night to get to UB, so we didnt see the slow change I had hoped for, but upon arrival in UB, we were in a treeless valley, with grass as far as the eye can see.

After five minutes of being in UB, I was ready to proclaim the place a shithole. But then I discovered that they had Coke Zero, where there had been none in Russia. So now I will describe UB in the same way as Lisa's future ex-fiance described the Simpsons family: a manure pile with a beautiful flower growing out of it. Now before anyone gets upset with me describing a city in such as way, I will be the first to admit that the country is facing many problems and that to a large extent, the state of the city cannot be helped. The population is abandoning a nomadic lifestyle in droves, creating huge population growth in UB, which does not have the infrastructure to support it and a government that is so corrupt that new infrastructure never really gets done. You also have massive alcoholism (the sad joke goes that Vodka was the only thing the Russians left behind), few natural resources to exploit, a lack of education and a miserable climate. It is so dry that it rarely snows in winter, even though the temperatures can get to be 70 degrees below zero, without the wind chill factor.

The other thing that I will say is that the Mongolian people are very friendly and much nicer that Russians. This was especially the case with people in service industries, who would actually try to help you and give service with a smile.

It had, in fact, rained the night before we arrived, and since there are no drains on the road of footpaths, water was lying everywhere, waiting to evaporate and creating havoc. Not that much could be done to make traffic worse in UB. Imagine New York traffic at peak hour, but with no one obeying the red lights and honking about every thirty seonds. All day, every day. It is just crazy. And it creates smog as think as anywhere I have ever seen it. As a slight side note, UB is the only place where I have seen a green pedestrian crossing symbol that is a black guy on a green field. Check the photo below and then the light at your street corner. It is just plain wrong.

After another one of those wonderful showers that can only come after an extended train journey, we headed off to the main square to see Ghengis Khan (Chinggis Khan in Mongolian), which was quite cool. The new school year started the next day and so there were throngs of kids around, enjoying there last day of freedom and there was a festive feel to the place.

Verena, Sarah, Robin and I decided to head up to the Winter Palace of the last Bogd (king) of Mongolia. The palace complex is a quite nice place, but unfortunately the exteriors of the buildings are in somewhat of a state of disrepair. The old temples and palaces now house museums, which are kept nicely, with good English signage and some fascinating exhibits. There is a ger made of 150 leopard skins, some great ceremonial robes and a funny collection of stuffed animals including, snakes, lions, bird, aardvarks and a leopard eating a gazelle.

Just as we left it started to pelt down with rain, and with taxis scarce, we split up to increase our chances of a quick ride, with Verena and I staying near the exit and Robin and Sarah on the other side of the road. We had been there for a couple of minutes when a car coming out of the palace pulled up next to us, opened the door, shouted something to Verena in German, who replied and we got in. There were only two spare seats in the car and so we waved (and I grinned) at Sarah and Robin still out in the rain. It turns out that the guys in the car are from Verena's home town of Cologne and one of them lived in UB and they saw her jumper with Cologne written on it and so they offered us a lift. A little disturbingly Verena's women's intuition told her that the guy was somehow involved in the sex trade and so I became the emergency boyfriend in order to not hang out with them that night (of course all this was in German and I was only told later). Robin and Sarah showed up to lunch 20 minutes later, wet after having taken three different local buses, and if looks could kill, Verena and I would be six feet under right now.

After a tasty vegetarian lunch at a place that supports local orphans I headed off to the Natural History museum, where I had been told there were good dinosaur skeletons. Overall, it is the best museum of its type that I have ever been in. Things are laid out and explained very well, for both kids who are learning the basics to detailed explanations. There are examples of almost all the native fish, birds, mammals and insects that can be found in Mongolia, which I found quite fascinating. the dinosaur exhibit, however, is the piece de resistance. The first room has great examples of dinosaur eggs and the complete skeletons of some smaller dinosaurs that looked like a small stegosaurus (no pictures allowed here, unfortunately). If this was all there was, it would have been pretty cool, but on the way out a door that had been previously closed was now open and inside was the complete skeleton of what looked like a Tyrannosaurus Rex (it wasn't a T-Rex, but a smaller, similar version). Standing under the skull I felt a sense of awe that I have only felt a couple of times in my life. In addition to the fell skeleton, they had the pelvis of a large herbivore (three people could stand in the hole and a femur that was taller than me. The most intriguing thing, however, was a pair of "terrible arms" on the wall. The arms, claws and collar bones were the only parts of the dinosaur that were found, but they are huge. The forearm looked to be nearly two meters long. Since the full skeleton (like the T. Rex) had piddly little arms, it makes you wonder if there was a gigantic (even for a dinosaur) beast out there we have yet to discover or whether there was a race of normal sized dinosaurs with massive, talon-tipped, arms. Oddly enough, I had the museum almost to myself and even after describing this, couldn't convince anyone to go later.

After the museum, we reconvened to head up to the ger camps above downtown, where the people who are abandoning the nomadic way of life move, creating a slum-like area. Out of the one million people that live in UB (there are 2.7m in Mongolia), 800,000 live in the ger camps. The government allows everyone to stake out 700 square meters as their own, once in a lifetime, all you have to do is put a fence around it a report it. Thus the ger camps look like fully fenced lanes, with the traditional round ger (tent) inside. There is no running water in the ger camps, so it is trucked in to various stations five days a week, where people come with buckets to get water to cook and clean with. Electricity is dodgy at best and heating is typically done with wood or coal burning stoves.

We were showed around the camp by Troy, an American from New Jersey who has moved his family into the ger camp to try and help improve things there. He runs a community center that helps teach kids and adults English, helps young kids prepare for school (many kids have never held a pen before and dont have the fine motor skills and so struggle and drop out of school in year one or two), provides scholarships to university of local children and emergency food and heat. Most importantly, I think, he is training the locals to provide these services, and is about to move on to another site in the ger camps and start again.

After talking with Troy for a while I got the feeling that even though things are bad in UB right now, there is reason for hope. He says that while alcoholism and domestic abuse is rife there is little other crime. There are no gangs or groups that dominate the areas, keeping people down. There are few diseases and little to no AIDS, unlike in many African countries. Children at schools are all taught English, along with other standard subjects. Added to this, the government is starting to take notice of the plight of the people in the gers. Just a few weeks before a flood had killed 22 people near Troy's house and now the government is just starting to try to improve things. Also, more than 40% of Mongolia's population already lives in UB, so there is a limit to how many more people can settle there and so the government may eventually be able to catch up with infrastructure projects, if there is the political will.

After our tour we went to the school that Troy runs to talk with the local students and help them practice my English. Everyone that knows me will tell you that I am absolutely horrible at making small talk and here I had to talk with a nice 20 year old girl (I am not even going to try to write out her name, Mongolian names are almost impossible to pronounce for me, so working out how to spell it is even harder) for 45 minutes, who could only make small talk in English. It was horribly painful, though we did manage to get through and I got a bit of an insight about her life, which though tough, seems quite nice. She lives at home with her mother, brother, sister and two month old baby (who is very cute, I saw a photo). She is a hairdresser, plays keyboard in a rock band and likes playing basketball.

Speaking of English, the people of UB speak it very well and the cost me dinner. Verena and I bet which country, Russia or Mongolia, would speak better English (I bet Russia) and within 10 minutes of being in the country I had lost this bet. I made Verena choose the stakes and she said that the loser had to buy a dinner of dog in Beijing. How can you not like a girl like this?

Before dinner we headed out to a cultural dance and singing show. Like most of these shows that I have seen around the world, I really wonder how authentic they are: one song sounded so Irish that I expected Michael Flatley to come out and start river dancing, while another sounded like the opening to House of the Rising Sun. There was, however, a very good display of throat singing. There were also two very good contortionists. I could totally do everything that they did, if I didn't have hips, muscles, tendons or a really bad sense of balance.

For dinner we all went out to a local Mongolian restaurant, where Verena and I split a barbeque plate of mutton, beef, pork and horse. I think I have may had horse before, but either way, I really didnt like it, it is very gamey and has the texture of beef. Oh well, a couple of cold Chinggis beers washed away the taste.

The next morning we headed out to the ger camp, and stories from that will follow in the next blog. Skipping forward about 36 hours we are now back in UB, with a free afternoon to explore the city and the usual gang of four headed out to the Gangan Monestary, where there is a really big statue of Buddha, that was interesting to see. I did a circuit of the temple, spinning the prayer wheels and admiring the 1,000 smaller Buddha statues inside. As an aside, I have decided that on this trip I will try to find the largest prayer wheel that i can and spin it. So far I have found one that wsa about my height and you spin it by by a giant handle. Stay tuned to this spce for breaking news updates on this.

As another slight diversion, Russians and Mongolians seem to have this fascination with feeding pigeons. I really dont like these flying rats, but in almost every square I have been in the last two weeks, there are people selling small packets of birdseed to locals, who feed them to the flying disease carriers. I was almost tempted to buy some seed and throw the enite bag full up at once, just to see the birds go nuts. While I am on the topic of birds, there have been amazingly few in Russia and Mongolia. Pigeons, crows and finches are about all I have seen in the last two weeks. Given how many birds surround my place in Stamford, the silence is deafening.

Two days after pouring rain, the city had well and truely dried out and now dust was blowing everywhere. Givent most of the roads are either dirt or under construction, this means that walking the city is not that pleasant, especially since I had just broken my sunglasses. To escape the heat and dirt we went to the State History Museum, which is quite nice. Given how poor Mongolia is now, it is easy to forget that they once dominated Europe and invaded China on a regular basis 600 years ago. The displays of relics from the height of an empire are very interesting and well presented. There was also a good display of traditional dress from the local tribes. The modern history section was well presented and I hadn't realized that Mongolia was the second communist state in the world, after Russia of course. There was also a justifiably proud display of the student revolution that overthrew the communist government and resulted in the withdrawl of more than one million Russian troops from the country.

Our final dinner in Mongolia was a delicious Mongolian barbeque. For those who have never done this, you should go. It is buffet style, where you pick out all the meat, vegetable and noodle ingredients and they stir fry them in front of you. When combined with a deliciously tasty Mongolian beer, it makes a perfect meal bafore getting on a train for yet another overnight journey.

As we leave Mongolia, I will say that I truely enjoyed my time here and look forward to returning. I wouldn't spent much time in UB, but the picturesque countryside just begs for a return visit and more than just one magical night spent under the stars.