Mongolia Adventure: Redux

Just got back into UB this evening, washing the dust out of my ears, repacking the bags for the train tomorrow morning to Beijing... Crashed into a good hostel (another $6 per bed night!) and cooked up the last of my groceries for an archeology grad student and a kid who has been living with a nomad host family for the last month.  Good times.  As per usual, the time here just wasn't enough, but for an ad-hoc trip to the boonies for 5 days, I think we did pretty well.  Late night re-cap:

Day 1: Driving out of UB in a well-stocked jeep/van with a kind faced driver and 2 other couples, fighting unbelievable city traffic and then free onto one of the best roads in Mongolia: mostly paved.  We stopped at a roadhouse for lunch, and I had my first taste of Mongolian tea: there is actually no tea, it is either yak or sheep milk with hot water, some rice starch, and salt. I think it may be an acquired taste.  In late afternoon, we dodged off the pavement and straight onto the steppe, hopping from one dirt semi-track to another, as our driver maneuvered us closer to a series of hills that had the unmistakable geology of Joshua Tree NP...  We passed several ger camps and then went into a canyon that ended at a small temple, with a caretaker family who opened up a tiny building - the woman I think is a lama, and supposedly has soothsaying abilities, but she just gave us a careful smile and let us wander around... a few other shrines, the ruins of an ancient wall, and a tiny brick house built into the cliffs, with very tattered prayer flags hanging under the eaves.  A few km away, we stopped for our first ger stay, with a family on the edge of the Mongol Els, a set of small sand dunes that some people call the "mini Gobi".  Absolutely beautiful evening.  The family served us some mutton soup for dinner, and the small stove in the center of the ger kept us cozy.  A few candles on the table, some vodka, and we played card games.  Maria and I both had bought a pouch of sheep ankle bones in UB, hoping to learn the popular country game- as our hostess came in with hot water, she saw us attempting to figure it out, and her face lit up, she came over and expertly flicked the bones onto the table to show us the different sides for the game, then she quickly went out and came back with 8 more, apparently a larger number needed for so many people.  She played a few rounds with us until we got the hang of it, and then gifted the bones for our collection.

Day 2: We said our goodbyes in the morning, and visited the inside of the family's ger, where there were several strips of sheep? goat? hanging from the center circle of the ger's roof, drying like we might dry salmon.  We asked if this had been part of our soup the night before, and made appreciative sounds :)  We visited the neighbors and had a chance to ride camels down to the dunes.  Couldn't pass up the chance, and had a blast.  Camels are comfy!  Our guide was an elderly man in full traditional dress, who sang softly as he led us through the sand, and on the way back pulled a long pipe from a pouch in his elegantly tooled boots and began to happily smoke.  We left the Els and navigated back to pavement, headed for Kharakhorin, an ancient Chinggis Khan capital city.  Not much is left of the original city, as the remains were used to build a monastery in the 16th century.  Had some goat dumplings from a vendor, and then rambled around the monastery for a few hours: colors more subdued here than in the city, fading into the yellow grasses and looking half-abandoned.  At the far end is a more contemporary building where a group of monks were finishing up their daily chants, with much horn blowing and cymbol bashing.  Their dark red and saffron robes are such a contrast with the landscape here, a blast of color.  Still a long day ahead, we began the off-road part of the trip, up the Orkhon valley on a confusing network of rough dirt tracks, sketchy river fordings, and sometimes just open terrain.  In the late afternoon we went up a side valley to the beginning of a beautiful larch forest, the base of a mountain that had another small temple at the top.  I don't think that even Saltery Rd. could compete with the next 5 km, but the clearing at the top was a mystical place, colored flags strung throughout the surrounding trees, a single ger with a caretaker family, and then the steep cliff up to a tiny monastery set into the rock.  The place was high, crisp mountain air, the view over the mountains and plains panoramic, and dark storm clouds were sweeping up the valley.  It was a completely peaceful place, and I thought, I could stay here for a long time... Above the temple was a rocky peninsula with a more shamanistic ovoo (large pile of stones) wound through with colored scarves.  The surrounding larch forest was entirely gold, and kept flickering in and out of the evening sun.  I didn't want to leave.  But, another 3 hours into the dark and horrendous dirt tracks weaving up the valley, and we finally arrived (mostly) in one piece at the ger camp for our next 3 nights.

Day 3:  High steppe is bitter cold in early morning, we kept to our wee stove in the ger until the sun had a chance to heat up the plains.  Our camp was right next to the Orkhon waterfall, with a lovely gorge filled with birch and larch at its base.  Several hours climbing around on the cliffs of the gorge, walking in the warm sun by the river, finding more small ovoos with their bright scarves scattered throughout.  I hiked up a nearby mountain in the afternoon, through a forest that had long been selectively logged by the many ger camps in the valley, up to a windy view of the steppe.  Came down at sunset, walking past neighboring gers, nearly full moon rising.

Day 4:  Another late morning.  As I walked out toward the falls, our hostess and her husband and (I think) granddaughter were separating nursing yaks from their mothers, so that they could be milked into a large white bucket.  They let me watch for awhile and the little girl and I played with the camera.  I gave a shot at riding a Mongolian horse in the afternoon - a funny experience because I had more of a recalcitrant mule...  for awhile I rode my guide's horse, with it's high wooden saddle, which I am still feeling today.  It is something to watch the herdsmen here ride - the horses have short legs and their gait is an extremely smooth canter - the men don't seem to move at all.  My guide was 23, round face windchapped red, with no more than a handfull of English words, but we laughed a lot...  He tried to read my fortune in ankle bones as we rode, and sang what sounded like the Mongolian equivalent of cowboy lullabies.  At one point we were able to coax the horses into a fast canter, shouting "choo" and nudging with our heels- he kept close to my side to make sure I was ok, and it felt like we were racing down the valley.  I walked up to a spring in the evening, which had a flow of dark lava rocks at it's edge, a place that felt like new.  Walked back down in late light, passing gers, sheep, goats, yaks.  Got together with my traveling peeps for some vodka down at the falls at sunset. 

Day 5: The long drive back.  12 hours of jolting.  Envying the many local people I saw on motorcycles, clearly not on a day-long ride.  The time it would take to see more of this country...