Überraschung Mongolia

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The last time I wrote I was just entering Mongolia and discovering the first landscapes of this beautiful country. 

A lot has happened since then and it’s time for an update!  

So after another long train ride I have finally reached the capital, Ulan-Bator, where I stayed just enough time to pay my respects to the statue of Chinggis Khan and learn a bit more about the country’s history in the national museum. Then I headed straight to Kharkhorin, the city that used to be the capital of the Mongol Empire (biggest empire in the world by the way), where I stayed with a nomad family for a week, about 30km away from the city. 

I was literally in the middle of nowhere. There were 2 gers (or yurt, in Russian, the traditional houses) and nothing else to be seen around. Nothing north, nothing south, nothing east, nothing west. Just the steppa everywhere. Water comes from a well, electricity is supplied by a couple solar panels. No network.

Six people live there : Bakhtokh, his wife Tsoltsmang and their 2 year old daughter in one ger, his brother, brother’s wife and 6 year-old daughter (who goes to school in the city) in the other ger. They have 700 sheeps, 300 goats, 100 cows, 40 horses and one cat, that walks around the steppa all day and comes back to warm up by the fire at night. Right now is the season when baby animals are born, which means the family had a lot of work. I helped them as much as I could, but my skills are very limited when it comes to grabbong goats by the horns or helping sheeps give birth so I was mostly cleaning up shit. All animals walk around free all day and come back around the camp on their own when the sun sets, which is pretty impressive. 

Twice a year the whole family takes down the gers and moves to another place. This nomadic lifestyle is slowly disappearing due to globalization and climate change. 

The temperatures in Mongolia have already risen by 2.2 Celsius degrees in the last 70 years. Winters are colder and summers are hotter, causing the death of many animals that cannot adapt to the drastic changes. Moreover, the Chinese competition for Kashmir wool, which is one of the primary sources of revenue for nomads, pushed many shepherds to buy more goats. With a high number of animals grazing the grass in the steppa doesn’t have the time to grow back in between seasons, there is nothing left to eat and more animals die. Shepherds are forced to sell their herds and go find jobs in the capital, where now 30% of the population lives and which has extreme levels of air pollution. It seems unfair that a country that has so much respect for nature would suffer that much from climate change. 

During my stay with the nomads I also had my first real encounter with Mongol cuisine. Since nothing grows it mostly consists of meat. A lot of meat. I was given horse meat dumplings fried in cow fat. My vegetarian stomach handles the food pretty well though, and it’s the most organic and locally produced meat I’ll ever see in my life.

After my stay with the family I joined a group of travellers back in Kharkhorin, that I had met while in Ulan-Bator. They are 3 guys : one from Argentina, one from Germany and one from Brasil. We all wanted to go to the far west of Mongolia, by the border with Russia, China and Kazakhstan. We separated in 2 groups with the intent to hitch hike. The first group managed to find a car, I ended up taking a mini van (after being repeatedly told by the police that there was no van and that they could take us in exchange for a big amount of money). Our van got stuck while crossing a river (no roads in Mongolia) and then broke a wheel, we then switched to a bus that took us to another bus and finally met the other group half way to our final destination. There the buses were all full, we found a car that could take us for a reasonable price, but the driver was just driving around the city talking on his cellphone and we couldn’t understand what was going on. He made us change cars 3 times and we finally left. Halfway the diver stopped and had us get on a minivan. It’s all very confusing when one doesn’t understand the language. After two full days traveling we finally reached Ulgii, where we could organize our trip to the Tavan Bogd national park, where we wanted to hike the highest peak of Mongolia. 

But nothing ever goes according to plan in this country. Our German friend says Mongolia is like an “Überraschung Ei” (Kinder surprise egg), we never know what we will find!  

So we paid for a driver and guide to the national park. The first night we arrived there, a huge snowstorm took us by surprise. The next morning the sky was clear, but it turned out our guide didn’t want to go to the peak. She had never been there in winter, she didn’t know the way and was absolutely not equipped. We changed our plans to do just a small hike in the mountain and ended with snow up to our waists and the guide walking behind us almost crying because she didn’t want to go. It was still very beautiful and we got to spend a couple nights in traditional families, eat a lot of dried meat and drink milk tea until death. We then went to visit a Kazakh family of eagle hunters that showed us their eagle and sang beautiful songs. 

Today for our last day we went horseback riding. I thought I was going to freeze to death but luckily another Kazakh family invited us for tea. People here keep feeding us all the time and I need to pee every hour because of the amount of tea we drink all the time. 

Then our Russian van broke. So we had to stay longer with the family and drink more tea until the driver could fix the van. We were introduced to a Kazakh tradition that consists of giving guests a full spoon of butter to eat at once. A couple of us almost threw up and the family was laughing a lot. 

So all in all we had a great time, met amazing people and saw beautiful sceneries, between snow-capped mountains, frozen rivers and the never-ending steppe. We are now on our way back to the city where we plan to have a party before the 4 of us split in 4 different directions. There should be vodka (another tradition to which we’ve been introduced by a very intimidating Mongol : drinking bowls of vodka. And its rude to refuse). 

I am a bit sad to leave my travel companions but looking forward to it at the same time, because one of them is just VERY machist and its starting to get on my nerves.  I now have to find a way to my next stop, Murun, where I’m going to volunteer for a week or so before I head to Russia. At least that’s the plan, but who knows what can happen in Überraschung Mongolia ?!

Give me some news!  

Love, 
Lucile