Mongolia (E)
Exploring nomadic landscapes...
07.09.2009
Mongolia is, without any doubt, predominantly rural. We were surprised to see the landscape change as soon as we approached the Russia/Mongolia border. It is amazing the difference between Mongolia and the very developed and forested Russia. Mongolia has great extensions of hilly steppes with nomadic people living in "gers," and huge amounts of livestock grazing everywhere. 
One of the first things that caught my attention was that Mongolians must stop to"worship" what they call Ovoos in order to have a save trip. These are normally located at the top of mountains/hills or on on a pile of rocks along the roads. 
The ritual consists in walking around the ovoos and throwing money to it. Some people also tie pieces of clothes of different colors (each color has a meaning but I can't remember that, sorry).
Our first excursion was to Terelj National Park... what can I say about this place? it is just georgeous!
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We spent the night in a "Ger" located at a small campsite runned by a local family. Gers are like tents that nomadic people live in, very easy to set, pack and go 
During our short stay in the park we went hiking, horseback riding, and rock climbing. And also enjoyed a beautiful night with some other fellow travellers. 
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After Terelj we joined Antoine (I hope this is how you spell it), a Vietnamesse-American guy, on a 5-day excursion to the Hintii region looking for the birth place of Chinggis Khaan. On the way to North East Mongolia we visited a Monastery that was destroyed during the Communist anti-religious campaing and now being restored, some bronze age grave yards and nice little villages. 
We also got to see some nomadic people in action! actually we saw a young couple getting water and transporting in with camels... that was really neat. 
On the 3rd day of the trip we finally got to our destination, the birth place of the recently proclaimed:" The Man of the Millenium" (sorry, I wrote cenctury before: my bad! the guy was born in 1200's!). This Mongolian conquered and ruled the largest empire of the world!! 
Sirrot (our driver) got a kick out of Jay's new look. He said that Jay's mustage made him look like Chinggis... 
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I am not sure about that!
The trip was long and very hard on the Russian van we were in. Although our driver was very skillful in mechanics and making the van work, we had to spend several hours for repairments/maintenance and pushing the car out of the river.
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The next two days we were driving back to the Mongolian Capital. The scenery was breath-taking.
We spent our last 3-4 days in Ulaan Baatar in a very nice (and cheap) appartment. It was the perfect time to take it easy, relax and explore the city as well as some other Montasteries and viewpoints.
We have just crossed the China border... the next stop: Beijing!
And yes! we went to see their Natural History Museum in Ulaan Baatar. They have an amazing collection of Dinosaur bones and eggs from the Gobi desert... it was awesome!
Wow. I had always imagined Mongolia to be more mountainous.. maybe I'm thinking of Tibet... Either way.. wow.
08.09.2009 by Ed