The Mongolian Outback: Day 1
As a kid I had a short bucket list of places I wanted to go to - The Darien Gap, Komodo Island, somewhere to see lava, and Mongolia. As I grew older and learned more about the world my list expanded, but Mongolia was there from the beginning. I remember the photos in National Geographic of Mongolians out on the wide Altiplano with faces that were flat, narrow-eyed, wind burnt, yet soft and strong at the same time. And the horses. They lived on horses with what appeared to be without walls, fences, or any barriers.
At 8:30am on July 3, we were packed and aboard our yellow Hyundai Starex van along with our driver Bayaná and our guide Toya to begin our adventure.
Bayaná was older, in his late fifties early sixties, but strong and quiet. I recognized him as one of the two men that had picked us up at the airport the night before. Bayaná had been driving the Mongolian outback for 17 years and didn’t speak any English. Our guide Toya was younger, around 21, Mongolian but studying international business & tourism in Shanghai, China, she spoke English and would prove to be masterful with Vicente, as well as extremely helpful.
Here is the route we took:
On the way out of town we stopped off at a supermarket. Were told this would be the largest supermarket we would see for the next 11 days and to stock up on any snacks or additional items we’d want. We picked up two travel towels, and a bunch of cookies & snacks for the road. I also picked up a 2 litre of beer. Yes, Mongolians know how to do their bulk beer well. Our plan included driving for an average of 4-5 hours per day so I thought the beer would be nice. I also picked up a bottle of Mongolian vodka. As we found in Ulaanbaatar, it was slim pickings in the supermarket for fruits and non-root vegetables. Vicente loves bananas so we bought half of the roughly 8 total bananas available in the supermarket for 75 cents a piece. The bananas cost more than my 2 liter of beer.
We continued out of town driving till lunch. We stopped off at a roadside restaurant that would very quickly and effectively set our uninformed culinary expectations. There were no menus and nothing in English. From our guide Toya we learned there were about 3 options to choose from, which she described as:
- Soup, dough, meat
- Dough, meat, vegetables
- Milk tea
Everyone could order one “entree” and the milk tea so we ordered a few of each. The milk tea came in a bowl and was a combination of around 1⁄4 Lipton tea, ¾ sheep milk, and a lot of salt. The soup, dough, meat turned out as a broth with noodles and sheep meat. The dough, meat, vegetables turned out as noodles, sheep meat, and a couple of sliced carrots. I’ve eaten my fair share of lamb at middle eastern restaurants and even a “Mongolian Grill’ in the US. This was nothing like that. The only seasoning as salt and each bite came with an overpowering flavor of sheep fat. It was tough to put down but we did our best. Possibly due to acclimatizing to the long van rides and the limited food options, Vicente had an eruption and hit Soledad so he had to go to time out.
Our stark introduction to the Mongolia outside of the capital city would continue outside. At high altitude without mountains, trees, or bushes as barriers, the wind was strong and constant. You didn’t just feel the wind, you heard it and often saw it. And the bathrooms… welp, to say there would be no western toilets would be an understatement. These would be the conditions for the rest of our journey and I’ve got to give major props to Soledad and Milagro because they just took it in stride.
We continued on the dirt road toward Baga Gazriin Chulu. Along the way we slowed down a couple of times to navigate through herds of sheep and goats.
Baga Gazriin Chulu was our first “site” to see. Everywhere across the rock formations people had stacked rocks. Some piles had developed further into formal ovoos (more on that in a future post). While hiking around we saw a herd of horses taking shelter from the wind. We started to realize that we were seeing lots of animals and very few humans. Forty-five percent of the 3 million Mongolians live in Ulaanbaatar, and 75% live in a “city”. That leaves very few inhabitants in the rest of the country. In fact, Mongolia is the most sparsely populated sovereign state in the world. However there are many animals. There are as many horses as people in Mongolia, roughly 6 times more goats, 6 times more sheep, an equal number of cattle and yaks, and one Bactrian camel per every 3.5 humans. Outside of the few towns and cities, fences are pretty much non-existent. Thus, as you travel across Mongolia part of the memories you create are of herds and herds of sheep, goats, camels, and horses out on their own, in a pack, free-ranging.
After Baga Gazriin Chuluu we continued to our camp. We would spend our first of several nights in a ger, the typical domicile for nomadic Mongolians, a few miles outside of Adaatsag.
The Mongolian ger is synonymous with the Russian yurt and has been a part of Central Asia for 3,000 years. The ger is like a portable super tent, with one round room, wooden columns, walls made of wooden lattice combined with animal wool and hides, and rope. A ger has one door that always faces south (toward the sun) and no windows around the sides, but a round window at the top that can be opened to cool off when there’s no rain, or closed to preserve heat as well as provide protection during the rain. When the roof window is open and/or it’s windy outside, Mongolians often tie something heavy, like a rock, to a rope attached to the ceiling to keep the ger from moving or potentially blowing away.
Nomadic families live in gers so you can imagine that privacy pretty much gets thrown out the non-existent window in the one room ger. Two to three times a year the family takes down the ger, moves 5 to 10 miles away, and sets it up again. This process used to occur on horseback, but today’s Mongolian nomads use trucks and motorbikes. Each ger looks the same from the outside, but inside reflects the different paint and central pole top design of the family and region. Our gers typically had a small, knee high table in the middle we’d use to eat at and the requisite 1 inch mattress that we laid our sleeping bags over.
I was a little concerned that the ger we would be sleeping in was only about 5 feet from what appeared to be the road passing through the area. It wasn’t much of a mitigation strategy, but our ger had 6 beds around it’s perimeter and we slept in the four furthest away from the road with our heads on the far side of each bed. I say “appeared” because roads in rural Mongolia are more like a series of generally parallel heel paths in the shortgrass that intertwine, combine, and separate every few hundred meters.
Before sleeping, however, the kids got the chance to chase the local herd of goats and sheep. Fun times.
We also got our first taste of what our guide cooked dinners would be. Our first night’s meal consisted of fried chicken nuggets acquired at a convenience-type supply store during the day, potatoes, carrots, mushrooms, corn, and rice.
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