Khan's Country

The Luck Doesn’t Stop Here

So far my expectations for Mongolia and my life here have found little common ground, not that that’s necessarily bad. This trend continued during my first trip to Mongolia’s countryside. Saturday morning I planned to catch a press bus to go see—and then write – about Chinggis Khan’s Calvary, an exhibition of 14th century Mongol warfare. Instead, I spent the day visiting the ruins of a Buddhist monastery, a lama’s (the human kind) home and tourist ger camps.

As I waited at wide and empty Sukhbaatar square for a press bus that never came, I thought, “this is just my luck. I can never do things the easy way. Now I have to hitchhike like a crazy person, asking to be taken to the Monol Hordes.” Moments later my editor called me and after some deliberation, decided that he and his family would accompany me to the countryside. I realized that, no, this is just my luck. Something goes wrong and I get bailed out.

I don’t really have a problem with this pattern. It has served me well to date, but I am embarrassed to admit that I’ve relied so heavily on other people, especially Sumiyabazar my editor, during my first week. I am doing fine here. I have an apartment; I have a registered visa; I know how to find my way to work; I even know how to order soup now, but I couldn’t have done any of it without help.

I was anxious enough about my first story not to reflect on the debts I owed, I was just glad to get a ride however. Sumiya—I called him Sumi until it became obvious that it wasn’t his name—, his adorable two-year old daughter, his wife, and her sister picked me up at the square. We stopped for breakfast on the way. I never made a habit of eating mutton and drinking mutton flavored tea for breakfast, but after Saturday I’m kinda used to it.

Buuz Cruise

We chowed down on Buuz, steamed dumplings with mutton, and I was reminded that men in Mongolia should eat fast. Mongolian Mother’s train their sons to eat rapidly, because if you’re a slow eater in the army, the officer stop giving you food. Mongolian women and children have adopted speed eating as well, and I should’ve fit right in, except that cooks here server their food piping hot. It’s so hot I think you can still here it crying in pain, or maybe that’s just me. I salvaged my pride with a heroic last minute gobble to clear my plate before the toddler, and then we went on our way toward the countryside’s rolling green hills.

All air pollution disappeared half a mile outside Ulaanbaatar, and I got my first sense of what most of Mongolia looks like. A closer view of the hills reveals that I half-dreamed their uniform green beauty on the cloudy day. They have more rocks, more color variation, and more character than I originally thought. They remind me of slightly pointier versions of California hills in winter. Unlike home, however, grab-bag herds of gorat, sheep, cows and horses, and white tents called ger dot appear regularly.

First Ger, It’s All Right

We rented a ger outside a hotel to rest before going to the Calvary show. About eight feet tall at its highest point, a ger looks something like a more compact circus tent. Inside they’re surprisingly well insulated. The proportions of ger furniture won’t accommodate your average fat person, and the table and stool inside approach play house dimensions. The door to every ger ever erected faces South, because as Sumiya said, “that’s where the Chinese come from.” Mongolians do not generally care for the Chinese.

As another pleasant surprise, my editor’s parent’s joined us. His mother is a boisterous longtime employee of the Mongol News Company. She introduced herself to me as the woman who sometimes comes into the UB Post office screaming “SUMIYA, SUMIYA!” His step father is a mild mannered seventy year-old professor of biological sciences at a university. They make a cute odd couple. He carries an umbrella with him and sits in the back of the car while she drives.

The Show Khan Wait

After more Buuz and milk tea (which is part mutton oils, part salt, and part milk, but I don’t think any tea) we headed to the Chinngis Khan spectacle. The price was unfortunately out of our league, however, and the owners were not accepting press passes. We slunk off and parked our group’s two cars about thirty meters away from the exhibit hoping to catch a peak from a distance, but a diligent parking attendant shooed us away.

Deprived of a spectacle of war, we headed to a peace spectacle, an old Buddhist monastery that once housed hundreds of lamas. I got to drive the parents on the familiar right side of the road, but in a Japanese car with the wheel on the right side. I was not great at judging the cars dimensions or avoiding potholes, and, even though Sumiya’s Mom seemed like she got a kick out of my driving, I think both elderly people were relieved when my time at the wheel ended.

Lama Drama: The Russians Came

For a peace spectacle, the monastery had a violent history. Russians burned it down and killed the lamas in the 1960’s, but the area now serves as a national park and wild life preserve with some ruins and some newly constructed Buddhist buildings.

Situated in a partially wooded valley, the area houses evergreens and gabby brooks. Eagles love this place and their presence borders on infestation, albeit a magnificent one. Walking around the place my Mongolian Companions helped decipher the history lessons on display. An old bark tepee provided an example of the housing northern reindeer herders use while giant, intricately detailed Caldrons once held the boiling meals for any number of lamas.

A little museum contained taxidermy from the area (mini-bears, lynx, eagles, wolves, and marmot) and some native art (feather collages, carved roots, and rock drawings). The three men braved the midday heat and trekked to the ruined monastery, adjacent to the one remaining original building from the religious compound. Inside the standing structure, statues of Buddha and other relics sit, waiting patiently for visitors to put money and bow in front of them.

The nearby remains—the Russians did a thorough job—now look like many other destroyed brick buildings which nature reclaimed, though pictures suggest it was once beautiful in a man-made way.

The Old Man and the Tea

Proof that Ruskies didn’t exterminate every lama in the area during their occupation of Mongolia emerged when we visited a cousin of Sumiya’s stepfather, the oldest lama in the area. He looked his 95 years, but as we walked into his ger just a mile away from the nature preserve he greeted us actively. Seated on small stools, we faced the old man in the ger back as he said some prayers. Mongolian’s reserve the northern ends of gers for the most respected objects and things like books, TV, Buddhist relics, family photos, and men. The fronts are for everything else.

As the lama chanted, his wife served up steaming hot mutton soup and of course as much milk tea as we could drink. The lama burned incense, on a tray, handing it to his guests who then passed rotated it around their backs in a circle two to three times. He also passed out snuff, which I scooped onto my fingers but never tried, before returning the bottle with my right hand.

More Than Appealing

Our last excursion took us to a tourist ger camp where we stayed just long enough to eat a final mutton meal, with vegetables some vegetables this time. We walked briefly around the camp, looking at the numbered, nicely decorated gers, and the often impressive wheeled platforms they stood on. I thought that these were just for show, but Sumiya said Mongols would hitch these massive structures to ox and then sneak up to China.

I arrived home just after sunset. My pores smelled of mutton and I had nothing to write an article about, but I’d have to say that the day was my favorite in Mongolia.