Hungry, Hungry Holiday
There’s no bad time to eat mutton and drink vodka in Mongolia, but there’s never a better time than Tsagaan Sar. The holiday, which came late in February this year, literally translates to ‘White Moon’ or ‘White Month’. It serves as the nation’s primary New Year celebration and gives people a chance to visit relatives around the city and the countryside. Any given family will make up to 1,000 buuz (mutton dumplings) for guests during the four or five days off work, and buy a corresponding amount of vodka.
Chinggis Khan moved the holiday from summer to spring, making it an occasion to feast after the lean winter while welcoming some warm weather. Everything being relative, 5-15 degrees feels great after a Mongolian January, and with Ulaanbaatar suddenly quiet, Tsagaan Sar offered a chance to walk around the city, and catch up with some of my favorite statues.
Stars and Statues
Stern likenesses of political figures—like honorific medals and Russian soldier hats—are part of Mongolia’s cultural inheritance from the USSR. The best statues around town are a forward-leaning Lenin, a diminutive cast of Zorig (the murdered democratic reformer), and a dynamic Sukhbaatar (an independence hero), who sits atop a horse on his eponymous square.
Sukhbaatar looks kind of like he’s waving to a bronze Chinggis Khan, reclining in the Parliament Building’s central alcove, but this statue has too much of a “Luke, I am your father” thing going on to crack my top three. Plus, there’s a better monument in his honor. You can see Chinggis’ face everywhere from beers to 
barbershops, but it comes out most clearly in a 40-foot Chinggis edifice just east of Ulaanbaatar.
Tsagaan Sar is not only a chance to traipse around the city, but also to get out of it, so a group of friends and I headed out to see this giant, to spend a few days at a ger camp, and to get a taste of traditional- Mongolian holiday hospitality. Our guide and host for the trip was a guy named Aigii, a broad Mongolian who graduated from UW Stout, and who told stories, mostly about ass kickings delivered by him.
Haunt Me History
Driving toward the extra-large Chinggis, we passed an isolated cluster of conifers—the 100 Trees, Aigii told us. Once upon a time Mongols ambushed and slaughtered a contingent of Turks and their prince at the site; since then, it’s been haunted. Don’t count the trees because it’s bad luck (I don’t think there are actually 100), but definitely don’t fall asleep or disturb anything in the outcrop. Of the two people Aigii knew who had done either of these things, one went insane after seeing a faceless woman in white calling out to him from horseback, and another broke his leg soon when he fell from a horse.
We arrived at the statue. This Chinggis looks like a battle-ready tinman, and reflects the sun remarkably w
ell from the top of his massive horse. An article in the UB Post referred to it as one of the modern wonders of the world. I wouldn’t go that far, but anything that big with a face is pretty incredible.
After 15 minutes, we returned to our van and drove off the main road, across a small bridge and to an encampment of eight gers and three small buildings. We were the only people staying there besides the caretakers, the security guard and Aigii and a big dog. Better yet, we were near the 100 Trees. That'd be our first destination on a hike around the mountainous areas surrounding the camp.
