Going Native

The Nomadic Ger:

Gers are the semi-permanent houses of Mongolian nomadic people. On our trip we stayed in family guest gers, an extra ger that a family has set up for guests to sleep in.

Nomadic families move at least once a year from their summer ger to their winter ger, which is often set into a mountain or hill. They also have at least three animal herds (horses, goats, sheep, camels, yaks, and/or cows). What was most surprising is that all the gers we visited had solar panels for electricity and satellite dishes for TV. But they still cooked by fire and lived a simple life.

The ger itself is a white felt exterior with a large hole on the top. There is a small wooden frame and wooden door that is often painted with beautiful motifs. Inside the ger, the walls are lined with wool and tapestry-style hangings. Poles extend from the top of the wall structure to a round wooden hole in the ceiling, that is also held up by two poles going to the ground. These are also painted in a similar manner to the door.

Ger life centers around the stove. Not only is it in the center of the ger, but it offers heat in the winter, it is where you cook the food, and it is where everyone socializes.

A good example here, where Richard is cooking and Emily is hanging out.

Inside the ger there are beds with thick blankets (it gets quite cold at night in October!), a table and small benches, sometimes a wardrobe or small wash basin, and a wood-burning stove with stovepipe out the hole in the ceiling. Family gers also have Buddhist shrines and cabinets for cooking supplies. In the Gobi desert, families mainly burned dried dung (or as our guide put it, "Shit"); northern Gobi and central Mongolian families burned a mix of wood and dung. When cooking, families would take the top off the stove and put a large pot in the middle to cook soup, rice, noodles, or other foods.

A ger is a great place to stay, and gives you a glance into nomadic life. It's very typically Mongolian!

Mongolian Buddhist Temples:

About 70% of people in Mongolia are Yellow Hat Buddhist (same as Dalai Lama). We had a chance to visit a small monastery in a village, Erdene Zuu Monastery Museum in Kharkorum, and Ongiin Khid monastery ruins.

Buddhism came to Mongolia in the 13th century, but became widespread in the 15th century. Erdene Zuu was built in the 1500s but destroyed by the Soviets in the 1930s when they turned Mongolia communist. It was rebuilt in the 60s but remains a museum. Erdene Zuu does allow photography indoors, but there is a 7000 tugruk (nearly $7) fee. It is one of the only places I know where you can take pictures of the Buddha if you want to. It is heavily discouraged at all other working and non-working temples I know of. There are working monks on the property, but they live and work out of a separate building.

The temples were actually different than their counterparts in Korea, Taiwan, Hong Kong, and Japan.

The small monasteries are often two to three main buildings with a collection of dharma wheels and a small Buddhist shrine. Blue silk fabric is a main feature of all the temples; we think they are for good luck.

Ongiid Khid are ruins of a monastery in the Gobi desert. It is quite a large complex, consisting of two dozen or so building foundations and a large shrine. There is a new monastery building there now, but the highlight is walking among the ruins and looking at the scenery. Ongiid Khid overlooks a nice river and is set into the hills, so it's a beautiful location. When we went the tourist ger camps were all closed, so we had the site to ourselves.

I found a piece of petrified wood believe it or not.

I Went Through the Desert on a Horse With No Name...

I had to post this, because it was probably the funniest thing that happened on our desert tour. We pulled into a gas station between Kharkorum and UlanBaatar, and we saw a man pull up on a horse. That was strange, but what happened next was even stranger. He went inside for about 5 minutes. I'm assuming, to convince the staff to do something that would never happen in the United States; he wanted them to fill up a one liter juice bottle with gasoline. I'm guessing that his motorcycle ran out of gas, so he went into the village by horse to get enough gasoline to drive his motorcycle to town to fill it up. They actually filled his juice bottle with gas, he gave them approximately $1.50 (that's nearly $4.50 per gallon), and then got on the horse and rode off.

This picture is 100% real.

The Good, The Bad, The Weird

Back from a 9-day Gobi Desert tour, and feeling refreshed after a nice, hot shower!
As we wrote last, we decided to go on a tour to the Gobi Desert in Mongolia, and were able to experience how nomad people live.

The Good:

• Mongolia is beautiful. As we drove 5-6 hours/day our first two days, we saw the changing topography from grassland steppe to grassy desert ("peach fuzz") to sandy dunes. Many of this change happened within 10 minutes of driving! In addition, far off mountain ranges and hilly lands helped to create a surreal landscape that is reminiscent of cowboy 'great plains' and spaghetti westerns. The only difference is this landscape is dotted with gers, or nomadic people's houses, and animal herds (horses, goats, sheeps, cows, camels, and sometimes yaks).

A lake in the desert with herds of horses

The white hills. Pictures can't do it justice.

Camels with the sunset. Very Discovery Channel.

Yolyn-am Canyon. Those tiny horses once conquered the majority of Asia, and large parts of Eastern Europe.

Sand dunes in the Gobi.

Bayanzag, forest of 'trees' in the Gobi

• Mongolia is HUGE. Like I said before, some days we had 5-6 hours of driving to get to our destination. Most of this driving was done on dirt roads, most of which were there only because other jeeps have driven there before. Every day the visibility was around 5+ miles in any direction. In addition, after looking at a map of Mongolia, we only covered a sliver of the country; maybe the state of California. This tells us how big and varied the country is, and makes us want to come back to experience the lakes, mountains, and trees of the northern area.

Land.

• Mongolian people are very friendly outside of UlanBaatar. We've been told that UlanBaatar can sometimes be dangerous. At first, Richard thought that meant knives and muggings, but really people mean pick pocketing. Outside UlanBaatar however, people were always warm and welcoming. The final two nights in the desert were excellent examples of this. Our 7th night in the desert, we went to a ger that our guide said was one of the most friendly in the desert. We used sign language and a little translation to talk to our hosts at two different family gers, father and son, and drank airag (alcoholic mare's milk, more on that later) until late at night. We even played a few Mongolian drinking games.

Cute Mongolian kid and horse milking

• Mongolian food is great, but basically variations on noodles, dumplings, mutton, and soup. Mutton is the most prevalent meat source in Mongolia. They make it with stir fried noodles and veggies, inside dumplings, boiled in stews, and they even eat the fat on its own. Dumplings, Emily's favorite food anywhere, come in fried and boiled varieties. Our favorite dumplings were filled with sheep lung, liver, and stomach. Noodles make a wonderful filler, and Mongolians use them in both soups and in stir fried dishes. Soups tie all these foods together. Soups can contain a mix of any of the aforementioned foods, and are apparently eaten year-round. Although it may seem like Mongolian food offers little variation, it is very tasty, and we were never bored with it. We did get to have a few things, like camel goulash (very tasty), that offered a change of pace. Food was always accompanied or followed by Mongolian milk tea (green tea with milk and salt).

Camel goulash and mutton soup with bread, potato salad, and fried dumplings respectively.

The list could continue on, because Mongolia, as we've experienced it, is a wonderful and beautiful country ready to be experienced. It has a big city with everything that offers in UlanBaatar, but the rest of the country is ready to be explored. We both want badly to come back, and could even picture ourselves living here in the future if only for a year or two.

The Bad:

• No showers. One of the only bad things that Emily could think of was not showering throughout the tour. We stayed at family gers, which meant no running water and spotty electricity. In the desert, opportunities to bathe or shower rarely, and in our case did not, present themselves. The dry nature of the desert kept us from smelling too terribly, and it made the shower after the tour that much better.

• Dust. The other was definitely the dust. We went to the desert during the fall, so the summer rains were gone, and the snow had not fallen yet. Therefore, it was extremely dry and dusty. Dust and sand got on top of and inside everything. We even had a bit of a camera malfunction with our Powershot, because dust/sand probably got into to the telescoping mechanism. It's fine now though.

Just look at my right (your left) boot...

The Weird:

• The nomadic lifestyle is very much alive and well in Mongolia. Our guide told us that every family moves at least once a year, but more often than not twice. It made us wonder how anyone got mail, or if anyone even got mail, and how Mongolia could every be certain of its population. It isn't so much strange as a bit quirky I suppose.

Camel riding was a highlight.

• There are no rules to anything in Mongolia, or so it seems. Traffic laws absolutely do not exist, and even traffic signs are few and far between. The drivers know exactly where they're going, but only because of experience. We talked to people from another tour, and their driver, who was relatively young, had to stop to ask directions twice just to make sure he knew where he was going. Also, any person who complains about traffic and bad driving where they're from should spend one hour on the congested streets of UlanBaatar. It will make anywhere else look like heaven by comparison.

Bumpy dirt roads through the desert.

• Korean people are everywhere! The first thing we noticed after we arrived, is that Korean products are everywhere. Cars, clothes, and food have all made the leap thanks to Korean businessmen. Even GS Caltex, a Korean gas company, is heavily represented in UlanBaatar. As we walked the streets searching for food, we found that Korean restaurants far outnumbered other foreign fare. Yonsei University has donated money for a hospital, and Hongik University gave money for what looks like an apartment complex/cultural exchange center. Even though Mongolia shares a border with China, Korea has definitely thrown money behind developing Mongolia.

Yes, that is Korean 라면 (ramen).

• Schools. Nomadic children are often hours from any small village, let alone a large town. We learned from our guide that children will live in a village where there is a school Monday-Friday, and then go back to their families during the weekend to work on the "farm". In addition, all children wear uniforms like in any Asian nation. The boys had to wear suits and the girls wore skirts and jackets. It was quite cute seeing a 7 year old boy wearing an oversized suit walking around on a dusty road with wandering dogs and gers in the background.