Mongolia

Losing your luggage, finding your reservation canceled, or in my case, losing my train ticket can all happen to even the most experienced of travelers. Mishaps are what make traveling adventurous. Without them, travel might as well be another commute to the office. They also make great stories.

I was in Mongolia to celebrate its octocentennial. Genghis Kahn founded the Mongolian state in 1206 by uniting the Mongol tribes. He and successive khans went on to conquer most of the know world. At its height in the 13th century, the Mongolian empire stretched from Korea to the border of Hungary.

My destination in Mongolia was its most famous lake, a 136 kilometer long sliver of water near the Russian border, named Lake Khovsgol. Surrounded by mountains and grasslands filled with wild flowers it has some of Mongolia’s most beautiful scenery.

At the lake, I wanted to learn to ride a horse. I wanted to learn what it might have been like to have been a Mongol warrior riding to battle across the steppes. I wanted to ride across the grasslands, camp beneath the stars and be free.

Unfortunately for me, no one at the train station understood English. I could not explain how I had lost my ticket and wanted to buy a new one. The golden horde, after all, had never reached the British Isles. But they almost did.

In 1241 the Mongols were set to march into Germany and Italy after having defeated Polish-German and Hungarian forces. Only news of the death of Genghis Kahn’s son, the ruling Khan at the time, saved Europe. Had the Mongols reached England, the uniformed guard stopping me from entering the just closed ticket office might have understood me. As I pantomimed my desire to buy a new ticket, the green passenger train, with my 561 Tugurt, $5, empty sleeper berth to Erdent, started out of the capital. The long green line chug-chugged-chugged, gaining momentum, shrieking as its metal couplings strained and pulled the suffering train. I watched. I stood in the rain.

Sometimes mishaps happen. And sometimes they lead to better things.

Finding A Ride

The next day, I was waiting in a parking lot swarming with aggressive drivers wanting my fare. I struggled to communicate.

I felt strange and out of place. I wanted to speak Chinese to these men with Asian faces, but I was no longer in China.

I had just finished a semester studying Chinese in Beijing. At the border between Mongolia and China, I had hurled quick witted pejoratives at a cab driver who wanted to short me two kuai, about 25 cents. Once across the border I was not able to buy a simple pen.

Being unable to communicate was but a small hindrance to visiting an otherwise wonderful land.
Mongolia has what China doesn't. After throwing off the shackles of communism in the early 90’s, Mongolia today is a democratic country. The population is small, there is clean air and water, wide open spaces and mountains you can actually see. UB, what the locals call their capital Ulan Batar, has a population of only one million. Half of all Mongolians live there. A city of one million in China isn’t even really a city. It is more like a village.

I found UB to be a charming little capital, completely devoid of anything Chinese. There were no Chinese characters, no neon Chinese flashing signs, no Chinese words on the menus and no pork, rice or noodles. Food was now beef, bread, potatoes, yogurt and cheese, a welcome relief after over two years of rice.

In the last hundred years, the Mongolians have been influenced not by their neighbors to the south, the Chinese, but their powerful friends to the north, the Russians.

In UB the buildings all look Russian. There is Russian vodka in the stores. Mongolian woman, in line with Russian fashion magazines, wear high heels and short skirts. The Mongolian language has even adapted the Russian alphabet.

The only thing in UB that struck me as being un-Russian were the numerous used South Korean taxi cabs and South Korean fried chicken restaurants.

The complete void of anything Chinese can be ascribed to the Mandarins having ruled and persecuted the Mongolians for several hundred years. Russians are revered because they gave the Mongolians guns to fight the Chinese in the 1920’s.

While I heard other tourists complain the city was polluted and the architecture was blocky and drab, I laughed. UB had clear skies. You could actually see the surrounding mountains. UB was a pleasant retreat from China. Most carping tourists, on their way east along the Siberian railroad, hadn’t made it to Beijing yet.

Back at the parking lot, the Mongolian drivers all wanted my fare. They all promised me they could take me to Lake Khovsgol.

While traveling I have learned the hard way, to never trust cab and bus drivers. One is liable to get ripped off trusting such crafty cozeners.

I haggled and tried to find out just where the drivers were going. I didn’t succeed. The communication barrier was too great.

At last, one driver handed me an orange plastic phone-an unusual device that looked like a normal phone but had no cord. It ran on batteries and had a small snub antenna.( Vendors carry the phones around on the sidewalks or set up shop sitting on a fold up chair in front of the lone department store in the capital. They let you make phone calls for a few cents. It’s Mongolia’s answer to public phone booths.)

“Hello!” an American voice asked.

“Hello,” I said.

“Hello,” the voice said again.

“Hello,” I said.

We were stupidly repeating the same word, riding a merry-go round of identical vocabulary, like two village idiots, Laurel and Hardy in their famous sketch of “Who’s on First?”

“Who is this? What do you want?” the North American asked, perturbed.

“I don’t know. This driver just handed me the phone,” I said.

In Mongolia the rule is when you can’t understand a foreigner call Dean.

Dean was a former Peace Core volunteer who had taught English in a remote northern town. He was in his early 30’s with light brown hair. He was enthusiastic and passionate about Mongolia, its culture and its people. He had lived in Mongolia for over four years and will stay for many more-helping the people because he loves it, a true ambassador of American good will. He was also a rare white man who could speak the local lingo.

Fortunately, he was also just a block away, waiting for a van to go to Moron, the same city I needed to go to to get to Lake Khovsgol.

Dean was not alone. With him was a Mongolian named Sardamba. Sardamba was his friend, who had also been his mentor while he was in the Peace Core. Sardamba worked as the English school teacher in Hatgal, the town on the edge of Lake Hosvgol where I was going.

Sardamba had a flat top, was short but of stout build. He smiled and had an easy manner but did not speak much.

I later learned, he had been a police officer before becoming a school teacher. He did not strike me as an intimidating law enforcer, a dictatorial tyrant who might rule his classroom with a stick. Rather, he seemed warm and friendly-a trustworthy man.

I had been lucky to meet Dean and Sardamba. Sardamba, to supplement his meager income as a school teacher, helps tourists in the summer visit the area around Lake Khovsgol. I had found a fluent English speaking guide before I had even started my trip.

I had read an advertisement in the back of a travel magazine wanting $4,000 for a horseback riding trip to Mongolia. Sardamba promised to arrange a 10 day horseback riding trip, with his two younger brothers as guides, for $6 a day. Missing the train had been a blessing.

Flying Coffins

The vehicles of choice in Mongolia are Russian built white minivans. They look like VW Vanagons, popular with hippies in the 60’s, but without the painted flowers and with a higher wheel clearance to charge across small thrashing streams.

In the local English press, the vans are affectionately called flying coffins. Drivers pack more people into the vans than there are seats and drive dangerously fast.
A van only begins its journey when the driver can not possibly pack more people into the van. In our van there were 16 passengers, three in the front with the driver and 12 in the back.
A sleeping berth on a slow moving train would have been far more comfortable than taking the local transport to Moran, but I would have missed another chance for a story.

Most tourists skip even the train and take the two hour plane flight to Moron and then a two-hour van ride to Lake Hosgvol. They skip more than the butt ache and misery of riding in a coffin, however. They miss the fun of breaking down, the adventure of crossing streams and the cultural opportunity to mix it up with the locals.

I am glad I did not travel by train or by plane because I experienced something extraordinary. The locals gave a stirring choral concert nearly the entire way. Westerners trapped in a car that rattled, bumped and shook violently while sitting on the razor thin edge of a seat, 3/4 of their butt cheeks hanging over the empty space between the seat and the sliding door, bashing their heads against the ceiling with every bump, pressed and packed with no room to stretch their legs, would complain.

Americans complain when their flight is delayed 30 minutes, when they are stuck in traffic for an hour, when the metro is running five minutes late. But in Mongolia, Mongolians don’t complain.

The Mongolians in my van sat, no room for cards, no other cars to count license plate numbers, strangers all, and sang. They sang beautiful folk songs in the darkness with high haunting melodies. They sang to kill the time and because they love to sing. They sang herdsman songs and love songs, songs of rivers, the grasslands and of horses. They sang joy.

We traveled by night. The moon washed the van with cool silver light. No one slept, no one could. The cold cool air of open windows flooded our tin can and the 14 Mongolians sang and sang and sang, every song different, everyone beautiful.

Mongolia has few paved roads. Dirt tracks crisscross the grasslands in the vague direction of large towns. If a driver can't find a track he likes, he will cut across the steppe. The bumpy jarring ride is why insides of all of the Russian vehicles, especially the roofs, are heavily padded.
Occasionally, attempting to sleep, I enjoyed banging my head against the door. The Mongolians would laugh as my startled and throbbing head would be lashed into conciseness. The singing would stop. The Mongolians would laugh, and I would fall again into the twilight zone where the head bobs, falls, catches a wink of rest before rushing back to semi conciseness by a jerk, a bump, a jolt on the nonexistent road.

During the long ride, in-between fitful attempts at sleep, Dean, the former Peace Core volunteer, entertained me with his tales of life in Mongolia.

Dean was a happy fellow, happy because he was always smiling, telling a joke, beaming praise or laughing. His favorite topics were Star Trek, teaching English and “secret laughers,” his name for the fairer sex.

“I love the secret laughers,” he said. “They laugh and blush when I talk to them. They get embarrassed talking to a foreigner. That is why I call them secret laughers,” he said.

Although the men do not do much laughing, said Dean. “You have to be very careful dating a Mongolian girl. The men don’t like it. If they see you with a Mongolian woman you can get beat up.”

Some Mongolian men are scary big. You would not want to get in a fight with one. I generally think of Asians as being short and slight of build- not Mongolians. They are bigger than Tongans. Raised on milk and cheese, lots of the men look like juiced up pro wrestlers. They are big dudes and retain the great warrior instinct of their glorious past.

Dean filled me on the history of Mongolia and how just 10,000 of these great men through intimidation, great horsemanship and superior tactics went on to conquer the world. He told me some interesting facts, such as how Genghis is not pronounced with a G but with a Ch so it is pronounced Chinggis. He explained what the 14 Mongolians in our van were signing about and what his two years in the Peace Core living in a yurt were like. (Yurt is a Russian world for the felt tents of the nomadic tribes in Mongolia and Central Asia. The tents are called gers in Mongolia.)

Dean told me how during the winter it could get to 30 degrees below zero, how he once nearly froze his hands after he went outside without his gloves on for a brief pit stop to the lu. Luckily, it was now summer. The weather was balmy and pleasant. A sweatshirt at night was fine.
The interminably long journey in the flying coffin finally ended in Moron, 22 hours after having left Ulan Batar.

Lake Khovsgol

Moron was not much of a city. It had dirt roads and donkey carts and a dusty parking lot for the vans. Houses were cabins made of pine. Each house had a fence built higher than a man made out of planks.

There were no finished public works, no fountains, no monuments, few buildings that were not wood. Certainly there was nothing of concrete. Light a match and the whole city could have burned.

It was like a city from the American frontier, a Montana cattle town on the open plains.
Indeed this town was even rare. All of Mongolia is one gigantic open grass land where most of the people still live in gers. Permanent houses are the exception not the rule.

Sardamba and I said goodbye to Dean, bought supplies for my ten day trip, and continued on to the Lake Khovsgol. If I had thought Moron was a small town I was in for an even greater surprise when I got to Hatgal on the edge of Lake Khovsgol.

Hatgal has a population of 700. It is so small, Sardamba’s address was, Hatgal, The province- Khövsgöl-, and finally- Mongolia. There was no postal code, no street number or P.O. box.
Imagine sending a letter to your friend in New York addressed, John Smith, New York City, United States of America. What are the odds of the letter getting there? But Mongolia is still romantically wild and untamed, with a miniscule population, what I imagine the American frontier was like 150 years ago. There is something enticing and thrilling about being in a town without street names, where simply a name is enough to get a letter to a quaint town, on a gorgeous lake near the top of the world.

Even if Hatgal does have only 700 souls it can boast at least one claim to fame. It has Mongolia's only naval base. Hatgal is home to the Mongolian navy. The navy has one ship and seven sailors, only one of which can reportedly swim. Mongolians are not know to be good swimmers.

Serdamba lived in a wood cabin with a green roof and North Carolina blue shutters. His home was surrounded by a pine fence. The fence protected a grassy yard with hitching posts for horses. His neighbors had the same arrangement.

The streets in Hatgal were dirt. There was no electricity or telephone service. The town was simply a collection of cabins.

Serdamba arranged everything for my 10 day trek. He would not actually be my guide, but his younger brother, Baasanjav would be my primary guide with a second brother Ulzii joining us half way through.

Baasanjav arrived with Ulzii the morning after I got to in Hatgal. They came into the cabin from the rain.

While the horses were hitched outside and we drank tea, I got to know my guides.
Baasanjav was a bright student, 24, the youngest in his family. He was studying English in UB and helped his eldest brother Serdamba with his guiding business to help pay for his tuition.

Baasanjav’s English was not perfect but good. He wore a blue cap with a silver horse pin and a grey deel- a traditional Mongolian long coat. He had an orange sash tied round his waist to hold the deel in place.

Young, bright, cheerful, many positive adjectives could be used to describe Baasanjav. He was above all else trustworthy and knowledgeable of horses and wood craftsmanship. He was a great guide and became a good friend.

Older than Baasanjav but younger than Sardamba, Ulzii, 32, was an experienced horseman and herder. He rode a wily black stallion and could gallop at full speed across the steppe covering over 70 kilometers a day. He too wore the traditional deel and had a green jungle hat to shade his black hair. More serious or perhaps more mature and experienced than Baasanjav he did not speak much. When he did Baasanjzv listened. Ulzii was the expert about horses and on our journey looked after the animal’s hooves, cutting out dirt and trimming them with a pocket knife like a toe nail. (Mongolian horses don’t wear horse shoes) He loved to sing while in the saddle. He was a happy young man with a playful spirit. When he did talk to me he said: “eat more bread,” “drink more tea,” or his favorite which he had found in the medical section of my Mongolian/English phrase book and said as a joke, “take off your clothes.”

Rain comes quick and fast in the north of Mongolia. As fast as it comes it often goes. With the dark clouds gone Baasanjav and I began our journey.

10-Days Around Lake Khovsgol

Our plan was to make a loop. We would first head away from Lake Khovsgol and ride northwest into the mountains, which surrounded the lake. After crossing the mountains we would then head east eventually reaching the lake at the top of the loop, 100 kilometers north of Hatgal. We would then spend the last three days riding south along the western shore of Lake Khovsgol to return to town.

Riding for ten days, felt like riding into America’s wild west, into what has often been compared by other American visitors as Asia’s Montana, big blue sky and pasture to the horizon, a cowboy’s dream.

It might be fitting to even rename Montana, Mongolia, for as big and grand as the big sky country may be, Mongolia is larger and grander.

On the edges of the steppes green mounds rose and gradually increased to become the bare rock pinnacles Baasanjav and I hoped to penetrate.

We rode besides dry river beds and camped in the pines. I soaked in the scenery, took pictures of the graving horses, and stopped to admire the wildflowers which painted the green grass canvas of the plains with spots of purple, red and yellow.

In the evenings we made camp fires and watched the big bright full moon fill the sky. We were living simple but living good in god’s country.

Our meals were easy: rice and dried meat, bread with peanut butter or sugar spread on top with a spoon. We had no vegetables or fancy sauces, just a little salt. It was enough. You go to Mongolia for the scenery, not the food.

We had one pan. Baasanjav kept it in a worn leather bag that fit it like a skin. The pot had a bone handle, the horn from a goat.

We boiled tea in the pan and drank all of it before we made breakfast or our dinner. Having just one pan necessitated this process.

We did not eat lunch because Mongolians don’t stop to eat at mid day. We ate breakfast in the morning and did not stop for food until we made camp at night.

Mongolians are tough. Ride with one for a few days and you will understand how they routed all the armies of the world.

But the Mongolians could not have gone far without their horses.

My horse was a seven year old mare named Heergii. Heergii means brown in Mongolian. Baasanjav told me horses in Mongolia often are named after their colors.

"What happens when you have two brown horses or two black ones," I asked
"Oh," he said "We have many different kinds of colors for horses, maybe 300."

And so I recon, the Mongolians have has many names for the color of a horse as the Eskimos do for different types of snow.

Heergii was the perfect horse for me, methodical, slow a nice mellow maiden who would rather be grazing on grass than transporting me. Most of the time Baasanjav pulled Heergii along with a rope. I did not mind. I was happy not to walk, to have my own elevated cruiser to take in the scenes.

Heergii was small compared to a western horse. Most Mongolian horses are not much larger than ponies. But they are strong and you would not dare tell a Mongolian his horse was a pony.
The horses often roam free, foraging for themselves on the grasslands. They have big heads and stout legs. Tough only begins to describe this breed. They need to be tough to be able to survive outside in winters where the temperature drops to -40 degrees.

There is no doubt Mongolians are the best horseman in the world. Children often learn to ride horses before they can walk. Young boys can fly on and off horses like they would bicycles and race their hoofed friends at hurtling speeds across the flats. Horse racing is still a huge tradition. During Mongolia’s Naadam Festival in July young children between the ages of four and 12 race horses for distances as great as 30 kilometers across the steppes, navigating at scary speed, hills streams and dunes for victory.

Sadly, I was a mere pretender. I was sore every night after covering my daily 30 kilometer dose of distance, not at full gallop, but rather a slow walk. My butt would ach and my knees would not bend. Riding a horse is like working in a new baseball glove, your butt needs time for linseed oil and kneading before it will fit the saddle properly. Ten days is just not enough time.

Baasanjav and I traveled for three days together before his brother Ulzii caught up with us. On the fourth day we crossed the mountains and dropped down to flat grasslands, verdant pasture to the horizon dotted with livestock and white felt gers.

We rode the plains to stop at the only town on our journey, the town of Erdinet.
There were no paved roads to the town, no power lines, irrigation ditches strip malls or much of anything but grass. In a giant lawn near the mountains, people just decided to build a village.
I felt like an early pioneer, a high plains drifter straight out of a spaghetti western riding into town with all the local folks watching the new stranger. It was a town like Hatgal, built of wooden cabins bellowing smoke and fences protecting green yards. Dogs followed our horses in as we rode up to the hitching post of Baasanjav and Ulzii’s aunt‘s home.

Baasanjav and Ulzii had not seen their aunt for a year. An older woman with an asthma problem she had difficulty talking, or moving about much. Despite her poor health we were welcomed by her and her daughter. Mongolians are renowned for their hospitality. Kindness towards strangers is more than a nicety it is a necessity. In a harsh land where winter temperatures can kill, helping a stranger can be giving the gift of survival.

The aunt’s cabin was simple. It had a wood burning stove in the center and two windows facing the mountains to the south. It had a wood floor painted orange. Around the edges of the cabin’s one room were beds to be used for sitting or sleeping as well as chests to hold clothes. The brother’s cousin was busy sewing a new deel, and stretching sheep skins by hand to form the warm inner layer of the traditional coat.

We ate well in the aunt’s home and did not have to eat dried meat and rice. Instead we had yogurt, fresh bread and freshly turned butter. We had light in the evening from a single bulb powered by a 12 volt car battery. Before we left the next day I was asked to take a picture of the cousins and aunt together. The family did not have a camera and the next camera man was most likely another summer away.

Vodka Brigands

Mongolia isn’t all a pastoral paradise. Alcoholism is a sore wound. Mongolians love the Russians because they gave them guns to fight the Chinese. Unfortunately, the Russians also gave the Mongolians a taste for vodka.

On our way into the town of Erdinet, we ran into a group of three men Baasanjav called, "bad men." The men approached us at full gallop. Baasanjav and Ulzii shot up in front of my horse to block their path and protect me from the men.

The three ruffians wearing dirty deels pulled on their reins to stop their horses. You could see their blood shot eyes, smell their grain soaked breath. Two of them had bottles of booze tucked into their belts.

The brothers stared at the men. They stared back for 20 seconds. No one said anything. The horses stood. They stamped their feet, snorted. It was an odd starring contest, a show of strength.

Finally a peace was brokered by the drunkest man.
“Hello,” he said. The young vigilante then offered us a drink, taking a bottle of vodka from his belt.

It would be impolite for us to refuse a swig. We all dipped our fingers into the bottle to wet a finger. As is custom, we then flicked the vodka into the air to give a blessing to the earth. We then each took turns to have a nip.

Satisfied, the brigands accepted their bottle back and rode off. “Bad men,” Baasanjav said.
The day after we left Erdinet and the safety of the aunt’s house, both of the brothers took watches to stay up the whole night. Bad men are known to steal horses in Mongolia. Mongolia really did feel like the wild wild west.

We Reach the Lake

From Erdinet we crossed another mountain range and finally reached Lake Khovsgol. The lake was blue. Pine trees, daisies and Queen Anne’s lace held the banks. Bees came to pollinate the blossoms of the flowers. There were no signs of man. The lake is believed to be several million years old and one of the earth’s most pristine lakes. Untouched, its waters are so clean they can be drunk without filtration.

We camped besides the lake’s shores. We tossed flat skipping stones into the rippled surface of the lake. I got six skips, Baasanjav seven. I was at peace. I imagined Lake Michigan would have looked much the same way when Louis Jolliet and Jacques Marquette journeyed from New France to Green Bay on their way to find the Mississippi, no cities, no concrete, no pollution- just grass and a pebbled shore line, a few trees and water that lapped against the shore as gentle wind blown waves.

At Issue with a Horse

I had thought after nine days of riding I had gotten to know Heergii pretty well. I thought she knew and liked me. My arse would still be sore from riding her each day, but I could get her to go on my own and even trot.


Most of the time, Baasanjav guided Heergii, but during my last few days on the trail I felt confident enough to ride Heergii on my own.

Horses are great. They are smart. They know the way. You can point them in the right direction and they will follow the trail without much guidance. They will avoid stepping on roots and keep out of the mud. They have brains.

You can love your horse, fall deeply for its dark pleading eyes. You can pet it, stroke its head, give it a bit of sugar and call it Trigger if you want. It can be your best friend, better than a dog.

But it must be respected, for unlike a family dog a horse is more apt to get you injured. I thought I knew Heergii well. Who knew simply taking off my hat would set her off. She must have seen me lowering my hat to my knee in her side vision. I had not even thought taking off my hat would set her off. I took it off instinctually.

Heergii bolted. She took off at a gallop. My saddle twisted off her back. It slipped to the right side of her flank, a bucket disgorging its load. I fell, but my right foot was still caught in the stirrup. I was set to be dragged in a real reenactment of a Hollywood Western. Christopher Reeves oh Sh>>>>>>>>>>t.

I was dragged two feet, three feet perhaps. I was saved by my oversized boots. My right boot stayed in the stirrup and my foot luckily was expunged. There is a reason why cowboys wear cowboy boots and this was the reason. Had I had regular shoes on with laces on my ankle would have most likely have been broken.

I lay on the grass. My butt was a bit sore. I was laughing. You can lead a horse to water but you can’t make it drink. The lesson: horses do what they want and Mongolia is a great place to learn to ride one because the horses are short and you won’t have far to fall.