Beautiful, tortuous hike

Last weekend I took the opportunity to go hiking and camping with some friends and fellow interns in the national park that begins just south of UB. Using some somewhat incomplete internet information about where to find the minibuses to take us to the town where we would take taxis to the monastery where we would begin our hike, we got to the base of our hike in the afternoon on Saturday.

We poked around the monastery a bit. There was a delightful taxidermy/nature-art-made-out-of-nature museum. There were a lot of families who had brought their tents and were picnicking outside (picnicking in Mongolia is a complex affair that frequently appears to involve cooking entire sheep). We admired the view of the valley, and then began our ascent.

The plan was to do a longer, somewhat more challenging hike up the mountain, camping somewhere near the top, and a shorter, easier jaunt back into UB the next morning. The hike up was lovely. We followed a stream most of the way up the mountain through the woods. I’m not sure exactly what the phenomenon was that led to the way the water flowed, but for much of the walk it flowed under us. We were on a layer of mossy, piney ground over a gap and then flowing water. There were frequent calls of “HOLE” to warn those behind of the potential to fall through the first layer of ground. We climbed some rocks at the top and had a much better view of the valley and the mountains all around.

Our process of arriving to this point all involved some vague lonelyplanet dot com description someone had posted about getting to where we thought we wanted to be. We then set about looking for some good ground to camp on. Luckily for us, we did not stop at the first decent looking place, but continued along and found the actual peak of the mountain. Peaks in Mongolia are usually easy to identify because of the presence of ovoos, or a pile of stones which generally have a stick with lots of blue scarves tied around it which are used as shamanistic or Buddhist worship sites.

At our new, and much more impressive, peak, we found a great camp site, protected from the wind and already equipped with a nice, flat rock that we deemed the kitchen. Just after we set up camp we watched our peak get enveloped by fast moving clouds. The clouds passed by in time for us to see a great sky full of stars.

Back at kitchen rock, dinner consisted of: dehydrated borscht vegetables with the spices meant to go in spaghetti sauce but instead in water (both packets clearly with salt added) mixed with some jarred hot dogs and noodles. Dessert was a miniature bottle of vodka shared amongst us and chased with oatmeal chocolate chip cookies.

The next morning we packed up camp and got to looking for our path home. The biggest consideration was avoiding the presidential palace compound in order to avoid trespassing and machine guns. So we began hiking across our mountain in the hopes of taking the next valley down. It was not easy going because we weren’t on a path. It involved both climbing over (and up and down) boulder fields and going straight through some pretty thick, yet only knee deep, bush. As it turns out, the path we were hoping to find back to UB was over a couple more of these peaks. Our easy hike back, for which we had limited supplies, ended up lasting just a little bit past delirium approximately 10 hours later. Thank goodness the first commercial enterprise after you get down the mountain is Irish Castle Restaurant. I chugged a liter of water and then got to work on my cheeseburger, fries, coke and liter of beer.

It was a mentally and physically exhausting day, but worth the views, the subsequent feast, and the rock-like sleep that night. I will definitely miss being able to walk straight out of the city into the mountains!

A Phew More Photographs

 Me and a giant stainless steel statue of Chinggis Khan

 Volleyball at the staff retreat

View from the left of side-of-the-road fermented mare's milk stand

View from the right of side-of-the-road fermented mare's milk stand

 

Side-of-the-road fermented mare's milk stand

Tourist ger camp in Kharkhorin, near the ancient Mongol Capital of Karkorum

At the Buddhist Temple in Kharkhorin

Buddhist Temple in Kharkhorin

Did I ever tell you the story of three holes in the ground?

Well, well, well

I am currently interning for the Millennium Challenge Account/Mongolia Peri-Urban Rangelands Project, Project Implementation Unit. So now you will know what MCAM PURP PIU means. The aim of the PURP [condensed version] is to improve the livelihoods and environmental management practices of herders in peri-urban areas through land-leasing contracts and infrastructure investments for herder groups. Land degradation and over-grazing are serious problems that are tricky to solve because the traditional Mongolian practice of open access to pastureland is actually enshrined in the constitution.


One element of the project is well construction and rehabilitation. I had the chance to go to six well-opening “ceremonies” in the peri-urban area west of Ulaanbaatar. This involved driving across fields to each well where we met the leader of the herder group, the well-construction contractor, and representatives from the local government. Those three parties and MCAM PURP signed contracts handing responsibility of the well to the herder group and ownership to the local authority for a period of 15 years, until the herder group has repaid a portion of the investment in the well to a local development fund. 


At each well they turned on the pumps and we made sure the water came out. It did in all 6 cases. They checked to ensure everything worked, gave the herder group leaders instructional books about the well operation, discussed land issues and disputes, signed all the documents and the transfer was official.  They also got signs to put on their new wells that let it be known this was an MCC/MCA project with funding from the US. I later got thanked for paying my taxes. It nearly brought tears to my eyes.


From my perspective, it appeared to be a successful day of well openings.

We finished the evening with one of the herder group families. This was my first time in a family’s ger and my first chance to experience a lot of the things I had heard about.


I drank some milk tea, made with a bit of tea, milk, water, salt and perhaps a touch of butter. I also tried airag, the fermented mare’s milk which is just coming into season. A bit fizzy, a bit sour; I did not overindulge. They had killed a sheep so I got to try some boiled blood and other innard-y delights. They then made khorkhok (see the picture from the previous post). This involves heating up rocks in the fire, placing the pieces of meat and some potatoes and carrots in a large milk jug with the hot rocks, and sealing it to steam the meat. Except for a bit of stray wool, not bad at all. Frequently people will eat this with pickles. This family actually had a sort of pickled cole slaw which I tried when someone was instructed to “give the foreigner some vegetables.”


After the meat we moved on to toasting with the vodka cup that gets passed around. One of the herder group leaders, who appeared to be the mother of the extended family, filled up a cup with some vodka and proceeded to pass it around to each person in the ger, one by one. In most cases it is acceptable to just take a sip, or put it to your lips, or dip your ring finger in it and flick it around the room as a blessing, and then hand it back, at which point whoever is passing will add some more vodka and pass it on to the next person. People made toasts to all of those involved in the project and the cup went around until the bottle was empty.  Lucky for me (envisioning the road back to UB, which has made me finally understand why we have SUVs) this was not one of the occasions where I was told “bottom’s up.” In those cases, you can’t just sip and pass back.


I had intended to write about a couple of those occasions, but apparently I can talk about wells for longer than I thought, so I will save those for another time.