Saturday in Ulaanbaatar, Mongolia

Today I played tourist.  After breakfast at the hotel, we met Flower and Bat Bayar, our tour guide and driver.  Four of us piled into the van with them and headed out to the Chinggis Khaan monument.  It was a long two hour drive.  Once we got outside of the city of Ulaanbaatar, the quality of road deteriorated.  The road we turned onto was under construction.  To prevent people from driving on the road, they have put mounds of dirt on the road where you can get onto the road - plus, they have dug ditches and and built berms along the entire length of the road.  This means you cannot drive on the road! Instead, everyone drives along in the fields, yards, parking lots - mostly fields, but for miles and miles there are just multiple routes across the fields.  You see where you want to go and just drive across the field.  The van had a five speed manual transmission.  At one point, I jokingly offered to drive - and I ended up driving in this joyous endeavor.  Oh, did I mention - there are generally no signs, other than in a few locations there are little arrows to direct you around non-navigable spots.

Many open fields, very few trees along the way

The road being built is on the left, the dirt trails are in the middle

The new road on the left, cars driving on the dirt

More dirt trails

At one point while Bat Bayar was driving, we came to a place where we could not drive and had to get out to find a new route

Many herds of sheep, goats, cows and horses along the way; note the dirt trails on which to drive

While I was driving, I told some of the stories about driving during mud season in Vermont.  The section I drove was roughly comparable to the worst years of mud season driving on Old Stage Road in Westford, VT - except that it was bone dry (hence no mud) and the dirt trails were no where near as straight as Old Stage Road.  It was an exciting experience, to say the least.

It took us two hours to drive the 54 KM to reach our first stop, the statue of Chinggis Khaan, the great leader and hero of Mongolia.  An enterprising businessman had this built as part of a proposed park which is planned to have a large ger camp (200 gers) and 10,000 warriors.  It stands 140 feet tall and as it came into view, it did not seem that big - until we kept driving and driving and finally got there.

After we climbed up to the base, I took a picture of the entrance to the park - again, still no trees, just grass

Flower told us that the statue faces towards Chinggis' home town of Erdeme in the province of Tuv.  Soum is the Mongolian word for town and aimag is the word for province.  There are 21 aimags in Mongolia.

The lobby of the museum (the statute is on top)

Large replica of Chinggis' whip held up by two mystical birds

Guinness world record for largest leather boot

Behind the boot, there is both a stair case (closed due to maintenance work) and an elevator.  The elevator takes you up to the base of the neck of the horse.  At that height, you can get both an excellent view of Chinggis and of the surrounding area.

They are just starting to build the ger camp

Beautiful mountains in the distance

Chinggis' whip

Chinggi's belt buckle with traditional Mongolian symbols of past, present and future

Looking down from the horse's head, these are the stairs from the elevator up to the head

Our guide Flower, me and Lara

 

Look closely, our van is the second vehicle to the left of that full size bus

 Our tour then took us below ground to the two museums.  One was focused on the Huunu Dynasty (the Huns) who ruled an area two to three times the size of current Mongolia.  Their reign was from 209 B.C to 98 A.D.  There were many artifacts that had been found by archeologists.  The second museum was focused on Chinggis Khaan's empire that stretched from Korea to Bulgaria during the 12th to 14th centuries.  Again, many artifacts found at archeological digs, plus lots of info about the Chinggis and then his sons who split the empire into four parts.

Life size replica of a 13th century Mongol warrior

A miniature plan of what the full park will look like when finished, including the 10,000 warriors and 200 gers

After touring the museums, we returned to the lobby.  For 2,000 MNT, you could dress as an ancient Mongolian warrior.

Lara, me and Jeanie as warriors.

As we left the museum and walked to the van, there were vultures and eagles for tourists to see.  You could even put on a glove and have one of them stand on your arm.

 

When then drove another hour or so to this ger camp for our lunch in the restaurant up on the side of the hill.  On the ride, Flower taught us that there are two ways to say thank you; I heard them as "tissue" and "cashew."  "Cashew" is said to someone older than you and is meant to show respect to your elder.  "Tissue" is said to someone the same age as or younger than you.  (Back at the hotel, I looked it up in my Mongolian-English dictionary and found the colloquial version to be "bayarlalah" - this is what the LEI students had taught me.)

There were many beautiful wild flowers

There was a nice porch on one side of the restaurant; this allowed for an excellent view of the surrounding area.

Our voluble driver, Bat Bayar - fortunately, Flower translated for him and us

 Lunch consisted of a nice salad, carrot soup and rice with carrots, peppers, onions and mutton.

Vegetarian rice dish was also available

After lunch, we drove for about 30 minutes to get to Turtle Rock.  We hiked about half way up Turtle Rock and a great view of the area.

Once we reached a comfortable spot halfway up Turtle Rock, we stopped to look out at the valley.

Jeannie hamming it up on Turtle Rock

Camels were available for riding

Back in the van for another 30 minutes to get to the Buddhist Meditation Center.  It started to rain as we arrived.  We made the long uphill walk in about 20 minutes in the rain.  The final approach was this staircase - only 110 stairs.

I

It stopped raining when we got to the top, so I left my raincoat and hat outside.  We all left our shoes at the door and toured the temple.  Bat Bayar is Buddhist and he went silently and reverently through the temple, visiting each of the 20 stations that explain (in both Mongolian and English signs) about various Buddhist figures who had attained arhatship and lived here in the mountains surrounded by varying numbers of arhats.  After, we went outside and could see the many prayer wheels that surrounded the temple.  And of course, since we were so high up the side of the mountains, there were fantastic views.

The entrance to the temple

On the trail to and from the temple, we of course had to cross this swinging bridge across a ravine.  It was probably 100 feet across and with each step you took, the entire bridge would spring up and down - and the ends of many of the boards would come loose from the frames and go up and down with you.

That was our last stop.  We then took about three hours of driving to get back to the hotel.  While the first 90 minutes was due to the driving on the dirt paths along side the new road being constructed, the last 90 minutes was due to the heavy traffic.  Rush hour traffic in Ulaanbaatar far exceeds the handling capacity of the city streets.  For the first time since arriving, I did see the results of a car accident - a collision between a car and a motorcycle at the intersection of small side street and the main street we were on.

Back at the hotel, I let Jonathan have first use of the shower and I went to the restaurant and bar.  I decided to try some vodka.  Mongolia has a reputation for making fine vodka.  On the menu, the options are either 50 milliliters or the whole bottle.  I chose the 50 ml version of Chinggis Gold vodka served on ice.  It was quite nice.  While I was sitting enjoying the vodka, Clayton and Jim (our new friends from Lincoln Memorial University) came in for dinner.  We chatted, they ordered dinner and I ordered a second Chinggis Gold.  Jeannie, Lara and Jonathan came down, freshly showered and in clean, dry clothes.  We all ordered dinner and drinks.  I had penne pasta with chicken in a light tomato based sauce and had a couple of Alton Gobi beers.  My total bill for two vodkas, two beers and one entree was 28,650 MNT - about $20.00.

During their visits to Ider University and Mongolia International University, Jim and Clayton had provided gifts to the schools.  In return, they had received gifts of Mongolian vodka.  Since they did not want to take all the vodka back to the states (Clayton no longer drinks alcohol), they gave me a bottle of vodka to share with the Habitat crew.  What a nice gesture on their part and what a nice way to end the day.  Jonathan and I have the vodka in our room and will share it with the other Habitat volunteers today.