An Early Start
The fire in the wood stove goes out overnight, so they come to your room at 6 a.m. and light a new fire so that when you wake up, it’s warm enough to get dressed. There was a large stack of firewood in the room, so I made sure to add a few extra before bed, and then slept so well. It’s so quiet here. The animal print blankets they left me with were awesome, very warm. So I had no problem staying warm. I woke up at 5, with my nose quite chilly. There were still plenty of embers in the fireplace, so I tossed in a few more logs and some kindling and lung-power and voila, fire. I made a very nice fire, delicate, ladylike. Kept the room from freezing or being too hot, a high-maintenance fire, if you will. But it was far more pleasant than the inferno I arrived to. Just as I got it how I wanted and headed back to bed, the 6 a.m. guy arrived at my door. He knocked, I tried to send him away, but he showed me his bag of coal. I thought maybe he was upset I’d used wood instead of coal and was going to add some coal. NOPE. He opened the stove, looked at my fire, gave me a nod of approval, and then took the entire plastic grocery bag of coal and put it, bag and all, on TOP of my little wood fire. Thannnnnnksssss. I tried to find a way to take it out before it caught fire, but there was nowhere to put a bunch of coal. I tried to go back to sleep, hoping against hope it would at least take some time to get super hot. But no such luck, within 10 minutes, I had opened the ger door and was sitting in the chair by the door, trying to decide what to do with my newfound 2 hours of morning awake time before my guide arrives at 8:30.
Working up an Appetite
I got myself dressed and decided to go for a walk. Layers and layers and hats and coats and scarf, and out the door. I went for a nice little hike in the snow around the camp. Down to the fountain with a bunch of interesting columns. Turns out, I would learn later, the light carvings on the pillars are sylized deer. The deer represent the messengers between earth and heaven or hell and earth, but always are looking upward. Then I hiked around the gers, testing out my snow boots, learning how to not fall down once the snow gets caked into the boot treads like a block of ice. Then I headed uphill…way uphill, to the breakfast house/restrooms building. Then I hiked uphill some more to a little gazebo, where I took a few photos of the serene landscape.
Breakfast
I headed down to the restaurant to have breakfast with the guide. Jackie, the girl from the train, was there having breakfast with her guide…some toast and jam. My guide, however, after MUCH pressure from me, made sure that we had some traditional Mongolian food for breakfast. We were brought some fried bread, like the fried dough sticks from the Beijing hotel, and a bowl of noodle soup with beef. Guide says ‘Oh, very traditional, tripe soup’. Dude is trying to call my bluff that I want to try real Mongolian food. We are about to go round.
Horsies!
We head out for the day, beginning with a visit to an actual Mongolian man who lives in a ger. We drove 5 minutes down the road, then onto a dirt road, then onto just a snow path, which horrifyingly crosses a few shallow (I hope) creeks that are frozen over. He invites us inside, offering us each a glass of milk tea, which is more of a soup than a tea…milk with salt and herbs and sometimes pieces of meat. It’s awful, but I drink it politely. The guy comes in and is gruffly talking in Mongolian to my guide. He sits, smokes a cigarette, and then starts putting on a very traditional Mongolian outfit: a giant layered robe with a wrap-around belt. It turns out, this is the guy who will take me on a horse ride momentarily. They give me a waiver, which I must read, but no one makes me actually sign, and it informs me that Mongolian horses are not like European horses. They are half-wild horses, and then goes through a list of things not to do, including startle the horse by approaching from behind, and that I should inform myself of how to make an emergency fall in case the horse becomes aggressive. Sure, that’s a thing I can just google right here in the middle of nowhere. So off we go, out into the cold. I shove some Hot Hands pouches into my ski gloves and saddle up. Apparently, the other people on the train also said that you should avoid the horse riding in the winter because you’re stationary, going through the cold wind, and it’s hard to stay warm. Pfff. It was awesome. We slowly trotted around the camp and through the woods, crossing back over the frozen creeks I mentioned earlier. This part was truly terrifying. If I were going to believe I might meet my end, it would definitely be while on a half-wild horse crossing a frozen creek, wherein every step the horse takes, it sounds like tapping on the glass in the top floor of a skyscraper. An eerie, hollow on the other side sound, some groaning and cracking noises. Getting wet in this kind of cold is apparently the worst possible thing. But we finished our ride without incident, when my guide realized he had forgotten to take any photos and comes running towards us from behind, startling my horse, who very abruptly makes a short sideways dash. I did not emergency bail, but just froze, hanging on tight. It was brief and the horse calmed down and my guide took some photos.
Buddhist Temple
From there, we visited a Buddhist meditation temple, which is just a Buddhist temple with no monks, so it’s ok to take tourists and ok to take photos. We got there and it is, of course, at the top of a hill. Straight up the stairs I go, 108 stairs to be exact. Numbers are very important here. 9 is the most important, so any number whose digits add up to 9 is special too, hence 108. We talked about all kinds of things, the different religions in Mongolia, the changes from the Soviet control in the 1920s and 30s to now. He told me how many temples had been destroyed by the communists, and proudly explained that, though the ancient Mongols ahd conquered many lands, they *never* forced a religion on them. Not their thing. We walked through the temple, with him explaining so many of the paintings and their meanings. He felt compelled to point out every time there was a swastika and make sure I didn’t think it was a nazi symbol. On the outside of the building, there are paintings on all of the beams of the roof. The sides are scenes from earth, the top, presumably scenes from heaven, and the bottom/underside/most easily seen and photographed side, depicted hell. According to him, there are 18 versions of hell, 9 hot and 9 cold. And the only way to permanently be sent to hell was to murder your parents or your children. Everything else gets a temporary stay in a specific hell before you get to bargain with the gatekeeper for release to heaven.
Ghengis Khan Statue
After going down 108 icy stairs, we visited the Ghengis Khan statue. At 9 stories tall, it is the largest horse-man statue in the world (it holds a Guinness World Record), and there is a giant Mongolian boot inside the museum that is the largest Mongolian boot in the world, also has a record book entry. The statue is massive, and we climbed the stairs inside it to the top of the horse’s head and took some photos. It’s really amazing how large and shiny it is, but it’s also entirely, including the stairs, made of metal, which is not helpful in the icy conditions. It was quite treacherous. We got back down to the museum/gift shop area, and guess what? There is a historical photo area. Now, all the other continents, I am calling you out. Step up your game. I have done this in many countries, but never like in these 2 Asian countries. The robe was heavy, ornate, real, not just a tie-in-the-back hospital gown. And the headdress! It was also huge and complicated. I of course picked the one reserved for royalty (not on purpose, I just have good taste). They let me put on the costume and then run around the lobby taking photos with my own camera. All-in-all, 5000 tugrit (sp?), which is like….$2.50 ish? The best souvenirs are photos. Then we went outside and there are guys who have eagles (!) that you can hold and take photos with. I am so here for this. My guide is like “Wait, go get your colorful dress!”. Good call, Enkhbat! We walk to the car, and I change from my black puffer coat to my bright red Mongolian-inspired Ukrainian costume coat. Me and the eagle and freaking silver Ghengis Khan. Pretty epic morning.
Lunch
Finally we head into town for lunch. I have continually asked to try local food and he is continually telling me that every time he does that, someone ends up in the hospital. Feed me a yak! I implore, but he insists they are out of season. So he takes me to lunch at BD’s Mongolian BBQ. He assures me that the origins of Mongolian BBQ are cooking on smooth river rocks over a fire, and that it’s his favorite way to cook at home. But he takes me to BD’s Mongolian BBQ, where everything is in English, the waitresses confoundingly are wearing shirts that say “Real men rub their meat”, and I am quite generally displeased. At least I got to eat weird parts of a sheep, though I have rejected liver and brain, both on principle.
History Museum
Atfter lunch, we hit up the National History Museum, which I was not super jazzed about, but was actually really interesting. My guide is very knowledgeable about history, and although I did not get to take any photos inside, you will have to trust that it was actually fascinating. There is a room of historical costumes that you can look at and pick, era by era, a video game or science fiction costume that is exactly that costume. Zant from Twilight Princess? Mongolian dress. Literally every headdress worn by Amidala as queen? Mongolian. Very cool and interesting. From here, we check in to my hotel and I take an hour to chill out in my room before we go to dinner.
Dinner
For dinner, we go to a restaurant which he assures me is more authentic Mongolian food. It is a chain restaurant, no wild game type things, but we had lamb. The restaurant is, confoundingly, called Modern Nomads, but spelled in cyrillic. …. it’s not in Russian or Mongolian (Mongolian also uses the cyrillic alphabet). It’s a transliteration of English words, written in cyrillic. It was a nice enough place, actually. It had other actual Mongolian people eating there, not just tourists. It was kind of like an Applebees of Mongolian food. Fine. We ordered a dish that is lamb and potatoes and carrots and garlic and onions, put into a bucket with a heated rock…kind of like fajitas. The food was quite good, but also mostly flavorless. I may leave Mongolia with no idea what Mongolian food actually tastes like, but so far, if I had to judge, it is far more similar to the flavorless meat/potatoes/onion food of Russia and not at all like Chinese food.
Beer
After dinner, I asked them just to drop me off in the town square, 1 km from my hotel, and let me walk, since it’s only 8 p.m. Luckily, in the square, there were a bunch of costumed people, lighting the city Christmas tree in the middle of the square. They seem to have the same blue-robed Ded Moroz/Father Frost version of Santa Clause that the Russians do, though I did not see the Snow Maiden. There were other characters, Mongolian anime type costumes and I have no idea what they were from. They were just wrapping up and everyone was leaving as I arrived, but it was still interesting to see. I had asked to walk, though, because earlier on our drive, I saw a microbrewery, which is where I am writing all of this now. Sitting here, listening to the rumbling of 30 other people speaking a language I have zero reference points in, it just blends into noise. The beer is decent…hefeweizen was good, black lager is off-putting. Now it’s time to head back to my hotel… another km in the ice and snow. I think I’m a winter person. –PS just arrived at hotel, so tired after sleep on train and in tent. Curled up in my cozy hotel bed with my laptop and realized, I smell like I have been riding horses all day. Ugh.
