Terelj Outings & the Tuul River

 Back in Mongolia I am! The air is getting cleaner, things are warming up, and summer (i.e. field season) is right around the corner. I've been incredibly busy at work since I arrived here, which has kept me out of trouble.  This time I avoided traveling through China, and flew directly from LA to Seoul, South Korea, and then on to UB. The Incheon airport in Seoul was very nice! So for now, I've fallen deeply into the daily grind, and it helps pass the days. I've been on several trips during the weekends to Terelj National Park, only 1.5 hours away...a little early for the greenery, but the park has beautiful stunning landscapes and granitic outcrops all over the place. I went out there initially with a friend/coworker, Odbayar, to scout potential Ger camps for a going away party for Jim. Jim is our exploration manager, my boss, and the person who allowed me the opportunity to come to Mongolia in the first place. His last weekend here, about 20 people shared a fun weekend at a Ger camp in Terelj to send him off with a bang! (ummm...there was a LOT of drinking, haha).  So now our office is a bit emptier without him, and it remains to be seen who will replace him. This weekend, Justin, Odbayar, me, and some other friends went down to the Tuul River, just outside of town, for a barbeque, and for Brando's birthday...in the video, you will see his very scrumptious, meaty bone that he was more than happy to nibble on and then bury. Haha, we had a very nice warm spring like day and it felt great to sit out in the sun.

I thought it might be fun to give you a list of the items I like most about living Ulaanbaatar:

1) The Indian food - specifically, the Taj Mahal restaraunt in the UB Hotel. If you ask people in our office, there is a running inside joke about me and Indian food - they always ask me, "Andy, what did you have for dinner last night?", and I say, blushing, and slightly embarassed "Indian"....."What? hahahaha! Again? Is that all you eat?". Anyway, I'm speechless. It has excellent spicy flavor, and it makes for great leftovers, AND I never get sick of it!

2) Joy Massage - I will truly miss this place when I leave. You can get hour long massages for $13! Can't beat that in the US (only Thailand is cheaper).  The first time I got a massage here, I almost cried out in pain, it was akin to Chinggis Khan himself giving me a massage. After a few of these though, one gets used to it, and even starts to like it. Yay for deep tissue massages! I aim for one a week, as a replacement to the chiropractor I used to go to. It really does help me feel more relaxed, I sleep better, and it eliminates any built up stress in my neck muscles from staring at screens all day. Too bad massages are so expensive in most other countries.

3) Taxis - you never know who will pick you up...but I haven't had any bad experiences. Usually the cars that pick people up are recent immigrants from the countryside, very poor, they often have even poorer driving skills, speak zero English, and you are lucky to find a seatbelt even in 1 out of 10 cars. But....its better than walking, breathing in exhaust, and its super cheap (about 50 cents/kilometer). Generally, in a taxi, I can say straight (chigeree), left (zuun te she), right (baruun te she), and please stop (zogsoree)....this is all I've really needed.

4) The people I work with - they are a very friendly, funny, eccentric group of expats and Mongolians. This past weekend at Jim's going away party, we had a campfire going late at night, and I was the only non-Mongolian standing around the campfire (out of about 15 people). Everyone was having a great time, singing well known Mongolian folk songs, drinking whiskey, and telling stories. There was plentiful laughter....sometimes I can pick up very generalized items in the conversation, but largely, I am clueless. After listening to the Mongolian language being spoken for nearly a year, it still sounds like a difficult encrypted puzzle that my mind cannot untangle. I would need some formal lessons to really start learning Mongolian.

5) Observing life from the outside - I feel like more of an outsider here than I have at any other time of my life. Walking down the street, unable to read or speak much of the language, it is a very humbling feeling. My understanding of pronouncing cyryllic is getting better, but my reading level is probably at the level of a very young child.  As a middle class white person in Mongolia, this is likely the most "minority" I will ever be. Walking down the street after I get off work, I'm surrounded by bustling crowds of mostly Mongols...smiling, laughing, smoking, waiting, yelling, selling, weighing, cleaning, and talking. At times, I don't know if I've ever felt so alone in a crowd of people. Again, humbling, but oddly entertaining to me, even day in and day out.

 Typical towering granite in Terelj.

 A monastery within Terelj

Odbayar crossing a bridge at the monastery. The signed warned that only a maximum of four people are allowed on the bridge at a time. It was fun.

 I'm thinking they got a little carried away with the informational signs ???

 Beautiful colorful artwork typical of monasteries here.

 Odbayar and I were scouting all of the tourist ger camps in Terelj for the next weekend (Jim's going away party). We ended up finding a pretty nice camp...here's what the inside of the gers looked like.

 A view from the top of the monastery.

I think the Mongolians find it very weird when I take these types of pictures, but they have a very rustic third-world feel.

 Cute Spaniel taking a nap in the sun.

 Hanging out with Nyama and Sokah (4 year old girl)....she is loaded with energy and a lot of fun to be around.

 She likes playing with the snow, but is very shy if she knows I'm taking pictures, so I have to sneak them in.

 Odbayar breathing in fresh air, and roasting some hotdogs as the group arrives at our ger camp in Terelj, "Heaven's Envoy"

 Going for a group hike.

 Justin's girlfriend, Solongo, and a very friendly ger camp mop-dog hiking with us.

 Jim chimneying his way up.

 Solongo and Brando, happy to be near the top.

 Justin and Solongo.

 More people from the office. Uka, on the left, I work with on a daily basis. She is 24, married, has 2 sisters, and was born in Ulaanbaatar.

 Solongo exploring the crevices.

 We found ourselves a little cliffed out.

 Early morning view with our ger camp in the background.

 Birch bark.

 Haha, symbolic for some things here, maybe.

 Jim climbing down from placing a skull on the rock.

 A friendly ger camp dog. He is on a big chained leash, not because he is mean to people, but he is dangerous to other dogs, we are told.



I'll finish this off with a few pictures taken in December, just before I left to come home for Christmas. I wore a full on respirator, concealed with a soft cashmere scarf, just about every time I stepped out of my apartment from about mid-November onward. It worked extremely well and blocked out all of the pollution, and saved my lungs. I also taped every window and door in my apartment to seal it off as much as possible from the outside air, while running the air purifier on high. Not a situation I ever want to get myself into again, but I did everything humanly possible to limit my exposure. The thought of staying here through another winter would be truly unimaginable for me, so I'm making alternate plans.

 Happy dark cold smoky day! On this day, it was about -20F walking to work. Several weeks after I left, temperatures in the city plummeted to -40F. So glad I missed that!

Haha...

 This is not moisture in the air, not fog. This is coal smoke and car exhaust, at dangerous levels. This is what happens when your primary energy source is coal, and there are no regulations/clean coal plant technologies, and 700,000 people in the slums of the city live in Gers and burn anything to stay warm this time of the year. Nobody should have to endure this, and I have empathy for all the Mongolians that have no other choice.

 Truly a time to hunker down in one's apartment and find indoor hobbies!

Ulaanbaatar Winter

Frenzied and calm, frozen and fluid

An alpenglow arcticarian landscape so foreign and foreboding,

I live here? 

Wow, imprinted, forever experienced and not forgotten,

A parallel world forming its own version of civilization and order,

In a sea of chaos.