Sleeping in Gers, Riding HorsesJul 26, 2008
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Chinggis Tourist Camp
Our Ger - Camp Chinggis Khan
Inside Our Ger
| Day 11-13: Mongolian Countryside We have really enjoyed our stay here in Mongolia. The country is absolutely beautiful, the people very friendly and hospitable, so much wide open space, and QUIET (outside the big city of UB). Our stay at Chinggis Tourist Camp was very enjoyable, and we enjoyed sleeping in a Ger, eating traditional Mongolian food (cooked over hot rocks), riding horses across the steppe and along the Tuul River valley, and seeing the Milky Way stretch from Horizon to Horizon. Truly memorable. It has been very restful and peaceful. To further deepen our enjoyment of the place, we were the ONLY PEOPLE in the camp for the first day and a half! We even tried the traditional Mongolian drink of fermented Mare's milk... truly an adventure. Sour, with bite, and particles floating around: not entirely enjoyable but memorable nonetheless. Last night some Spanish tourists arrived, and we were all treated to a display of traditional Mongolian dance, costume, singing, instruments ... and KHOOMEI (throat singing)!! This was a highly enjoyable and unexpected experience, and we took many pictures and video. It was very interesting to talk with the Khoomei master afterwards and hear about his research and how he is not just preserving this traditional style of singing, but also moving forward with new innovations (i.e. moving from Pentatonic Khoomei into Diatonic Khoomei). There are colleges and Universities here in Mongolia specializing in training traditional musicians and dancers. Fascinating. Today we visited Terelj National Park ... to see "Turtle Rock" but were entirely unimpressed. The park is "protected" but there is so much tourist development that it is almost like Disney World. We were actually allowed to climb Turtle Rock, which was surprising but fun, and discovered a lot of garbage at the top. That was sad. The natural beauty of the park is stunning, but it is difficult to go anywhere without running into busloads of tourists. Again, we found this surprising. Next time, should we ever come back to Mongolia, we would try to get much farther away from Ulaanbaatar to escape all the tourists. Even near our ger camp there is a HUGE amount of development going on, surrounding the new Chinggis Khan statue/cafe that has been built in the middle of the steppe. It is a neat idea, but way over the top and will soon infringe upon the peacefulness of the land we enjoyed. Spent the afternoon running around UB finishing up last minute things, trying to ship things back to Canada (to no avail), shopping, picking up our train tickets. The traffic in UB is a nightmare, and we were glad Dash Bold was driving and not us. Definitely WAY WORSE than Uganda, no word of it a lie! Our interpreter has been very generous in staying with us and helping to safeguard our stuff. He was supposed to drop us off in UB at 2:00 but he has been hovering all afternoon and will personally see us off at the train station. We are SO GRATEFUL for all that he has done for us, but will be glad to get our freedom back! In a few hours we leave Mongolia on board the same train that got us here. We are NOT looking forward to having to spend another 6 hours in Naushki. If you come to Mongolia do not fly MIAT, do not take the train (unless continuing to China), but do fly directly to Ulaanbaatar to avoid wasting 12 hours of your trip sitting at a border crossing! When we get to Irkutsk, Russia we will have to board a bus immediately to get to Lake Baikal and Olkhon Island ... it may be nearly a week before we can get internet access again. |
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