We aren't on tarmac very long before our tires embrace earth once again. We're cutting laterally across a valley, with dozens of mice scurrying out our way. An eagle sits off to once side of the road, bemused, until one of us raises a camera and then he's gone. We stop for a pee break, beneath a hillside covered by sheep, though oddly only on one side. A motorcycle pulls up, an old man and his young granddaughter. He sits on the ground, sharing a smoke and a chat with our drivers. Bilgee hops on the old man's bike and races around like in an advert for those short-lived Bronson motorbikes. The old man seems completely unperturbed.
We make another impromptu stop, at a lone ger set at the curve of a broad valley. Tulga had apparently chosen them at random, dropping in uninvited with eight other guests. But the hospitality immediately appears, namely in the form of khumiss, that alcoholic, fermented mare's milk that I'd been wanting to try. It is lighter than expected, a bit like unrefined sake. I hope for another sip, but sadly the bowl doesn't come around again. (I do refuse a second helping of sheep brain, scraped raw direct from the skull by a grinning Bilgee.) The young family here are very friendly, with an infant, and an older boy. The wife is strikingly attractive, and looks ten years younger than her 27 years. She also seems to be the only one doing any work, ever on the move, yet moving with an unhurried calm.
We all file out to watch her and the boy milk the horses. A few dozen are tethered along a single rope, the young foals a little skittish at the newcomers. A few of us get a chance at riding, and when mine turn comes I feel surprisingly comfortable in the saddle. The day is warm and beautiful, the location beyond picturesque. I think how nice it would be to do a horse tour in Mongolia, enjoying a passage of days as nice as this one.
Another couple turn up, relatives apparently. One of the men offers to demonstrate lassoing one of the newer, unbroken horses. It takes a few attempts, but they finally get him. Bilgee, ever the maverick, wants a ride. It bucks and leaps, and he's only on for a handful of seconds before he goes bum first into the dust. He'll play it off laughing, but later on I notice a large scrape on one elbow. Tough guy Charles Bronson indeed.
We continue along the valley, at one point weaving through a large flock of black and white sheep, like making one's way across a chessboard. Tarmac comes and goes, then we cross a stream at the head of the Orkhon Valley, which is supposedly the pastoral home of Mongolia's oldest people. Our ger camp sits along midway down the valley, isolated and with a good view from its position on a rise. We expected to leave again after lunch, though are delayed slightly by an intense wind storm that comes from nowhere, It is kind of exciting to sit in one's ger during such a storm, wondering if the entire thing will make like a UFO and take flight.
We eventually drive further into the Orkhon, above its broad valleys flecked with trees. At one point the river makes a dramatic series of turns, white water racing below the hilltop from which we admire it all. Not far from here is Temeen Chuluu, a collection of graves and deer stones commemorating a Turkic people, going back to the 3rd C. BCE. It is a peaceful place, the jagged stones like the sails of old ships, sailing toward the gentle hills behind. The mountains above are tree-covered and home to bears. We linger a long while here, but no one feels in any hurry (though I do feel a tinge of regret that we didn't get to visit the Tovkon Khiid monastery somewhere in the hills further out). I wander down to the river's edge, here a mild flow across the grasslands. Horses graze just the other side. You can almost envy the dead spending their eternal rest here.
We disembark the vehicles midway home and walk an hour or so back to camp. Tulga lingers behind, probably to allow us the chance to navigate, to get a sense of the challenges the nomads would have experienced navigating a rather featureless landscape. Horses too are on the move, walking single file to wherever they'll spend the night.
We spend ours at Ursa Major. Being an eco-camp, there is no electricity or running water. As such, there are no showers, but we are brought hot towels, carried in those wicker baskets best known for steaming Chinese bao. I take up the offer to get my hair shampooed, just for the experience. Then I return to the quiet of the approach of evening.
It's a large camp but there are only a few other guests. As is the case in most camps, the evening meal is western, and this one even has basilico squirted across the plate, served up by a man with a Native American dream-catcher tattooed on one forearm. We linger long after dinner, before the staff gestures that they want to go. But we still have wine, so we all return to one ger, to tell ghost stories as the wind again kicks up outside. The fire in the stove of our own ger takes the edge off the cold, but I am not long in enjoying it as the wine and the long day nudge me quickly into sleep.
I awake early to read out front of the ger, warming myself with the coffee I'd made. I could sit here all day and watch the herds of animals moving back and forth across the Steppe. A group of horses comes up the hill, accelerating as they descend. I wonder what inspires these movements. Does one animal just suddenly go and the rest follow? A majority of their group crosses the dirt track without hesitation, but an old timer coming up far to the rear, moves across gingerly. Then they all suddenly stop and begin to graze. The little ones keep running around in circles, at play.
Kharkhorin comes up suddenly, or at least what is left of it. The Soviets had attempted to build a small city here, now a ruin of tall buildings at the center of town, the side of one laid open like a nasty wound. The rest of the city (or more aptly, town), is low and residential, residences aligned in rows, alternating in square blocks or round gers, like a game board where the players can't agree on the rules.
Erdene Zuu Khiid holds court at the center, as you'd expect from the Mongolia's best known monastery. From her previous visit three years ago, LYL remembers the area as run down and abandoned, but today about a dozen small shops stand shoulder to shoulder across the carpark. Originally built in the 16th century to declare Tibetan Buddhism as Mongolia's state religion (an act that also saw the first use of the title of Dalai Lama), the monastery was badly neglected during the Soviet years. Back in the 1990s, I nearly got involved in an opportunity to help restore it to its former glory, though in a further example of impermanence, my plans fell through in the end.
The site is vast, though the current buildings on site are all on one side. A massive ger of 45 meters circumference once held court at center, though now all is covered by grass. The three main temple buildings are of various shapes. Monks are active in one of these, as a priest leads them through their pre-meal prayers. We sit awhile to listen, then move to a neighboring building to recieve blessings for a safe journey. The biggest temple buildings had once been the spiritual heart of the site, but today now function as a museum. Ironically the scrolls and Buddhas are far grander than those in the active temple itself.
We move over to our camp, and lunch. It is quite large and busy, and one can't help but feel a sort of tourist vibe here. Kharkhorin being a tourist town, this makes sense. And in this particular case I hardly mind, as it offers electricity, points for charging devices, and most importantly, the first hot shower in five days. If ger had windows, I would be able to see former sumo grand champion Asashoryu's more polished and posh-looking camp just across the river, large oval-shaped ger of bright white. I imagine a great deal of yen must flow through there.
In the afternoon, we visit the museum. As LYL has been here, she begs off to go visit some shops selling silk. I do a cursory look around the exhibits (enjoying particularly the maps, the ruins of the old kiln, and the diorama of the historical Kharkhorin), then Tulga frees me to return to Erdene Zuu, to see a few features my guidebook has told me I've missed. It feels good to be on my own for a while. I pass a pair of young monks carrying brooms dawdle and laugh as they go. Behind the row of shops, a small child defecates in the dust.
The wind is high when we all regroup. We wander out to the stone turtle that marks where Chinngis Khan's son, Ögedei set up his capital. A few of the remaining stone columns were visible beneath a massive platform, but little else. We'll visit another turtle atop a hill nearby, stopping on the way to admire a large phallus at its base. Legend has it that the phallus is a reminder to the monastery monks to control their sexual impulses, but imagine it is a fertility symbol for a good harvest, nestled as it in beside a stream that undoubtedly goes on to water the crops further on.
Not far from the turtle is one of the largest ovoo I've seen, piled high with horse skulls. As I undergo the obligatory three circuits around it, the wind is growing in intensity. It has felt like autumn for days, but this wind from the north promises winter. The Buddhists are right, change is ever-constant.
On the turntable: Art of Noise, "Dreaming in Colour"
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