Disseminating Tracks VIII: The Hustai, and Beyond

The wind of last evening promised, and the weather this morning delivers.  We leave camp in a light rain, the first we've seen while in country. Luckily, we follow a surfaced road for most of the journey.  I pass the time by finding interesting-looking mountains out on the horizon, and wait for the inevitable roadside ovoo that honor them. We pass through a series of little towns, each one more wild, wild west than the last.  Buzzards perch lined up along the fence surrounding a rubbish tip.  The built-in joke that all the petrol stations are called "MT."    

The rain stops. We eventually turn off the tarmac onto a dirt path, no doubt surprising a western woman squatting nearby to pee.  It is a rough track out to the ger camp, where we're to have lunch. I don't know it yet but by morning it will become my least favorite of the trip.  I was thinking how much I was going to miss this ger glamping, but a noisy trio of drivers talking half the night make me appreciate the upcoming hotel bed.  Not to mention that there are a good number of unsavoury looking characters simply hanging about. There are plenty of tourists too, including one bitchy Englishwoman who is particular nasty to me while in the queue for the buffet.  Despite the hardships, I find myself missing the desert. 

After lunch we trace the river through an elongated series of hills.  We stop suddenly, for eagle-eyed Tulga has somehow spotted a small group of horses nudging their way along the cliffs that overhang the valley.  These are the famed Takhi wild horses, the only true wild horses left on earth.  My color blind eyes have a little trouble distinguishing their coats from the brown hills behind. 

We move onward, crossing a stream whose length is foretold by the long line of trees adjacent.  The mountains above take on the fantastic conical shapes of extinct volcanoes.  It truly is a dramatic yet peaceful place, and it's easy to see why the ancient Turkic people settled here long long ago.  Their graves remain, a long line of stones mimicked the earlier trees in the way they stretch away toward the horizon.  

We meander back toward camp on the other side of the mountains that had shaded us on the way in.  A young deer has fallen into a ravine and seems unable to move, but we leave it be, so as not to make worse the situation.  Then we spot the horses, closer than before, and we drive up toward them.  They graze oblivious to us, still a safe distance away.  There appear to two groups, following the lead of their respective alphas.  Suddenly we notice another male, a massive elk with magnificent horns.  He too is leading a group of his own.  Amazing how this entire menagerie appeared out of what had seemed to be empty space. 

We get another even closer look at two other groups during the drive out.  They are just off road, and we quietly stalk them to get good photos.  Like the other night, the horses are moving single file toward somewhere, but being wild, every place is home.  We watch them a long while, until the fading light tells us that we too best move.

The number of tourists at the camp hinted that Ulaanbaatar is close, and the land grows more and more cluttered until we are indeed in town.  By good luck, the International Horseback Archery Championships are the following weekend, so we drop by the watch the riders train.  It is a strange setting, just above a cluster of ger that look puny beside what had been a film set for a recent Chingiss Khan biopic.  The Mongolian horsemen look relaxed, almost as if they have no horse beneath them and are merely gliding bowlegged across the land.  A trio of bowmen practice in front of a group of targets, even spinning around to fire backwards.  It is easy to see how their forefathers conquered the world.  Many of the foreigners by contrast look big and clumsy. In their demeanor too.  Due to his English skills, Tulga is corralled into interpreting for the organizers, and some of the Europeans attempt to rebut this and assert their own will.  The Asians in turn have said nothing, and look more favorable for it.  The highlight of course is when we, all the while standing in our matching polo shirts and commenting on the proceedings, are asked by one German women who we were. 

We head toward city center, for our last afternoon as a group. Midway there, we drop into a traffic jams as bad as any I've ever seen. Apparently the city's 1.7 million inhabitants have one million cars.  The city is trying to curb their use by restricting say, those whose license plate ends in "1" from driving on Monday, those with "2" from driving on Tuesday, and so on.  Residents get around this by simply changing plates.  Quite crafty, these Mongolians.

We eventually arrive at the Winter Palace of the Bogd Khan, and wander awhile through the temple and grounds.  The Russian-style house is the highlight though, filled with exquisite furnishings and decor.  As we go, I wonder which room housed the 13th Dalai Lama, who took exile here after fleeing the British invasion of Tibet in 1903.

As the traffic jam made us miss lunch, we decide to simply do dinner early.  I'm pleased that Veranda is the venue, as I'd wanted to at least grab a coffee there, in this funky little jazz and Euro-themed cafe overlooking the Chojin Lama temple.  After a fortnight with the diet we've had, we all go a little overboard with the ordering, the wine in particular.  Thus it is in high spirits we thanked our team, and part officially as a group.   

Thus freed, LYL and I dart over to buy my horse-head fiddle, then rest awhile.  Our number is down to four when we meet for a farewell drink on the rooftop restaurant of our hotel.  The owner is a funny fellow, almost Russian in his demeanor.  He takes us to the helipad above, and we admire the lights of the city.  He tells us that a few days before, he'd been angered to find an array of snipers lying along one edge, acting as security for Putin's visit in the city square below.  He told them, "I don't give a shit who is coming, this is my roof!  You need to ask my permission!"

The Spirit of the Mongol lives on...


On the turntable:  Hank Mobley, "The Best of..."

Disseminating Tracks VII: The Orkhon Cradle

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"

Disseminating Tracks VI: Desert to Steppe

 The sun rises on us, its warmth creeping across our little plateau, moving from ger to ger.  It isn't long before the trucks are ready to go, and we pull away from one of the most remote places on earth.

It proves difficult to route-find in the glare of the rising sun. For the first time our drivers need to rely on "Mongolian GPS," stopping at a lonely ger to ask directions.  There are hundreds of sheep and one little girl, maybe two-years old, eating from what looks like a bag of marshmallows.  

We move steadily toward a wall of mountains to the north, which marks the provincial border.  Just before reaching them, we follow the windy, roller-coaster like road across the conical hilltips. Then we drop again, racing along a dry riverbed. We come finally to the wall, and amazingly the drivers know the way, turning right.  With a bit of winding around, we find our way through.

A series of rock canyons have sandy bottomed beds and boulders piled up as if they were assembled there.   We speed past a small abandoned camp, abandoned for the time being anyway.  It has a couple of large corrals, some overturned water troughs, and a few baobab trees. A pair of ovoo still remain up on the hills above.  The gods will keep watch.

Then long flatlands, with not a thing on the horizon, even more sparse than yesterday, which at least had small blooms of shrubs.  Long triangular hills appear in the far distance.
The eye tries to make sense of the empty landscape, placing in it things it is familiar with.  I begin to see what I consider prehistoric rock formations, ancient, spiritual places, but in those are just the things that the earth has offered up.  My eyes are used to traversing the deserts of New Mexico, and perceive where I expect there to be towns.  But of course here there are none, simply pools of haze in low lying valleys.

And then some small shrubs begin to arise, and with them camels.  They are the tallest things on the landscape, although their shadows make them appear even taller.  To the west, a shimmering mirage reflects the peak of Ikh Bodg.  Then we roar down into the town of Bayanig at high speed, a banner of dust trails trailing behind.  To a person watching in the town, this would have looked reminiscent of the approach of invading horsemen of days old. 

We stop to allow our drivers to refuel, and poke around the town's sole shop.  I'm delighted to find what is labelled as Craft Beer (but later on I can barely drink it, for god knows how long it has sat moldering on the shelf).  A pair of big motorcycles are in front of a restaurant next door.  The riders are Dutch, and are intending to cut their trip short as they are finding they have the wrong bikes, too heavy for these dirt roads.  I decide to rewatch Ewen MacGregor's trips when I get home.

Our camp is not far out of town, sitting alone at the base of the nearby mountains.  It is a small camp, and there are no other guests.  After the obligatory afternoon rest, we set off after the day sheds her heat.  We are in search of ibexes, but find none.  Instead it is we who scramble up and down the jagged rocks. We sit a long while here, gazing out over the land, and spilling out stories when they occur to us.   It has been a magnificent day, moving through a constantly changing landscape, as if someone is flicking through a photographic album, turning the page every fifteen or twenty minutes.   The magic of the land seems to have won us over, and we are no hurry to move.

When we do, it is to al fresco dining, the evening far too pleasant for us to wrap ourselves in the felt walls of the dining ger.  When the stars come out they are of a number I've never seen, and the magic takes another form.  There are constellations, satellites, and few planes.  Most of all there are the meteors.  There is also a sudden bright flash, which both puzzles and dazzles.  It is a night of which myths are born.

In the morning, we again squeeze our way through what appears from afar to be a solid wall of rock. Into the flatland of the other side.  The highest thing on the landscape is a dead camel.  Our vehicles race one another along parallel tracks,  another Mongolian superhighway.  They shift and swerve from one to another in a beautifully choreographed dance of steel and dust.

The landscape has changed again, to that of Arizona;  boulder-filled valleys and mountains jagged like the Superstitions.  But I am returned to the present by the ovoo, many are just off road, in line with a distant peak.  A truck carrying the broken-down components of a ger overtakes an ancient Lada. A traffic jam is caused by thick flocks of sheep, a dog acting a traffic cop.   Stones line the hilltops, and mice race across the tarmac made hot by the noonday sun.  Horses shade themselves under a bridge. 

Just outside of Arvaikheer (which I jokingly pronounce as I hear it:  "Ah Fuckit!") we stop at a horse monument, which is a ring of tall concrete horses standing before a shrine decorated with Buddhist deities. Nearly out of sight behind is a long line of horse skulls leading to an ovoo.  There are a number of people here, families, dressed up for photos on the kid's first day of school.  

Then into the city proper, and in a city, lunch can only be hot pot.  Later, as we walk through town to the hotel I feel people staring, which could be because I'm foreign, or it could because I'm absolutely coated in dust. Tonight will be the first time in over a week that we'll sleep in something not circular (provided we don't drink too much). The room is lavish, probably built for high-ranking party members back in the Soviet days, the furniture garish and too many in number.  The feeling of style over substance continues at dinner, taken at what is called an Irish pub.  There is no Guinness, but there is an German Bock, welcome after a week of light (though tasty) pilsners.  Our meal is taking far too much time, so we cancel half of it.  

We'll take a night stroll through town, over to the central square (there's always one) which is rife with young people just hanging around, and little children proving a hazard in their funky little motorized cars.  Tulga treats us to a quad-bicycle ride around the square, so LYL and I take a lap, trying not to run over any of the little daredevils.  We'd earlier seen families dressed up to celebrate the new school year, and the night has just that feel, the hint of cool in the air dictating summer's end.


On the turntable:  Bob Marley and the Wailers, "Exodus" 


   

Disseminating Tracks V: Dinosaur Country

  
We start our long drive into the desert with a prayer stop at a large ovoo with a good number of ibex horns wrapped around wood and stone.  From here our vehicle literally glides across the sands, skating through a low opening in the dunes.  It is a pretty white ride, and in hindsight I should have given thanks at the ovoo that I'm not at the wheel.  

The higher desert beyond is dotted with saxaul bushes.  (A bad joke is made about their being called this since the plant sucks all the available moisture from the earth.) Their numbers thin out, and the landscape suddenly becomes green. We sneak through a broad dusty pass on the Altai, where a shepherd gives water to his flock.  As our group mills about, stretching their legs, I make a quick climb up a hill above, and am surprised to see a small cluster of ger hidden in the valley on the other side.  

Toward midday, there is a further surprise, that of a tarmac leading to a small town. It's amusing that someone would decide it was needed, as it simply vanishes again on either side of town.  This is the last stop for trucks heading into China, which is a mere pass away.  There are only a few vehicles today in Gurvantes, a two-horse town with a name right out of northern New Mexican.  There are a number of ger around the perimeter, and a few brick buildings at center, as well as a small and door-less toilet shack that proves to be one of the grottiest squat-drop loos in the world.     

We all file into the town grocery store to stock up on snacks and for Tulga to arrange our box lunch.  The shop appears to be composed of just two aisles: one with alcohol and one with sweets.  It makes sense that there's not any real meat here since that would taken off the hoof, though there is a cooler at the back, filled with offal and an extraordanant amount of chicken legs.  It did seem somewhat incongruous to see the cartons of milk in the freezer toward the back. 

Stocked up, we await for someone to show up and open the warehouse nextdoor where they store the cases of water.   (If I ever publish a collection of my Asia travel pieces, it'll be titled Waiting for the Guy with the Key.)   After a short drive out into the desert we stop suddenly for our picnic, literally in the middle of nowhere.  We settle in for what we all expect to be another long drive, but then a surprisingly short time later, we arrive at camp.  

Overall, this camp at Naran Daats will prove to be the least comfortable, due to its rock-hard beds and lack of hot water.  (Apparently there was some, but not for me.)  I try to find more comfort by folding all the duvet layers under me, which sort of works but I shiver through both nights.  But such hardship always makes for an interesting memory, and after all, isn't that we paid for?    

But I liked the camp's isolation, sitting at the corner of a broad ledge, overlooking a narrow canyon of white rock and red earth, that must flood wildly in wet weather, begetting a rich panorama of wildflowers in spring.  A single family seemed to run the place, and I wondered at the young boy, how boring he must find it. (I find out later he spends most of the year at school in Gervantes.)  The patriarch has long ago made peace with it all though, and most often he could be seen sitting before his ger, silhouetted beautifully against the landscape, his three-legged dog ever at his feet.  

We go out to explore, climbing past an an ovoo and a makeshift spring filled with cans of beers for the night. At the top is a pagoda that has one of the Tibetan Tara's carved into the side.  This adds even more holiness to the natural cathedral through which we walk.  After traversing the
canyon rim we descend, crossing to the the far walls where Tulga finds us the spine of a dinosaur, jutting from earth. Fossils such as this continue to appear and disappear as the soft earthen walls of such canyons give way in heavy rains.  Thus for a good guide, such discoveries are always new.  

We'll find another set of bones the following day, shattered and calcified into pieces of fallen stone.  Searching nearby is a small group of French, a family that I met earlier, as they passed us in their old Russian van.  I remembered in particular their son of perhaps 12 years, who looked so delighted at finding dinosaurs, right down to his Jurassic Park T-shirt.  The heat of the day would prove too much for the poor thing, as back in camp I'd see him walking back and forth to the loo, his mother alongside, who didn't look so good herself.

We spend the relative cool of morning exploring Khongoryn Els, called Mongolia's Grand Canyon by the locals.  To me it is more Canyon de Chelly, extending laterally, rather than having the massive scale and depth of the Grand.  Standing at the cliff's edge I remember well my descents into both, a descent I recreate today, first down onto a massive sand dune tucked into one corner, then downward still onto the stone floor.  We move beneath the towering red walls, which narrows eventually into a slot canyon.  The path out is along a dry riverbed, pushing at one point through dense reeds.

Lunch follows, in the shade of a small oasis.  Tulga decides to wait for the heat to drop before we undergo our aforementioned dinosaur search (which also provides the ironic parallel of a good look at a massive lizard scaling a rock wall).  Most of the group goes to the trucks to doze, but I decide to stretch out beneath a small juniper. As I lie there, I feel a connection somehow with the timelessness of nomads, and an simple understanding of how to survive out here. In the day's heat and the frigidity of night, beneath the flawless blue canopy, beneath the magnificent burst of stars. 

I believe that we all share something similar on the day, in our own way.  After dinner we sit awhile nursing Georgian wine in the gazebo at the center of camp, basking in the quiet and the awe, until the spirit takes us and for some reason we all begin to sing songs by Leonard Cohen.  From Montreal to Mongolia.  Why not?


On the turntable:  Jean Michel Jarre, "Oxygene Trilogy"
  

Disseminating Tracks IV: Camel Country

Not long after breakfast, our digestive juices are swirling around as our vehicle bounces across the desert.  We follow established tracks, though occasionally we lurch sideways to take another one.  I think about how hard this kind of driving must be on the drivers, the constant diligence of the eye, the constant jostling of muscle and bone. 

We all get a reprieve at the Khavtsgait Petroglyphs, dating anywhere from 3000 to 8000 BCE.  A short steep climb brings me to the top of a bluff, dotted with jagged black stones that had been here long before that.  Tulga shows be the first two or three petroglyph sites, them releases me to seek more on my own, I meander up and down the northern cliff face, the now familiar glyphs jumping out in the morning sun.  Ibex are most prevalent, one in particular having been drawn in exquisite detail. The thin paths are lined with goat droppings, looking like a musical score.  In the brush, the grasshoppers are beginning to awake, clicking like those old sprinkler systems from the 1970s.   It is pleasant to wander these heights, the hills behind me defining the border with China, and everything else stretching away to the flat line of the horizon.  

It isn't too far from there the flaming cliffs of Bayanzag, where we catch up with the Korean tour groups. I walk out to the edge of a narrow spit of land, allowing myself for a moment the feeling of being out here totally alone. The features of the landscape speak of having once been part of the sea floor long long ago, before they dried up to give the dinosaurs room to roam.  

Lunch follows, at a ger camp run by two young women.  One of them greets us to offer milk, drunk warm from a hand-carved earthen bowl.  She is dressed in traditional garb, yet the rest of her hints at a certain nonconformist cool, with her cop sunglasses and hair tinted that orange shade which the Japanese used to do in the 90's before they got the chemistry right.        

Afterward we stop to refuel in Bulgan. It is most certainly a one-horse town, with just a couple of shops and a uninspired Buddhist temple of aluminum wrapped in wrought iron. More Korean tourists buy ice cream.  A drunken monk in yellow robes collects dust as he shuffles about.  Another man carries a newborn baby, its forehead streaked with the grey of ash.  I lean in and say how cute it is, then remember that doing so may tempt jealous spirits into carrying it away. 

We move on over the flat earth. Despite the remoteness, animals are never far away.  Camels graze in the most remote sections; cattle prefer to stay closer to small water stations.  We'll occasionally part like Moses large oceans of sheep strewn across the road.  Tracks constantly multiply and divide.  At one point in the low hills we lose the other vehicle, but then quickly unite, its familiar boxy shape and accompanying trail of dust never difficult to spot.

Throughout the day, we make multiple stops, usually to pile out to look at some animal, or a bird swirling overhead.  Eagles are most common, though a group of ibex moving toward the hills occupies us for a good while.  As such, the long drives are never monotonous, as the land does its best to present its infinite charm.

The day ends at a busy ger camp.  It has an old Western homestead feel, with a broad porch and long wooden benches in the dining hall.  The visitors here seem divided into European adventure-types, and the more general Korean tourists.  The latter will keep me awake late, as their drunken voices carry shrilly through the thin air.    

I read awhile in the early dawn, coffee warming me as I sit on the chilly porch.  Camels graze out on the desert, their shadows stretching them into oddly-shaped spindly beasts.  The famous sand dunes are out to the south, rising along the base of the hills.  And above, the long, low and jagged peaks that are the Altai.

We won't visit the dunes until the cool of evening.  Tulga helps us occupy our morning with a walk out on the bluffs above camp.  A small shack at their base provides the water and electrics, all running off an ancient car engine as generator.  (I'll constantly be awed by the DIY approach that Mongolians have taken in order to live in these remote reaches.  MacGyver could learn a few things.)  A handful of horses graze amongst the crags, and further out, a group of English bicyclists pedal into the heat. 

When the shadows of the camels begin to stretch in the opposite direction, it is time for our ride.  But first we visit the camp of the camel drivers, sitting around the inner perimeter of the ger of a tough-looking middle aged woman who looks part of the earthen floor on which she so solidly sits.  She bosses a couple of the younger men about, but truly dotes on her young son, who is stinted in size and unable to walk properly.   The love they share is obvious in their interaction.  A bowl of fermented camel's milk is being passed around, rich and thick like cottage cheese.  I'm not particularly squeamish about the weird food of travel, but I worry a little about doing the following day's long bumpy car journey with a runny tummy.  After all, there are no trees to squat behind.    

We saddle up and move slowly through low scrub to the dunes.  I miss the gentle ringing of camel bells, but at least the driver isn't playing incongruous music on his mobile like my driver in the Taklamakan last spring.  But our's today is similarly disinterested in the whole thing.  It is far more pleasant though to sit bareback, rather than be crushed into those uncomfortable wooden frames the Uiygurs prefer.   We lurch gently along, laughing as our animals get bunched up.  We take a pleasant meander through a shallow riverbed, as the non-riders in the group play paparazzi from the carved out cliffs above.  

We disembark, the setting sun accentuating the sweep of the dunes as they cast lengthening shadows. Tulga points out a 'peak' further out, and allows us to find our own way.  I take a long circuitous route along a ridge line, reached by a tough climb, the footing uncertain and ever shifting.  Once at the top it is easier to move along the sharp lip of the dunes. The others further off look small as they each follow their own path.  At one point I come across a horse skull, a reminder that some paths are shorter than others.  

I find I've misgauged the length of the ridge, and as I race down into its trough I find that both my legs and my laughter are completely out of control.  A sandstorm swirls around us for a minute or so after we regroup at the peak. Then the silence returns, yet another immensity in which to lose ourselves.

On the turntable: Art of Noise, "Moments of Love"
On the nighttable: Laurence Bergreen, "Marco Polo: From Venice to Xanadu"

Disseminating Tracks III: Into the Gobi

 And so it is that I find myself for the third time in four days going to the airport at an hour before daylight.  Possibly the same genius who was responsible for putting the sports arena and airport along the same road had decided to schedule the departure of a full third of the day's flights between the hours of 6 and 7 a.m.  The airport is a strange place, the feeling small, somewhat dark and confined.  We all huddle like refugees around a handful of cramped tables, drinking our coffees and keeping one ear perked for the announcements in a language we don't understand.  

The waiting area at our gate is filled with miners ready to board their flight to the contentious Oyu Tolgoi mine in the south.  Oddly enough, about ten minutes after they boarded they are back, and return to their seats, sitting slumped, sullenly, sleepily. Then it is our turn to board, and not long afterward, the twin props begin to spin, and we're aloft.  

The earth below is a monocolor tone, a bit like my native New Mexico, but without the punctuation of mountains that in their dramatic contrast give the word 'flat' its definition.  Tracks crisscross nearly everywhere. In some cases, a half-dozen parallel tracks race each other across the plain, then homogenize into a single strand, which from the air resembles an immense rake.  

The city of Dalanzadgad eventually rises up. Its minute downtown area is a just handful of six- or seven-story buildings, reminding me of the Albuquerque I knew when I first moved there in 1981, a similarity made easy due to the backdrop of purple mountains behind which in their own way resemble the Sandias.  But its the smell that really brings it home, the smell of sage, in the near-autumn air.

At Gurvan Saikan Airport, I could be standing in front of my mother's house, with the Manzanos defining one horizon, stretching out toward Mountainair further south. It is a very short drive to our ger camp.  The tents are all identical, their interiors differing little in each of the half dozen camps in which we'll stay over the following weeks.  There are a pair of beds (though a double here); a few quaint pieces of furniture that always seem to match the door in being twee and ornately painted.  The trelliswork within defines the ger's circular walls, and can easily be retracted for a nomadic people's seasonal move.  (Tucking in sleeves or pantlegs between the wood and the canvas also makes for a good place to air out clothing on a trip devoid of washing facilities.)  The canvas outside the trellis can be 'untucked' to create air-conditioning, especially when the wooden, ever south-facing door is tied open.  The apex of the roof has a section that can be peeled back for the same cooling effect, or for viewing stars from the comfort of one's bed. 

After a short rest we regroup for lunch in the main ger, an immense space that could seat a hundred or so.  It would prove the biggest of the trip.  Then we pile into our Land Rovers for the drive out into the Gobi.  The size of our group allows for just a pair of them, driven by a couple of friendly fellows who we grow to know well during our near-two weeks together.  One of them, Bilgee, has all the craggy resemblance to a middle-aged Charles Bronson, though he has a penchant for smiling much more often.  He has a theme song of sorts, which will roar out of his vehicle each time we are expected to embark, and even louder when we roll out of the steppe and into a ger camp.  

We head into the Yol Valley, named for the massive bearded vultures that seemed nearly ever overhead. We begin with a quick stop at a small nature center, which contains a number of lifeless taxidermied animals (by which I mean the taxidermy itself looked lifeless).  We soon leave this behind to drive the short ways out to the start of our walk.  There are a depressing number of vehicles out at the car park, amny being those attractive vans right out of the Soviet '50s.  I'm told they are sturdy little beasts, but devoid of air-con, and break down easily (though easily repaired).  These belong to the Korean tourists who will prove to be the largest tourist demographic in Mongolia.  I've always thought that the Korean language sounds somewhat Japanese, but spoken alongside Mongolian, I hear an even closer relation there.  (Mongolian spoken in a vacuum sounds almost Russian to me.)       

We follow a broad valley, passing herds of cows and horses happily grazing.  A few of the latter must be on their lunch break, for most of their brethren are laden down with Koreans, who look as if they are mustering courage to take one hand off the reins to take a selfie.  Eventually the valley narrows into a canyon of steep walls, where we find more people, many scrambling atop craggy rock formations and contorting themselves into an array of photogenic poses.  (This will lead to catchphrase of sorts, as anytime we'd gather for a group photo, we'd attempt a new "Korean pose.") There are few locals too, the older horsemen in traditional clothes, and a handful of young boys busy with horseplay of their own, wrestling and just being boys. 

We lose the crowd not long after, as we wend our way through the narrow walls, repeatedly jumping the stream that ever runs through.  One section has a sudden drop, which is slippery and tough going with the wet soles of shoes. Eventually the canyon opens into another broad valley of softly sloping hills and wildflowers.  We stop often, looking at plants and flowers and animals, the most amusing being the pika scrambling everywhere, and the grouse trying to look dignified as they amble up some remarkably steep ascents.  Juniper bushes prove even better climbers, reaching remarkable heights.  And along the way, the sacred ovoo mark the more oddly shaped rocks, looking very sacred indeed.     

The landscape dazzles, in color, in shape, in scale.  But the true vastness will be measured later.  After dark, the sky shows all she is capable of, and the stars she paints herself with are of a number beyond imagination.


On the turntable:  Love and Rockets, "Hot Trip to Heaven"

Disseminating Tracks II: Ulaanbataar

Our single day in Beijing was nearly inadvertently extended, for when we go to our departure gate at the time our ticket tells us with be the start of boarding, we find ourselves last, the plane already full.  It leaves the ground a few minutes before it is supposed to.  The earth below is hidden by cloud, opening only for landing.  Luckily we pass over Ulaanbaatar on approach, the view below confirming exactly my mental map, with all our proposed destinations for the day clearly visible beneath us.  We circle out over the suburbs, which fittingly are more circular than squared, here too the residents preferring their homey gers to the soulless Soviet style apartments of the city center.  The runway is lined with a few old planes from that same area, as well as an ancient Sikorsky helicopter, its body arched and bent like an aging dog.

At first glance, Ulaanbaatar proves unattractive, with the aforementioned apartment blocks, interlinked by the exposed pipes that stretch from the coal and natural gas plants billowing their steam further out. In the winter, freezing temps turn this into smog, making the capital one of the most polluted cities in the world, its toxic particulates trapped by the cold air and the ring of surrounding mountains. The poor air quality has led to discussion about moving the airport further out, due to ample cancelled flights.  (Town planning isn't much better.  I don't know who the genius is that decided to set the massive sports arena out on the same road as the airport.)   In his book The Horse Boy, Rupert Issacson states that Mongolians don't do cities well.  But rather than the Mongolians, the blame should fall on the Soviets.  Practical, functional, but by no means attractive.

We arrive at out hotel, the Blue Sky, a mollusc shell rising across a broad boulevard from the obligatory central square.  LYL tells me that on her last visit a few years ago, this tower of blue glass had been the stand-alone high rise in the city.  It has since been joined by a dozen more, all hotels, clustered in the same few blocks.  From these lofty heights, one has a good view of the mountains hemming in from all sides, no doubt a magnificent sight when coated with snow (provided they can be seen at all through the smog).  The nearer hills stretching toward them are dotted with white ger, like little beads of foam on the surface of a bright green sea.

Despite the first impression, the city's charm takes hold at street level.  We start at Gandan Khiid, Mongolia's most important Buddhist temple, and one of the few to survive the Soviet purges of the 1930s.  The windhorse flies on, above the circumambulating pilgrims spinning as they go oil-cannisters repurposed as prayer wheels.  We join them, lapping a trio of buildings that look like Russian dacha.  A prayer service is underway in the main temple, and we go inside to quietly sit awhile, relishing the Tibetan cultural vibe that I so adore.  

After a quick peek at the 26-meter statue of Migjid Janraisig (Kannon/Kuan Yin) and her amazing surrounding pantheon of Buddhas and sutras, we move down the hill, past the Centre of Eternal Heavenly Sophistication (intriguing, yet sadly closed), to the main boulevard.  We dawdle, looking for lunch, before settling on a Monglian Hot Pot place.  The cool hues of John Coltrane serenade us as we sit at a table with a sunken heater at center, then laden down with a number of side dishes to immerse in the boiling water.  I really appreciate the chopsticks, long and lacquered, with screw on the end where you can attach tips of wood, thereby practicing hygiene and alleviating waste.(I'm looking at you here Japan.)  As we leave we are encouraged to roll a series of sheep's ankle bones along a square of felt, which reveals our fortune.  We have no idea what it means, only that the proprietress gives both of us an enthusiastic yet wordless thumbs up.  

The next stop is a contrived one: the State Department Store, a throwback to the Soviet glory days of 1921.  We intend to buy some traditional kit to wear at dinners, a bit of fun we enjoy while traveling. Yet here nothing appeals, all of it too formal, too expensive.  (I will return the following day to pick up a light jacket, since the clouds of morning had spoken of autumn, a season which the forecast then attempts to bypass entirely by promising 6℃ nights while we're out on the Gobi.)  

Across the street is Beatles Square, so named for the large brass figures of the Fab Four at the center.  I can't help but be reminded of Almaty's similar Apple Statue.  Back to school sales have overflowed from the State Department Store and a series of stalls have been erected in one corner.  

We continue along. I am surprised by all the well-dressed youth in this Chic Élanbataar, which suggests a burgeoning middle class. Yet below the new hotels, some of the old remains, as well as a few open and untouched spaces.  One has a lovely little villa in the center, which reminds me a bit of Jim Thompson's house in Bangkok.  It looks abandoned, but for a guard sitting in a little hut by the front gate.

With the cool temperatures and small town vibe I'm reminded a lot of Boulder, aside from the ger of course.  I'm told that over a million people live in the city, about a third of the country's entire population. The numbers tend to increase after a hard winter, the fatal dzud that often kill up to a million livestock.  Thus the capital is simultaneously on the grow and falling apart.  The streets and sidewalks are broken, and water lingers after recent rains.

LYL decides to go back to the hotel for a rest, but I detour over to Chojin Lama Temple, the former residence of Mongolia's last state oracle.  Converted into a museum in 1942, it has all the look of a Taoist Temple, yet filled with articles more Tibetan, including the lingering ghosts of butter lamps.  The exhibits aren't too profound but the handful of buildings appeal, and it is fun to frame for photos their spiky corners against the more modern towers above.  

I wander past the blocky and unmistakably Russian-built Wedding Palace, foregoing a pair of inviting cafes to instead visit a craft beer bar I'd seen on the drive in.  They don't have the sampler flights that I ask for, but amazingly they bring me four modest glasses anyway, free of charge.  I nurse these awhile, followed by a 'guilt' pint, thinking what a funky little city this is.  Eventually a trio comes in and sits at the opposite corner of the place, yet one voice, the American one, still cuts across.  He and his female Mongolian colleagues small talk for a few minutes, until he launches into some inane business speak.  I don't know his position, where he sits in the company heirarchy, but his language, though friendly, is aggressive and didactic.  I'm reminded of the book The Ugly American that I've recently read, and here before me I see its basic premise at work, that my countrymen too often take a position of superiority, rather than one of understanding.  But what do I know.  

We meet our Wild Frontiers group the following morning, the numbers refreshingly small, just six.  We set off immediately across the square, taking a few photos with the massive statues of the Khans, then spend the rest of the morning at the National Museum, finding it as grand and informative as I'd been told.  Another hot pot lunch follows, this one more formal but not quite as tasty as yesterday.  Then a performance at the Tumen-Ekh Ensemble, which in just an hour offers a remarkable cross section of the diversity of musical forms that the steppe has to offer.  These kinds of things can be very hit or miss, but this one is particularly good.  And when I see the singer staring off into space as he sings khöömei, I begin to feel tears welling up in my eyes. That's where it started for me 20 years ago, with the mesmerizing throat singing, suggesting perhaps a tie to this part of the world, and its vastness.  As we file out I decide that I'll buy a horse-headed fiddle when we returned here to UB in two weeks.  

It is a very easy day, just wandering a small slice of the city.  We finish at a trendy little restaurant near our hotel.  It is western fare (and opulent wine) but I appreciate our guide Tulga's choice, for once we leave this cosmopolitan city, all our meals will most certainly be from one of what the Mongolians refer to as the five snouts...


On the turntable:   Genesis, "Foxtrot"
   

Disseminating Tracks: (Beijing Prelude)

From East to West, the twain kept a-rolling, spreading into Europe and the Middle East.  Devouring book after book as I travel, each page revealing new insights into how great an extent Asia defined Europe, despite the latter's reluctance to admit it.  These influences came on the hoof of the Mongols of course.  Being a product of a Eurocentic education and culture, I'd grown up believing that they'd been bringers of war, conquerors of cities, slaughterers of culture.  Yet due to my current reading, I now see their progenitor Genghis (hereafter Chinggis, in keeping with the true pronunciation) as one of the world's earliest proponents of globalization. Slaughter he did, yes, but only those who opposed him (no different than the economic policies of a certain sitting president).  Those who bent the knee were absorbed into the growing diaspora, their knowledge and experts utilized, their technologies and economies emulated. And almost as amazing as all that the Mongols accomplished, was the brief period in which they did it.  Their dominance lasted a mere 150 years or so, but their legacy lived on.

Until the 20th Century at least. The prior century was the most horrific proponent of genocide in history, culturally speaking.  Back in 2006, I'd flown to Beijing in order to bicycle around the old Mongol hutong neighborhoods, worried that they wouldn't survive the frenzy leading to the 2008 Olympic Games.  Prophetically, on my roamings today I find them long gone, replaced by new monuments to Chinese wealth, monuments found in every large city across the globe, monuments to the icons of fashions that will fade from the stage far more quickly than the Mongols had.  For isn't the nature of empires, business or otherwise, to fall?

 With a keen sense of irony, we stay at another monument to empire, the Beijing Hotel, which started life in 1917 as the Grand Hotel du Pekin, before eventually becoming the head of Japanese operations during their occupation. I have a Lost in Translation moment as I wander through its sprawl, trying desperately to find the Writer's Bar.  Somewhere during my journey I come to a massive banquet room, whose grand columns and staircase looks like a set from The Last Emperor, after Pu Yi was made puppet of the Japanese.  I finally find the bar, its French-made parquet floor the first dance floor in China, its walls hung with the celebrities and dignitaries entertained by Mao and the Gang over the subsequent half century.  I hope they had better luck with the menu, as nearly everything I ask for has run out.  I suppose I need to get back into China mode.  Luckily I'll only be here for one day. 

 

On the turntable: Bruce Hornsby, "Here Come the Noise Makers"

(untitled)

One last swim,
Before Summer dissolves into

Spider lilies and swirling typhoons. 

On the turntable:  Black Sabbath, "Born Again"

Sunday Papers: Ella Maillart

"Travelling in company, one does not learn the language so quickly. The natives do not make their own of you. You penetrate less deeply into the life about you."

  
On the turntable:  "Bob Weir & Rob Wasserman, "Fall 1989 Long Island Sound"
On the nighttable:  "James Hilton, "Lost Horizon"

(untitled)

On the cusp of autumn
Cool bookends
Frame the shape of day.

On the turntable: Journey, "Greatest Hits Live"

Sunday Papers: Diana Shipton

"However close you are to people, however mentally in tune with them, places and experiences that you have not shared have little meaning.  You listen to the stories they tell you of people and countries you do not know; you look at the photographs they show you, but however interested you would like to be, the unshared existence remains like something in a novel, shadowy and unreal. Only personal experience can be a firm reality." 

 On the turntable:  Gene Loves Jezebel, "Giving up the Ghost"
 

Sunday Papers: Peter Fleming

"Communism is like platonic love.  It is all right as a theory, it is all right as an experiment, but after that it too often fails to maintain its original nature."

 On the turntable:  Jerry Reed, "Hot A' Mighty"