#38 Mongolia

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Hello again after just a week!

Sadly our Mongolian adventure is coming to a close. Also sadly enough anyhow, with the new upgrades to this travel blog it looks like I can't upload pictures. For now, I've put a bunch on Facebook though.

We came into Mongolia on the nicest distance train possible! In our 4 bed closed compartment we were the only people occupying it. The train had an excellent food car, nice tea/coffee ladies and even a shower. (I was wondering why they came around and gave us fresh towels). Our first day in Ulaanbaatar was Independence day or Naadam festival. The whole country shut down to wrestle, do archery, and horse racing. We went to the stadium and watched several wrestling bouts. Basically it is a bit like Sumo. 2 men come together, grapple, and the one who's knee hits the ground first, looses. There are no age or weight categories, so the strongest wins.. like old times! We also drank kvas, ate horse, and tried buuz. It was a great first day.

Then we went to the semi-Gobi we stayed with a local family in their guest ger (yurt is the Russian word) and had a wonderful day climbing the sand dunes and hunting for the poisonous Mongolian desert spider, which we didn't find. Our day started off ominously enough when upon coming across a flowing river or driver asked some 6 year olds playing in the water if he could drive though, they said 'yes' and he plunged into the sandy river and got us stuck. We had to roll up our pants, take off our shoes and hike an hour to the ger village. Later he got stuck in a sand bank. In general his Toyota Camry was not fit for off roading...

At the camp we took a lovely camel ride in the desert, went on a hike to find beer, and played some vollyball and read. I am in the middle of Obama's "Dream's from My Father" now. The next day we went to Hustai National Park, home of the Przewalski horse. So all animals are ranked from 1 to 7 on the endangered list, with 1 being completely extinct, 2 being extinct in the wild, and 7 being not extinct at all, etc. The Przewalski or Takhi horse survived only in a few zoos so it was number 2. After being re-released into the plains of Mongolia their numbers have rebounded to number 3. So after being almost wiped off the face of the earth, they are growing in numbers. We saw these beautiful horses at Hustai.

We also visited a local family and drank some home made fresh yogurt. It was great for a hot day! Not only did we ride horses across the plains we also ate horse. It was pretty tasty actually, although it is not Kosher, and I will not be making a habit of eating it. We also got to see the national instrument of Mongolia in action. It is the 2 stringed horse headed fiddle with throat singing accompainment. It was really neat actually and we almost bought one of their 25 dollar cds. I hear they are on iTunes though so later we will take a look.

Back in Ulaanbaatar we tried unsucessfully to find Laura's license plate and our Russian "transit visa" ...hopefully we can get one at the airport in Moscow. We went to several lovely museums. One had a facinating exhibit on Chengis Khan, founder of the Mongolian Empire that went from Ukraine to the Pacific. Beef tartar comes from Mongol putting meat under thier saddles for long ride snacks. Another museum had a huge dinosaur bone collection from Mongolia. There is some controversy as to whether the Tarbosaur is just a T-Rex with a different name. The 3rd museum to victums of persecution (by the Soviets mostly in the 1930s) had a pretty chilling display of actual human skulls, all with bullet holes in the front. You cant't very well say they starved to death if they all have holes in their skull!

In general this trip has been very informative and interesting. I have several subjects for future googling. I learned and saw a lot! Tomorrow if we cant enter Russia we may not be allowed to leave the airport. If this is the case, see you in Ukraine!

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