Blogs from Mongolia, Asia - page 12

Ulaanbaatar is currently hosting a graffiti festival, although it would have passed me by had I not been told about it, via a German expat living in the city. Part of the festival was a night hosted by the Goethe Institute at a bar called iLoft (not sure if that was inspired by Apple or not), which a group of us went along to. The crowd was about a quarter expats and the rest Mongolians, and the night overall was more or less indistinguishable from a night out in a European city, perhaps because it was European-organised (and DJ'd by Frenchmen). The only noticeable difference was that there was a lot of space: clubs in England are always jammed full of people, but away from the dancefloor in iLoft there was a lot of room, and ... read more

Now we are back north of the Gobi we see wild horses, and we are also staying on a farm where horses are kept. Even the horses that belong to someone, though, retain their wild spirit: yesterday we watched as around 10 people spent around an hour lasso-ing 10 or 15 horses, most of which resisted, including one calf which bolted and bucked dramatically around the makeshift paddock. It seems like a lot of work, but once broken the horses are valuable and used for milk as well as transportation. The horses they gave us to ride were much more biddable, although occasionally even they needed encouragement to move off, and our guide's horse refused to go near to the other horses. We did two short treks, one in the morning to a lovely small waterfall, ... read more

After a couple of long days of driving we have arrived west of Ulanbaatar, where the scenery has become verdant and lush. However, there has been little rain this year and Orkhon waterfall was dry, although still spectacular. The place where we had lunch, next to a river where a couple of men were fishing in the sun and another in traditional dress rode by on horseback, was one of the most beautiful I have been, despite the atrocious road to get to it. Yesterday we had lunch with a family who live in a house in a small town (by this stage, 9 days without a shower, I do not feel fit to be a guest in anyone's house).. On the television they were showing first American Idol (dubbed into Mongolian, apart from the actual ... read more

Food is included in our tour, so I don't have to worry about cooking anything, it arrives (literally) on a plate. The meals prepared by our tour guide are loosely based on Western food, but when we stay with nomadic families we eat whatever the family is eating, there is no choice. On arrival at a new family we are always welcomed into the family ger and offered tea and snacks from a bowl, usually sweets or a bread that looks like a doughnut but tastes drier and breadier, or a snack made from dried curds, which tastes of strong, salty cheese. The tea is milk from the family's herd which is heated in a large bowl first thing in the morning, salted and then kept in a Thermos flask for use throughout the day. It ... read more

As we travel through the country we often come across along the sides of the roads monuments consisting of piles of stones, usually surrounding some kind of post, with blue scarves, animal bones, small notes and various other ephemera mixed in amidst the rocks. These are believed by Mongolians to bring blessings to travellers, and the tradition is to stop, pick up a stone from the bottom, and throw it up to the top, seemingly part superstition and part prayer, perpetuating the monument. The ritual is primarily Shamanistic, but has now become tied into Buddhism, with prayer wheels and other Buddhist offerings sometimes found at the sites. We stopped at Pak Atzer ("Land of Stones") today. There used to be a Buddhist monastery situated in the valley, but this was abandoned in Soviet times when the ... read more