Into The West - Part Three : Altai Tavan Bogd

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Our western adventure into Altai Tavan Bogd national park didn't start quite as we'd planned it. The idea was to ride into the park accompanied by the furgon and all our lovely gear and to spend a week of relatively luxurious camping in the mountains, riding on ahead of the car each day. The pass over the mountains to get into the park was steep but everyone seemed confident that the car would make it. Since it had been snowing, though, the pass was no longer open to vehicles so another way in would have to be found. We weren't able to find enough extra horses to use as pack animals but we thought a couple of Hatran's camels would do the trick nicely.

The day we were to leave we found out that we had only one camel coming with us. A camel can carry around 200kg without too much trouble, and this one was a big fellow. The word for camel in Mongolian is Temee, pronounced as Timmy of South Park fame. Henceforth he was known, at least to me, as Timmy, spoken with just that intonation. He was a good Timmy. Now, you'd think that 200kg would be ample for a 8 person expedition that was only supposed to last for 5 days, 4 nights. But in Mongolia things work a little bit differently. We needed not only our own gear, minimized, with tents, but also a communal tent with a portable stove fire in case the weather got too cold to cook and eat outside. Then we needed the food; again, in Mongolia it's a bit different and rather than lots of handy, light, freeze dried food we had jars and cans galore. We also had enough for a few extra days in case we got snowed into the valley. And on top of it all we had the wrangler's (plural: one for horses and one for camel - we had both Hatran and Amangol's husband, Atalkhan, come along with us) sleeping gear which, once again, is not as lightweight and packable as the western equivalent. All loaded up the poor camel looked a bit miserable.

We also had some trouble getting permits to enter the border area. We were told that we should have applied for permission in Ulaanbaatar and that there was nothing they could do for us in Altai. We thought it was all off for a moment, but Amangul came to the rescue and got her brother (I think), who was head of the Protected Areas Office in Ulgii, to pull some strings and eventually our permits came through.
It took until after lunch to get ready, true Mongolian style, but we got away in the end and rode out of town without too much fanfare. A few hours ride toward the mountains saw us to a little homestead where we were met by a man named Mere who was VERY glad to see us. His whole family had gone off to a wedding and he'd been left behind to look after the herds. I think he was getting a bit of cabin fever. He showed us to a camp spot and then invited us in for suu-tei-tsai. I had four bowls. Lovely stuff. The girls and I eventually escaped under the premise of cooking dinner, leaving the guys to be further drowned in salty tea and enthusiastic conversation and probably plied with nasty Mongolian vodka.

It was our first really cold night, that night. We were at 2300m/asl and the stream we camped beside froze solid overnight. I'd never seen a frozen stream before, so it was quite a thrill for me. I felt very intrepid, if more than a little bit chilly.

Our next day was a long slog up and over the pass and down into the park proper. The snow was perhaps a foot deep at the top and we were glad we hadn't tried to drive the furgon over. It was crystal clear but hideously cold. I was practically frozen to Gunther's back in between stints of walking to un-numb my feet. In the evening we camped on a small plateau overlooking the valley. It was getting to be a cold business overnight. The temperature was dropping to below -15 degrees, which is my sleeping bag's limit, so I was sleeping in all my clothes to keep warm. Near the camp were a few 'man stones'; stone age carvings in the shape of a man, thought to mark the graves of important people. The following day we hit the border guard post. Altai Tavan Bogd runs down the Chinese border and you need special permits to enter, it being a restricted area. We all lined up while our passports and permits were checked by two bored young guys with guns. We were fully prepared to be turned back, but the let us in without too much hassle. It was at this point that Hatran announced that we'd be in the park a total of 5 nights, making our trip 8 days, 7 nights, rather than the planned 5/4. Lucky we'd packed extra food. The fact that our border permit was for the original 5 days didn't seem to be an issue. In Mongolia it's easier just to go with the flow, so that's what we did.

Once we'd passed the border guard post the landscape changed dramatically. Up until then it had been dry and barren and rocky. At that point it became this gorgeous forested region with a big rocky river and lots of larch trees turning colour for winter. It felt quite magical after all the rocks. We spent three days in the valley and did some beautiful riding. On one of the days, Hatran took us on a day ride up into the surrounding mountains on John's request to go somewhere 'exciting'. That day contained the most hairy, dodgy and thrilling riding I've ever done, hands down. The places we were able to take those little horses were just insane. The hills were so steep that I'd hesitate to walk down them on foot, let alone on horseback. Some of the hills were so steep that we did have to lead them down, which was probably scarier - having 300kg of horse following you down what might as well be called a cliff. But we got some sensational views and the distinct feeling that very few people had ever bothered to get to where we were. That day the repect I have for Mongolian horses grew immensely. Western horses would have been tumbling down the sides of the mountains willy-nilly if they'd been taken up there. By the time we'd climbed to the first ridge I'd decided that Gunther was the best thing since sliced bread.

That was also the day we had our first fall of the trip. It was quite sensational, too. Mongolian, Russian and Kazakh saddles all operate on a two girth system - one looser one just behind the forelegs, where western girths go, and one tighter one further back on the belly. The flaw in this design is that the rear girth, which is the active girth, tends to get looser and needs to be readjusted frequently. In this case, Sam forgot to check her girth and mounted her horse with it's nose pointing down the hill. It then proceeded to put it's head down and graze which resulted in the saddle sliding right over it's neck, depositing Sam squarely in a prickly bush. The most amazing thing about the fall, though, was that the horse just stood there quietly, with a saddle over it's eyes, waiting patiently to be untangled. They have the same reaction to having ropes tangled around their legs and when they've stepped through their reins. Phenomenal horses. So Sam had broken the no-fall barrier for us and thus lowered the odds of the rest of us coming off. Good of her, really.

That night I made tea from rosehips I picked during the ride. They'd been ruined by the recent freezes so were no good to eat but were fine in tea. Hatran and Atalkhan thought I was wierd but I've found that gathering the odd bit of wild food here and there has been one of the most fun things about my time in Mongolia, whether it's mushrooms, onions, berries or fruit.

That was also the night that I fell in the river and lost one of my lovely water bottles, all in one fell swoop. I went down to the water to fill it up and I remember thinking that I should take my gloves off so as to have a better grip on the bottle. But I didn't. And of course I was getting water from the faster section of the river - fresher water etc. I was standing on a nice, wide, flat rock and all of a sudden my legs shot out from under me and I landed on my arse with my legs in the river up to my knees. I pulled them out pretty quick but I also dropped my nice camelbak bottle into the river. So, of course, I jumped in after it, not thinking that having wet boots, trousers and long johns was perhaps a more serious problem in sub-zero temperatures than a lost waterbottle. Clearly my brain doesn't prioritise according to logic when I have just dunked my feet in an icy river. And I didn't manage to catch the bottle, anyway, after all that. (Don't worry, Mum, I had a dry pair of bottoms and socks to change into, although my wet boots made the next couple of days a bit more miserable than they'd have been otherwise.) I was hoping that everything would dry if I hung it by the fire that night but they didn't. Everything was in various stages of frozen solid in the morning, with my boots taking the rock hard prize. It took half an hour by the morning fire to soften them up enough to put them on over my poor, plastic-bag-wrapped feet.

On our way out of the park, past the border post again, Hatran directed us up a side valley. It transpired that he was planning yet another night in the park for us. Not only were we already in violation of our permits, it would also make the food situation fairly tight. We had a brief discussion about the merits of risking being caught in the border area without permission vs. the wisdom of high-tailing it out of there and getting away with the extra two days we'd already had. We decided that the risk was low enough, when compared to the gain of an extra day in such a beautiful area. Besides, we thought, if we got caught and, as a worst case scenario, got stuck in a Chinese border jail for a night and slapped with a US$500 fine (which John was confident he could talk us out of), it would make a bloody good story. Thus, we decided to stay on. In the end we were saved from our foolishness by a turn in the weather. It got cloudy, it got cold and miserable and windy. We changed our minds and decided we'd better race the weather to the pass before we got stuck in the valley with no food.

We only made it with a day to spare. Crossing the pass this time was a different experience. There was much more snow by the time we got up there. There was still the bitter wind but this time it was driving sleet at us and we didn't have the views, being closed in by cloud. It was a miserable day. Cate and I walked down the other side in order to avoid freezing solid.

We were just on the home stretch when we had our second fall, even more spectacular than the first, this time courtesy of Cate. We were cantering (slowly) along a flat and relatively rubble-free stretch of road toward Altai when all of a sudden Cate's horse, which was just in front of me, face-planted into the road, sending Cate over it's ears. If that wasn't bad enough it then proceeded to execute a flawless forward roll right onto poor Cate. Good old Gunther stopped immediately but there wasn't much I could do until Cate's horse had got off her, giving her a few good kicks in the process. Miraculously Cate was able to get up off the ground after that, with no broken bones poking out of her body, no blood, and with her un-helmeted head fully intact. We thought she might have broken or dislocated a couple of ribs or possible fractured her sternum - that's where the horse sat on her - but she won't know until she gets home and has an x-ray. High drama, to be sure.

The night that we got back to Altai there was a huge dump of snow which would have rendered the pass impassable. We woke up to a fairy tale village of yaks standing in snow on the main street and powdery snowflakes drifting down. It made Altai seem so pretty, hiding all the rough edges under a blanket of perfect white. It melted down to slush by lunchtime but the morning was spent in ankle deep snow. It was almost a pleasure to go across the road to the loo.

www.zavkhan.co.uk

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Comments

[niki]

well that was fab
hi em - did yiou get the eagle hunters phone number - he looked like a serious one - and what an adventure - oh my god cant wait to see the photos - will pick u up from the airport on tues nite - u sound so up!!!!!!1 happuiness must be a hill and an eagle and a ghorse then xxx cu sooner mum