Outta Mongolia

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I didn't do much in my last few days in Mongolia. I went shopping for souvenirs, as one does. I was a bit perturbed by the wall of wolf pelts in the shop for sale to tourists – whole pelts: head, paws and all. The Post Office was nice and simple, unlike the one I once had to use in Kuala Lumpur, where the postage was on one floor, sale of boxes on another, stamps on another, and Customs declarations on another, at each counter of which you have to stand in line for half an hour to be served.


On another day I went for a long walk to the Tuul River south of town. As you may recall I already tried the Selbe River, which is also in the south of town but which turned out to be more canal-like than river-like. The Tuul River is a proper river and it isn't far away. If I had been able to walk there in a direct line from my guesthouse I could have got there in half an hour, but instead just before the river you hit a highway and have to follow that for ages until you can find a side-road to the river (or in my case, until I managed to find a gap in the wall of buildings and make a quick cross-country ramble). The sky was blue and cloudless, but warm it was not. Before heading out in the morning I had checked the weather online to make sure it wasn't going to rain. It said that it was currently minus 7 degrees Celsius! I thought that couldn't be right, but it was certainly minus something, because at the river there was a heavy frost and all the puddles were frozen solid! I wished I had taken my gloves with me! The river is really nice, crystal-clear, and quite deep and fast-flowing so not frozen. It is edged either side with a dense mini-forest of willow scrub, and you know what's found in willow scrub don't you? That's right – azure tits!



I figured they must be here so when I saw something bright blue fly from a willow into a tree I knew that must be one. Turns out only the wings and tail are azure blue, the rest of the bird is like a washed-out powder blue, so when seen from a distance it looks almost white. It was sort of a disappointment but they were really common and the more I saw them the more I liked them. It helped that they weren't at all flighty like most of the birds here, so I got to watch them for long periods. By the end of the morning I had decided that they were the nicest tits I have ever seen. There were also great tits here which being “real” great tits (as opposed to the splitty ones) are also very attractive, and willow tits and white-crowned penduline tits as well. There were actually heaps of birds all through the willows, although most I had seen already this trip (yellow-browed and Pallas' leaf warblers, Daurian redstarts, little buntings, red-breasted flycatchers, long-tailed rosefinches, black-faced buntings, grey wagtails, Daurian partridges). Lesser whitethroat was new. I even saw a common snipe near a flooded bit of ground, and it must be woodcock migration season or something because I flushed no less than four of them. I got the first one in the binoculars as it flew off so I can count it, but I spent ages unsuccessfully walking round and round looking at the ground trying to find an unflushed one to look at.


The next morning I went back to the Tuul River. I got there faster this time because I had picked up some short-cut points. I had taken my gloves and also another layer of clothing but it turned out not to be as cold as yesterday so they remained in my bag. The birds were much the same as yesterday except no snipe or woodcocks but even heaps more azure tits and Daurian redstarts, as well as a male Siberian rubythroat. Best for the morning was a tree of Daurian jackdaws, and another tree with a red squirrel in it. The red squirrels here aren't actually red, they are a rich browny-black with pure white bellies. The squirrel took my Mongolia mammal list to twelve (not including the Pallas' cat eyeshine or the wolves howling). What I really want to see is a hoopoe! I've seen them in the Waterfall Aviary at Jurong BirdPark, but never in the wild. I looked in South Korea, I looked in Russia, and I looked in Mongolia. No joy yet.



And that's it for this country. I am outta Mongolia! (See what I did there? Pretty clever!!). This morning at 6.30am I flew to Beijing to start the exciting CHINA part of the trip. It was 20 degrees when the plane landed at 8.30am, which is over 20 degrees warmer than Ulan Baatar when I left it!


Ulan Baatar gets a bad rap in travel books, but I never even got knifed once while I was here. I think the city's bad reputation is greatly exaggerated which is a shame. It is also regularly labelled with words like dirty, smelly, ugly. It's like that Simpsons song about New Orleans except you change the name to Ulan Baatar. But I liked it. I may have been swayed by the fact that it now tops my list of cities with the most beautiful girls (knocking Kota Kinabalu off the top), and for that I have to thank Genghis Khan. On the wall at Idree's Guesthouse where I was staying there is a big poster showing the Mongol Empire. Have a look on the internet for a similar map – their empire was immense! It stretched from Europe in the west; south to Baghdad and the Persian Gulf; around the Himalayas north of India; included the entirety of China and Russia, and down into Thailand and Burma; Vietnam and Cambodia had to pay tribute to them; they even tried to invade Java! Naturally women from all over the empire were sent back to Mongolia for the harems of the khans, and it is from the mixing of all of these that today's Mongolian women are created. Genghis Khan: he's all right in my book.


Mongolia as a whole I really enjoyed. It is easily in my top favourite places I've been, and I'm already contemplating returning at some point. I didn't have long here (about two and a half weeks) so I'd really like to come back for longer and do some trips after wild camels and saiga and snow leopards. If so I'd probably combine it with an organised tour for the Baikal seal in Russia.



Everybody should go to Mongolia!

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Comments

[rick franks]

Hello
Hi Israel, Just wanted you to know that a friend put me on to your blog recently and I really enjoy reading it. I can relate to a lot of the things you talk about being pretty much an independent traveller myself and being keen on birds and nature. Keep up your adventures and I look forward to more of your writing.

[Scary Israel]

thanks Rick, I'm always surprised anyone other than friends and relatives read what I write, but so long as everybody enjoys it (or even if they get useful information out of it!) then it is good.