Mongolia

For Chinese National Day this year some friends and I traveled to Mongolia. We took a train from Beijing to Mongolia’s capital, Ulan Bator, which took 30 hours. While on the train we passed through the Gobi Desert but that happened mostly at night so I just saw a little bit when I woke up in the morning.

As we got closer to Ulan Bator the terrain turned more hilly and reminded me of the time my family drove to through eastern Wyoming, I half expected to see an antelope.  The plains were dotted with fenced-in yurts (gers in Mongolian) which are short, squatty versions of tepees that served as homes for nomadic ranchers. At the outskirts of Ulan Bator the density of yurts increased until we saw huge areas of tightly packed yurts that shared fences with snaking alleyways in between. These yurt districts surround the city on all sides and since they are pretty mobile I guess would make Ulan Bator’s population pretty variable.

In the city we did some exploring and went to the city square where a huge statue of Genghis (Chinggis in Mongolian) Khan is proudly displayed in front of the main government building.  Genghis is still a pretty big deal in Mongolia and when you consider that he put them on the map by beginning an empire that eventually covered over 22% of the earth’s land mass you can see why that is the case.

Later on we went to a performance of folk songs and dances. For me the coolest part of the evening was the throat singing. I’m not sure how it works but it sounds awesome, a little funny but definitely awesome. Somehow they can manipulate their throat and nasal cavities to produce multiple pitches at the same time.

Another highlight of the trip was going to a national park that was a few hours out of the city. Beautiful doesn’t begin to describe it. Apparently there is a type of pine tree, Tamarack Larch, that changes color and loses its needles in the winter. These trees were all over turning the hills this brilliant shade of yellow. The contrast of yellow against the bright blue sky was spectacular.

Another reason I liked going out to the countryside so much was that I got to ride three different types of animals in one day: a horse, a camel and a yak!

The thing I was looking forward to most before I went was to have some authentic Mongolian barbecue. Imagine the surprise when I found out that the Mongolian barbecue in the States was actually started in Taiwan and just marketed as Mongolian. I wasn’t too disappointed though because real Mongolian food is great, they eat meat and lots of it. And I actually did get to go to a Mongolian barbecue because the only American-franchised restaurant in Mongolia is not a McDonald’s or KFC but a BD’s Mongolian Barbeque, go figure.

Mongolia was a lot of fun but I was looking forward to get back to China where I could actually somewhat understand the foreign language that was being spoken on the streets (you will get a lot of funny looks in Mongolia if you try to speak Chinese). Our return to China, however, was delayed by snow! The temperature was just at freezing so the snow didn’t stay long but it was coming down pretty heavily and in big flakes for a while. Our 10am flight from Ulan Bator to Beijing was delayed until 2am the next morning so we missed our connecting flight in Beijing and had to find a place to sleep when we finally got through customs at 5am. Fyi, the benches at the new Burger King in the Beijing airport are really comfortable and long enough to double as a bed. Plus when you wake up in the morning you can have a Whopper for breakfast! Hey, if you hadn’t had a Whopper in a long time you would eat it anytime it’s available too

Check out the rest of my pictures from Mongolia here.