Travels into No-Man's Land

JM - Our week-long spring break has come to an end. We had some interesting travels, most of which is really, really difficult to explain in words. So, this blog posting will mostly be photos from our experience. We travelled to Choir (like a state capital city), Shivee Gobi (which is a town in Gobi Sumber aimag (aimags are like states)), Munhhaan ( a town in Sukhbaatar aimag) and Baruun-Urt (the state capital city of Sukhbaatar aimag). All of these places were way off the beaten path. We left Wednesday morning, and drove for 4 hours to reach the first place. It was mostly paved road. The second day however, as we travelled to the next town, we took no road. It was a six hour drive following a path through the flat, open nothingness. We stopped 4 or 5 times at a random ger to ask directions. It was a very bumpy ride! In those 6 hours we saw only 3 other vehicles, all trucks of some sort. All our traffic troubles came only from random mud puddles, losing the track we were following, and slowing to a stop to let horses, cows, sheep and goats pass in front of us. Our trip back yesterday was a nine hour drive, the first half without any road, the second half with a paved highway that in a few places just ended, and then started up again a few km down the road. And now for the photos.

This is one of the men clayton interviewed for MercyCorps. We are sitting inside his ger. You can see on the sofa next to him a small bottle with some fabric. That is his snuff bottle, something that all mongolian men have. When people come to your house, it is a whole ritual of presenting your snuff bottle to them -- there is a certain way to present it, a certain way to receive it and inspect it and return it. Its pretty cool, but the snuff (tobacco powder) is pretty potent.

Above is a photo to show you the bowl of freshly cooked goat's meat that was shared with us. You can see some knives that we were given to cut ourselves off a chunk of super fatty meat. It was pretty good, if you got some without much fat, which wasn't easy.

here's a picture of a typical mongolian horse. they are small but stocky and hardy. We saw countless horses like this one grazing in the endless pastures.

This is the home of one of the people we interviewed. This is their "winter camp" which they will leave soon to move around for the spring and summer with their herds. You can see clayt in his red coat.

This cow was snacking on garbage in the middle of one of the "cities" we visited. In with the rubbish was a cow skull with horns, which this cow was using to scratch his face.

The sign at the top of this building says "delguur" which means "store." Not many people know that the swastika was used by lots of people long long before hitler, and is related to ancient buddhism practices.

This little girl was at one of the gers we visited. I just thought she was cute standing there in her purple sequined boots chilling with her puppy. She's at the entrance to the ger, which I wailed hy head against, as I always forget to duck to go in.

A view of one of the "cities" we visited. Can you imagine living here? Most of the cities had no roads, just a lot of open space and you drove where you needed to go.

Here is Clayt standing by our "road" to the countryside. Our translator said we were lucky, as this was one of the better roads available. Would you be concerned if your driver went off the paved path and followed this route instead? Better yet, later that day we got to drive an hour and a half of it in the DARK.

This guy was awesome. He was one of the people clayt interviewed. He is wearing the traditional del (the blue coat/robe) and the boots made of felt. Not really pretty, but super thick and super warm. You can see on the sofa in the corner there is an empty bottle of vodka. He was a generous host, and as we talked, he continuously poured shot after shot (in a rice bowl) for everyone, until the bottle was empty.

A big gold bust of lenin i saw in a tailoring shop we were visiting. Not sure what that's all about.

We got to see a horse race on our last day in Sukhbaatar. I was trying to take a photo of the finish line, but this guy thought I was taking his photo. I guess I was.

Here is one of the early finishers of the horse race. Mostly the racers are children, 5 years old and up. The race was for 25 kilometers. Can you imagine putting your 5 year old on horse for a 25km race?

Here are some camels we saw on the ride home! We had stopped for a bathroom break. Out in the endless open, with no tree or rock in sight to hide behind, I did not partake in the roadside bathroom breaks.

Here's another little cutie hanging around one of the farms we were visiting.

This couple were very nice herders that we visited on our first day. They had lots of cute little lambs and baby goats, and they let them out of the pen to visit with us. One that was only a few days old put itself right between my feet and proceeded to nibble on my jeans. Clayton said when they opened the pen I gave a squeal of delight and he thought I was going to die from being overwhelmed by so much cuteness. I don't remember the squeal.

A last shot of the goofy looking camels giving us the eye as they passed. It was really awesome to be out in the middle of nowhere, no cars, no roads, no people, no buildings -- just us, the earth, and some wary camels.