Don't act like you're not impressed...

C - There is a reason that the countryside is so often romanticized in casual mongolian conversation. It is almost overkill. After the hundredth stunning vista, when you've again made the obligatory comments about how no one has ever stood on that spot in history, or how those mountain ranges are incredible, or how the valley opened up for miles around you as you came over another hill. Eventually you just quit talking because the spectacular openness - always accompanied by mountains on all sides - begins again over every next mountain. The extraordinary becomes ordinary. We saw rolling green hills, rocky piles of boulders that you'd swear were dropped their by some giant hand, long red valleys that stretched for miles around like the surface of mars, fuzzy green mountains, a 500-yard series of sand dunes separating the steppe from a mountain range, calm rivers whose banks were dotted with distant gers, volcanic rocks laying where they had been spewed countless years ago - like a pot of spilled topsoil on a kakhi carpet.

On our recent leg we traveled through four aimags (like states), spending considerable time in three of them. We began in Arhangai and proceeded on to Bayanhongor and then Uverhangai. We passed through Tuv Aimag on the way home, where we stopped for a delicious lunch of some sort of hot dog/sausage in a weird gravy (add the sarcastic tone of your choice). You can see our route on the wonderful Mongolian judicial map below, included for your entertainment and education. Also, if you look to the far west of the country, you can see Hovd and Bayan-Olgii, where we'll be spending roughly the next two weeks.



So, in the frame of my internship I was conducting interviews in these Aimags. Jessica accompanied to take pictures on the trip and to see the country with me a bit. We spent a lot of time talking with people in their gers and eating dangerous amounts of homemade dairy products. We had quite a bit of airag (fermented mare's milk), aarul (a variety of dried curd products), orom (clotted cream), dried cheeses, Mongol arkhi (vodka distilled from mares milk or cows milk). An interesting variety of delicacies almost all of which I prefer to fatty meat. Below you can see the spread of dairy products one Mercy Corps client produces - note the cow stomach filled with butter in the lower left. Jessica touched it without knowing It had just been filled the day before and was therefore soft and still stomach-like.



Although we were really busy going from place to place interviewing people, we did have some time for ourselves toward the end of the trip. Usually we explored the local towns (mostly really tiny places that came into view after 2-3 hours of driving through desolate nothingness - sometimes across rivers and dried river beds. We were fording rivers like it was the game Oregon Trail. Luckily no one died of dysentery). We also climbed up the available hills/mountains, always sure to return before dark due to warnings about wolves. One of the people traveling with us told us about a man she and her father picked up on the road one day. He was camping when wolves attacked and subsequently ate his horse, then attacked him. He had fended them off and was burning a fire in a night-long vigil to keep them at bay. I guess they have earned their reputation. As you can see, it is a good idea to keep an eye on Jessie.


Because this trip was related to Mercy Corps work, we were again lucky to see mongolian life in the raw, not mediated by the tourist industry that sometimes tries a little too hard to make sure you get the right experience. The people we met were regular folks trying to make a living the a country not rich in natural resources, capital, or population (for labor or consumption). It can be a bit daunting, but these people were doing their best. Generally we would find them at work regardless of the time of day. Some didn't have any electricity but had found their own ways around the handicap.

This furniture producer has electricity, but faces another problem. He can't find a workforce. He has five employees: 2 carpenters and 3 painters (all deaf). He cannot keep up with orders without more workers. To boot, 2 of his three painters are perpetually drunk, which he has to tolerate. Another drunk employee kept interrupting our interview, once trying to sit down and accidentlally ramming into Solongo (a woman working on this project with me). He had to be physically escorted out of the room (by the scruff of the neck and the back of the pants). The guy wasn't really sanctioned in any other way by his boss. Its just part of the cost of doing business for him.


This gentleman used to be a monk, but was forced to close his monastery due to a lack of funds. He is now a rather successful herder in Bayanhongor. I have run into him twice before, so we were pleasantly surprised to see each other again (I interviewed him at a market day once, and saw him in the Bayanhongor Mercy Corps office when last I was there). He has a very interesting home (not a ger) with many buddhist images and pictures. As everywhere we went, these people offered us food and drinks, and seemed to treat the occassion as a social event as much as a business exchange.


These folks have been labeled some of the best vegetable growers in Mongolia, and are just now trying to make a commercial success of it. Around them you can see their potatoes and cabbages growing in their field. They have dug a 300 foot-long ditch to irrigate their crops from the river. They also cleared and prepared the land by hand. They made us vegetable soup (again, this is a misnomer, as vegetable soup generally contains few veggies and a lot of fatty meat) with their fresh produce which was excellent, although seeing people cooking your food over a fire fueled with animal dung takes some getting used to.


We met this man in a very small town called Jargalant, the farthest north we traveled. You could see horse tying posts across from the town hall (which, by the way, was also the only place in town with extra beds - we stayed in more than one town hall on this trip). He carves saddles by hand out of tree stumps - he also had to gather most of his raw materials by hand, which can't be easy. He, like many others, said that electricity could really improve his productivity. As with many things in Mongolia, people really invest some time and effort to produce items that they end up selling for what I would consider bargain basement prices.


This little lady stopped us in Jargalant to show us her hand-made souvenirs. I don't imagine she gets many people to come and look. We went with her and looked at an array of crochet animals, felt decorations, hats and bags, etc. When she came to the green jacket in the picture below, she carefully folded it and handed it to me. Our translator said she was giving it to me, which I tried to refuse because it seemed too much. She insisted and gave jessica a felt seat cushion. We didn't want to take these gifts that she had obviously labored over without buying something, so Jessica bought the ugliest little camel doll I have ever seen. maybe you can see him later. We are going to send a copy of this picture to the lady.


In Arhangai the Mercy Corps office treated us to horhog, a traditional mongolian meal cooked with hot stones. First you have to slaughter a sheep. Then you put the meat, potatoes, and carrots in a container along with salt and some very hot rocks. You leave it sit or bury it to cook for a while, then bon appetite! In the picture below you can see the precursor to the meal. Mongolians really try to use everything. They mix some blood with meat and onions and stuff the intestines for sausage. They eat all of the organs, the tongue, and even save the blood. The mix the blood with spices and onions, pour it in the stomach, cook it until it gets hard, then eat it. The skins are sold for various uses. For some folks I suppose this sort of thing isn't so spectacular, but I am used to buying meat in neat little cubes in the grocery store. The smoke you see is burning cow dung, which helps to keep flies off the meat.


So, on this trip I interviewed people in gers where peoples children were sleeping, on a hillside next to a herd of goats being milked, on the roadside (we were waiting for a herder who had gone into town, but had to leave before he arrived. We stopped a motorcycle on our way out of town and it was him), on a cot with no mattress outside in someone's yard, among people pounding out felt, alongside people hand-made contraptions that pounded wool into felt, in our car, and everywhere in between. We met interesting people all over. Many people really weren't looking to make a lot of money. Instead, they were trying to create wealth and jobs that stayed in their communities and contributed to the quality of life there. We played with people's fat little babies who were often skeptical until we gave them the stickers my mom sent me. People were really friendly, and liked to have a good natured laugh about the things we were interested in, like how they milked their goats for example.


As always, I haven't even scratched the surface of our adventure (other drunk people, an almost constant confusion based on everyone speaking mongolian, the incredible variety of wildlife including vultures, foxes, marmots, a host of other birds, countless yaks, sheep, horses, goats, camels, GIANT grasshoppers that plague Jessica's dreams. I guess if you want that info, you'll have to give us a call.

Here are some other interesting photos from our journey. Round 2 (Hovd, Bayan-Olgii) begins tomorrow, so you probably won't hear from us for a while.