For the Love of Steppe

It's quite easy to summarize the nature in Mongolia. The weather is harsh and most of the land is steppe or desert, with few lakes or rivers. It's difficult to survive in such an environment without the support of others. After witnessing the people's lives outside Ulaan Baatar, we now think that many of the quarrels and fights we saw in UB are just a sad part of city life. Instead, it seems that the norm is to extend a helping hand even without knowing each other. In fact, many kind folks saved us during the tour that was plagued with problems.

Passersby stopped to help us on three out of the four flat tires we had on the first day of our tour. What would one do, without a spare tire and no repair shops way out in the middle of a vast steppe or a desert? The only way out of such a situation is flag down a passing motorist to indicate that you're having problems. Those who stopped to help us provided parts, tools, and even a spare tire until we got to the next town. Usually, those who ask for help return the favor by offering beer, vodka, tobacco, or perhaps a small amount of cash, but they are not an absolute requirement. In some cases, those who offer help provide drinks and food to the stranded. Then they all sit around the problem, in our case a punctured tire, discussing the situation and working on the issue at hand. They may not even introduce themselves, instead focusing their energies on providing the help that's needed.

The countryside of Mongolia, the animals, the steppe, and the ever-present big sky, is always on the minds of its people. Everybody, including those who live in cities like Ulaan Baatar, longs to be there whenever they can. They have such a strong connection with the land. The sense of sharing the land with everyone is normal, and based in the nomadic traditions. Except for the few main highways, there are no fixed roads through the countryside, and drivers follow whichever track looks smoothest. There is no concern for entering private property and it's not a problem to pitch a tent or erect a ger wherever they feel like it.

Helping each other is the norm among Mongolians, perhaps because they share the harsh climate and the land. Their identity is glued together with the environment that they live in and is what connects its people together.

Four Days in the Countryside

Bam! The Russian jeep that would take us to the countryside slammed into the Honda Accord driven by a middle-aged Mongolian couple on busy Peace Avenue. It was 9:30am, just 15 seconds after we pulled away from the State Department Store to begin our short four-day tour of the countryside. Fortunately for everyone, there were no injuries. Was this an omen of things to come over the next four days?

July 24 (Day 1)
09:30 The tour started. Fifteen seconds later, encountered a traffic accident. No injuries.
10:00 Restart of the tour.
13:00 Flat tire No. 1, on the left-front tire.

13:30 On the road again after patching the inner tube.
14:00 Lunch of Onigiri (Japanese rice balls) under strong sun and dusty wind.
15:00 Flat tire No. 2, on the right-rear tire at the outskirts of the "Mini Gobi". Walked around Mini Gobi while the tire was repaired.

16:00 On the road again after patching the inner tube, with help from a group of Mongolian passersby.
17:30 Flat tire No. 3, on the right-rear tire. Walked around the vast landscape during the repair.

19:00 On the road again after patching the inner tube, with help from a group of Mongolian passersby.
20:15 Flat tire No. 4, on the right-rear tire, around 15 kilometers from our first destination Harahorin.
21:15 On the road again after a Mongolian passerby lent us his spare tire for the short drive to town.
22:00 Arrived at Harahorin. Patched two tires at a tire repair shop.
23:30 Parked the jeep in the middle of a grassy hill. Pitched tents in the dark and slept. No dinner.

July 25 (Day 2)
08:00 Woke up with hunger.
09:15 Takeoff after a cup of Mongolian tea. No breakfast.
09:45 Arrived at Karakolm, a ruin from the Mongolian empire and a monestry. The driver and the interpreter went to the town to find a tire. Tried to enjoy the morning, somewhat successful but mostly feeling down. After the sightseeing, waited another hour or so for our damned Russian jeep to pick us up. Ate apples and biscuits.
13:30 Takeoff for the day's destination.
14:30 Stopped at a ger due to a thunder storm. Found flat tire No. 5 on the right-rear side. Ate cup noodles for lunch while waiting for the storm to pass and the tire to be repaired.
16:00 On the road again after patching the inner tube.
16:45 Engine halted due to a broken belt.
17:15 Repaired the issue using a spare belt. How the driver fixed it was completely unknown.
18:30 Arrived at Olgee Lake. Pitched the tents and prepared dinner. Enjoyed lake side views before strong wind and cold air overcame us.
20:00 Dinner. Dark clouds gathered overhead.
22:00 Retired for the day.

July 26 (Day 3)
00:00 Thunderstorm. Our tent almost collapsed due to high wind, rain and strong thunderstorm.
02:00 Another thunderstorm, harder than the first. Rain water started to drip inside our tent. Considered moving to the car, but changed our position inside the tent instead.
08:00 Woke up to find clearer skies and a heard of 25 horses grazing outside our tent.
09:30 Walk by the lake with our driver and guide.
10:30 Began driving for the day.
14:30 Flat tire No. 6.

15:45 Takeoff after patching the inner tube.
17:00 Temperature rapidly going down, and weather getting worse. Hard rain with strong wind and thunder. Wind and rain coming in through the gaps on the door. Pants getting wet from the water, feeling very cold.
18:30 Trying to find people who were delivering new tires for us. Very cold. While we tried to find the people, some wire under the jeep broke.
19:00 The driver somehow fixed the wire in the pouring rain, right by a flooding river. How he repaired the problem was unknown.
19:30 Met with the people with tires, headed to a roadside repair shop. New tires were installed on right front and right rear wheels. Waited in the strong, cold wind during the repair. Feeling extremely cold and lost the sense in hands.

20:30 Arrived at Hustai National Park. Caught up with a ranger at his station post.
21:00 Started to find the horses that are said to be the origin of all horse spices. Saw six of those horses in a deeper part of the park.
22:30 Arrived at a ger which is the home of the ranger and his family. Had dinner with cup noodles.

July 27 (Day 4)
07:00 Woke up as the ger family was already active. Observed various morning tasks among the family memebers. The family offered breakfast. Some conversations with the family. More observations of their lifestyle. Rode a horse.
10:30 Drove around the park with the ranger guiding us with great information. The Russian jeep doing much better in the terrain, so was our mood.
12:00 Returned to the family's ger. They offered lunch.
13:00 Left Hustai National Park.
16:00 Returned to Ulaan Baatar.

The tour was plagued with problems. We also question how the preparations were done for our tour, on the part of the tour operator. However, it was a meaningful experience in many ways. We saw the lives of Mongolian people in forms that are true to their culture. Various conditions of the nature we put ourselves in were beautiful and dynamic, no matter how they turned out to be. And that's what we visited Mongolia for.

The Inner City in UB

"UB". That's how Ulaan Baatar is called by the foreigners. After spending a few weeks here, my impression is that the city is practically a ruin of the old communist system. Russians left when the Soviet Union collapsed in the early 1990's and Ulaan Baatar is just now starting to vitalize itself, hopefully in a positive direction for the future of its people.

Except for the excellent telecommunications throughout Mongolia, the overall basic infrastructure is lacking, or at least has a lot of problems. There are so many potholes in the streets, and the sidewalks surface has collapsed in place. After the rain there are large, muddy puddles everywhere. Cars, minivans and city buses spit out black exhaust that, combined with the twirling dust, makes breathing difficult. The uncovered manholes house the homeless who sit beneath the cities surface drinking the night away.

Many of the men in this city are extremely short-tempered and physically abusive. We've witnessed several arguments, scuffles and violence on several occasions. Domestic violence toward women, unfortunately, is all too common. Before the Naadam holiday, road rage was at its peak. With no traffic rules and little enforcement, gridlock is inevitable. This situation lead to shouting matches and fist fights in one of the busy intersections.

When it comes to driving, men act like teenagers who have just gotten their driver's license. They act as if they gained some kind of all mighty power, and that spells troubles for pedestrians. Crossing on the green walk light is no guarantee of your safety.

Is this just how this city is? Is the meat based diet causing too much yang energy in the body? Or is it caused by the vodka many men drink everyday? Are these mentalities reflections of the unstable society that is rapidly transforming from the collapsed communist stronghold to an open market culture? Or, have they been like this since the era of Jingis Kahn whom they are so proud of?

We heard that the number of well-educated and career-oriented women is on a rise in Mongolia. In any given college classroom, women outnumber men by about 5 to 1. They seem to have started moving forward on their own, and once educated, they are not interested in a relationship with just any ordinary guy.

I'm sure you're reading this thinking that Ulaan Baatar is all doom and gloom, however, we also have also seen several peaceful families trying to survive in this environment. Many families from our neighborhood step out of their apartments on these hot summer evenings and we can see the love in their hearts as they talk to each other or play with their children and grandchildren. For many, the family is the center of their lives.

UB's inner city is a surreal space where all these elements coexist together somehow. When we take a step back and think about it, we know that we can see similar scenes in every urban center around the globe, regardless of its level of development. Perhaps I'm just worn out on the city scene and need to head into the countryside. I think it's time to stand in the middle of the open land and watch the sunrise, sunset and stars.

Eve of the Festival

Ulaan Baatar is full of activities with Naadam just three days away. We've rented an apartment in a residential area away from the city center. There aren't many foreigners here, and it gives us the sense that we are in the middle of Ulaan Baatar's urban life. Outside the steps of our apartment is a black market crowded with locals shopping for festival food.

Naadam is a yearly festival dating back to ancient times and celebrates the Three Manly Arts of wrestling, horse racing and archery. It is an important national holiday for the Mongolians and many of them take the week off to travel home to the county side, which they have a deep connection with.

On the eve of Naadam, as I cooled off outside the buildings front door, a young boy dashes out of our building with money in hand. Moments later he hurries back with two bags of pasta and other ingredients. It reminds me of my childhood in Japan when I would run out to buy groceries for my family.

The next thing I witnessed was a car pulling into the dark parking lot. A middle-aged woman got out with many large shopping bags filled with food. To my surprise, her husband then pulled a live goat from the backseat. With their neighbors' help they dragged the poor animal to their apartment upstairs. I never imagined that an apartment could become a slaughterhouse. They would have fresh meat for their Naadam meal.

Over the course of the long holiday weekend, the building began to fill with a terrible stench. We finally realized that the goat's corpse had been disposed of in the buildings communal garbage shoot. This was the source of smell that overwhelmed our apartment.

Mongolians consume a massive amount of meat, mainly from goats, sheep, horses, and cows. There is always a strong, distinctive smell of animal flesh around the nearby market. One morning, a horse head, with its' cheek muscles shaved off, smiled at me from the back of an old Russian-made wagon. It's quite normal to see large bones abandoned on the sidewalks, or several goat heads under tables at the open-air market. Various intestines, livers, and other internals are displayed on tables and testicle sacks serve as a natural bag for other meat. The shopkeeper tries, without success, to keep the flies at bay. To our sense, these are rather gruesome sights, however, the locals select and purchase these products while laughing and gossiping together.

Every culture has something that other cultures think different or strange. Their customs and practices are normal to them and shouldn't be viewed by other standards. For example, in Japan, the freshness of fish is measured by how many seconds it takes to kill and serve the fish as sashimi, with its' moving tail proof of this swiftness.

In America,, however, we are removed from the slaughter house, and buy our food already neatly cut and packaged on Styrofoam. I think the Mongolian's might think this a strange way to buy their favorite food.

In the end, we have our own thoughts and opinions, however, we try hard not to cast judgments on our observations. We would be lying if we said that the sights and smells that we are unaccustomed to don't challenge and turn our stomachs on a daily basis. At the same time, we are learning to appreciate these differences.

Mysterious Siberia

We're moving eastwards on the Eurasian continent. On June 29, our Trans-Siberian train left Moscow at 11:30pm for the 72 hour journey to Irkutsuk, where we arrived on July 3, at 9:30AM.

After meeting our driver, we continued east to the small town of Listvyanka on the shore of Lake Baikal, one hour away by car. Our lodging is located up a dirt road that stretches from the lakeshore into a lush valley. It's a log cabin that shares property with a few other homes, the Baikal Culture Center and an art gallery.

The valley itself has exploded with fresh green wild grass and wildflowers busting into purple, white, yellow, orange and pink blooms. The thick forest of pine and birch flank the valley floor and a small creek runs through the valley floor to the lake. The view from the cabin looks out to Lake Baikal, with it's surface shining cold blue. The opposite shore lies about 50 Kilometers beyond the rising mist of the lake.

Lake Baikal is huge. It holds about 20% of fresh water that exists on this planet. Its surface area is not so large, but its depth drops over 1,600 meters, making it the deepest lake in the world.

The lake hosts a unique set of wildlife including the fresh water Baikal seals who live mostly in the remote, northern part of the lake. Its water is crystal clear, and the rocky bottom can easily be seen. The lake has three distinct ways to purify itself: sponges, corpse-eating shrimp and a unique microorganism that all live in the waters. Unfortunately, many environmentally ignorant Russian tourists visiting this beautiful place mindlessly dispose of their trash on the shores.

As we walked the shoreline we felt the chilly wind blowing off of the lake. The water temperature stays below 15 degrees Celsius during the warmest season, and acts like an enormous water-operated cooler. It's easy to imagine how cold this area gets in winter, just by feeling the breeze coming off the lake in early summer. People told us that the lake freezes solid and that cars can be driven across in February and March.

The people's expressions are much softer here. It only takes seeing us twice for them to share their smiles with us. Our accommodations include breakfast, which is served at the neighbors' house next door. Each morning the grandmotherly woman welcomes us with a smile and serves us a large home-cooked meal. This gives us a sense of the true Russian hospitality. In her backyard is a wonderful vegetable garden, from which she picks lettuce and herbs for our morning meal. Potatoes take up the largest patch and tomatoes grow in the greenhouse along side the laundry hung to dry.

Another neighbor on our hosts' property is an older woman living with her grandchildren. We photographed her working in her potato patch and afterwards she invited us to her house to see her painting. During the long winters she transforms herself from farmer into artist, painting self-portraits and her surroundings in a Chagall-like style.

Unfortunately, the art gallery burned down this past spring. The property owner is busy building the new gallery. Paintings that survived the fire are now shown in a temporary building. I did not expect much out of artists who live so far away from art centers, yet once I stepped into the small room there were many wonderful discoveries. The imaginations of artists in Siberia are fabulously mysterious and surrealistic, sometimes even psychedelic. Their originality stretch out of their own fairy tales and are realized on canvas.

During this short stay by Lake Baikal, we believe that we have peeked into the beautiful natural surroundings and the mysterious lives of the Siberian people.