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Mörön, Mongolia
48° 15' N 100° 22' E
Sep 11, 2006 11:03
Distance 244km

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Other entries in Mongolia

To Moron, Airag and the Mongolian Wrestling Champ

Text written in: English

Yes we were off on the way to Moron and I was prepared for a long night.  I quickly fell asleep but woke up a couple of hours later when we left the roads leading to the capitol and started the vast off road portion of the trip.  I was expecting it to be a thrill but I had no idea just how bouncy an off road journey could get.  It was constantly a series of speeding up and slowing down to navigate the jeep trail.  It had absolutely no improvements, no ditches or anything.  It was just a long slow series of bouncing at least twice a minute the bouncing would take your butt off the seat of the jeep.  Mind you that you are also packed up tight against strangers and I was glad it was a group who believed in bathing. There were about 12 of us and enough cargo that sometimes it fell down amongst us.  There was everything from sacks of flour to picture frames.  Everything arriving in Mongolian towns had to go on one of these jeep journeys.

It was very dark when I was awake enough to notice how empty the country side was. Really it was just devoid of much electricity. The big problem I had was that I was sitting next to the window and when I fell asleep my head would bump into the window with a loud thud and wake me and some of my neighbors up.  I did what I could to put all sorts of soft squishy things between me and the window but it was hopeless and said soft squishy things would bounce out of the way and leave my head to bounce into the window.  Later I would realize that this is why the middle seats were prized on these journeys.  People are much softer to bump your head against.

The time it could take for one of these trips was highly variable, I had heard it should be about 20 hours. I was in a sleepy bouncy mesmerized state as the sun started rising. We were driving through rolling grassland valleys dotted with gers and an assortment of livestock.  Part of me felt like I was fighting a war of endurance.  Every 2 or so hours the van would stop for a break, it was always in the middle of nothing. If it was available the women would walk on a hillside if not they would go to the other side of the van.

Sometime during the early morning one of the woman's 4 year old daughter got motion sick and they found a plastic bag for her and through it out the window when she was done.  They asked me for tissues first and I gave up some of my precious supply of toilet paper.

Because it was early in the day we stopped at a Ger for a longer break and there was much talking.  I saw an older woman saddle a horse and then she handed a tree branch with some dead leaves on it to a 4 yr old boy.  There wasn't a tree around for many miles. The boy's head was only 15cm taller than the bottom of the stirrup on the smallish Mongolian horse and I was amazed at how naturally he was able to climb the stirrup and mount himself on the horse.  He took off at a slow trot using the branch to motivate the horse and then about 10 minutes later I noticed that he was just a dot on the hillside herding the sheep a bit closer to the family's ger.  At that moment I started to realize that I was in for many surprises in Mongolia.

We then drove around for another hour through some narrow wooded glades and then back tracked a bit before stopping at another ger. It was a nice long stop. One of the gentlemen on board managed to sell a couple of plastic buckets to the family for $1.50.  During the trip my Mongolian phrasebook and my Lonely Planet guidebook were quite popular with my companions and the heavy forceful woman next to me seemed intent on learning some more english from me.

At this point my guide takes me guidebook starts looking at one of the regional maps and starts looking at some distant mountain peaks to try and gauge our location. Being a bit of a smart ass I got out a large map of Mongolia which had degrees and minutes clearly demarked on it.  With my GPS I was able to plot our location within a few km, but at that point the driver decided that he knew where we were from looking at the mountain and my little one page drawn map in a guidebook.  I knew that we weren't lost, because there are literally dozens of ways to get anywhere in Mongolia with so many dirt tracks.

I was stretching my legs a bit when I realized that half of our group was inside the small wooden cabin the family had and someone fetched me because I was more interesting than the usual passerby and I was served some airag. It was fermented mare's milk with about 4% alcohol and tasted something like yogurt that had gone a bit bad.  The family had a large barrel of it and I was able to determine through much communication that keeping it out of the sun in the cool fall weather that it would last a month.  There was always an abundance of dairy products in Mongolia. Since I was well provisioned I retrieved a chocolate bar from the van and gave it to little girl who was living there.  Just having visitors was an event in a place that was so isolated.  My hybrid sandals with shoe toe certainly attracted a lot of attention in a culture where the country folk only wore horse riding boots. It was hard to judge the prosperity of the family without a good basis for comparison to other Mongolian families.  One thing is for sure is that there didn't seem to be any lack of food or warm clothing, but I also know that fall is the most prosperous time of the year when the livestock have had all summer to fatten up and then have  all winter to slowly starve and freeze to death.  Mongolia is a cold barren land and its recommended not to visit families during the harsh endless spring.

We continued on our bouncy merry way for hours and hours, at some point there was a mechanical problem with the van.  Because these long distance jeeps run on little profit margin they are constantly breaking down and I wasn't surprised.  Honestly  I had no idea what was wrong with it except they worked on it for about 30 minutes with a couple of jacks and some animated conversation.. Perhaps it was a phantom problem.  It was a wide open dry valley and with the blazing afternoon sun most of us took shelter in the shade of the van.  I ate more chocolate, for some reason eating chocolate helps me set up a rhythm for long transits, when it seems like another endless amount of time has passed I eat more. Often I just run out.  For the longest time I didn't even see any villages we could pass through.

At some point without any marking we crossed a real bridge over the Selenge River which drained the Khovsgul Nuhr into Lake Baikal via Ulan Ude in Siberia.  I wouldn't have known the name of the river if my companions hadn't told me. The Khovsgul Nuhr was a lake with 400km of coastline and 2% of the worlds fresh water and my ultimate goal was riding a horse around it.  At this time my biggest fear that I would show up and the tourist infrastructure would be closed for the year.

There were numerous creeks that we forded with the jeep and occasionally we would hit the frame of the thing against a giant hump of dirt and I would wonder how the vehicle survived such torture.

We were rounding out the afternoon when we arrived at the destination of the van. Another mistake I had made was getting on a jeep that wasn't even going all the way to Moron, oops. . I think my driver had called ahead and there was another shared jeep waiting for me, the probable reality is that it was just a nice bit of luck.  I was a bit paranoid about the driver asking for money later after all the subterfuge going on so I made sure my driver gave the new driver my money in my sight.  I wasn't feeling very trustful, there were at least 20 people around and some of the people from my van helped put my luggage into the new smaller jeep wrangler type vehicle and closed it tight so that I couldn't even see my bags.  I had them open it back up and quickly verified that I had everything.  I wasn't expecting such a quick depature so I had food out and my shoes off.  I was busy collecting myself and making sure that everything was in order the heavy forceful woman next to me kept interrupting me trying to communicate with the driver and  she wanted my phone number, when I didn't  even have a phone, I as a bit annoyed at everything that  moment . The new jeep started driving off when they stopped us and gave me my jacket, I was quite pleased because the jacket was my outer shell to protect me from harsh weather and I would have been in a pickle without it. 

It was about 5 more hours to Moron and we were passing just north of a whole series of mountains.  This driver had more of a kamikaze approach with the goats which I found strangely entertaining.  My companions were curious and made me feel welcome. As the day was rounding out a sense of calm came over me.  This driver was also less careful with his vehicle and at one point the jeeps frame hit the ground so hard that all of our heads hit the padded ceiling 3 times, it was head to ceiling, and then but to seat, then head to ceiling, then but to seat and then head to ceiling in rapid succession.  At least they are smart enough to pad the ceiling.  And for some strange reason we all looked at each other and smiling and laughing.  Especially the driver. It was surreal.   Dust quickly spread itself everywhere in the interior and I could make dust come out of my beard.

The sun was setting and I had finally got myself into a place where I felt like anything could happen.  The view was amazing, the sunset was exquisite and the ride of course was rougher than I could have imagined before hand. Most of the off road jeep trails in Mongolia were a series of zig zagging paths and often the driver seemed to randomly choose them in ways that seemed to add much distance to the trip.   The jeep had all sorts of make shift wiring sticking out from under the dash and it reminded me of one of my brothers cars when we were teenagers.

 We stopped at an ovoo toward the end of the trip. It was a pile of stones and a prayer flags at the top of the hill. It was customary to stop and if you were a Buddhist say a few prayers before continuing on.  I was futzing with my bag a small bit and some how later on I was under the impression as we were arriving in Moron that it had fallen out at the ovoo, when in fact it was buried underneath some other stuff.  I went from insane panic to instant relief.   We could see Moron about 10 minutes before we got their with the last vestiges of daylight.  The wind was blowing and the whole city looked like an incredible dust storm. For a while it looked a movie scene from the Road Warrior.  Moron was a dry dusty town, mostly dirt roads, about 30,000 people and had a wild west reputation.  In my short visit I only ever saw one other westerner.

Right as the jeep was stopping at the parking lot for arriving long distance jeeps a woman comes up to my door as I open it up and asks me in english where I am headed.  It was the last thing I was expecting.  At first I thought I was hallucinating, her english was good and she was well dressed. I quickly found out that she was trying to hustle up more passangers for a shared jeep ride to Khatgal, it was another 4 hours. We waited about 30 minutes until the sun had set.  The going rate was 23 dollars for a carload of passengers to but we were trying to negotiate a discount for two of us.  The driver finally agreed to 20 dollars but changed his mind when he made it outside of town and with neither of in the mood for such crap we told him to turn back and take us back into Moron.  Our room for the night was at the White House, which was a bar and billiard hall with a shared dorm room with 4 beds in it.  So it wasn't much of a hotel.  I know that I got charged an extra dollar for being a foreigner, but that's just how they do it in Mongolia.

The woman said she would organize a jeep ride to leave noonish the next day and I was happy to have her save me the trouble. It turned out that she was a tour director for a Ger camp and a mostly defunct boat operation on the Khovsgul lake.

I put my bags in the room at the White House, and decided to have a look around the place, when I walked into the billiard room there was a bunch of people playing pool.  I was a combination of surprised and terrified when a 2 meter Mongolian  wrestling champion locked arms with me and started spinning me around a bit, he was clearly drunk and lucky for me that was just his way of saying hi.  Between him and his friends I wouldn't have been able to put up any meaningful struggle.  I had already seen a couple of drunken fights in my short stay in Mongolia.   Right as the wrestler was releasing me, a much smaller man who spoke perfect English introduced himself.

Amazingly it turned out he was the proprietor of the Sunway Gueshouse in Khatgal, it was one of three operations that I was considering for my horse trek.  Essi asked me if I was hungry and I certainly was so I said we could discuss horse trekking while getting some grub.  The food was cheap and good, we talked business.  Essei's price for guide horse and packhorse was more than fair at $19 a day. The price would have been less if I had been able to get a crazy person to join us and share the price of the guide and packhorse. It was a 14 day trip, and I knew my guide wouldn't speak more than a few words of English and I was ready for something that would test me.

I was in a good mood and paid for my new friends dinner.  Played some billiards with him and his friends had a beer in the upstairs bar and then found a nice sleep.  The bar seemed like it was probably one of the nicer places in town and it was complete with a popular VIP private karaoke lounge that was available for rent.