Mongolia Road | All Roads Lead to Ulaanbaatar

Mongolia Road | All Roads Lead to Ulaanbaatar

To test your knowledge of geography, people always ask for the capital of Mongolia. If you can name “Ulaanbaatar” it means either you didn’t sleep in high school or no one is expected to know about this strange-sounding name.

I ran out of Russian ruble in Ulan-Ude, my last city in Russia. Not wanting to withdraw more oney to have Lenin watch over me, I left for Ulaanbaatar (UB) three days earlier than planned with a lot of misgiving. I wanted to rest after a month of rough train traveling and camping with minimal washing, but not in a country known for its intense sun shining 250 days in the year and not in a city sounded like a dairy product (Ulan-Butter).

Surely Mongolians are fond of dairy products, but they didn’t name their capital after one. The name Ulaanbaatar means “red hero” in the memory of the Red Soviet army (“Ulaan”) and Mongolia’s hero, Sükhbaatar, who liberated Mongolia from Chinese occupation. 40% of the population lives in the city, some live in “big” cities outside of UB and the remaining live as nomads roaming the vast land. When I first arrived, I didn’t know why most guesthouses and hostels were full, unlike in even in touristy and crowded cities in Europe. I stayed in the Golden Gobi and saw piles of travelers coming and leaving, and the scenario repeated until someone told me that tourists have to make their base here to arrange tours, transportation to other regions of Mongolia. Most tours and car rental start from UB, the only hub for long-distance destinations. Unless you have your own car, it’s faster and cheaper to travel from UB to point A, return to UB and then travel to point B.

I arrived in UB in the rain, following two Singaporean bikers who navigated through the city with a proper GPS device. I stayed the first night at LG Guesthouse B across from the State Department Store, one of the big landmarks of the city. I took a walk in the store, not looking to buy anything particularly, mainly to watch people. I felt strangely happy, the kind of emotion you don’t usually feel in a shopping mall. This was my first Asian country outside of Vietnam and first time encountered the people I vaguely knew.

I always loved arriving in a new place for the very first time. Everything was pretty and exciting even for an ugly city like UB. This time I didn’t feel rushed as I had a whole month ahead of me, thus I could relax and take things slowly. I spent the next week in UB to relax and to catch up with my journal from Russia and enjoy not going anywhere. My initial doubt was correct. I extended my stay in the country to three months. It was easier than extending the contract with your landowner in your own country. The officer only quizzed me about the address of my guesthouse which I assigned a random number on Peace Avenue. He asked me why I wanted to stay longer. I said that I wanted to volunteer. “No you can’t work with this permit. You can only travel.” “Ok, I don’t work then.” “Are you sure?” He looked at me suspiciously. “Sure. ” I nodded. Then he stamped on my passport. I don’t think Mongolian government worries about people illegally stay in this country; who wants to come to this country, and if it’s so, the more the better. There is so much land and little people.

I spent the first day hang out with Benedicto and Alberto, the Spanish couple who stayed at the same guesthouse in Ulan-Ude and took the same bus to UB. For someone who would spend only a couple of days in Mongolia in UB, Albert already tasted the rough treatment from a third-world country. He got bitten by a dog at the Russian-Mongolian border. It ripped his short jeans and left a long cut on his leg above the knee. It was as serious but he and the girlfriend spent their first evening roaming around UB looking for the hospital. They came back healthy with a Mongolia art teacher who volunteered to show them the city. Mona was a talkative, natural and overtly friendly to some stranger she met just last night. We visited the National Museum and Mona gave us a short lecture of the museum. When we wandered off, she called after all “Come here and listen to Mongolian history from a Mongolian teacher.” She took her long black hair and cover her face making a mustache. “Look at me doing Chingis Khan.” We took a group picture outside the museum. Mona took a look and moaned “Oh I hate my face. So fat.” She took the Spanish couple to to the train station to buy ticket to Beijing. The Trans-Siberian train from Moscow-Beijing departed on Sunday, the next day, thus the couple had no choice but leave UB after spending just one day there in order to have a few days in Beijing before catching their flight home. They had only 3-week vacation and they chose to spend it in 3 big countries Russian, Mongolia and China, starting out from Moscow. They spent most of the time in the train and skipped almost all cities and didn’t really see anything. I don’t recommend doing that. Mona excused herself from as she needed to draw a few pictures to show them to her boss at her new job. She gave Benedicto and Alberto a hug before she left but then returned shortly after. “I have to hug you too because I hugged another.” She grabbed me and gave me a big kiss on the cheek. I had no word to describe Mona.

The initial feeling that I could live here for a long time disappeared after a few days. UB became very hot and I got fed up with walking on busy streets, watching out for cars which didn’t care for red lights, zebra crossing and rights of pedestrians who in return blatantly ignored traffic laws in front of traffic police. They, soon including me, walked when the light was red, crossed the street in front of incoming car. I stopped going out and stayed in my guesthouse, and only came out in the evening when the city became much more tolerable.

The Germans whom I tagged along for a self-organized 18-day tour around the country arrived a week later and we left UB. [to be included]

I returned to UB 18 days later and spent another five days in UB guesthouse. Now I feel at home here . My sense of direction improved as I navigated streets without using a map even though I didn’t stray far from Peace avenue and Baiga Toru street. I behaved recklessly like the locals. There is no other way to be proper pedestrians in this city anyway as the drivers behind the wheels are reckless themselves. Zebra crossings are just white lines painted on the street. In fact, there are more accidents happen on the crossing because pedestrians become less alert and put their guard down thinking they are in the safe zone. Once on the zebra crossing I and a group of pedestrians had to yield a driver who raced down the small street with no intention to stop.

The enthusiasm from the first arrive day had died out. I still haven’t gotten fed up yet by the people. Soon I found the city to be too hot, ugly, messy and noisy to linger around and could not wait to get out. I still liked Mongolia very much. Similar to Iceland, it had the most dramatic landscape I had ever seen. I didn’t feel that I understood the country and the surface beneath what I was seeing, but the longer I stayed, the less I felt the urge to discover.

I was so looking forward to China to binge on better food and observe another culture which I could definitely relate to.