Backing Mongolia can be a trip of a lifetime. You’ll see things you might have never seen before. Make sure you pack the right gears and clothing for Mongolia though. If you plan on traveling all over Mongolia, then pack for all occasions: spring, summer, autumn and winter. The weather in Ulaanbaatar, the capital, can be sunny and hot, but as you drive out to the steppe, it becomes windy and cold.
I was in Mongolia from mid-August to mid-September; the sun was less harsh. Some part of the Gobi desert was cold and windy while in another; you can walk in short and a t-shirt. In Yolyn Am, your feet can be stuck ankle-deep in the snow. Most of the time I wore many layers and peeled off one by one depend on the weather condition.
As I watched the drama unfold, I noticed a similarity in the miscommunication among our group to that in projects I worked with. We spoke English, used the same vocabulary and agreed to the same thing, yet we wanted completely different things.
Here is a quick summary of the situation. I met a German couple, Andy and Suzi in Kazan, Russia who planned a trip to Mongolia. They had already arranged for a driver, Mendee, a van and a translator/guide, Erdem and had a rough plan to travel for 18 days in the North and Central Mongolia. Their friend, Neil would join later. They needed three more to fill the van, with me, we only needed to find two more. We found the last two one day before the trip, Moran and Asher from Israel. The Israelis wanted to visit the Tsaatan people up the North. Andy and Suzi wanted to visit Lake Khovsgol. From the map, these two locations looked approximately close, thus we agreed on doing both.
Mongolian children were so adorable with their rosy, puffy cheeks, tiny eyes and faces as dirty as their surrounding. I must be the picture-perfect environment I found them in. I saw toddlers and young children playing around their tents while older boys herding their family’s livestocks on horseback, running small errands on motorcycles and girls fetching water from small streams or assisting their mother greeting guests.
Children growing from the countryside were very eager, polite and resourceful, characteristics I found lacking from those in the cities.
Where else to ride a horse than the very place which invented horse riding. I did 3-day horse trekking at Khovsgol Lake starting from Jankhal where the guide and his horses lived.
The manager of Garage 24, the Guesthouse we stayed in Khatgal, called other families in the region until we found a family who gave us the best deal. It cost 20000 MNT per day for the guide and10000 MTN per day for a horse plus each horse plus one horse to carry our luggage.
Think again before saying “I’m in deep shit.” It’s not something you want to say in Mongolia as it might come true. In the beginning, the thought of doing the Mambo no. 1 and 2. out in the open, semi-exposed to public view, made me feel unease, but after one week, I got used to this form of public indecency.
Landlocked between the largest and most populated countries in the world, Russia to the north and China to the south, east and west lies Mongolia, an intriguing place where past and present seem to co-exist. While Ulan Bator is as modern as a capital can be, half an hour drive away from it, I feel as if I have entered a different era. Dominating the vast, empty landscape where I am the only thing separating the earth and the sky are nomads on horseback herding livestocks or working around their gers, a form of portable housing in Mongolia.
I knew Mongolia as soon as I was old enough to carry the ID of my uncle or aunt to the video stores and rented Chinese costume dramas. These made-in-Hong Kong films were the primary sources of entertainment for many Vietnamese of my generation. I skipped extra lessons, spent many sleepless nights, endured the wrath of my father to follow the romance and adventure of my favorite characters.
“Here looking at you kid,” said Humphrey Bogart to Ingrid Bergman in what was considered an all-time famous quote in the Hollywood classic “Casablanca.”
Ulan-Ude was no romantic Casablanca where Bogart’s character had a toast with his flame Bergman before letting her run off with her husband. Instead, it was a gray, noisy, crowded, ugly city in Siberia, and yet I felt the same effect seeing Lenin’s penchant eyes looking over the city, looking at me.
My name is Cindy, also rhymes with travel junkie. A friend said I was probably a gipsy in my previous life. One of my many secret missions in life is to convert you to run off every once in awhile.
