{"id":256,"date":"2009-06-03T10:23:11","date_gmt":"2009-06-03T15:23:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogs.iwu.edu\/factrack\/?p=256"},"modified":"2025-06-03T07:20:19","modified_gmt":"2025-06-03T12:20:19","slug":"a-few-days-at-camp","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.iwu.edu\/factrack\/2009\/06\/03\/a-few-days-at-camp\/","title":{"rendered":"A Few Days at Camp"},"content":{"rendered":"

JR often says, \u201cThis is just like Scout camp.\u201d He\u2019s usually right, but this time, he\u2019s more right because Mongolia does resemble Scout camp in many ways. The Lonely Planet, for example, describes it as \u201cThe world\u2019s largest campground,\u201d and while there are a lot of places I wouldn\u2019t want to pitch a tent, there are many that I could. With one million people in Ulan Bataar, and 500,000 in the second largest city, Mongolia has one of the lowest population densities in the world.<\/p>\n

We discovered the \u201cbig sky\u201d country on our 350 km trip from UB to Karakorum, one of the few ancient cities in a country dominated by nomads; even today, about 25 per cent of the population lives a nomadic existence, and about half, we\u2019re told, live in the ger tent (a yurt is a more well-known name for the circular felt tent that is characteristic of Asian nomads). The road in places is no better than the road in Scout camp, and it, like most roads between cities here, is a toll road. Parts of it were under construction (ongoing, said our guide, for the past four years, and expected to be completed in four years). The \u201cdetours\u201d are paths suitable (barely) for four-wheel drive vehicles, and we hung on dearly as our driver navigated one of several choices until we got back on the standard two-lane \u201ctoll road\u201d to the northwest.<\/p>\n

Like Mongolia, where 50% of the population live in the gers, we\u2019re spending two nights in gers and two nights in hotels. Yesterday, after leaving UB, we drove most of the day, making two stops. One was at a sand dune that resembles the Great Sand Dunes national monument, without the backdrop of 14,000-foot mountains of Colorado, but with some mountains in the background, and about a 60-mile swath that is a haven for wild life.<\/p>\n

One of the main tourist attractions is in fact the outdoors\u2014the Gobi in the South, the mountains in the North, and the wildlife in both places. The big sky panoramas are sweeping and spectacular\u2014miles of space, with few gers, fewer towns (none that really merit the name until Karakorum), and herds\u2014of sheep, goats, cows, and horses, driven by cowboys (yes! Some wear the traditional Mongolian dress of the del, a long robe with a sash; others look like something out of a cowboy movie). It was great fun to watch the drovers herd the sheep, aided by the dogs, as we did in our ger last night (and noted some on cycles and scooters doing the same). No wonder tourism accounts for 18% of the income of this country.<\/p>\n

The other was at a monastery that gave some indication of the religion here that\u2019s been restored since the fall of communism: a tantric Buddhism that owes its inspiration to Tibetan Buddhism, and in fact the first two Dalai Lamas, the religious leader of Tibetan Buddhism, were Mongolian. Between the nomadic nature of the populace, who built little of lasting value until the 17th century, the Chinese, who destroyed much of the historical evidence before that, and the Russians, who destroyed much in the 20th century, especially \u201csuperstitious\u201d sites in 1937, there\u2019s not much history left. The remnants of the one we saw yesterday being mostly rebuilt, with some ruins and a building or two leftover.<\/p>\n

In the ger, a kind of motel arrangement for tourists\u2014there was a shower in our compound\u2014our guide taught us a few games that JR thinks I should bring back for camp; they\u2019re played with sheep’s ankle bones. Each facing has an animal name, and one game consists of playing a kind of pool\u2014dropping a handful of bones and flicking similar ones until you miss; then the next person plays, etc., until none are left. Then, the game restarts with the loser (usually me) getting the number he has from each player and beginning again.<\/p>\n

Today, though, we got to Karakorum, and the trip was really worthwhile. There is a temple\u2014again destroyed, mostly, in 1937 and the monks killed, but partially rebuilt\u2014that was really spectacular. The guide took us through the extant buildings, which were a la Tibet\u2014the animistic tantric Lamaism that has followers of the Buddha that resemble the protectors of the shaman religions of Mongolia and Tibet\u2014blue demonic protectors of horses, the thousand-armed, thousand-eyed goddess of mercy (who got transformed in China by an Empress, who was annoyed that the Buddha god-figures were male, into a female), and as the Guan Yin, the goddess of mercy, is one of the most popular Chinese buddhas; and with the statues resembling Mary, one of the most popular purchases for Western Christians. The smell of yak butter reminded me of Tibet, where JR and I had gone five years ago. The temple also had an active congregation of monks, and when our guide said they would chant sutras in ten minutes, we went in for the services, which were in Tibetan, the language of Mongolian Buddhism. There was also a flea market in the compound, and I found a few things that I hadn\u2019t in any of our night markets from Bangkok to Beijing (though most of the items were made in China); one of the vendors tried to sell me a genuine statue of Genghis Khan that I had to remind him was the Guang Gong, one of my Chinese heroes. When we bargained, our guide was a little embarrassed, because, she said, Mongolians don\u2019t haggle, and American tourists never bargain, they just pay the asked price. Well, surprise to her\u2014we\u2019ve been to China (and, in fact, I bargained in Chinese, which took the Mongolian lady by surprise, but she thought my Chinese was very good, and gave me the price I wanted). We\u2019ve educated our guide, too\u2014our food can\u2019t be spaghetti and\/or French fries. We rejected a boxed lunch of fried chicken in favor of a Mongolian dumpling soup that was much, much tastier.<\/p>\n

Our afternoon was more like Scout camp, and perhaps it was fitting that I had my Philmont shirt on; we went to a local family ger for an hour and a half horseback ride through the mountain transition zone that is where we\u2019re at, and a visit to a real ger, one with a family who lived there. Our SUV took a mountain road, crossed a river that flows into Lake Baikal (I was tempted to say we forded the river, but we\u2019re driving a Toyota Land Cruiser), and landed at the winter camp of a herdsman. Out came the local food for guests\u2014yoghurt made from cow\u2019s, goat\u2019s, and sheep\u2019s milk (happily and necessarily served with sugar), served from the pot in which it was made, hardened curd, and curdled cream from the yoghurt served on bread (I told JR we should be careful what we asked for).<\/p>\n

The food was preparation for a ride in the valley, where we got a sense of what it was like to have been one of the Mongol warriors, who spent 20-some years on the road carving out the empire that stretched to the gates of Budapest. The ride, on a Mongolian saddle made of wood and smaller than the English leather saddles (ouch!), took us through a small forest (the trees were suspiciously growing in straight lines, and look like\u00a0 they\u2019d been cut to make the outbuildings and corrals that keep the herd separate)–the goats stay in the pen for milking purposes. We also passed a party that we later learned was celebrating, partly with vodka, the first mare\u2019s milk of the season; when we went through they were using a pole with a lariat to lasso horses and rope them down, as well as one of the children. Twenty years in the saddle, even with time out for looting and pillaging, seems excessive, but two hours was fine. Still, my bottom was glad to be rescued by our guide and driver!<\/p>\n

Dinner wasn\u2019t like Scout camp, although we did have local food. We ate a sheep intestine dumpling that was much better than it sounds, and pasteurized yoghurt for dessert.<\/p>\n

Believe it or not, we\u2019re sitting around a campfire\u2014the stove in our ger is lit\u2014and I\u2019m re-teaching JR Scout Vespers. Softly falls the light of day, as the song goes, and we\u2019re fading away. Tomorrow we leave early for our return to Ulan Bataar, and on the way, we may get to ride a Bactrian camel. Try that at your Scout camp!<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>
Riding in Mongolian saddles gave a sense of the Mongol warriors’ lives.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
\"\"<\/a>
The 1904 Lama Temple in Ulan Bataar juxtaposed with a 2009 office building.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
\"\"<\/a>
Sugar helped improve the taste of this three milk (goat, cow, horse) fresh yoghurt, served in a ger.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

JR often says, \u201cThis is just like Scout camp.\u201d He\u2019s usually right, but this time, he\u2019s more right because Mongolia does resemble Scout camp in many ways. The Lonely Planet, for example, describes it as \u201cThe world\u2019s largest campground,\u201d and while there are a lot of places I wouldn\u2019t want to pitch a tent, there … Continue reading “A Few Days at Camp”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":36,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[79],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-256","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-in-the-land-of-the-great-khan-mongolia-with-jr"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.iwu.edu\/factrack\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/256","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.iwu.edu\/factrack\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.iwu.edu\/factrack\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.iwu.edu\/factrack\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/36"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.iwu.edu\/factrack\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=256"}],"version-history":[{"count":10,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.iwu.edu\/factrack\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/256\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":8816,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.iwu.edu\/factrack\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/256\/revisions\/8816"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.iwu.edu\/factrack\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=256"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.iwu.edu\/factrack\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=256"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.iwu.edu\/factrack\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=256"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}