Life in a Tent (Mongolia)

From Beijing I boarded a train that would take me nearly 10,000kms to St Petersburg, Russia. To get from China to Russia the train goes via Mongolia. This is a country that I’ve wanted to visit for some time and it didn’t disappoint.



A Buddhist prayer shrine in the hills

After the torturous middle-of-the-night immigration and customs processing, our train rolled on into Mongolia. Waking up in Mongolia it was interesting to see the landscape change so dramatically; this is high country of rolling hills. There are no trees, just grasses, and it’s all pretty dusty. Even in the train, the dust from the Gobi desert got into our compartments (which sleep four people) and into everything.

 It wasn’t too long before I started to see what I’d be seeing the whole time in Mongolia – Gers ( the tent like nomad homes) occasionally on a hill in the distance, and bands of horses roaming the lands. It’s the lowest population density on earth, purely because the soil is so unproductive that folks have to graze their animals on an enormous land area to survive. And that dictates their diet, which is largely meat (lamb and horse mostly, beef and chicken sometimes), without many vegetables save for potato. One night I ordered a lambs head and it included everything; eyes, brain, and most interesting to eat, the tongue.

What surprised me was the soviet era apartment blocks seemingly in the middle of nowhere. This would be the beginning of a long stint in ex-soviet countries, and unfortunately for Mongolia these hideous building (and corruption) are apparently remaining keepsakes from the old commie days.

Ulaanbaatar is the capital and it says a lot about this country. It is very quickly developing, and you can see multi storey building being built right next to Gers. For 2012 Mongolia had the world’s largest GDP growth rate. This country is going through a massive mining boom which is powering their economy. Another trend is urbanisation; people are moving from their nomad country lifestyles into the cities, or should I say the city. And strangely, some are still living as they would in the middle of nowhere, with their Gers right next to busy roads, soviet apartment blocks and interspersed throughout the city and its immediate countryside.

Interesting, just out of town we saw anti-ballistic missile launchers being set up on a high hill. Even the Mongolians were nervous about North Korea.

We went out to a national park which had more dramatic, alpine scenery and did a hike and stayed in a Ger. It snowed but the Gers were perfectly warm and quite cosy. It was a beautiful location and my stay in the Ger was one of the highlights of the trip so far.

 

 

 

 

Oh, did I mention how crazy they are about their warlord ancestor Genghis Khan? Yep, he's even on their currency (which I had to use as toilet paper in one very unfortunate situation).

It’s a cool way to live and I’m glad to be able to see it before the country modernises and blends into the rest of Asia.

And we continue on the train headed for Russia…