Ulan-Baatar, Mongolia – Distant. Isolated.
Rough-edged and tumble- down. Poor. Harsh. Unsettled.
Unpolished. Bleak. Barren.
Forbidding. Tough.
What a great place.
Because, while it is all that, at the same time Mongolia is beautiful, proud, historic, cultured, resilient, complex and fascinating. Withdrawn or sheltered for centuries, Mongolia is only slowly and maybe reluctantly opening up to a world much of which it once conquered.
A land of enormous steppes and harsh desert, forests, mountains and lakes, it has only one city within an area the size of much of Europe.
There are uncountable rootless “ger” (tent) camps.
Where is it written that good things are supposed to be easy?
Ulan-Baatar – better known to crossword puzzlers as Ulan Bator – is a sprawling city combining history and faith with the minimal charms of the country’s longtime Soviet patrons: drab architecture, dreary function over flair, iron-fisted social order. Amid challenging topography and climate, it is a huge outpost of bustling crowds and martial monuments.
Once conqueror of the world under Genghis Khan (or Chinggis Khaan, as is the spelling here), Mongolia was overwhelmed by the presences of its sun-blocking neighbors, China and Russia. (Roughly, what is now Mongolia was “Outer Mongolia,” while “Inner Mongolia” of yore is part of China to the south.) Disdaining the Chinese, who since returned Khan’s intrusions time and again, Mongolia sided with the Russians and was shaped heavily by the Soviet Union’s influence.
With the collapse of the Soviet system, Mongolia has experienced much of the same disruption and drift of its patron. The system was ill-prepared for a relaxation of the orderliness and certainty of a state-controlled economic-social system and, given a choice, citizens elected many Soviet-era figures to continue leading.
At the same time, Mongolia recognizes the need to diversify its economy, opening up tentatively to the rest of the world. It is not Gay Paree or Foggy Old London Town when it comes to tourism, but the fascinating spirit of the land, its people and culture go a long way to filling in the gap created by the scarcity of fine cuisine and top-of-the-line hotels.
You can buy a good meal anywhere in the world, but where else can you stay in a nomadic ger and ride ponies on grassland steppes that extend forever in every direction. You can buy fancy baubles in any shop in most any city anywhere, but in Mongolia, the attraction is the landscape, the beauty of the people in native clothing walking down a city street, the sense of being an outsider.
Most visitors are wise to get out of the city, to tour with the nomads, whose territory begins about an inch beyond the last city building. They herd sheep and cattle and camels and yaks, moving every few days, dismantling and rebuilding their utilitarian gers in no time at all.
A ger is a round, hatbox shaped white-felt tent that is the most common living quarter of the Mongolian people. On the steppes, in the Gobi or even in Ulan-Baatar, gers pop up like mushroom caps. They are comfortable, heated with coal stoves and lined with couches.
Many Mongolians believe that digging up the ground, disturbs the spirits. And so they do not plow fields or sink foundations for their homes outside the cities.
They are not big farmers. They eat mutton and abide by ger etiquette: Always make noise before entering to alert inhabitants of your arrival; do not knock on the always south-facing door; do not roll up your sleeves, unless you are announcing that you want to fight; step over the threshold with your right foot, and never step on it; men move counterclockwise within, women clockwise; don’t whistle inside; always accept the hospitality of the host, even if it’s for 1 million cups of tea or pinches of snuff.
It might not be official custom to clonk your head on the low doorjamb, but it is a constant reality. Night sounds on the Mongolian steppes include a series of head-knocked bonks followed by curses in foreign languages. Even while among a family of nomad herders, we watched as the head of the family thumped his noggin entering his own ger. It hurts.
The vast Mongolian countryside produced enough warriors to conquer the world from here to Hungary and back. It is a hard life for the nomads, with short summers and long, very cold winters.
Ulan-Baatar is a city of 800,000 people, two-thirds of the country’s population – many living in the gray concrete monstrosities favored by communist planners from eastern Germany to North Korea. New buildings are built with construction techniques as old as the hills: bricks tossed one by one to masons on high.
Zippy movie theaters glisten next to Internet cafes while women walk the streets like human phone booths, offering use of their cellphones for a few tugrik, which exchanges at 1,120 to the dollar.
The city’s center is marked by the chesty architecture and monumental style of the Russians to the north.
Sukhbaatar Square is a vast plain surrounded by large buildings – the Government House, the Opera House, the stock exchange.
The Zaisan Memorial, which commemorates the end of World War II, Soviet space successes and general goodwill toward the giant power to the north, towers above the city, offering visitors an urbanscape to one side and vistas of the achingly empty landscape stretching out from another while, below, a monument to a tank commemorates Mongolian military prowess.
Buddhist prayer flags, in the Himalayan tradition, snap in the breeze, sending prayers out over a land marked by its enormity.
Buddhism is the core of this land, surviving as it has elsewhere despite vigorous communist attempts to crush it. The Gandantegchinlen Monastery in Ulan-Baatar is the country’s most esteemed holy spot, the only Lamaist Buddhist facility to survive the communist purges of the late 1930s and the pressures of official hostility since. It is rich in religious architecture and tradition in a land where such devotion was banished and condemned.
The faithful visit the monastery to pray and reflect.
The Bogd Gegen Winter Palace is the home of the last Mongolian theocrat ruler, Jebtzun Damba Hutagt VIII. (Transliterations from Mongolian to English provide many variations of spellings, but a tourist has no problem finding his destinations, as there aren’t that many to begin with.)
Wrestling is the principal sport here, and important matches are televised in the fashion of major soccer games elsewhere. Wrestling heroes are national figures, and the Wrestling Palace is one of the city’s most striking buildings.
At the State Department Store (watch out for pickpockets outside) you can find souvenirs and local specialties – furs, cashmere, pottery, folk art, clothing. Prices are reasonable, but the selection is limited.
The best souvenirs are memories of the people outside, strong and cheery, beautifully garbed in bright colors and great boots watching their children on little street-corner amusement-park rides, of taxis being pushed along by their drivers rather than running their engines and using expensive fuel, of small horses and ponies wandering the countryside amid the gers.
Ulan-Baatar someday might erect a Ritz; already there are a few modestly luxurious hotels, such as the sprawling Bayangol, with its opera-house-size restaurants and ballrooms. But it is hard to imagine how even a palace of comfort will rival the charms of the classical dance demonstrations at the Tumen Ekh Ensemble Palace down the street.
The odd Mongolian throat singing would give goose bumps to a yak, and the contortionist routines make you feel sore just watching.
Information for travelers,
To visit Mongolia, Americans do not need a visa in advance; it’s easy to obtain one upon arrival. Mongolia is accessible by air and trains from Beijing or Siberia.
Carriers serving Ulan- Bataar include Aeroflot, Air China, Korean Air and Mongolian Airlines. We arranged our trip over The Internet with Monkey Business in Beijing (monkeyshrine.com), but there are many other agencies.
2006 will mark the 800th anniversary of the establishment of the Mongolian Empire, and ceremonies are being planned both in Mongolia and beyond. Hunting, kayaking, fishing, bird-watching and camping are attractions of continuing and increasing interest.
The major annual festival is the Naadam, held for three days in July in Ulan-Baatar. This is marked by a wrestling competition, archery contests and horseback riding – unusual in that the riders are all children.
The people are friendly and helpful. English is not widely used, but the language is being taught as the country looks to tourism as part of its future.
Helpful information can be found, among other sites, at mongoliatourism.gov.mn and miat.com.
