The Good, the Bad, the Mongolia

Ulaanbaatar is an ugly city.  I say this with full awareness of the subjectivity of beauty.  I appreciate the cultural norms and probably biased expectations that I possess.  I take into account the effect that my mood, at any given moment,  can have on my perceptions. Yet, even factoring all of this together, I return to the same conclusion ‘Tis an ugly city Or as my niece would say “U-G-L-Y! You ain’t got no alibi! You’re ugly!..”, but she is a bit of a bully like that.

The prevailing architectural trend is standard Communist-era block buildings.  The main road, Peace Avenue, is beset with the Asian equivalent of strip malls. The use of bright colors appears to be frowned upon.  And this may have been specific to the time I was there, but a persistent dust storm had everyone and everything finely coated in a layer of gritty sand.

On the first of a recent two day visit, I braved this granular assault to explore my surroundings.  I found some immensely kind and helpful people I encountered a number of monuments, mostly dedicated to Chinngis Ghan (not Ghengis Khan, as I had always been led to believe) but with a smattering of Communists personages thrown in for good measure.  I passed by a ger district, where the traditionally nomadic people from the rural areas have moved to in search of employment.  The felt tents or gers are set up in garbage-strewn fields and are generally fenced in, creating a shanty-town like community- it is strongly advised that foreigners avoid these areas, so I never got an up-close look.  I even tracked down a vegetarian restaurant located inside of a Buddhist meditation center.  All of this gave me a glimpse into the people, their past and their present, but the dust, the congestion, and yes, the ugly city, just made me want to get the hell out of there.

Sukhabaatar Square: the biggest square and prettiest part of the city.

A few blocks away, in front of the Ulaanbaatar hotel, Lenin makes an appearance.

Peace Avenue: Man with a Scale

So, on day two, I did. On a prior visit to Mongolia , I had done a day tour of UB that included a short visit to the countryside.  Now seemed like a good time to return with the benefit of more time.  I asked the hotel to set me up with a driver who could take me to Terelj National Park , something they did in a surprisingly short time.  It became somewhat less surprising as I eventually figured out that my affable monolingual  guide (note: that one language was neither English nor Spanish) whose name sounded something like Yaav, was not actually a cab driver, but more likely a friend of the hotel desk clerk who happened to own a car.  I say this by way of observation and not as a complaint.  Had he not repeatedly stopped for directions or shared my enthusiasm for the scenery that was clearly also new to him, I would never have been the wiser.  I liked the guy. He was excited to be there, eager to show me around and owned some of the most eclectic mix cd’s I’ve ever heard

The entrance into Terelj National Park.

The one thing that I had asked the hotel staff to translate for me before we set off concerned my overwhelming desire to ride a yak.  I am well aware of the fact that adult Mongolians do not ride yaks.  They are equivalent of ponies at children’s parties. The kids take a photo atop the hairy beast, maybe go for a spin around the steppe, but that’s about it.  But as a citified tourist with extremely limited animal riding experience, I felt I was roughly on par with a Mongolian five year old.  This plus I had promised a friend I would do it.

We were not 20 minutes into the park when Yaav spotted a herd of yaks.  He pulled over and led me across a field heavily mined with yak turds. There they were, about a half dozen yaks peacefully grazing on dry grass.  I tried to ask, in every way I could think of, how exactly I was supposed to mount one of these creatures for my photo op.  The response was always the same, he would smile and say one word: “Danger.” I decided that perhaps yak riding was not a realistic goal for me.  I could just pet a yak.  I slowly approached a medium size female, but was stopped short when she looked up from her lunch, glared and then made the most hideous noise I've ever heard.  That’s right, the yak was talking smack.  When I looked around, even the little baby yak was throwing around a bit of attitude. Faced with this setback, I quickly opted to abandon all yak-related activities and return to the safety of the car.  Sorry, Myke, maybe next time.

Satisfied that I was no longer pining for a yak ride, Yaav turned off on a dirt rode and header deeper into the park.  We drove until we came upon an archway with a couple of souvenir salesmen milling around it.  It was a perfectly nice wooden arch, brightly painted up and smack in the middle of nowhere.  I was baffled by its very presence. The mystery of the arch was resolved quickly enough when Yaav pointed way, waaaay up the hill.  There in the distance sat a Buddhist temple.  I imagined that monks lived up there in seclusion and this arch represented the closest spot that visitors could come to these holy men.  I imagined wrong.  Yaav was sprinting up the hill, cigarette in hand, before I realized that I, too, was now expected to undertake this hike.  I followed, huffing and puffing, stopping over and over to take photos of absolutely nothing for the moment’s respite that it offered.  The entire time, I was trying to figure out what path exactly was going to lead us to the temple since there was a sizeable gorge between us and it.  The answer, to my mounting concern, lay in this oh-so-sturdy wooden suspension bridge:



There was a sign limiting the number of people on the bridge at any given moment to four, which had me wondering what the Mongol to well-fed Cuban weight ratio was.  Was this thing going to hold both of us…at the same time? I’m writing this, so obviously it did, but not without a good deal of protest.  It was swaying like a Mardi Gras drunk and creaking like an arthritic long-distance runner. I was so happy to make it to the other side that I didn’t even mind that now there were a bazillion steps, designed to represent the trunk of an elephant, which we still had to climb.

The temple, known as the Aryapala Temple and Meditation Center , was worth the effort. It was small, charming and thanks to its incredibly remote location, a true testament to either the faith or stubbornness of whomever was involved in its construction. The locale provides a magnificent view of the wondrous landscape of the park and its surrounding mountains Here, the chaos and ugliness of UB seems a world away, although in reality it's only 60 km or so to the west.

Check out the bridge off to the left, not much more encouraging from a distance, is it?

Rat detail from the door.

Our final stop in the park was a rock formation dubbed “Turtle Rock”.  In my experience, whenever a natural occurrence is said to look like something else, a healthy dose of imagination will be required to see said thing.  There is usually someone pointing and saying things like “Ok, you see where that tree is? That’s where the chin is. See it? No? Maybe if you stand here…” Not the case with Turtle Rock.  It very much looks like a gigantic stone turtle.  Kudos to it and whoever named it.

This little girl lives in a ger in the shadow of Turtle Rock and was up for a game of peek-a-boo.

We were coming over a hill on the drive back towards the city, when I glimpsed in the distance, what I thought was a gigantic Hershey’s Kiss sitting atop a low building.  As we got closer, the silver colossus took on the form of a massive Chingiss Khan riding a horse.  At 30 meters, I’m sure it is the world’s biggest something (ie. silver sculpture, guy on a horse, silver guy on a horse in the middle of nowhere…) We parked and walked around it, but I deferred on paying the $15 entrance fee to climb up to the horse’s head.  Had they sweetened the deal and let me ascend to Khan’s helmet, I might have considered it.



Soon, we were back in the city. Yaav used his cell phone and the help of the front desk clerk to let me know that he didn’t want to end the tour yet.  He wanted to take me to a look-out point on the outskirts of town. The Zaisan Memorial overlooks the entire city and is a tribute to the relationship between Russians and Mongolians, particularly during WWII.  I had been there before, but was having such a good time, I didn’t want the tour to end yet, either.  We joined a multitude of Mongolian families in climbing the steps to the top.  For the second time, I was amused by the highly stylized mosaics, best described as early 80’s homoerotica with just a hint of Cold War kitsch I seriously love these murals . The view it affords on the city is perfect in showing the massive scale and urban scrawl of UB, and has been already mentioned, its aesthetic shortcomings. But beyond, it also shows the wild, often desolate open plains that reveal the true nature of Mongolia. Of that part, there is no question. It's simply beautiful.