Mongolia! The Land of Camels, Gers and Ankle Bones.

We got to Mongolia at 6AM and had a long, wet walk to the International Ticket Office to get our tickets to Beijing. My mom 7 I watched “Flight Plan” in Mongolian while my dad bought the tickets.

After we got that taken care of, we walked to our hotel, but got side-tracked by a military procession. We saw all of the soldiers, the head of the armed services and possibly the president. There was a big force of warriors on horseback and tanks and missiles! It was awesome! There was a giant statue of Chinggis Khan (that is how they spell it in English here) seated on a throne in the front of their parliament building.

We got to our hotel and went on an exploration for lunch at 2PM. We found a cool tour on the 12th and booked it; we were also able to eat their pizza.

After that we went shopping. I loved the camel calendars and all of the cashmere. It was so soft! I couldn’t figure out what cashmere I wanted. They also had felted crafts and camel wool. I got a flag and we went to the State Department Store. We didn’t even see ½ of the cashmere floor. On the fifth floor, they have a giant selection of traditional clothing, bags, tsam masks, huge paintings, ankle bones, traditional weapons and musical instruments, and basically everything Mongolian. They had these pearl sewn elephant pillow cases that I really wanted, but I couldn’t figure out what elephants have to do with Mongolia. Darn it!

Next we went to a non-profit handmade crafts store called “Mary & Martha’s”. It is a store that helps out women. They set up and work with cooperatives in rural communities. The poor women make their traditional crafts and they get 50% of the money themselves. The store owners took the name from Mary and Martha in the bible; it’s actually a lady and her husband. I got a hand embroidered bag, a felt necklace and a felted, fuchsia rose. They make their own shopping bags out of old newspaper!

When we got up the next morning, we went to the Nadaam festival. After lots of clueless meandering, we finally found one station, archery. It was just getting started and we saw three men and two women shoot. People come all day long to compete over the two days. The targets were stacks of cups, and I think points were given based on where you hit the stack and how many cups you knock down.

We heard large amounts of cheering and discovered the ankle bone shooting. Well, it seems to consist of a large oval of people chanting while tossing a white tile. When the tile reaches the half-way point one of two people with a wooden block like a Scrabble tile holder would take the tile and put it on the block. Then, after a long time, he flicked the tile at two ankle bones on a table at the other end of the oval. Then the tile was tossed around the other side of the oval for the other contestant to shoot.

It was a large collection of busy tents with throngs of traditionally dressed people moving from event to event. We saw troops of Mongol warriors invading the stadium! There were Tsam dancers in their gorgeous costumes with their incredible masks. There was a flag procession with people dressed like ancient royalty. The woman with the American flag had the most beautiful robes and a phenomenal peacock headdress. After a while, it was all too much amazing and we were starving. We headed back into town. It was so crowded that we couldn’t see the wrestling (we saw it later on TV - the horse racing is out in the countryside, but is almost constantly on TV!).

For dinner we went to the Grand Khan Irish Pub – so we wouldn’t be late for the theater! I had French fries and vegetable rice (it was like Mexicali corn mixed with white rice). My mom made me try the Mongolian pie – hers wasn’t very authentic because it was vegetarian.

The orchestra was dressed in traditional robes and headdresses of red and gold. There were several sizes of horse-head fiddle (which is square box with a long neck with a head shaped like a horse head) all of which make a beautiful sound. The fiddle only has two strings, the male string is made with hairs from a stallion’s tail and the female string with hair from a mare’s tail. They played and people came out to sing a “long song” which is not about the length. It is a song about the land of Mongolia. The orchestra also played a song by Mozart entirely on the traditional instruments. An ensemble came out a performed a “throat singing” piece. This is when a singer sings two or three notes at one time. It sounded amazing. We also saw dancers performing different traditional dances. One of them was about Nadaam and featured archers and wrestlers. My favorite part was the contortionist. She was incredible. She put her behind over her head and framed her face with her feet and smiled. For her last trick she folded herself in half with her behind over her head holding on to a pole with her teeth and spinning around. There was also a tsam dance which is a Buddhist dance to keep away evil spirits.

When we got out of the performance it was raining buckets and quite cold. We did not have our rain jackets because it had been sunny all day. All the people we had seen selling umbrellas earlier in the day had gone inside and there were no taxis around. Luckily we found a restaurant call Le Bistrot Francais where I got hot milk and a chocolate mousse.

The next day, we got up, had some salty Mongolian corn flakes, and headed out with our tour guide to Terelj National Park. First we stopped at Turtle Rock which I thought looked more like a bird with a boy’s head. We climbed about half way up to take in the view of the valley and then got back in the car and drove to a monastery that was shaped like the head of an elephant. It was brightly painted with pictures of various important Buddhist figures on the walls. There was a large censer of burning incense and a large gold Buddha image. On each beam there was a painting of a mouse who looked like he was regurgitating Easter eggs. Our guide told us that this was symbolic of money and good fortune. Outside, we spun all the prayer wheels. On our way out we found a prayer wheel that is meant to be spun by several people at once and so we all spun it by taking a handle and walking around it clockwise 3 times.

The walk around the monastery was beautiful with the monks’ school, paintings on the mountainsides, panels with quotations from a Buddhist holy book and millions of wildflowers, butterflies and crickets.

Next we came to a collection of 3 gers where we were going to ride horses and then have lunch. They offered us pickles before our ride and then the father came home with a sheep in a large yellow plastic bag. The sheep did not seem happy with this manner of arrival and was wiggling and squirming wildly to escape the bag. We were sure the sheep would not have a happily-ever-after, so we mounted our horses and rode away.

I’ve nicknamed my mother’s horse “Gassiopeia”. Can you guess why? Ashe said it was like a cartoon it was so outrageous and she said she was afraid the saddle would slip off because he seemed to be deflating. When we returned a sheep skin was draped over a fence post and the yellow bag lay empty on the ground. Our lunch consisted of steamed yak milk, potato pies, and vegetable soup. Our tour guides had the same except their all had meat (not the yak milk). It was very nice of them to make our lunch vegetarian. They probably think we are crazy. It was all very dense and filling and they made way too much food for us to eat. We all stuffed ourselves to not offend them, but there was no way to eat it all.

Our next stop was the 40 meter tall Chinggis Khan statue with a golden whip. The statue is placed on the site where he found the whip; the whip was a divine sign that he was to conquer the globe (or at least China). We climbed up the interior of the horse he was riding and soon made our way to the viewing platform on top of the horse’s mane. From up there his (Chinggis Khan) face is huge and stares at you like, “what are you doing on my horse?” The view was spectacular. They were constructing hundreds of gers that will eventually replicate the pattern of the ancient Mongolian horse brand. We saw a bunch of golden eagles surfing thermals right beside us.

After we clambered down the stairs (and I got my picture with the Mongolian warrior guarding the door) we got back into the car – I had hoped to ride a Bactrian camel, however, the camels were apparently kjust for sitting on and taking pictures, so we didn’t bother. My mom says we will go on a camel safari in the Negev someday, but they won’t be Bactrian. My dad says he’ll wait for us in Jerusalem. He hates riding animals. It was a wonderful day and we finished up with dessert at Le Bistrot Francais!

Mongolia has been amazing!