Mongolia Mission Weeks 78 & 79 - The trip of a lifetime

Mongolia Mission Weeks 78 & 79

We promised one final blog entry about Mongolia, and this is it! 

If you have followed our blog (and we appreciate all the love, prayers, and support we received!), you know that we spent 17 months mostly in Sainshand, Mongolia. Sainshand is a city of about 25,000 people and is the capital of Dornogobi province, in the Gobi. It has a charm and a beauty of its own. And beautiful sunsets. But we were anxious to see more of Mongolia before we left the country.

So, to top off our adventure, we went on an awesome 2 week trip with one of our children, Kristina, who came to Mongolia to pick us up. We went with another senior couple, Keven and Debbie Hart, who went home to America about the same time we did. This is the abridged version of our trip. There's so much more than we can possibly report or you can possibly bear to read! And it's still a long blog entry!

On April 30th we headed to Ulaanbaatar one final time with all of our belongings in suitcases, boxes, and bags in our car. What a blessing to have the car and not try to manage everything on a train and in taxis! We checked into a hotel and Kristina arrived the next day. We spent a day and a half showing her as much as we could around the city and surrounding area around Terelj National Park.

We were excited to have Kristina visit! Notice the extra bag
she brought to help us haul home all the stuff we accumulated.

We visited Sukhbaatar Square and a
cashmere shop. Kristina got to meet our sweet 
English student, Michelle, at our favorite restaurant.

We visited the famous Chinggis statue,
climbing a long set of narrow stairs to reach the
viewing platform on top of the horse's head.

 

We visited a monastery, held eagles, rode horses and camels...

talked with the camels about the ride....

visited Turtle Rock....

and tested our archery skills!

Then we put ourselves in the very capable hands of some English-speaking tour guides and their drivers (and for some of our trip, even cooks). If you're ever interested in touring around Mongolia, we highly recommend https://www.newmilestonetours.com. Great bunch of people. They customize tours to make them fit what you want to experience rather than an "off the shelf" tour. Run by Mongolians with many years of experience as tour guides and tour operators. (No affinity money involved here.) 

We first set off to see the westernmost part of Mongolia, the Bayan-Ulgii province. Mongolia has 19 ethnic groups, but the Khalkh people make up about 85% of the population. The next largest group are the Kazakh people, who make up about 4% of the population, but probably 80% of the province we visited. They are mostly Muslim with a distinct language and culture fairly different from the rest of Mongolia. 

Hopefully, this gives you an idea of where we went. First, the little heart in the lower right is Sainshand. We started our trip from Ulaanbaatar and flew to Khovd, the largest red marker on the left (west). Ignore the blue driving route, because driving from Ulaanbaatar to Khovd is a 25 hour drive. We flew. The red star in the north was the next week's trip. More on that later, but this map shows where in Mongolia we visited with Kristina and the Harts. 

Khovd airport, where we landed, is not very crowded. There's
a flight from Ulaanbaatar 2 or 3 times a week. The city
has almost 40,000 people.

We visited our church's chapel in Khovd and found elders busy
making birthday cake for Elder Paul, who served with us in Sainshand.

After our flight, we were driven to a remote area on 170 km of paved roads and 150 km of fairly off-road terrain. Along the way we saw some completely barren, drought-affected areas. We also saw Tsambagarav Mountain, one of Mongolia's most beautiful snow-capped mountains. It's part of a National Park known for glaciers, rare wildlife such as snow leopards, and stunning scenery. 

Lots of wide open, barren spaces. And snow-capped mountains.

We picnicked on the shore of Tolbo Lake, which was still mostly frozen.

Fences in this part of Mongolia are made of rock and sometimes some yak dung formed and 
dried into bricks. Stacks of drying dung are piled on rooftops and fence tops in cities and in 
large piles in the country. The dung is burned in stoves for warmth and cooking.

The Kazakh host family we stayed with comes from a proud tradition of eagle hunters. The dad and two daughters acquire and train eagles, with which they hunt for small game in the winter and also participate in competitions. The older sister was away at school, but the 15-year old showed us her skills with her eagle. It's still rare to have women eagle hunters. For a great film (true story), see "The Eagle Huntress," available on Amazon Prime. 

Here's a perspective of the area and our guest gers -
one for Roses and one for Harts.

The insides of our gers were decorated with beautifully
embroidered tapestries done in the Kazakh style.

Our restroom facilities for our stay.

We got to try milking a yak. Not as 
easy as a cow, it turns out.

We got to dress in fox fur and hold a young eagle.

Some of us tried our hand at Kazakh embroidery.

We caught fish from an ice-bordered river.

which our guides turned into fish soup.

The mom and dad of our host family, such wonderful people,
fed us a pre-meal snack of an abundance of dried cheese, curd, and ghee. 

The main dish was rich and made from dried meat. It included
 a pasta-like bread steamed with the meat. (The bumps come
from the dough sitting on the holes of the steamer.) Everyone who
shares a meal eats with their hands as a family.

We got private concert of Khazak music at a nice restaurant in Ulgii. Interesting instruments, including
a little white carved figure of an ibex that danced and added percussion as the man working its strings
played a stringed instrument with those same fingers.

It was great to experience the culture of western Mongolia, if only for a few days. We enjoyed our tour guide and even met his wife and young children at an evening event in the town square of Ulgii. They are a loving and wonderful family.

Back in Ulaanbaatar we spent a night in the new, very nice Khublai Hotel, right next to where the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints' Mongolian temple will be built.

 

Temple site on the edge of town, visible from the road to the airport.

Then we took a different tour to the northern part of Mongolia. For this, we flew from Ulaanbaatar to Murun, then drove to Khuvsgul Lake and stayed at a ger resort on its shore. Ger resorts are commercial enterprises where a company owns a campground full of gers built for tourists. They have solid floors instead of vinyl laid on the ground. They have fairly up-to-date bathroom facilities.

This tour consisted of several off-road jaunts, the longest being 10 hours. What a ride! (Think about 4-wheeling over hours of Mongolian outback, fording a couple of streams along the way.) It was a beautiful area of wonderful vistas dotted with herds of sheep, goats, yaks, cattle, and horses, all with their spring babies.  

The dotted blue line is our flight. The green drive shows where we drove, with overnight stays
along the way. Nearly all the drive was dirt roads, with 3 to 10 hours of drive between each pin.

We were asked to speak in a church Family Home Evening in Murun.
People there had lots of questions about our story and what it's like
to serve as seniors. Our guide was happy, which is also her English nickname.

Near Murun we saw fascinating deerstones
from the Bronze Age (3000-700 BCE).

We visited a local family and their horses. As usual, we were offered refreshments.
Small pieces of scone-like bread are common; here it was very fresh and tasty.

Horses are often tethered to a rope strung between posts.

We stopped at the 50/100 monument. This marks the
spot of 50 degrees North and 100 degrees East. Several local
establishments showcase this, including the 50/100 Hotel.

We spent 2 nights at a ger resort on the banks
of Khuvsgul Lake. 

Khuvsgul Lake is the 2nd largest freshwater lake in the world, based on volume of water stored. It provides water to 80% of Mongolia. We enjoyed a hike up a hill overlooking the lake. It was mostly still covered with ice from the winter.

Then we hiked a bit further and found evidence of shamanist rituals, including teepees adorned with silk scarves and things like fabric snakes, a shamanist outfit with a headdress of feathers, and a tree trunk with 7 bleached white horse skulls. Before Buddhism came from China, Mongolians worshiped nature, and many still do. The shamans in this area have a reputation of being very effective, so that's one reason some Mongolians like to visit it.

We visited a local yak farmer on the shore of the
lake. Kristina was given a baby yak and invited
to come back any time to visit her yak,
whom she named Cordelia.

The off-road driving in Mongolia provides a choice of roads to follow, depending on your mood,
we guess. Or maybe there is a lot of traffic some days.

We drove through several streams, but here we used a bridge. 

We stayed in a couple of "guest houses" - sort of like Airbnbs.
 One outhouse was fairly fancy - it had wallpaper. This is the
men's side. The women's had a toilet over the hole.

We ended up on a magical-feeling mountain top at the camp of a reindeer herder family. This was again a separate ethnic group and culture than the majority of Mongolians. The Tsaatan or Dukha ethnic people are only about 400 in number (and diminishing) and are famous for traditional reindeer herding in the far north. They move their homes and herds two or three times a year, always in high elevations in an area known as Taiga. Sometimes they are referred to as Taiga people in reference to their region. Their nomadic homes are not in the yurt shape - they're what we in America would call teepees. 

We rode horses up to their camp, with male reindeer packing the equipment. We took turns riding reindeer, visiting and petting the babies (who sound like geese honking when they want their moms), and listening to the mechanical-sounding clicks of the reindeer joints. (The clicks help them keep track of each other in blizzards.)

Reindeer fur is deep and soft.

This woman sits on the floor of her teepee to sew traditional silk clothing with a manual sewing machine on the edge of her bed.

We played "Monikers" with Happy, creating our own words
and phrases. We had so much fun!

Some of the reindeer are hobbled together
so they don 't wander too far.

Cuteness overload! The female reindeer had not lost their antlers yet.
They lose them after giving birth.

We caught John stoking the fire. He kept it going
all night - so hot that he melted Kristina's air mattress.

Us with our hosts and guides at the reindeer camp.

The ride back down was a little too eventful. It had rained,
and Kristina's horse slipped and fell. She ended up with an ugly
bruise on her thigh but maintained good spirits in spite of it.

Our driver singing at a beautiful river on our way back
to Murun. Apparently, if you sing in this magical little 
valley, small bubbles rise to the surface from the bottom.

At an overnight stop, we met a trapper. He's the star of a  documentary called "Taiga" about the people of Northern Mongolia.  The documentary is about him hunting bear.

What a trip! And we so enjoyed the company of Keven
and Debbie Hart. They put up with us really well and
play a mean game of 5 Crowns.

Back in Ulaanbaatar, we had a chance to take Kristina to a performance of traditional music, dance, and contortion. Wonderful, cultural musical instruments and throat singing.

The contortionist also shoots a bow 
and arrow with her feet, hitting a target.

We bought souvenir Mongolian-style wedding rings.
Diamond shapes represent the woman
and circles represent the man. 

On our final night in Mongolia, we and the other departing English teachers shared our testimonies for Mongolian church members and friends in Ulaanbaatar before we left the next day for home.

With Jay, our interpreter, mission executive
secretary, and friend.

Kristina attended and learned about our tradition
of kissing on the 4th floor landing of our apartment 
every time we went up those 6 flights of stairs.

It was amazing to visit new places and meet some wonderful new friends. Mongolia is the size of Alaska and is the most sparsely populated country in the world. And so unique. What an awesome privilege it was to serve here and to travel here. We've learned so much about the country, the people, our God, and ourselves. We have been blessed and protected. 

We'd love to talk more about our experiences with any of you who have questions or would like to chat. Just let us know! (It might be hard to stop us...)