Sad to be going. Love this country. Waiting for taxi to station……Vladivostok here I come……

Back in the big city, bidding a fond farewell to my fellow travellers who are now homeward bound while I gear myself up for the next leg of my journey – Vladivostok.

Its good to have the extra day here before moving on and a chance to visit a couple of museums, art galleries, that sort of thing. Never be tempted to think of Mongolia as a poor backward country – its art and history are stunning and distinctive and they are rightly proud of their culture and traditions. Everything is big and solid and square and beautifully presented. Very few beggars. Pretty clean. People live in gers because they want to not because they are poor and most have a car (and a house) sitting outside.

But goodness I love this country. I came for the landscape and the horse culture and have been overwhelmed by it.

What will I take with me? Standing outside my ger gazing up at the stars……..seeing a shooting star…….the flowers – a totally unexpected delight – whole mountainsides of wild flowers of every shape and colour and herbs, smelling gorgeous.

Oh yes. And the boots. Mongolians and their gorgeous boots! They dance in them, ride horses in them, soldiers do their soldierly drills in them, singers sing in them, Nadaam visitors hang out in them, monks pray in them, you sport them with your Sunday best, your every day clothes just for the hell of it and absolutely whenever you want to impress……..they are softish leather, shaped like a long riding boot and may be different colours, may be combinations of different leathers in patterns, may have simple or fancy stitching or may be elegantly plain or stylish. Some of the women can carry off wearing them with stilleto heels. They are fab and I am sternly keeping myself OUT of shoe shops!

Yes that’s our ger camp – isn’t it fab!

This morning I have galloped across the Mongolian plain, surrounded by mountains and forests as far as the eye can see, under the huge sky, on a tough little Mongolian horse and it was heaven.

In fact this place is heaven – our gers sit on a great flat grassy area among hills and forest, its a delightful camp, they come and light a fire in your ger in the morning, its hard to put across just how lovely the gers are, both to look at and to be inside (there will be pictures I promise maybe the Russian internet will be more amenable, fingers crossed). The furniture is painted, colourful and cheerful, there are lovely fabric drapes round the bed, chairs and cushions, and you can just sit outside and drink in the view. Its magic!

On arrival last night I walked up a nearby hill and it was good to be alone, high above our camp just revelling in being here. There were scrapings on the ground made by wild boars rooting with their tusks.

On the way here we did the tourist thing and stopped at the massive Ghengis Khan statue – typical Mongolia – if they want to make a monumet they don’t do it in a centre of population where people can pass by every day and with buses and trains to get you there, they stick it, huge and imposing, out in the landscape. Its common to see huge statues of wild animals atop a hill at the entrance to a national park and at one place we stopped at, just outside a town, their big monument to Mongolia was a 20 minute walk up a hill.

Around the Ghengis Khan statue is now a bustle but its jobs and prosperity for people and its beautifully done, a place you could hang out for the day. There was a museum which was, incongruously, all set up to cater for people taking selfies with the exhibits (statues of Ghengis Khan, mock ups of gers and life as a nomad or a soldier, etc) so if you stopped to actually look at something you were shoved out of the way by people wanting to have their picture taken in front of it. Nobody (but me) actually looked AT anything.

We’re off again today, can’t wait – 2 more nights of wonderful huge landscapes (and no wifi).

To give you an idea, Mongolia has the lowest population density in the world with just over one person per square kilometre (UK  has just under 400). Total population is about 3 million, over half of whom live  in Ulan Bataar.

UB was a moveable capital til less than 250 years ago, now its just a big city, people flocked here 30 or so years ago in search of all the usual things but many of them still live in gers in the suburbs, or have a house with a ger next to it. At heart every Mongolian is a nomad and at weekends likes nothing better than to take his ger off into the wilds and hunt wild boar and barbecue it. They are not profligate – they well respect the environment and wildlife and are not actually supposed to hunt but its who they are!

Nearly all the animals we see are healthy and well cared for except, very sadly, one of the national parks we visited where, for some reason there were also far too many carcasses lying around and horses excluded from the herd, nothing but skin and bone, soon to be carcasses themselves.

Ger suburb of Ulan Bator

So, today was it – the Nadaam festival – and we watched the most joyful celebration of a nation’s culture I have ever seen. The stadium was packed, there were bands and dancers and march pasts of people representing every aspect of Mongolia from past to present with camels and yaks and horses galore, in fact the horse is absolutely central to Mongolian culture and the horse is what was so exuberantly shown off today..

It was wonderful and equally wonderful was milling around outside the stadium before and after, among the performers lining up ready in all their glorious traditional costumes, families out for the day, many wearing all sorts of variations of local dress, hundreds of food stalls all packed, stalls selling all the usual stuff you get at a festival, horses in among the crowds, everyone happy and excited to be there.

In fact happy crowds has been a delightful feature of this whole trip from the street party atmosphere in Moscow in the build up to the World Cup to Ulan Ude with the cultural show there and enjoying everybody milling round in the square to here in Ulan Bataar with the various Nadaam events we’ve been to and the big square where people love to gather and enjoy the statues and music and just hanging about enjoying life.

Another happy gathering the other day found us out in the desert in one of the remotest places on earth, no wifi, the only electricity there was generated on site with solar power and what do we do of an evening? Crowded round a television and cheered our boys through to the world cup semi final!!!!

We stopped in the middle of the desert at a couple of lonely sheds . Our driver Shaggar did not need directions in the usual sense as he always knows where we are going – and by the way no self respecting Mongolian would EVER use GPS in any form – but needed some local knowledge about finding a route through the sand. After much chatting we were delightfully guided for the next mile or so by a woman on a motor bike with a little girl riding pilllion who waved and pointed and gestured and laughed.

One of the days I got to ride in the support van which was great. It meant a view through the windscreen and an open window beside me and I could see more and appreciate better the landscape around me. That day we drove over fresh wolf footprints in the sand and saw a herd of wild gazelle and passed an oasis – a small area of dense trees and green crops surrounded by a few cars and gers and a single sandy track passing it by. Have to confess I loved the sense of just being in the landscape, my only companion our support driver. Despite our not having a word in common we communicated occasionally, we agreed the sheep were ready to shear, he pointed out the gazelles, that sort of thing. I am genuinely enjoying my fellow travellers but my real love in travelling is not to spend my days on a bus full of westerners with a guide interpreting everything and this was great.

There is no way I could have done this trip independently – logistically – the distances are too great and the centres of population far too small and few and far between – you can’t hop on a bus to get around. We are on a tourist trail, we come across other groups doing exactly the same thing at the stops but I am lucky to be able to just step away and revel in my surroundings and get my fill of the desert and just so happy to be here.

Here’s a long shot of our bus near the oasis.

We stay in ger camps which range from the delightfully simple with ingenious showers and loos which are a seat over a hole (in a shed I am delighted to report) to the almost luxurious but showers and loos there were at every stop and boy did we need those showers after the long hot bus rides! These ger camps sit isolated in the enormous landscape often with no other habitation in sight.

And we’ve met some local people along the way. At our first camp we visited the family who run the ger camp we stayed at and milked their goats and crowded into their ger for chat and curiosity. In the middle of that one their landline phone rang!!!!! Another time we just stopped and asked a random family out on the steppe who were in the middle of setting up their home for the summer, they were horse breeders and had just come down from the hills where they winter as its more sheltered. I didn’t go into their ger, preferring to inspect a line of their horses tethered nearby and bonded with our support driver who’s a horseman and raced in the Nadaam when he was a kid. Next time I see him I’ll ask if he raced bareback!

This horse breeding family may be nomads but don’t hink for a minute they are poor or in need of tips from us – they have 4 gers and many fine horses, a motor bike and truck.

We’ve had fabulous days and lovely walks out in the open landscape or into narrow gorges (where there is still ice left over from the winter as the sun never reaches there) or down over the most incredible sandy cliffs – here the land has shelved down in a massive way revealing an enormous hoarde of dinosaur fossils which were excavated in the 1920s. We’ve seen Buddhist temples and Shaman stupas and a museum of stuffed animals – not sure what to feel about that – it included snow leopards, lynxes, eagles, camels, the lot.

Apparently I was very honoured to be allowed to inspect their best horses at close quarters – very much appreciated. And specially that connection with people that goes beyond language

OK over the next couple of posts you’ll get random snippets from our 7 days in the desert, written on the road…..

So, I’m travelling with a group of people, most if not all of them are veteran group holiday people – all like travelling to out of the way places and are used to fitting in with a group and I am very much enjoying their company – they don’t seem to mind my propensity to linger at the back so I can be alone in this incredible landscape and just revel in being here.

We’ve had very long hot days driving across miles of steppe and desert. Our bus is Russian and our tour leader assures us its the best for this sort of trip because its a good old fashioned bus built to last and can be fixed on the road – he pointed out that a modern computer controlled vehicle is no use to man nor beast when it conks out in the middle of Mongolia with not a garage in sight and no phone signal. All of which is to the good as we had several unscheduled stops for engine tinkering. Fine by me – a chance for a pee and for me, another chance to stand and stare. I can’t get enough of this place.

Its vast – we drove through huge plains, rolling hills, flat hard sand and gravel desert, past and through desert cliffs all under the widest skies you have ever seen, mostly blue, sometimes lowering grey clouds, occasionally overcast and windy. HOT!

And the very lovely thing is the smell – some places are more green than others but there is very little grass, its all herbs and wildflowers. the main smell is lovely and fresh and I am assured its wormwood, we”ve had camomile, thyme, sage (I’d better stop there being useless at plants before somebody points out that these things don’t grow in Mongolia! But I assure you the smell is lovely)

Lunch and loo stops was just a case of driving off the road and stopping. We peed behind the support van if there was no other cover.

There were tarmac roads for a bit of the way and then just dirt and sand tracks. Our driver got us there every time, there are virtually no landmarks and although he was following tracks how he knew which track is beyond me. Our tour leader said he just drives and the road appears before him….

We stop to take pictures of eagles, enormous vultures, cranes looking just like big herons, herds of grazing cattle, sheep, goats and horses – and camels.

Yes I’m back in the land of the living, and thank you all for your good wishes and comments on this and everything.

Today we saw the most incredible horse race. Several hundred small, tough Mongolian horses raced 14 kilometres across the open plains. They register first and are checked over – to make sure they are proper Mongolian horses and nobody has managed to sneak in an Arab. This happens at the stadium and finish line and where its all at – people thronging about, lots of them on horses just for the fun of it, gers (mongolian tent houses like yurts), constant commentary from the megaphone, in fact in many ways reminiscent of a British horse event but bigger in that it’s hugely spread out – then they all trot the 14 km across the plain to the start line, accompanied by jeeps, before turning round and racing back. These were the 3 year old horses who get a shorter race – the 5 year olds get 32 km – and it was shortened today because it was pissing down and conditions were bad. When they cross the finish line their trainer meets them, on horseback, and leads them triumphantly away. Oh yes, did I mention the jockeys are aged between 6 and 13 and most of them ride bareback?

Pics to follow – internet somewhat random here…..

That’s the winner and yes he’s bareback

Back from the desert and it was FAB but when we got back to our hotel in Ulan Bator I collapsed in a heap. Just the usual travellers tummy but, well, one of the worst….. have woken this morning feeling more human and will venture out to the Nadaam and see what happens……more anon……wish me luck……

PS don’t worry you won’t get gory details or a blow by blow account of this particular miserable aspect of travel!!!!!