Horse riding

It's amazing how much more you appreciate Spring after living through such a freezing and long Winter. The past couple of weeks has seen the temperature in UB rise over zero degrees, which has made many of us very excited and starting to actually think that there will be a Mongolian Summer. This has also seen the locals downgrade to their Spring coat/jacket, one we would consider suitable for our Winter (I'm staying in my Winter coat for just another couple of weeks).

While the countryside is still covered in snow, a few of us AYADs thought it would be a great chance to visit Stepperiders, a ger camp located about an hour south of UB in the Bogdkhan Uul National Park. Stepperiders is run by a local family and they take you horse riding through the surrounding park.

We arrived at the camp on a Friday night, stayed over in a ger that they kept warm all night with a fire, and spent most of the next day at the camp.

In the morning we hiked up a nearby mountain so that we could enjoy the beautiful views of the park. We had to create our own path to follow, so at some stages I found myself buried knee-deep in snow. In the afternoon we went on our horse ride with the local guide, who was so lovely. My horse was incredible as it powered its way through the deep snow and ice. Some of the other horses though tended to hesitate a bit more.

Despite the weather maybe being around -5 or -10 on the ride, I didn’t feel the cold (perhaps I've finally learned how to rug up), except for a strong chilly breeze on the mountaintop towards the end.

After our ride, the local family cooked us lunch consisting of noodles, veggies and meat. After a couple of mouthfuls I realised that this meat was actually horse meat. A few days before, a friend had told me that the taste of the meat is actually quite similar to the horse’s smell. Unfortunately, this meant that I had broken a promise I made to one of my sisters back home who is passionate about horses. I’m sorry Em, but I had no idea, and once I realised I stopped! And I don’t plan on eating any more..

I’ll definitely be taking another trip back to Stepperiders in the Summer. It will seem like a completely different place without the cold weather and snow.

Hiking around UB

On Sunday I went on a hike with Otgo, her sister and a few of her sister's friends. UB is surrounded by beautiful mountains so it was great to get out of the city and make the most of the last snowfall (I'm assuming..).

It was a beautiful view, apart from the smog cover over UB

We stopped at the top of the hill for a Korean-style BBQ lunch. Otgo's sister's Korean friend cooked up an absolutely delicious meal of meat and fish, with kim chi, rice and noodles. Dessert was bean soup, made from one of my favourite foods- sweet red beans (azuki), a taste for which I acquired in Japan at my weekly tea ceremonies. The dish was completed with fresh snow from the mountain. It was so good that I finished it all, despite it making me even more freezing cold!

SME Agency Outing

On Saturday my host organisation, the SME Agency, held its annual Spring excursion. We went to a ger camp in the Bogdkhan Uul National Park, about an hour south of Ulaanbaatar.

The Ger camp and Lunch

Over the course of the day we ate a lot of food, including a lunch upon our arrival followed by dinner just a couple of hours later. Lunch was mutton dumpling soup, and dinner mutton barbecue. The latter was actually the most delicious mutton I've eaten whilst in Mongolia. I think it was more like lamb as it was much more tender. My work colleagues brought the sheep with them on the bus as an entire carcass, wrapped in a plastic sheet.

In between meals, we spent our time in the ger playing games, such as who could build the tallest tower out of apples, and singing competitions. We also worked off a bit of the food by hiking up one of the nearby hills, and venturing to see the significant Manzushir Khiid Buddhist monastery in the region.

With Otgo on the hike

Visit to the monastery

Games in the Ger

Dinner

After dinner, everyone sang and had a few shots of Mongolian vodka as both activities are considered to aid digestion. This carried on in the bus ride home. I really love the way that singing and music are such important parts of the Mongolian culture. Otgo told me that this stems from their traditional way of life as herders, and that as such, a person has a lot of time to themselves, so singing is a way of entertaining oneself to pass the time.

Home time

Khövsgöl Nuur: Ice Festival

On Tuesday last week I travelled to Khovsgol Nuur in the north-west of Mongolia. Lake Khovsgol is the largest lake in Mongolia in terms of volume - being 136km long and some 262m deep! Over the Winter the lake freezes to a depth of 1.5 metres, which allows for vehicles to cross it on their way to Russia (although oil trucks are prohibited). For the past few years, the local community has been holding an annual Ice Festival, so this gave us a great chance to visit the region.

Scenes from the drive (just one flat tire, which must be record for such a long trip on the Mongolian off-road tracks)

Driving on the lake to the ger camp

We stayed beside the lake at a Mongolian family's ger camp. During the days before the festival, we spent our time horse sledding on the frozen lake, horse riding and hiking in the forrest and hills, and in the evenings listening to the sounds of the ice cracking and water gushing against the ice on the lake.

The festival was a two-day event with lots of traditional activities including horse sledding, ice skating and Russian van races, as well as sumo wrestling, tug-a-war, curling, bowling, fashions on the field (children, men and women categories) and even karaoke! One particular highlight of the festival was the fish khuushuur (a deep fried dumpling filled with fish), which we enjoyed with some milk tea in a ger. I also loved admiring the colourful deels and animal-fur headwear worn by the locals.

On the first day of festival I had my first experience on the ice slide (shown above). On my second attempt, I reached the bottom and was in the progress of standing up (in my large and heavy felt boots) when a Mongolian man standing on his feet slid down the slide towards me. Before I could get out of the way, he had knocked right into me, taking my legs out from underneath me, which resulted in me falling awkwardly on to the ice. Luckily I was with people skilled in first aid and had locals to take me to the closest hospital in the village of Khatgal, about 10 minutes drive from the festival. The local doctor did a great job fixing up my wound with 3 stitches; the international doctor back here in UB was quite impressed. Apparently the staff at that rural clinic are used to treating such types of injuries as they are often experienced by locals as the result of drunken brawls and horse falls.

With one of the kids from the family we stayed with on the lake

I didn't want to leave Lake Khovsgol, but the experience has made me even more eager to get out into the Mongolian countryside as much as possible. It is such a beautiful and unique country. While at Lake Khovsgol we were told of a proposal in the 1980s to mine the rich phosphorus around the lake. The Mongolian people at the time resisted this heavily due to the great environmental risks to the area, so it was rejected. Unfortunately, a similar idea has been proposed in the past year, but hopefully the Mongolian people will continue to fight against this for the sake of the beauty and purity of the lake.

On the drive home to UB