East Mongolia

Aussie Christine is back from Mongolia and says it was "Ammaaaazing! All blue sky and endless miles of every shade of yellow you can imagine, absolute silence and the nicest, nicest people I've ever come across." She has posted her photos and story and here's the link.

She now plans to go back in Spring only next time to go west instead of east so she can do the Gobi Desert, and she's definitely going to ask to have the same team she had this time because Mulgi, the translator/driver, and Baghi, the tour guide/cook, quickly became her favourite ever people.

But before she went off jaunting, Aussie Christine spent four days in Ulaan-Battar and says ... well, let me give you the backstory first:

A month ago, Aussie Christine was walking the back streets of Bangkok when she was struck by a sudden thought: "This feels familiar. Why does this feel familiar? This shouldn't feel familiar!" and realised that, after 15 years rocking around the world, particularly in Asia, most of the world now feels like "her own neighbourhood", and she doesn't like that! She wants to be bombarded with strange sights and smells and encounter "the alien" at its most intense.

Well, that's what she found in Ulaan-Battar. It's wonderfully strange and intensely alien and she ADORED it!

She has just sent me this very quotable piece to give you a better sense of the place:

"Ulaan-Battar is a cauldron of concrete and dirt. New buildings are thrown up on any available patch of ground, while new-monied Mongolians drive around in their Humvees to battle Landcruisers and yellow taxis for right of way on pot-holed boulevards.


The best bits, she says, is the almost total absence of "branding". She isn't talking about the lack of a presence of the usual ubiquitous Western multinational companies, which thankfully have a minimal presence, but that they hardly even signpost their own brands. Yes, in Ulaan-Battar they brand practically NOTHING. In the row upon row of identical streets with identical buildings with identical doorways, you are just meant to know which door takes you into the supermarket, or the food market, or the clothing market, or the whateveritis market. And it isn't a problem because, if you wave around your calligraphy, locals will personally take you into whatever place you're after.


Weather? It snowed the whole time she was in the city, but the moment they left for the jaunt into the wilderness, the skies cleared, the sun came out, and, except for night, she only wore a T-shirt. Mind you, it was a long- sleeved, fleecy T-shirt, but a T-shirt none the less.

Touring Mongolia is getting easier all the time these days. Apparently there's a place that puts together these deals for you, but I have to ask her for details and the link.

And the prices? For only US$300.00 a week, she got a rugged Russian mini-van which totally took the serious battering it got, including getting stuck headfirst and tipped almost upside-down in some slushy ice. And that price came with Mulgi and Baghi, food and accommodation. They went East into the desert near the Russian border where Genghis Khan was born and grew up, and they stayed in gers (they are only called 'yurts' in Western Mongolia; in East Mongolia they're "gers") all along the way.

All in all an experience she can't wait to repeat.

By the way, his name isn't actually Genghis Khan, which apparently is a western mispronunciation, but I've already forgotten what the real name is. And did you know he had red hair and green eyes, and that no one could understand why, so I guess Eastern Mongolia has forgotten it was once the land of the red-haired, green-eyed Yolger people, some of whom, obviously, weren't driven out?

And here's something no one in the world knows about: Aussie Christine said they were forever coming across the most spectacular sites with amazing views and massive piles of rubble that Baghi said were once monasteries, and it turns out that the Russians came over the border and destroyed all the monasteries for thousands of miles, and, yes, slaughtered all the monks, thousands of them, and that they did this repeatedly for over 60 years and only ended the onslaught when all the monks and monasteries were gone. And no one knows about it.

Please, can you spread the word about these atrocities? Folks have to know this was done in East Mongolia, so can you do your part for history, truth and JUSTICE and tell other folk. And if you have access to the media, can you ask someone to investigate this and make sure the world KNOWS so the Russians answer for these Crimes Against Humanity.

But, to sum up, Aussie Christine says East Mongolia is wonderful and she highly recommends taking the tour she took. I'll pass on the details as soon as I get them myself.