It may have been American Independence Day but we were in for a very non-American day as we arrived in Ulaanbaatar and got off the train. We met our guide Nemo and went out to the parking lot. Col France described it as such: take a box of dominoes and pour them into a casserole dish. Cars were blocking other cars, going in all directions, fitting into space between cars I wouldn’t trust myself cycling through let alone driving, etc. If only we realized that this was a prelude to what the roads in Ulaanbaatar would all be like. We had to wait about 10 minutes before we could clear ourselves a path but eventually, using the rule of “bigger cars always win” we managed to get out of the parking lot.
As I mentioned, the traffic didn’t get any better. Lanes were non-existent and traffic lights were merely a suggestion. I kid you not, cars would just drive full speed into an intersection and everyone would be going with nobody stopping. We learned very quickly that you take tour lives into tour own hands when walking around Ulaanbaatar. We stopped at a bank to exchange our leftover rubles into Mongolian Tigrigs (10,000 T to $8) and then got to the hotel just in time for breakfast (it was still only 7:30 by about this time).
After breakfast and settling into our rooms we met our guide Bata at the centre square. We arrived at the square to find an orchestra of 999 Horsehead fiddlers practicing for the Naadam Festival which was to start in a few days. From the square we drove out (trying not to notice the accidents waiting to happen all around us) to the Gur District Community.
The first thing that our guide made clear to us that, despite the fact that in many ways it does indeed look like one, the Gur District is NOT a slum. In fact, 70% of the 1.2 million people in Ulaanbaatar live in the Gur district and places like these are where the middle class of Mongolia live. The Gur district has no running water so residents use a communal well which is open 6 days a week for12 hour a day. Water is really cheap, 100L of water is only 50 tigrit (under 2 dollars/1 pound) but you need to carry it yourself (more often by hand because of people don’t have cars). There is a well for each 150 families. The community has no central heating and so every house has a stove (wood or coal) and therefore air pollution can be quite bad. Furthermore the pollution also comes from kicked up dust because the community doesn’t have any pavement. Finally there is no sewage system and therefore every house has their own outhouse.
The community we visited was called Yellow Rock because during the Socialist purge of the Buddhist monasteries in 1930s the Yellow sect monks were killed by being thrown off the cliffs above the community. The population of the community is over 8000, 60% of whom are under the age of 35. There is only one school so the students need to go in 3 shifts . Mongolia students can graduate in 10th or 12th grade, must do 12 years in order to qualify for University. 80% of students finish those 12 years. The long vacation occurs in the summer because the summer is milking season and the children are expected to help their families. It was interesting to learn that if you are a citizen of one of the large cities in Mongolia you have the right to own 0.7 hectares (per person in your family) of land for free. All you need to do is pay for the city registration (approximately $50/person) and then you can claim your land. The land inside the city is obviously all gone and so people need to go further out, thus causing the communities to expand all the time.
We visited the community monastery and learned that Mongolia is 75% Buddhist. Most of those are “yellow hat”, a sect that was established in Tibet. The original religion of Mongolia was shamanism but Buddhism was adopted in 1500s. There is a monastery in each community, but this particular one houses 8 monks here. Everything in Buddhism is done in Tibetan but there are people who are currently translating everything into Mongolian. The 4th dalai lama was Mongolian and Ulaanbaatar is considered the second holiest Buddhist city behind Lhasa. People come to the monastery for all sorts of reasons ranging from the resolution of problems to getting names for new babies. The rest of the religious makeup of Mongolia is 8% Muslim (only Kazakhs) and 18% Russian Orthodox or Christian (there are lots of Christian missionaries working in Mongolia).
After the monastery we went to the house of a Kazakh family and learned about the Kazakh people of Mongolia. The second largest ethnic group, they live mostly in the western province. They are Muslim, speak Kazakh, and are considered "semi-nomads" because they camp during winter and move during summer. They are known for their crafts: handmade rugs and handmade embroidery especially. The women of the community gather and do crafts together which they then sell in markets. We learned about traditional Kazakh dress and found that men's dresses have collars whereas women's do not. All married Kazakh women wear headscarves but the rules of dress and “decency” as dictated by Islam are not as strict because of the mixing and mingling with Mongolians and their customs. Women wear hats topped with owl feathers to protect from evil spirits.
After the Kazahk house we visited a Gur which is a tent in which many middle class Mongolian families like. Gur translates to “home” and the same word is used for these tents; Yert is Central Asian term for a Gur. The Gur is made up of 3 parts: wooden construction (including the roof-ring, 2 pillars to hold up the roof, and a wall in lattice form with camel hair "nails" that easy to squash and extend). During construction, the heavy furniture is put down first, then put walls around, extended, and tied together. Next you put up the roof-ring and pillars, then put poles to connect the roof-ring to walls. Covering the Gur in a light coloured canvas layer makes the Gur brighter, then the felt layer is laid over the canvas. In winter they use up to 3 layers of felt to keep the warmth in, and then a waterproof canvas layer is placed on top. Everything is tied with camelhair (or yak hair) ropes. A new Gur costs $1000 (for simple plain one) and will only take 2 hrs to put up and 30 min to tear down.
After our tour, Col France, Becky, Katharine, Sky, and I walked past the State Department Store (which we planned to return to for some souvenir shopping) to the Gandan Monastery. The monastery was founded in its present location in 1838 and at its largest held around 5000 monks. In 1938 the Communists began suppressing religious communities in Mongolia and cracked down really hard on the monks. They destroyed around 900 monasteries, tortured and killed monks, and used the temples to house officials or as stables. In 1944 several monks petitioned to reopen Gandan Monastery and it was allowed to reopen under strict supervision. After the Democratic Revolution in 1990 the monastery began an extensive restoration and rebuilding program.
At the monastery there were people selling birdseed which, in our opinion, was a terrible idea. There were more pigeons in that monastery than I have ever seen in my life. Tons of people were feeding the pigeons and they were flying everywhere. I am not a fan. Another interesting monastery experience happened when we were sitting outside the Migjed Janraisig (biggest tower housing a 26.5 ft tall Golden Buddha) waiting for Col France to take pictures. A woman walked up to us and saw Katharine’s foot wrapped in gauze. She tutted over it and shook her head and eventually knelt down in front of Katharine, put her hands on her ankle, and started praying. At first it was nice, then the longer she was sitting there the more awkward it got. She was there for a good three or four minutes and eventually finished her prayer and left. Katharine was appreciative but a bit put off as well.
We then walked back to the State Department Store to get some souvenir shopping done. There was so much to look through and it took us a long time to figure out what we wanted but eventually we got most of what we wanted (knowing that we could come back on Wednesday to get anything else we might still want). Afterwards we sat in the café outside the store and had a cold Chinggis Beer and while we were waiting the skies opened up and it started pouring! It let up a bit but it was still raining pretty hard by the time we needed to leave to walk to dinner. Katharine and some of the others got a head start because of her slower pace and the rest of us followed later but got to the restaurant before the group that left earlier. I went back out to look for them (going a different way back to make sure that they hadn’t taken the other route) and got all the way back to the department store before they reached the restaurant and so I had to run all the way back to the restaurant getting completely and thoroughly soaked.
Dinner was worth it though. As our way to “celebrate” the 4th of July we chose to eat at bd’s Mongolian Barbecue. If that name sounds familiar to you, then you’re probably right because it is an American Mongolian barbecue chain. So basically we chose to eat dinner on American Independence Day in the capital of Mongolia at a Mongolian barbecue restaurant owned and operated by Americans! How’s that for cultural immersion or imperialism? All in all, one of the strangest 4th of July’s I’ve ever experienced...
