Wild horses couldn't drag me away... but the State Department can.

After several weeks and two intense days, all of our possessions were boxed up, crated up, and drove off, hopefully on their way to Trinidad.  Faced with sitting in an empty apartment for our last weekend, we decided a much better course would be to get in one last countryside adventure.   With a crew from the Embassy we headed out of the city to Khustai National Park.  We had visited Khustai before on our own, when we tent camped, lost our car after hiking away from it, and were kept up most of the night by a crew of Germans celebrating a World Cup win.  This trip would be very different.

Khustai is famous for being one of the only places in the world that you can see wild horses.  Known as "takhi" horses here or Przewalski to the rest of the world (a rare example when the Mongolian word is way easier), the horses were once extinct in the wild, but a successful breeding program has allowed them to be reintroduced to 3 locations in Mongolia.  Per Wikipedia, "Most "wild" horses today are actually feral horses descended from domesticated animals that escaped and adapted to life in the wild. In contrast, Przewalski's horse has never been successfully domesticated and remains a truly wild animal today."  So, we set out on an odyssey to see the wild horses, and also some ancient graves and carvings that are also located in the park. 

Embassy cars reach the summit, on our way to see gazelles.

In true Mongolian adventure fashion, what was supposed to take 2 hours took 5, and involved some intense driving across rivers, along cliff sides, and over lots of rocks.  Several members of our party were rather shell-shocked by this abrupt introduction to the best of driving here. 

We saw many takhi horses, and also gazelles, red deer, and eagles. 

We stopped to see some "rectangular graves."  We don't know any more about them except that they are graves, with rocks laid out over them in a rectangle shape.  Very exciting.

The next site was pretty amazing though; a Turkish burial site with over 20 human stone carvings and 550 standing stones that were placed there for some significance which is now lost.

On our last morning in the countryside, we took a small walk out around the camp and enjoyed the brisk air and great vistas.  We will miss this!

So Long Ulaanbaatar, have another Chinggis on me

The author enjoying a Chinggis at a pub in Ulaanbaatar

We have lived in Mongolia for very near two years now. That is a thought to contemplate. I can’t say that ever in my life I thought I would be in a position to say that. It has been an eye-opening experience. I have seen many things I never saw before and probably never will again: an old lady proudly showing off her wolf carcass, a camel race, men wrestling in large boots and bright pink underwear, and Chinggis Khan vodka. Mongolia, in fact, still considers Chinggis to be their greatest leader; he is celebrated not only by his own line of vodka (he actually has about five different brands), but also has his own beer, hotel, and international airport. His image adorns most Mongolian souvenirs, from wall hangings and pictures to flasks and shot glasses, Chinggis Khan is the most marketable image from Mongolia’s history. I wonder what Chinggis would think of the commercialization of his name. His is immortalized in a statue in front of the Government House, and many others throughout Mongolia’s capital city, Ulaanbaatar.

Of course, today’s Mongolia has come a long way since the time of Chinggis. He may have ruled the largest land empire in world history, but he did not have a smart phone or notebook computer. One thing I will take away from living in Mongolia is an understanding of how closely the newest technologies can live next to squalid poverty in the developing world. There are many Mongolians today who drive Hummers and BMW's, while the majority of Ulaanbaatar still lives in gers, the felt-lined tents Mongolians have been living in since the time of Chinggis Khan. Mongolia is one of those few places in the world where many people still live a very traditional lifestyle, even while a growing upper and middle class embraces modern amenities. Our apartment has a built-in sauna; what do you think of that, Chinggis?

We leave Mongolia in two weeks for a couple months back in the U.S., followed by a move to the white beaches of the Caribbean. I should be very excited about this (I think I am on a deeper level, and am just suppressing it at the moment), instead I feel a sense of loss about leaving Mongolia behind. It has its negatives, for sure. Mongolia is not the easiest country to live in in the world. It’s the only country I have lived in where I actually worry about getting scurvy and I have known two people with gout. I didn’t even know people still came down with gout; I thought it was a disease left behind in the days of colonialism. The smoke and air pollution in the winter is terrible and I have even heard troubling statistics about the air quality in the summer months in the capital.

But the countryside is gorgeous, one of those few places in the world where you can take a drive out to the countryside and feel like you are seeing a place very few people get to, a place that really has not changed that much since the 12th Century. Glancing at the rolling hills, you wonder if you see a horseman in the distance holding a horse-tail banner, just as one might have done in Mongolia’s distant past. A quick glance through binoculars confirms it is really just a pile of rocks and sticks, one of the many ovoos that line the countryside, place markers of spiritual significance still to many modern Mongols. Just for fun, you pretend it was built there by the soldier you saw; perhaps it was the ghost of Chinggis Khan, still here in Mongolia having a good laugh as he watches us drink some Chinggis-labeled beverage or other. Perhaps the joke’s on us.

Be carrefful for glissade!!!

Good words to live by, to be sure.  But we'd all have to be a lot less carrefful for the glissade if they hadn't decided that slick marble was an excellent material for stairs in a country that spends at least six months of the year covered in snow and ice....

A Change of Scenery

So, after four weeks off with a cracked rib, I finally started back up running today.  I was so happy to be back out exercising again, and it didn't hurt as long as I didn't breathe deeply.  Non-runners may not believe it, but that's really not a problem.  When you've been running for roughly 15 years, you can truck along at an easy pace without breathing hard, even if you're supremely out of shape.  However, going back over the gym and hopping on my favorite (of 2) treadmills didn't feel as familiar as usual.  You're away for a month and they change everything!  In this case, the change consisted of the interesting decorating choice of three large cross-stitched portraits of nude women.  It really is quite mind-boggling.  Someone not only bought these kits, but then spent countless hours painstakingly cross-stitching the portraits in their full color glory, then tastefully matted and framed them, and decided to hang them in our apartment complex gym.  I mean, I know the winters are long here, but really....

Taking Stock

As we drop under the 5 weeks left in country mark, some of my thoughts are for the future and our upcoming adventures.  But more and more, I find myself thinking over the last two years here and evaluating the good and bad.  So, in honor of the 5 week mark, I give you a list of 5 Best and Worst of Mongolia.

5 Things I Will Not Miss:
1)  Being so far away.  We both really like Asia, and plan to come back here again if we can, but at the same time I'm looking forward to being a bit closer to home and better connected to the rest of the world.  And here's hoping it will not take 5 months to receive our household goods this time.

2)  Pollution.  I'm glad my poor little lungs only had to handle 2 years of this.

3)  Traffic.  Poor roads, insane congestion and a total lack of traffic laws or common sense once someone gets into a car makes driving here ridiculously stressful.  I've never used my car horn so much or yelled at so many people as I have over the last two years....

This actually looks much more civilized and less congested than usual.

4)  Food.  There are some Mongolian foods I really like.  Salty milk tea is actually quite tasty, and their homemade noodles are good.   But a cuisine that is dominated by fat, mutton, fatty mutton, and sour milk products can be difficult to love.  I think Susan's face in this picture says it all.  (sorry Susan!).

Mmmm... sour milk cubes and gravel cookies!

5)  These curtains.  Imagine waking up to these everyday!

5 of Many Things I Will Miss Greatly:

1)  The scope for adventure.  There is so much of this country that is still completely untouched.  I'm not sure we'll ever serve again in a place where we have so much freedom to just get out into the wilderness with such ease.  Little private property and little roads... the adventure is up to you.

2)  Wildlife.  Herds of horses, sheep, goats, yaks and camels abound.  It never gets old enjoying the herds roaming freely across the countryside.

3)  Hiking.  I didn't even really like hiking before I came here.  Now I love it, and am already planning trips I want to do in Trinidad.

4)  Landscapes.  Related to my hiking note above, I can't even count the number of amazing vistas we've seen here.  I could post probably 100-200 pictures to support this favorite, and had to just pick one at random.

5)  The Mongolians.  I love the people we've met here.  I will miss working with my staff so much, and can only hope that I'm fortunate enough to get to work with people this wonderful and crazy in the future!

Suiting up for our staff retreat.  I think it was only around -30 that day.

Transitioning to Trinidad

We are under the 6 week mark of our remaining time in Mongolia, which feels very strange.  In true State Department fashion, our departure inexplicably got moved up by a month.  (Something about "maintaining the integrity of the transfer process"... huh???)  So we've been feeling a mix of panic and excitement since we found out.   But that's not that interesting.  And thinking about it stresses me out.

What is occupying my thoughts more and more now, though, is our next post.  I'm really going to be living in Trinidad for the next two years?  What will that be like?  I've spent the last 30 years of life (so, all of it) living in climates with 4 seasons, most of them cold.  What is it really like to live on a tropical island?  Will I go crazy?  And, more importantly, what am I going to do with the roughly 1 billion sweaters, coats, boots, gloves, hats and scarves that we own?

But amid all the questions and transitions, every now and then you learn something that just makes you realize how cool this all is.  For example, I just learned yesterday that one of my favorite movies ever, Disney's 1960 classic (don't laugh) The Swiss Family Robinson, was filmed entirely on Tobago.  Apparently, the tree they used is still standing.  Tell me that's not awesome.

I'm going to be really disappointed if our embassy housing doesn't look like this.  Elephant included, please.

Coughing in Karon

I have a new metric to judge vacation spots by - would it still be fun even if you had pneumonia?  I'm happy to report that Karon Beach in Thailand passed, though I would love to return sometime when I could actually breathe.  Still, we had a lovely week there.  Eating lots of Thai food, cold drinks (of the fruit variety only, for me, sadly), good books, and lots of laying on the beach.   For a change of pace, sometimes we went to our hotel's rooftop pool instead.   Our most strenuous activity the entire week was a rousing game of mini-golf, surrounded by fake dinosaurs.  Pretty fun actually.

Scenery like this made it harder to concentrate on your golf swing.

The view from our hotel room.

Andy enjoys an evening dip in the pool as the sun goes down.

This is where I spent the ENTIRE week, coughing, but happy.

While the vacation was fun, our trip back was a bit challenging.  Feeling more rotten as the trip went on, I felt a rib crack while I was coughing on our way to the airport.  I'm not sure I've ever had a longer flight than the trip back from Phuket to Seoul.  But, many antibiotics and painkillers later, I'm finally looking back on this trip fondly!