A land of vast, untouched landscapes and a timeless nomadic culture, Mongolia’s wilderness has long attracted adventurous travellers. Three such travellers are in our midst; Loyalty Club members Chris Berry, Peter Taplen and Glenn Wilson have all travelled to Mongolia with us this year (Chris on Mongolia & Naadam Festival, Peter and Glenn on Best of Mongolia), and have each sent us a wonderful account of their explorations for you to enjoy.
It seems that people who decide to travel to Mongolia are often asked “why?” when sharing their travel destination with family and friends. The answer for Chris was because he’d never heard of anyone going on holiday there, while Peter was inspired by a tv show. Glenn’s answer is ‘because it’s there’, but had been considering Mongolia for a while, especially having already travelled through the Five Stans. Whatever their reasoning, all three travellers enjoyed their adventure, calling it a ‘wonderfully different experience’ having ‘enjoyed every minute’.
But enough from us, let’s hear from our intrepid adventurers!
Chris’ Story
The essence of “Mongolia & The Nadaam Festival” was experiencing the differences between the various Mongolian cultures and those of the tour participants – Kiwis, Aussies and Brits – in a brief, well-guided tour, led by a flexible, sensitive and responsive tour manager.
Walking the streets of Ulaanbaatar was like walking through any European city. Dress styles and interpersonal contact matched European dress and ways in a comfortable summertime mid-20s temperature. Clearly, many capital-dwellers enjoy the national wealth arising from the exploitation of mineral deposits in the north of Mongolia. Early morning bumper to bumper rush hour traffic in Ulaanbaatar rivals any city across the world; 36 hours later the cascading landscape of the Gobi Desert gave a very different perspective of Mongolia.
Grassy valleys, meandering rivers, rolling hills and the occasional canyon provided the backdrop to challenging “safaris” in skilfully driven four-wheel drive cars. Peppered across the varying roadless landscapes are herds of goats, camels, sheep, horses, cows and yaks, mostly domesticated – tended by unseen nomadic people who live in girs (yurts) – while some are untended and essentially wild. Occasionally we encountered Soviet-style towns with obsolete industries to remind us of times before 1990. Nomadic Mongolians maintain their way of life within these towns with family girs surrounded by wooden board stockades.
We spent more than half the nights on the trip in girs ourselves. Luckily, the indoor ambient temperature was comfortable regardless of outside conditions. A crucial extra item is a torch for the essential night-time trips to the bathroom.
The tour includes off-the-beaten-track visits to local families who tend their animals: goats, sheep, horses and yaks as well as milking the mares for fermented milk – a delicacy for specific taste buds. A typical local meal is a hotpot of meat (with bones), potatoes and carrots cooked on an open fire. Hot stones from the fire are placed in the pot to maintain heat.
The annual Nadaam Festival fantastically summarises the special pride that Mongolian people have in their traditions and heritage. The spirit of Chinggis Khan lives on in the love of, and pride in, horses and horse-riding, shown in the extraordinary 20km+ races during the Festival. Nomadic children ride horses from as young as four, and some of the top lightweight jockeys in the Festival Races are just seven or eight years old. We also saw the traditional Festival Games’ events of Mongolian wrestling, traditional archery and knuckle bones.
Peter’s Story
I enjoyed every minute of the tour, from the museums and temples, to viewing the modern city, shops and restaurants etc. The tour group i joined with were fantastic, and we had a great adventure throughout. From staying in the various “gers” every evening, to the numerous places we visited, from the cities to the Gobi Desert. It was not tiring travelling across the desert and the scenery was amazing! We also viewed a Mini Naadam Festival and interacted with the locals. A great time was had!
Our tour guide Zaya was the perfect host and explained and showed us the history of her country. She went above and beyond to look after us throughout our journey. And it was a pleasure to know her, from all of us.
I would like to go back to Mongolia to see this vast country sometime, and especially to visit the Eagle Festival that takes place every year, and other parts of this beautiful country.
Glenn’s Story
I was not sure what was there to see in Mongolia (what does “steppe” look like? … and I have seen several Asian deserts – they’re not all the same), but two weeks before I set off, I would be returning from touring The Five Stans and Mongolia was pretty much the next country to the right, so I was completing the set – it would be churlish not to. In fact, I had been looking at tours of Mongolia for a few years, but it did not entice me. Then Wendy Wu announced their tour and the itinerary looked very promising, and being Wendy Wu, this was likely to be the best way to see the country, and it would dovetail nicely with The Five Stans.
Returning from The Five Stans I now had an inkling of what the cuisine might be like: nomad food – what you can carry on a horse, so no vegetables (you don’t hang around to watch them grow) and no herbs or spices and what you did eat was likely to be boiled … not a good start for a foodie like me who wants to eat a country’s culture as well as see it.
As for the scenery, each of the Five Stans are very different so that did not give me much of a clue.
So what was it actually like ?
Firstly, my fellow travellers were, as usual, a great bunch – it takes a certain sort of nutter to tour the far-flung corners of Asia – used to taking the rough with the smooth and laughing all the way. This honestly was the best bunch of people I have ever travelled with – no-one was a “problem”. We were a bunch of mainly Brits with the odd Aussie and Kiwi thrown in.
Our tour manager/guide, Zaya, was great and handled everything with aplomb. She was very knowledgeable and had a great enthusiasm for her country. She created a rota of “who sat in each car on what day”: couples kept together and singles rotated daily – it gave you a chance for a different conversation every day and a chance to “see” different takes on the country every day.
The hotels we did stay in were good (very good in Ulaanbaatar). The rest of the time we stayed in tourist ger camps which varied in layout & size but always had a central building where “admin” lived, and the restaurant/cafe was located
The food was good – we had the odd Mongolian speciality but in the ger camps we were fed mainly European-esque cuisine, but with some exceptional highlights. Lunch was sometimes eaten in ger camps en route, and in one town we went to a pizza place – and they were good, but the kitchen must have worked in overdrive to provide a stream of pizzas to this sudden influx of massed foreigners.
I have no standout memory from this tour – it was a wonderful kaleidoscope of different landscapes (the word scenery does not do Mongolia justice) with glimpses of a (sometime dark) past in the ruins of monasteries juxtaposed with the bright colours of new-built and re-built buildings.
Wendy Wu provided various experiences like musical / dance shows and even the Mongolian version of a county show (a Naadam festival), which featured dancing, wrestling, archery, a horse race, and flicking dominos at a target (I kid you not).
After having seen a musical dance show a few days earlier, during one lunch in a swanky hotel in the middle of nowhere, we were entertained by a string trio: a Mongolian-type 2-stringed (square) cello, a 2-stringed double base and a 3-stringed “guitar” – most enjoyable folk-rock – the music was lively and several CDs were bought afterwards and one of our group was even allowed to play the guitar.
Other experiences included my first horse ride (with a girl leading the horse) and my first Bactrian camel ride (in China they would not let me ride one “because I was too old” … luckily neither the Tunisians nor Mongols have such qualms, so I have completed that set as well). Before the horse ride it started to rain so we were lead inside the main family ger and went through the Mongol ritual of visiting someone, with everyone giving a potted history of their life and drinking Mongol tea, eating the traditional accompanying snacks and even the ritual taking of snuff.
We had a few good walks through different landscapes, and I found the views while driving were both diverse and enthralling – hills were usually present, and one drive through a narrow canyon showed them close up, but the shape of the landscape varied with the underlying geology. We also passed numerous herds of sheep, goats, cows, yaks and horses feeding on the sparse grass and scrub desert of what I guess “the steppe” comprises.
And the weather was usually good – warm but not too hot, with just the odd quick shower.
Points for the prospective tourist to ponder:
- Do I get travel sick easily? Can I take the vibration of driving over fairly flat, but nevertheless not smooth ground for a few hours at a time. There were only 3 travellers (plus the driver) in each vehicle, so there is, at least, plenty of space.
- Can I hack living in a ger for over half the holiday – even those with electricity and an en-suite! At least one even had aircon. Talking with travellers using other tour companies it was clear that not all gers are created equal!
For myself, the travelling was not rough enough to mention, most of the time (and the exceptions might qualify as an experience), and myself and my fellow travellers all seemed to enjoy the gers – it was not rough living.
With the above provisos, I would heartily recommend this tour of Mongolia to everyone – you have not been to somewhere like this before! It doesn’t need any special preparation – I just turned up with my usual gear (and probably insufficient pre-tour research) and never felt I had left anything behind – just go!
