Photherapy

Our Mongolian friend, Byamba, who is currently studying in Vienna, recently wrote us to say she visits our image gallery often, especially when she misses her friends and family in Ulaanbaatar. “They really make me feel better. Never knew I was such a homesick person!”

For many of us, the bulk of our photographs are condemned to sit on a hard drive, slowly succumbing to bit rot.  So it’s satisfying to know at least a few of our images are warming a homesick heart.[svgallery name="mongolia07"]

Driving out of UB

We leave the city limits just before the morning traffic starts to boil. Because I have the fattest ass, I get the honor of being in the front passenger seat. Nikki, Augú in his car seat, Uyanga and male Byaamba have to share the back. The first hour or so of driving passes without event. Our driver, whose name I never did catch, puts in a cassette of a very popular singer, whom I’ve heard countless times blaring out of cabs and stores during my walks around the city. His excellent, operatic voice makes me wish I had spent my childhood years in the Mongolian countryside, just so I could use his songs to reminisce.

N had spoken to G last night, who told her the drive to Tsetserleg is about 12 hours, not eight, as the group had originally estimated. “The roads are dusty, but generally in good condition,” N says, recounting G’s words. She has been taking 500 mg of Panadol every 6 hours to combat the fever and looks and sounds much better this morning. I admire her strength, for deciding to come with the kiddo to this country, for deciding to embark on a long road trip to the Mongolian bush with nary a day to recuperate from her day of fevers and chills.

Her fortitude is about to be tested, because soon the highway will end, and we’ll be forced to drive on dirt. For the next eight hours.

Although G was technically correct in his synopsis of the road conditions out of UB, I would have perhaps used a slightly more robust word than ‘dusty’. What the cars are churning up as they speed by, and as the picture here shows, is soil by the ton. Sun-blockin’, lung-fillin’, dinosaur-killin’ dust that slips into the air vents and between the window seals until it cakes you and everything else in the car. I feel like we’re in a mobile tandoori oven.

Almost “disappeared”

I embarked on a photo hunt this afternoon, as I usually like to do in new places. Too embarrassed to take shots of people, I stick with abstracts: sunlight on buildings, shadows, broken pavement, water, etc. I had just shot a string of photos of an ornate fence surrounding a bright yellow building when an armed guard approaches and asks me to follow him back to the security booth. He is smiling a little too much, trying to be overly polite and comforting, which makes me ill at ease. The metal of his gun has worn to a dull patina. He makes a phone call, his voice deep and his sentences curt. Pretending to fumble with my camera, I start to delete any photos that can be interpreted as “spyish”. I then try to show the guard the remaining images, but he brushes the camera aside and makes a sign that either means “wait” or “shove something in my face again and I’ll make knots in your fingers.” About a minute later a disheveled aparachik comes out of the building.”Why are you taking photos of this building?” he asks.
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Twist

For all our preparation and anxiety surrounding the little one, it was Nikki who got sick in the end. She woke me at 3 a.m. on the morning that we were supposed to leave for Sol Dav. Her forehead hot as an ember. Her defenses had been steadily deteriorating since we arrived in UB. We couldn’t mitigate the utter exhaustion we felt coming off the 27 hour flight (1 hour to D.C., 3-hour wait, 13 hours to Beijing 7-hour wait, 3 hours to UB) because Augú couldn’t fall asleep for hours after we arrived at the hotel. The little sleep she did get was light and not very rejuvinating.On top of this, United lost her only check-in luggage, which contained all her clothes and most of A’s. All the prep she did ahead of time, getting him good gear and clothes, gone. You were spared, dear reader, a post of invective hurled at the dinosaur airline because of a power outage in our hotel. On the eve of our trip out of the city, the airline calls to tell us they have no idea where the bag could be. So at the last minute, we had to scramble to get the child some new clothes and shoes for camping, underwear and shirts for her, etc.Of course, no sooner did we return from our shopping spree at the Sky deptartment store, the airline calls again to say it found the luggage and that we’d have it later that night. I think this is the point that N’s fever started. Continue reading »

Michelle Hotel

Bayaamba booked a lovely hotel for us down the street from the National University of Mongolia. The Michelle Hotel comes with a free breakfast (eggs, cereal, fruit, etc) and an internet/conference room, with connection speeds faster than any I’ve been able to find at the internet cafes here. The hotel is across from the gated Chinese Embassy and is only a ten-minute walk to the huge Sky Department Store, which stocks a host of Western goods like package fruits, diapers, canned goods. Not something I’d generally give a hoot about, but as we’re traveling with a toddler, it’s reassuring to know we have access to items not normally found in Mongolia. For quick shopping, there’s a 24hr mart next door to the hotel, as well as an “aptek”, a pharmacy.

First Dispatch from UB

Ulaanbaatar is a loosely packed, dry and dusty town. It keeps low to the ground, with scarcely a building taller than 15 stories. The mountains around it keep the morning light undirected and the city stays cooler longer as a result.I find the place and its people to be extremely likeable and would normally be lamenting the fact we have to leave in a day, were it not for the awful air quality, which, coupled with jet lag, exhausts me within an hour of starting a walk. The diesel fumes are most concentrated at dusk. But by the early hours of morning, the streets are emptied of traffic and the fumes drift away until just the sweet smell of wood fire hangs in the air. UB is a place of contradictions. A stout monk in traditional garb walks around screaming into his cell phone. Dilapidated temples, in the shadows of new construction. Many cars have the steering wheels on the opposite side as American ones do, yet the traffic direction follows the U.S. system. Women in full length, traditional del robes wait for buses next to women with skirts so mini they look like belts.The Mongolian language can fall strong on the ears of westerners at first. But grow accustomed to it and you begin to notice that sentences start gruff then drop to an almost-whisper level, a perfect reflection of the extremes of this land and its climate. It is a low, masculine language, designed to travel across steppes and pierce frigid winds and dust storms. But the laughter is light and the songs are wondrous. If you find yourself on a crowded street corner waiting to cross, hope for a lull in the traffic: you just might hear a dozen people singing quietly to themselves.