Going to a Ger
My new Mongolian/American friend who wants to be called Amanda, whose life story is worth its own blogpost if not a major movie, surprised me Saturday afternoon as I was finishing in the cafe kitchen. "I'm coming at 4, be ready with warm clothes and food. We're going to the countryside." That's what Mongolians call the rest of their enormous country beyond the bumper car, horn honking bounds of Ulan Baator. That's where they truly love being, just the way Mainers who live on the coast can't wait to get away to the woods where everyone of them keeps a little cabin. Even the most sophisticated urbanite, like Nanda's step-brother, a kidney transplant surgeon trained in Chicago, keeps a ger and horse in the countryside. "It's the real Mongolia," everyone says.
So off we went in her brother's Japanese SUV with the driver riding English style on the right side while the car went American style on the right side of the road. His stylishly dressed wife sat in the passenger seat, telling him whether he could pass or not, which I reckoned was tricky from his perspective. "A typical married couple," Nanda said at one point. "He drives and she directs and of course they're arguing all the time." It seemed quite light hearted and good natured to me, especially since these people had just returned the night before from an 8 hour journey to see her aging parents in the far countryside after her father was awarded a medal of honor for his fine building work. Then they'd immediately consented to Nanda's plea to take us out of UB, as the locals call it.
It wasn't easy getting out of town late on a Saturday afternoon since there are only two bridges over the Tuul River that bisects UB. We sat in a traffic jam Nanda found reminscent of her time on the Santa Monica Freeway, the 405, when she lived in LA. But I didn't mind this one: the cars were spiffy, the sidewalks were clean and I was getting a change of scenery. The national bird of UB seems to be the crane as humungous ones tower everywhere, building sleek office skyscrapers and apartment buildings. I finally saw gas stations too. Petrol is sold by the liter and is so wildly expensive that Nanda took $ 70 from me to pay for her brother's gas.
We began to move on the other side of the river, plowing along a four lane highway that suddenly became a two land dirt road, then a two lane paved highway, again a dirt road with huge gouges and potholes we had to keep sideswiping. But we were in big sky country, a tree-less steppe where grass was just beginning to emerge and the bare background hills folded into each other as they rolled from dark to white in the play of light. It was perfect scenery for old Westerns except the land was dotted here or there by an occasional white ger whose uniform roundness and pointed peak looked like a dollop of frozen yogurt or white Hershey's kiss. The ger, which we call yurt, is the typical Mongolian house. These people historically have been nomads and the white horsehair ger can be set up or taken down in about an hour. Permanent ones now sit on brick or cement foundations and have painted wooden doors as well as metal stovepipes rising through the peak of the round roof. The door always opens to the south for the solar benefits, but also because the wind blows east west. You can set your compass by a ger door.
Predictably around a ger will be large or small herds of cows, sheep and goats or horses. Once we passed a pack of camels accompanied by an eagle.
An hour out, a monumental stainless steel status of Chinggis aka Ghengis Khan wielding a golden whip atop his horse rose out of nowhere on the barren plain. We drove through an archway to a crowded parking lot. We climbed a lot of steps and went inside a ger shaped glass building where we had to pay the equivalent of $4 each to go further. "The guy who thought this up is very rich now," Nanda said as she handed me my change. We crossed an atrium that had a three story high boot to put LL Bean to shame. "It took 60 cows to make enough leather for Chingiss Khan's boot," Nanda's brother said as we gawked.
We took a small elevator to 3, the top floor. From there we wound around a narrow cement staircase that finally opened to a small flight of wider steps that took us a platform where, turning around, I realized we'd been inside the butt of the horse and were now outside atop its head eye to eye with the great waist belt of Chinggiss Khan with his golden whip. Amanda said this was actually the spot where Chinggiss is supposed to have found the golden whip that signaled his success as Emperor of the World.
Getting off the elevator at 2 we found a museum of Mongolian artifacts including primitive armor, bronze teapots, bronze bridles and iron stirrups, and eventually chainmail. Another room featured a huge map of Chinggis' empire, stretching from the coast of China to Turkey and Syria, and the way he divided it up among his sons: the Yuan Empire that was essentially China, the Golden Horde that was essentially all the central Asian "stans", .. . There was one English speaking docent there and she was anxious to give her spiel about the various dynastys outlined on the map because I was the only foreigner who'd passed through that day. "Which was Kublai Khan?" I asked and she pointed to China, proudly noting that its Great Wall had been built specifically to keep the fearsome Mongolians out.
About 45 minutes after we left Chinggis Khan on the plain, long flat topped sand hills began to appear in front of the rolling ones. "Coal mining," Amanda said. And I remembered everyone telling me how eerie UB is in the 40 below winter with the thick smog of coal heat filling the air so that you cannot see a foot in front of you. The road bent 90 degrees and a town appeared. "The Russians built it for the coal mines but it's a nice little town now." With severa banks, a supermarket, several mini marts, the standard karoake bars, one cafe and two restaurants lined up along the main road, it looked like a typical small town serving several thousand people. It took two minutes to drive through.
We were only two more minutes into the countryside when the SUV suddenly veered off road onto the plain. It was almost 9 PM and light was fading. But we soon twisted onto a dirt track going seemingly nowhere, crossed onto yet another and finally came to a stop in front of a fenced in shack and ger. "The woman who lives here alone," Amanda said as she threw open her door, "is 73 and she's just beautiful in every way. You're gonna love her. That's why I brought you."
More tomorrow about dinner and the ger and that beautiful old woman.
goinandy Garson"Wordsmithing to attest how the Dharma saved me from myself!"
http://www.sandygarson.com
http://yoursinthedharma.blogspot.com/
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Labels: Chinggis Khan, ger, Mongolia, Ulan Bator
posted by Sandy Garson @ 5:59 AM
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