Coming down to the wire now. Departure for Mongolia is the day after tomorrow. This will probably be my last post until the week of the 25th. In the meantime, enjoy these videos of some of what I’m hoping to see this coming weekend.
“Naadam” means festival in Mongolian. The biggest festival of the year is the one coming up this weekend in UB. Smaller naadams will be taking place before and after the national event and one or two of those are what I’m shooting for since one can get a lot closer to the action.
First up- Archery:
Second- Wrestling:
Third- Horse racing:
And, finally, a short video that not only includes the events above, but winter camel racing.
But first, to help everyone get in the mood for Naadam, which begins a week from tomorrow, here’s a terrific music video from Nomin Talst called “Minii Mongol Naadam” or “My Mongol Naadam”. This is a great example of why I love Mongolia:
On Monday, I’ll do my last post before I leave. It will include one video for each of the Three Manly Sports that are held during Naadam: Horse racing, wrestling and archery.
I leave next Wednesday, so the organizing and packing has begun. Over on Facebook, a friend asked what I consider essential, both personally and professionally. FWIW, here it is:
Personal Essentials:
I don’t go there anymore without a Thermarest pad, even for hotel stays. The beds, everywhere, are HARD, seriously hard. My hips don’t do “hard” anymore. I also take my 20F rated down sleeping bag. It’s a rectangle, not a mummy bag, so I can use it as a comforter on a ger bed if it gets nippy.
Drugs for all the basics: cold, flu, sinus plus bandaids, antibiotic cream, sunscreen, Cipro, etc. and medical emergency air evacuation insurance, which I get from my tour company. There’s essentially no western standard medical care in the capital, Ulaanbaatar, except for an SOS International Clinic and something called the Russian Hospital. In the countryside, well, I don’t know much about traditional Mongolian medicine yet.
For anything serious, like a sprained ankle (yes, that can be serious) or a dog bite, you’ve gotta get to Hong Kong, Beijing, Bangkok, Seoul, you get the idea. And that can run, so I’ve heard, around $10,000 to get flown out, so $40 a month for the insurance is a pretty reasonable deal, I think.
My one major preference that I indulge is the ability to have a cup of coffee when I get up in the morning. This has proved iffy at times at the ger camps when I’ve gotten up early and haven’t been able to score a thermos of hot water the night before. I now take an Esbit stove, which is basically a small metal stand that one can put a small stainless steel camping pot on and that uses solid fuel cubes, which travel in my checked luggage. Heats enough water for two large cups of coffee in about 8 minutes. I buy packets of three-in-one coffee and milk tea at a grocery store in UB before I head out to the countryside. I take a coffee mug, too. Oh, and matches.
A Fozzil bowl that stores flat and snaps together and will hold water. I use it mostly as a place to put my watch and rings and stuff at night, but I can use it to wash underwear and socks in a pinch in warm or hot water that I heated up with the…Esbit stove. The stoves in the gers aren’t really used in the summertime, so I can’t count on access to one of those and wouldn’t want to use fuel for that kind of thing anyway.
Two Travel Towels, each of which fits into its own little bag. I never have to worry about having a towel and I like to have one for my hair. It’s small stuff like this, which is different for everyone, that seems to make travel go more smoothly.
As is true for many places, I always plan to dress in layers. Sturdy pants, light hiking boots or walking shoes, fleece jacket, t-shirts, turtleneck, thermals just in case. Teva flip-flops for going to the shower ger or if it’s hot.
I also always take a couple of del, the long, traditional Mongolian garment. Perfect for a robe in the morning, to wear to the toilet or shower, sit around in in the evening or, and this is really traditional, portable privacy on the road in a country where there are mostly no trees. And it can be really, really flat.
One change from previous trips is that I have lots to do in UB this time with various people. I’ve only had “field clothes” before and always felt like I’d just crawled in out of the Gobi. I really needed a nice warm weather outfit. So, our very own local Bohemian Mermaid, Bekki Scotto, carved out an hour a few days ago before she hit the art festival road and met me behind the Safeway store in Arcata with a rack of tempting goodies to choose from. I bought a couple of her hand-dyed rayon t-shirts, and a matching skirt and scarf to wear in town. She made me promise to get my picture taken wearing her finery in Mongolia.
My iPhone with excellent earbuds. I don’t care about airport delays anymore since I can always zone out to music, play solitaire or Paper Toss if I don’t feel like reading. Or watch my virtual koi pond.
I take a small stack of books, paperbacks that I will mostly leave behind as I go.
A Timbuk2 messenger bag for my non-roll-on piece of luggage, which my purse fits into, so I still only have two items. Clever me. It also holds the laptop, my file folder of trip stuff, all the power and charger cords and USB cables, snacks, a water bottle, a book and…my First Class Sleeper, which is more or less a half-size air mattress that you put between you and your cattle car-class seat back. It provides lumbar support, cushioning and has “pillow flaps” on either side. It has made a huge difference in my inflight comfort and arrival fatigue level. For $29.95. I just wish they’d make it from something that didn’t outgas at first.
My Mongolian-English and English-Mongolian dictionaries, since I’m really trying to learn the language.
Professional Essentials:
All the camera equipment: two Nikon D-80 bodies, 28-300 lens, 80-400 lens, 8, 4 and 2GB memory cards, four batteries, and a charger.
New KATA daypack for carrying same.
MacBook Pro for primary image storage in iPhoto. New Toshiba 500GB portable hard drive for back-up.
Car lighter adapter for charging batteries since not only do the ger camps usually not have electricity, but I’ll mostly be either camping out or in a fairly remote research camp this time.
Sketchbooks, pencils, gel pens, pan gouache, more paper, pencil sharpener, brushes, water-soluble colored pencils, a collapsible water container.
Nikon Monarch 10×42 binoculars.
Final essentials:patience, flexibility, a sense of humor and a willingness to set a goal but let the Mongols figure out how to do it. And my sense of wonder always gets a thorough workout.
I’ve planned this next trip to leave time for more sketching and to do studies using watercolor pencils and gouache. Last year it was all I could do to keep up my Flag Expedition Journal. This time I’ll be writing my journal in a Moleskin sketch book, but it won’t be a big narrative production like before.
The current plan is to spend the first two weeks traveling in the countryside camping out with a guide/driver and a cook. This will provide maximum flexibility since one can camp pretty much anywhere it seems reasonable to put up a tent. It’s one of the great things about Mongolia and something I haven’t been able to take advantage of before. Then I’ll be in and out of UB for a couple of weeks, then going to Ikh Nartiin Chuluu Nature Reserve for about ten days.
I’ve been easel painting almost exclusively for most of the year and haven’t done much field sketching, so I felt I needed to spend some time getting back up to speed. I got a start late last week and spent the afternoon doing the kind of work I plan to do in Mongolia when I can sit for awhile drawing something that isn’t moving much, like buildings or rocks.
Some years ago, my husband and I saw a show of field studies Thomas Moran did when he was the artist accompanying the Hayden Expedition, which surveyed Yellowstone, resulting in the creation of Yellowstone National Park. He worked on toned paper with watercolor, using an opaque white for his body color. I really loved the look he got and started to experiment with different papers. What I’ve settled on is a 100% cotton paper, Annigoni, from Cartiera Magnani, an Italian company that dates back to 1404.
I’ll be using another Magnani paper, Pescia, when I want to work on a white surface. Both take water media quite nicely.
Here’s two examples of my inspiration, courtesy Thomas Moran. The light brown tone is the paper color, which means this method also saves time:
And an example that I did at Hustai National Park on my 2006 trip. As you can see, the toned paper is perfect for punching up the white on the sunlit side of the gers:
Pan gouache on Annigoni paper, 10x7"
Last week’s pieces. I did them pretty quickly, less than a hour for each larger one. I wanted to replicate as closely as possible how I would do it in the field, even if I was working from photographs. For the pen work I chose Sakura Micron .01 pens. The ink is archival and waterproof. This means I can do the pen work first if I want to and then add water media:
Main Temple, Gandan Monastery- Sakura pen, watercolor pencils and body color, Annigoni paper, 10x7"Enroute from Ulaanbaatar to Arburd Sands ger camp- pan gouache, Annigoni paper, 10x7"Horse and tack studies- Sakura pen, watercolor pencils, Annigoni paper, 7x10"Rock formations, Baga Gazriin Chuluu Nature Reserve- Sakura pen, watercolor pencils, Pescia paper, 7x11"
I did a number of art festivals in the San Francisco Bay Area for a few years, including the Marin Art Festival the year before last. What I have found as an oil painter is that the street fair style of events don’t provide a targeted market for what I do. After skipping last year because of the economy, I decided to go back to the Marin festival. It’s a well-established destination event held on a big, grassy field near the Frank Lloyd Wright designed Marin Civic Center.
Side view of VW Eurovan packed and ready to go
I like that fact that it’s a flat rate for a space and that once you’ve been juried in, you are invited back and given a $100 discount on the entry fee. Knowing I will be able to count on participating year after year means a lot to me as far as my yearly planning. Communication from the people running the festival is excellent. They go out of their way to find ways to drive sales, especially this year. Besides postcards provided free to the artists in whatever quantity you request (each one good for a $10 free admission), they sent an email to all the artists with a free pass to print out that we could forward on to our mailing list. Other things they tried this year to drive sales were handing out “coins” that could be redeemed for a $10 discount on sales over $100 and a silent auction, which did generate sales. There is also a raffle.
Back view of VW Eurovan with propanels
Besides the artists and fine craftspeople, there is gourmet food, live music and members of a local “circus” who provide amazing stiltwalkers and costumed raffle winner announcers. Well-behaved dogs on leashes are allowed. Someone does face-painting for kids and there are special activities for them, too. There are lots of tables with umbrellas and chairs for people to plop down in for a break. It’s all calculated to encourage people to stay as long as possible.
My booth at the festival; they request that you "spill out" into the walkway area
I’ve decided that the Marin festival will be my one yearly Bay Area “appearance” due to time and distance constraints. My plan is to build up a following and identity as the artist who paints Mongolian and animal subjects. I feel that I made a good start this year. I had sales, got quality sign-ups for my mailing list and was able to tell my “story” and make myself memorable.
As I said last week, I had a few more things coming in and they got here the middle of last week. One is a 500GB Toshiba portable hard drive. My plan is to shoot my pictures, download them first into iPhoto on my MacBook Pro and then back them up to the Toshiba, so that they will be in two places. It’s light weight and has an internal shock sensor for protection. I bought mine on Amazon.
Next were two new memory cards for the cameras. This next trip will be almost twice as long as my previous ones and since I’m hoping to see lots of Mongol horse action close up, races and herders working, I anticipate using the burst function more than ever. I already know that I can fill a 4GB card in less than a day. The price of memory cards has continued to drop. My new SanDisk 8GB Extreme SDHC Class 10 High Performance Memory Cards cost less than the 2GB ones I bought a few years ago. I buy the “Extremes” because I can never be sure what weather conditions I’m going to encounter and I need a fast card that won’t hang up in the middle of the action. These came from an Amazon seller.
The third item I described as an “indulgence”. What I wanted were portable speakers for my iPhone, for listening to music when I was in a hotel or ger camp. I ended up ordering Livespeakers and returning them. Maybe my really good quality earbuds have spoiled me, but the sound just didn’t cut it. My husband, who understands how things like speakers work, explained why it’s physically impossible to get a real bass tone out of small speakers. I knew they would drive me crazy and I can use the fifty bucks for something else. Voices sounded ok though, so for someone who wants to watch movies I think it would be fine.
So, that’s about it. One pair of LL Bean tropic weight pants with cargo pockets still to arrive. I’ll do a packing dry run this weekend.
Don’t know if I’ll have time to post anything since I hope it will be a busy weekend. It looks like it’s going to be a beautiful, weather-wise, so the crowds should be good. I’ll be in booth 105S. The festival is on the Lagoon at the Marin Civic Center. Traveling home on Monday, so stay tuned…
As promised last week, here’s look at two items I recently purchased for my next trip to Mongolia. In both cases, they are “upgrades” that I hope will perform and function better than what I’ve used in the past.
First up, my new camera/day pack. I’ve used a good sturdy general purpose daypack from REI for quite a few years and it did what I wanted until I got a MacBook Pro which is larger than my old IBM x31. I solved that problem with a messenger bag from Timbuk2 that I reviewed here last year.
The cameras fit in the old pack, but had to be put into it vertically side-by-side with some kind of cloth wrapped around one to keep them from banging together. Not very satisfactory. And it got worse when I was able to upgrade to a Nikon Nikkor 80-400mm lens last year which is much longer and bigger in diameter than my old zoom telephoto. The jury-rigged set-up even made my guides nervous.
I started out looking for a pack which had the depth and padded dividers that would let me safely carry the two cameras as I had before. On the road, the pack is on the floor at my feet so I can grab either body in a hurry or zip it up and go without a bunch of fussing around.
I searched the internet and found a couple of possibilities, but realized that the only way to know for sure was to take both cameras to my local camera shop (Swanlund’s) and see what actually worked. And, as it turned out, the one I’d thought would, didn’t. But the young guy who was helping me, all of five days on the job, pulled a KATA pack off the wall and handed it to me. I’d seen the brand when I was looking on the web, but knew nothing about them. Turns out they’re an Israeli company which specializes in “Protective Carrying Technology”, which means gear bags and bullet-proof coats that can literally go into a combat zone. Might be, uh, overkill for my purposes, but I did want something that will protect my cameras.
So I sat on the floor with both Nikons and their lenses and a Digital Rucksack DR-465. What the young sales guy pointed out was a top compartment which would hold one camera and a bottom compartment with zippers that slid back far enough that I could get the body with the 28-300 lens in and out easily. And he was right.
There’s a loop on the back for a tripod and a zippered net pocket on one side for a water bottle. There are three zippered storage pockets in the front and the top compartment has a pocket along the back that will hold pens, notebook, cellphone, etc. The bottom compartment has a re-configurable or totally removable padded divider. Included is a rain/dust cover that comes in its own bag.
The inside is a lovely goldenrod and it has a purpose. It’s a color that will make it as easy as possible to find whatever is in the pack when it’s dark. Really dark.
The company points out in its literature that it doesn’t look like a camera bag, which is true, and that’s not a bad thing at all. The straps feel like they are well-designed ergonomically and will be comfortable with a full load hiking in the field. So, all in all, I think I’ve got a winner here. I’ll know for sure by the end of the first round of travel in the countryside.
KATA Digital Rucksack D-R 465, without camerasKATA Digital Rucksack DR-465- with cameras
I’ve also gotten a new jacket. I needed something less bulky than the reliable old Travel Smith jacket I’ve used since 1999. I wanted wind and at least a little rain resistance. The weather in Mongolia is very changeable and one needs to have good outerwear.
The best deal in my price range (pretty low) was an REI Windbreak Thermal Jacket for $89.95 (and I had a 20% off coupon),which they describe as their warmest wind-blocking fleece. They claim it will do the job in up to 50mph winds, which ought to be sufficient. It also has a water repellent for light rain. I have a poncho already for real rain, a certainty if Mongolia has a normal summer. The exterior pockets zip up and there are also large pockets on the inside, which I think will be handy. The styling is such that I can wear it around UB and not look like I just crawled in from the Gobi.
I’ve been wearing it every day when we go out to walk the dog and, so far, I like it a lot. But, once again, field use will tell the tale.
REI Windbreak Thermal JacketREI Windbreak Thermal Jacket
Just got an email from Amazon that my order from them has shipped. More camera batteries, a new option for back-up and a little indulgence that I’ll reveal next week, if it works.
The propanels are up and covered with paintings. The studio is about as clean as it ever gets. There’s new prints and cards. I’ll be baking oatmeal cookies tonight. And, at 11am Saturday morning, it’s Show Time! The 12th Annual North Coast Open Studios .
If you’re out and around in Humboldt County this weekend, consider checking out a few studios. Our county has an amazing variety of artists and the community is very supportive.
I’ll be open on Saturday and Sunday from 11am to 5pm. This year I’m offering a selection of small, affordable works ready to hang on your own wall or to give as a special gift.
For more information on this great event, here’s the link to the official website, which includes a directory of artists with examples of their work. maps to all the studios, photos of many of the artists in their studios and more.
In the meantime, Niki is resting up for his big socializing opportunity:
I’m now one month from departure for my next trip to Mongolia. I don’t have a specific itinerary yet, and probably won’t until I arrive, but here’s some of the things I hope to do and see this time around:
A nice little serving of buuz
-I’m one of the administrators for a Facebook fan page called “Buuz”, which are dearly beloved steamed meat dumplings. Mongols make and eat zillions of them for Tsagaan Sar, the Mongol New Year. When you ask a Mongol living in another country what they miss most, “buuz” is often the answer. We have over 700 fans now! And it turns out that the person who started the page, an Italian guy who is married to a Mongol woman, is going to be in Mongolia the same time as me. So we’ve announced a get-together for “Buuz People” in Ulaanbaatar on July 13 at the (no fooling) Grand Khan Irish Pub. Who knows who will show up, but it should be fun.
Yaks, Gun-Galuut July 2009
-It appears that the first weekend of August that there will be a Yak Festival somewhere in the Khangai Mountains west of Ulaanbaatar. Now, how could I miss that?
Horse race finish, National Naadam July 2009
-I would like to get to a number of Naadam horse races, both the national one and at least one or two local ones to get more painting reference. I also want to get a lot more photos of the herders and their horses.
Closeup of Chinngis Khan statue east of Ulaanbaatar July 2009
-There’s not much left of the ancient Mongol capital of Kharkhorin. It was sacked by a Ming Dynasty army and then most of the remaining stone was used to construct Erdene Zuu Monastery. I would like to visit both.
Tahki mare with two foals, Hustai National Park Sept. 2008
-For wildlife watching this trip, I want to go back to Hustai National Park and see the takhi in the summertime. I didn’t have time to go there last year. And I plan to return to Baga Gazriin Chuluu Nature Reserve and Ikh Nartiin Chuluu Nature Reserve for argali, ibex and whatever else comes within camera range.
I’m tweaking my equipment for this trip and will cover that in future posts. At the moment, I’ve gotten a new wind and moisture proof fleece jacket from REI that I really like so far and a new Kata daypack for carrying my camera equipment in the field. More on both next week.
Susan Fox, American Artist 