Travel

Personal and Professional Essentials For Traveling In Mongolia

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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.

Mongolia Monday- Warming Up For Sketching In Mongolia

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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"

Off To The Marin Art Festival!

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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…

Mongolia Monday- New Gear for Next Trip

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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 cameras
KATA 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 Jacket
REI 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.

Mongolia Monday- Next Trip Coming Up Soon!

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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.

Mongolia Monday: Boroo (Rain)

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Mongolia gets very little rain and most of what does fall comes in the summer. After the brutal winter zud (a drought year followed by an extremely cold winter with heavy snowfall) that hammered the country these past months, a year of good rainfall would be a blessing, indeed.

Being a herding culture, the Mongols have always depended on rain to grow the grass they need for their animals. The rainy season is short, so I suspect that as wonderful as a Mongolian summer is, it’s also a time for some anxiety.

In 2008, rain came late, at the end of August. My husband and I were at Ikh Nartiin Chuluu Nature Reserve. We arrived on a beautiful evening. It started to rain at around 3am and didn’t stop for 18 hours (we counted). But we had perfect weather for the rest of the trip.

In 2009, on my Artists for Conservation Flag Expedition, it was definitely the rainy season, even though there wasn’t enough to break the drought.

Here’s a few of my favorite “boroo” photos. (Note: “Boroo” is pronounced more like “baurau”, with a rolled “r”.)

Naadam opening ceremonies, July 2009; the colorful show goes on for everyone, including the Mongolian State National Grand Orchestra
Heavy rain/hail en route from Ulaanbaatar to Arburd Sands ger camp, July 2009
One of the hailstones; roof of vehicle was dented
On-coming rainstorm at Ikh Nartiin Chuluu Nature Reserve, July 2009; it rained hard for an hour and a half so I just stayed in the cozy ger; the white rectangle in the background is one of the toilet enclosures. Yes, it was a bit of a walk.

Rain has, so to speak, seeped into the culture to the point where it’s a leitmotif in many of the music videos I’ve watched and clearly has romantic connotations. Sometimes it seems like there has been an informal competition between groups and singers to see who can work the most rain into their video.

Here is one from Javhlan. Imagine this singer with an absolutely glorious voice, standing in the woods singing as the crew poured “rain” onto him. I’ll bet he only needed one take.

And, taking it even further, is A Capella’s “Boroo”. Hope it was a warm evening.

Finally, instead of a set-piece like the previous two, Guys 666, who normally seem to be hard rappers, did this video, also called “Boroo”, that tells a story, albeit not an entirely happy one.

Mongolia Monday: Teaching Myself Mongolian

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Today I thought I would share how I’m studying to learn Mongolian. I had two years of German in high school and before that, had had some private lessons in Japanese before a trip that my mom and I took with two other couples to Japan in 1968 when I was fourteen. That’s pretty much the extent of my foreign language experience. (Trying to teach myself Welsh was a non-starter and I don’t know that learning to read the Canterbury Tales in the original Middle English counts)

Before my second trip to Mongolia in 2006, I decided that I both wanted and needed to learn at least a little of the language since I was going to be traveling on my own for over three weeks with only Mongolian guides and drivers. The guides, at least, speak decent English, but I was going to be finding my way around Ulaanbaatar on my own part of the time.

The first sign I could read; the ubiquitious "KHAN BANK"; Hovd,Sept. 2006

I advertised in our local news/art/culture weekly for a Mongolian tutor (in rural Humboldt County, California?) and, guess what, I got a phone call within two days. Seems a woman from Mongolia, who had met and married an American guy who was there serving in the Peace Corps, was at a party with her husband and a number of people asked them if they had seen the ad.

It turns out that she had only been in this country for a couple of months, so her English was still very uncertain. He called me and we set up a meeting between her and I. It went well and we were able to get together about a half dozen times before I left. Even better, we’ve stayed in touch and become friends with them.

She drilled me in basic pronunciation, got me going with some basic vocabulary and taught me necessary phrases like “hello”, “thank you” and “I’m from California”. Her husband contributed a word to use if someone hassled me- “Yasambay!” (sic), which means “What are you doing?”, the idea being that the person would be so shocked at hearing Mongolian from a non-Mongol that he/she would immediately stop whatever they were doing. As it happens, I’ve had no occasion to say it so far.

That tutoring, plus a copy of the Lonely Planet phrase guide for Mongolian is what I had until last year.

Banner for tent sales, Narantuul Market; Ulaanbaatar, May 2005- top line: "GERIIN MOD, ASAR MAIKHAN" - Geriin is, I believe, the possessive of ger, the felt "tents". Maikhan are the summer tents; "ONO MONKH", followed by "GERIIN BUREES KHOSHOG, TSAVAG"; OYUU TSAGAAN", followed by "BREZENT MASHIN KHUCHLAGA"; last line "UTAS", "Call:"

After sitting mute, and depending on a translator, during my three days of meetings with the herder women in July of 2009, I decided that it was time to get serious. While I was in Ulaanbaatar I bought Mongolian-English and English-Mongolian dictionaries.

When I got home I started to comb the web for a language program and found one from Transparent Language. (None of the other major foreign language companies offer Mongolian as far as I can tell). It is based on word lists that are viewed on “cards”. Each word is in Mongolian Cyrillic and and a transliteration into the Latin alphabet. One can also listen to a male native Mongolian speaker and repeat back each word. It even lets you slow down the speaker so you can hear the word better. There are a variety of other activities like typing out the words and some simple games.

I had also bought a small stack of music CDs and rapidly realized that I could use them, too. The perfect two-fer, listen to cool pop and rock music and study Mongolian at the same time.

Billlboard; taken from train on the way to Ikh Nartiin Chuluu, April 2005 (I may have started to fall in love with Mongolia at this point, seeing the bactrian camel cart)- "MONGOL SHUUDAN BANK"

But I was still struggling to get anywhere. As it turns out, my husband had to learn Russian when he joined the Air Force (and if I say any more, I’ll have to kill you). He told me the first thing he and his classmates had to do was memorize the Russian alphabet overnight. He suggested that I back up and learn the Mongolian cyrillic alphabet. I managed that in a few evenings and suddenly it got a little easier.

I’d started to “collect” words, writing them on a pad of paper. That reached its limit of practicality pretty quickly. I bought a copy of Bento, the consumer-level database program for the Mac and created my own word list, which is divided into categories like English, Mongolian, part of speech and subject (animal, food, furniture, etc.). I can sort my list by any of them, which is very useful and why I bought a database. It will be on my laptop, which travels with me, but I’m also going to print it out in each category to have handy in the car or when I’m walking around.

Recently, a commenter on another post told me about Anki, a downloadable program that generates “cards” with whatever content one wants like, say, Mongolian words. This is the same model the Transparent Language package, Byki Deluxe, uses, but those are pre-set. I’ve downloaded Anki, which is free, but haven’t had time to mess with it.

Well, that banner was a surprise. Are there actually any collies in Mongolia? I have no idea. Ulaanbaatar, Sept. 2006- "SHINE (new) BARAA (merchandise) IRLEE ("has arrived", I think it means)"

Then a French Facebook friend (say that fast three times) told me about PowerWord, which includes Mongolian as one of their offerings. So, for $8.99, I now have a Mongolian language program on my iPhone, too. It is also based on word lists, like Byki, but so far I think I like the way it’s organized better. It also has a spoken component, this time with a female voice.

Of course, the best and fastest way to learn will be immersion in the language once I get to Mongolia. But I hope I’ve “primed the pump” for rapid progress with the study that I’m doing before departure.

Chinggis is everywhere; Ulaanbaatar, Sept. 2006- "ENERJI"; the lines above and below the main word are in a script that I can't quite figure out for every letter. The block lettering is easy by comparison.

Comments and corrections welcome!

Mongolia Monday- 6 Things I Haven’t Seen Or Done In Mongolia. Yet.

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It’s the last installment of my six part series. This week it’s going to be what I haven’t done yet. Of course, it’s an endless list, even for one country, because there’s always something new crossing one’s radar. But I wrote down the first six thoughts that came to mind and found that I do have a good list of things that I really do want to do or see and that are reasonably achievable.

Not having done them yet, I don’t have images. But I’ll share some which I took on previous trips that are related and also have inspired my list.

1. Gallop on a horse across the countryside– I am not a rider, but I’ve always wanted to do this (maybe it was all the western movies I watched as a kid). I looked into it once and the riding teacher I spoke with said six weeks of lessons at least to get to that point. Needless to say that didn’t happen. But in Mongolia…..I trust the horses and the horsemen, so maybe it’s possible. We’ll see.

Herder with horses near Hustai National Park, Sept. 2008

2. Attend the Yak Festival– Now really, who could resist that? Not me, that’s for sure. My current understanding is that it was started by a dairy company and is held around the first weekend in August, which means I can probably go this year! According to the Wikipedia entry for “Yak Racing” the activities include “…yak racing and showing, wild stallion and yak rodeo riding, milking contests and other traditional Naadam events of horse racing, wrestling and archery.”

"Ride me? The heck you say." Yaks at Gun-Galuut Nature Reserve, July 2009

3. See Burkhan Khaldun– This is the sacred mountain where Chinggis Khan dedicated himself to Tenger, the Sky, went to pray and, on a few occasions, hide from enemies. It is still an important place in Mongol culture. I don’t know if non-Mongols are allowed or welcome onto the mountain, but I would like to see it.

Tahilgat Hairhan in the distance; en route between Baga Gazriin Chuluu Nature Reserve and Ulaanbaatar, July 2009

4. Take a lesson in writing the ancient Mongol vertical script– Back in the 1970s and 1980s, I worked as a sign painter, graphic designer and calligrapher. I’ve always loved lettering and type. I spent a lot of time learning to letter with a sign painting quill (brush), along with pen and ink. “Oriental” brush lettering never particularly attracted me, however. Then I went to Mongolia and saw the vertical script, which Chinggis Khan adopted from the Uighar people because he realized that he couldn’t run his empire without a writing system. As you can see  below, it’s still in use today, 800 years later. And it’s stunningly beautiful.

One of the first times I saw the Mongol script; large banner on building across from my hotel, Ulaanbaatar, Oct. 2006

5. See Tsam Dancing– Today it’s a Buddhist ritual of relatively recent (late 18th century) origin, but it has it’s roots in ancient shamanistic beliefs. Basically an exorcism ritual, it has a set “cast of characters”. The fantastic costumes and masks must be seen to be believed. Fortunately, many of them are on display at the Chojin Lama Museum in Ulaanbaatar. When I saw them the first time, I was captivated without having a clue about what they were for. To see them in use would be wonderful.  For a fuller explanation, go here.

Tsam dance costume, Chojin Lama Museum, Ulaanbaatar, Sept. 2006

6. Hike in snow leopard habitat-Which is a lot more realistic than saying “see a wild snow leopard”.  There are between 500 and 1000 snow leopards in Mongolia, according to the Snow Leopard Trust. Their habitat covers over 100,000 sq. km, so obviously the odds of seeing one are really slim to none. But one can get out into the mountains where they live.

Jargalant mountain, a far eastern spur of the Altai Mountains, Sept. 2006

Mongolia Monday- 6 Places For Chinggis Khan Fans To Visit

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The only thing many people know about Mongolia is that it is the place from which Chinggis Khan and the Mongol Horde rode forth to conquer the largest land empire in history. The Mongols’ view of him is very different than the one westerners grew up with. Far from being a bloodthirsty “barbarian”, he is considered more as Americans do George Washington, as the father of their country. He united the Mongol tribes in 1206. The last vestiges of his empire lasted until the 18th century, although it had split into many separate parts long before. He was their lawgiver and his pronouncements carry weight and provide some guidance in the country to this day.

Mongolia became the world’s second communist country in 1921. Not long after, the memory and public acknowledgment of Chinggis Khan was, except for a very few brief periods, actively suppressed. This changed, it appears, almost instantly, when Mongolia became a democracy in 1990. He is THE major cultural icon of Mongolia today. In fact, I just realized that I’m writing this wearing my Chinggis Khan t-shirt that I bought when I was there in 2006. There is also Chinggis Khan beer and vodka. Large wall-hangings with his portrait are very popular. You see him on billboards. He and his warriors ride into the National Naadam stadium during the opening ceremonies. There is a pop singer named Chinggis Khan. And, as you will see below, one can put together quite an interesting tour of the country visiting statues, monuments and a variety of locations associated with him.

I’ve been to three of the ones listed here and hope to visit the others at some point. Who knows, maybe this summer!

Government House, Sukhbaatar Square, Ulaanbaatar
Chinggis statue

1. Sukhbaatar Square- When I first saw the Government Building in 2005, it was a socialist era plain brown rectangle. The next time, in 2006, it was covered with scaffolding and it looked like a major change in the facade was under way. By the time I saw it again in 2008, the transformation was complete as you can see in the first image. It’s now one of my favorite government buildings ever. And the centerpiece is an enormous statue of Chinggis Khan.

Chinggis Khan room at the National Museum of Mongolian History
Mongol chain mail hauberk-13th-14th c.

2. National Museum of Mongolian History- There’s a rather large room devoted to Chinggis Khan and the Mongol Empire on the 3rd floor. Lots of interesting artifacts, including the chain mail hauberk show above. There are supposed portraits of Chinggis, Kublai and other Mongol khans, but I believe they are Chinese in origin and created after the lifetimes of the subjects. One unexpected display has an actual letter between one of the later Khans, Guyuk,  and the Pope. There was a surprising amount of communication between the Mongols and western Europeans from the 13th century on, although usually at cross-purposes. The Europeans wanted the Mongols to help them beat the Saracens and the Mongols wanted the Europeans to submit to them and become part of the Empire. Needless to say, neither party got what they wanted.

The world's largest equestrian statue
The view looking east as Chinggis would see it

3. The Chinggis Khan Equestrian Statue- It’s 40 meters high and on a 10 meter high base and is covered in aluminum. If you look at the horse’s mane, you can see the people who had taken the elevator up into the horse’s body. There’s a restaurant, gift shop and other facilities in the base. The second image shows what the statue “sees”. Out beyond those mountains is the origin point of the Khalkha Mongol people, who westerners think of as “Mongols”, although there are quite a few other ethnic Mongol groups.

These next three are the places that I haven’t been to yet, so there’s no images.

4. The Onon River– In the mountains near this river’s junction with another, Balj Gols, is where Chinggis Khan is believed to have been born. Although westerners think of the Mongols as a steppe people, they originated in a mountainous area that is part of the southernmost extension of the taiga or boreal forest. This is where the first monument to Chinggis Khan was erected during the socialist era. The people responsible ended up being purged. There is also a stone marker near the village of Dadal, placed in 1990 to commemorate the 750th anniversary of the writing of the Secret History of the Mongols, almost the only primary reference material available about the Mongols during the time of Chinggis Khan, although it survived only as a Chinese transliteration.

5. Avarga- This site on the Kherlen River is supposed to be the location of Chinggis Khan’s “capital”. It is believed to have served as his base from 1197 until the end of his life. I’ve been told that there are two noisy ger camps in the immediate vicinity, so it looks like a day trip or camping out will be the preferred options.

6. Burkhan Khaldun- This mountain, where Chinggis Khan took refuge from enemies before he became Khan of all the Mongols and journeyed at various times in his life to pray to Tenger (the Sky), is located within the Khan Khentii Strictly Protected Area, which the Lonely Planet guide describes as “Chinggis Khan territory”. There is an ovoo on the mountaintop that is visited by the Mongols. I don’t know if it’s ok for non-Mongols to go onto the mountain, but I would at least like to see it.