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Jan. 4, 2005 In 1997, living in Beijing, China, I visited CITS (China International Travel Service) to inquire about getting a visa for Russia. I was informed that Russia usually grants a 30-day visa, but hoping to practise some Russian, I deemed this inadequate, requesting 3 months instead, unavailingly. So I abandoned the idea of Russia for the time being. A train ride to Moscow on the Trans-Siberian Railroad would have taken me through Mongolia too, and I was disappointed at the prospect of losing that opportunity. So I decided to go to Mongolia anyway, where just a short stay would be good enough, as I had no intention of learning any Mongolian. Yellow pages do exist in China, but my hotel had no phone books, so I was forced to call Directory Assistance. I was still deathly afraid of getting on the phone in Chinese, but I got the number of the Mongolian Embassy somehow. The girl at the embassy spelled out the name of the street in English letters. But knowing how to spell a street in English and finding it on a city map in Chinese are two entirely different things. Devoting hours to poring over dictionaries and maps, I finally located the embassy. I went over on the subway, left two pictures, my passport and $40, returning the next day to pick up the stamped passport. I went to Beijing Station, a massive terminal beginning to age ungracefully, to buy a ticket, but they sent me to Beijing International Hotel, where CITS maintains an office for Trans-Siberian Railroad. For $65 I bought a one-way ticket to Ulaan Baatar, they won’t sell a round trip. The train does depart from Beijing Station though, so the next morning I was there, along with about a thousand other people out in front, with backpacks, tied-up cardboard boxes, and paper and plastic bags, milling around among all the rusty pedicabs and bicycles, banged-up vendors’ shacks and clutter. I was very annoyed that I would share my compartment with an English-speaking Israeli who knew nothing of Chinese or Russian. Naturally, I had hoped to meet local people and get a chance to talk. The Israeli was very forward though, introducing himself to everyone in sign language, so I was drawn in too, as a poor man’s interpreter. An hour or two later, we passed the Great Wall, battlemented and turreted in this part of China, and before long we made Zhangjiakou, a city visited by a devastating earthquake later that year. All afternoon we rolled through Inner Mongolia, a political subdivision of China called an ‘autonomous region’, and around midnight we got to Erenhot, a town on the Chinese-Mongolian frontier. At Erenhot, we had to wait three hours for the bogeys to be changed. China and Mongolia have different-gauge tracks. In Mongolia, we would also be down to a single track. When we started rolling again, customs agents came on board, inspecting documents. I awoke in Choyr, a town of 9000 in Govisumber, a Mongolian province, and bought buns from Mongolian women through the train window. Though it was only October 8, there was snow on the ground, but it vanished as the sun began to climb. Then we continued on our way, crossing the Gobi Desert. This was less frightful than I had imagined, not unlike the southwestern desert in the US, mostly sagebrush and tumbleweeds, but without scrub pine or cactus. A ‘yurt’, also called a ‘ger’, is a Mongolian felt house around 25 feet in diameter, with a shallow conical roof, also of felt. A hole in the center lets out smoke. I can’t imagine that they’re warm enough for the intense cold of the region, where winter temperatures drop to 40º or 50º below zero. Scattered here and there in the Gobi were hamlets of 4, 5 or 6 yurts, and you could see horses tethered or hobbled nearby. There were no roads and no electrical or phone wires anywhere. I saw a few small herds of Bactrian camels, the handsome, shaggy, two-humped camels, along with herds of cattle, sheep and goats. We passed through half a dozen permanent villages too, squalid huddles of adobe houses, surrounded each by a square mile of green farmland. We reached Ulaan Baatar in early afternoon. Mongolian and Turkish were once believed to be related as members of the Ural-Altaic languages, and the Turks supposedly first appeared around the 5th century in Chinese Turkestan and Mongolia. I had always considered these notions strictly academic, but almost immediately upon detraining in Ulaan Baatar, I learned that there are indeed many Turks in Mongolia, far as it is from modern Turkey, where some of them migrated about 1000 years ago, leaving populations throughout Central and Western Asia as they passed. I got a room for $10 a day in the apartment of a lady named Dora, who lived there with her daughter and her mother. A travel agent soliciting at the train station led me to her. Cattle, sheep and goats wander the streets of Ulaan Baatar at liberty. Still it´s cleaner than most parts of Beijing. Around Suhbaatar Square, the central plaza of the city, stand a parliament, an opera, a post office, a stock exchange, a college, a gallery and a museum. Atop one building is the legend, "Mongol Ornoo Manduuliaa" (Mongolian People 10,000 Years). Nearby are the state department store, the national library and an ornate temple, called Choyjin Lama Temple. Mongolians were Buddhists. Today they’re atheists. Many children in Mongolia beg on the streets. I understand that, during the harsh winters, they live in tunnels, clinging to hot-water pipes to stay alive. It's a very sad, sparsely populated country, with an area nearly four times that of California. Today, Mongolian is written in Cyrillic (Russian) letters, but has nothing at all to do with Russian. A few words were intelligible though, like ‘goulash’ and ‘hot dogs’, so that’s what I ate. Most of the books and newspapers are in Mongolian, with a few books in Russian and other European langages available too. Incidentally, the Mongol Messenger, an English-language weekly can be accessed on Internet at: www.mongolnet.mn/mglmsg The president of Mongolia is Natsagiyn Bagabandi. The new prime minister is Tsakhiagiyn Elbegdorj. Nambaryn Enkhbayar was PM when I was there. ------------ About the author Thomas Keyes: I have written two books: A SOJOURN IN ASIA (non- fiction) and A TALE OF UNG (fiction), neither published so far. I have studied languages for years and traveled extensively on five continents. Email: udikeyes@yahoo.com Tell a friend about this site! ------------ All articles are EXCLUSIVE to Useless-Knowledge.com and are not allowed to be posted on other websites. ARTICLE THIEVES WILL BE PROSECUTED! |
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