What did we had in mind when we planned our trip to Mongolia? Probably the vastness of the never ending steppe, massive sand deserts, Mongolian gers (their nomadic tents, "jurten" in german), their love for goat products (milk, cheese, Cashmere) and of course the national hero Chengis Khan. We've spent 3.5 weeks travelling through Mongolia's Gobi desert, stayed in the striving capital Ulaanbaatar and were privileged to attend the famous national sport festival called Naadam, and yes, Mongolia certainly lives up to its stereotypes, but there is much more that meets the eye.
Take the vast steppe and the dry Gobi desert for example: Sure, the scenery doesn't change much and that's part of the Gobi fascination. However, if you look closer you discover the real richness of the Gobi. Quite surprisingly there's a lot of change in Gobi's nothingness: Every couple of kilometers you see a lonely set of gers where nomads still live like hundreds of years ago. animals and herders are never far away, but all of them already own a mobile phone and a satelite dish is decoratively placed outside every yurt tent. Then you have this enormous blue sky that doesn't want to end at the horizon, it's even bigger than in Australia. It also came to us as a big surprise that there is a lot of life in the Gobi desert. We came across a couple of camel and goat herds that eagerly waited next to wells for someone to pull up some water for them (which we of course always did on our tour). Last but certainly not least there are many spectacular mountain ranges (we even hiked to a deep valley that still had ice along the river bed) and the massive sand dunes of Khoryn Els. Yet, only 3 per cent of the Gobi consists of sand! Watching our driver navigating through the Gobi was another highlight. Picture a massively big field of steppe grass land, no trees, no mountains or houses let alone street signs to find orientation, just some tyre marks here and there in the dirt. Now you know how difficult it must be to find your way through the desert (much to our discomfort our driver had to ask for directions numerous times).
Then there is the quickly growing capital called Ulaanbaatar (UB) in the middle of all this nothingness. For us it was a bit like a beast: Soviet style inspired building blocks didn't make it look pretty, the non-existence of any driving rules made it chaotic and nearly dangerous of us to walk around (the bigger and stronger a car is, the faster it will reach its destination; red traffic lights don't mean that cars stop) and we could see and feel the (too) quick growth rate of the city. But UB also has its nice sides: Eg. the old monastery in the middle of town where ancient Buddhist traditions are still alive. Or the numerous traditional yurt tents in the middle of a 3 million inhabitant metropolis.In fact, half of all Mongolians still live in these yurt tents, but only a quarter are real nomads and move from place to place with all their belongings.
A true highlight towards the end of our trip was the national sports festival called Naadam Festival. Imagine the whole nation in a stand still for 3 days, all trying to look beautifully, some with colourful traditional Mongolian dresses all eagerly watching the three Naadam disciplines archery, horse riding and wrestling. There's also a fourth weird competition going on called angle bone shooting where three sportsmen try to hit 2 sheep bones in a distance of about 3.5m with a little square bone that gets accelerated on a angle bar through their ring fingers.
And of course, we were succesful in researching for Leibspeise. We could sample a German Wurstplatte at the Khan Bräu, and speak to the owner who is from Böblingen (around the corner from Leonberg, Gislind's hometown), we ate Berliner at the Sacher's Bakery and we found Liverwurst from Werner's Fleischwaren in the supermarket. Check out our Leibspeise blog for the Khan story.
Take the vast steppe and the dry Gobi desert for example: Sure, the scenery doesn't change much and that's part of the Gobi fascination. However, if you look closer you discover the real richness of the Gobi. Quite surprisingly there's a lot of change in Gobi's nothingness: Every couple of kilometers you see a lonely set of gers where nomads still live like hundreds of years ago. animals and herders are never far away, but all of them already own a mobile phone and a satelite dish is decoratively placed outside every yurt tent. Then you have this enormous blue sky that doesn't want to end at the horizon, it's even bigger than in Australia. It also came to us as a big surprise that there is a lot of life in the Gobi desert. We came across a couple of camel and goat herds that eagerly waited next to wells for someone to pull up some water for them (which we of course always did on our tour). Last but certainly not least there are many spectacular mountain ranges (we even hiked to a deep valley that still had ice along the river bed) and the massive sand dunes of Khoryn Els. Yet, only 3 per cent of the Gobi consists of sand! Watching our driver navigating through the Gobi was another highlight. Picture a massively big field of steppe grass land, no trees, no mountains or houses let alone street signs to find orientation, just some tyre marks here and there in the dirt. Now you know how difficult it must be to find your way through the desert (much to our discomfort our driver had to ask for directions numerous times).
Then there is the quickly growing capital called Ulaanbaatar (UB) in the middle of all this nothingness. For us it was a bit like a beast: Soviet style inspired building blocks didn't make it look pretty, the non-existence of any driving rules made it chaotic and nearly dangerous of us to walk around (the bigger and stronger a car is, the faster it will reach its destination; red traffic lights don't mean that cars stop) and we could see and feel the (too) quick growth rate of the city. But UB also has its nice sides: Eg. the old monastery in the middle of town where ancient Buddhist traditions are still alive. Or the numerous traditional yurt tents in the middle of a 3 million inhabitant metropolis.In fact, half of all Mongolians still live in these yurt tents, but only a quarter are real nomads and move from place to place with all their belongings.
A true highlight towards the end of our trip was the national sports festival called Naadam Festival. Imagine the whole nation in a stand still for 3 days, all trying to look beautifully, some with colourful traditional Mongolian dresses all eagerly watching the three Naadam disciplines archery, horse riding and wrestling. There's also a fourth weird competition going on called angle bone shooting where three sportsmen try to hit 2 sheep bones in a distance of about 3.5m with a little square bone that gets accelerated on a angle bar through their ring fingers.
And of course, we were succesful in researching for Leibspeise. We could sample a German Wurstplatte at the Khan Bräu, and speak to the owner who is from Böblingen (around the corner from Leonberg, Gislind's hometown), we ate Berliner at the Sacher's Bakery and we found Liverwurst from Werner's Fleischwaren in the supermarket. Check out our Leibspeise blog for the Khan story.
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