Gobi Desert Greetings

While the terrain down in the south of China where I've lived for years was very similar from place to place with the occasional mountain popping out on the horizon, the terrain here in Inner Mongolia is wild. You'll be in the middle of the plains for hours and suddenly there are mountains rising high above you only to be followed behind by a desert. That's why Adam and I were excited to find that the tour we had chosen took advantage of the varying terrain.

After spending the night drinking and laughing around a poop fire and sleeping in our yurt (seriously one of the coziest places I have ever slept!), we boarded our trusty bus and headed out of the grasslands, passed the big city, left the mountains in the dust, and stepped out in the Gobi Desert.

The Gobi Desert spans across both China and Mongolia. In Chinese it is referred to as 戈壁 (Gebi) and in Mongolian, it is Говь or "Gevi." The Gobi Desert is the fifth largest desert in the world and the largest one in Asia at 500,000 square miles. It is both sandy and rocky and it tends to be a very cold desert (I know! I assumed all deserts were hot too... until I was freezing in one!)

We were in the part of the desert called Ordos Desert. You can see the city of Hohhot to the northeast of us.

The Gobi Desert is the home of many different species despite the harsh climate including gazelles, Mongolian wild ass, and sometimes even snow leopards, wolves, and brown bears! And of course, a desert would be incomplete without camels. 

There are two species of camel in the world. The one humped dromedary camel, also known as the Arabian camel, is from (you guessed it!) the Arabian Peninsula and is found all through Northern Africa today.  The camels found in Inner Mongolia are known as Bactrian camels and are only found in small pockets in Central Asia. They are considered critically endangered in the wild and are almost entirely domesticated today. 

The Bactrian camel population VS. the Arabian camel population.

Now it's been a dream of mine ever since I was a little girl with hopes of being an Egyptologist to ride a camel through the desert. Fourteen years in the making, you can be darn sure I was going to get on the back of a camel while living in the middle of the Gobi Desert. 

After putting on unnecessary protective covers for our shoes, we hopped into a large (for lack of a better word), sand dune rover (it almost resembled those amphibian trucks that can enter into the water on those super touristy Duck Tours). The driver with no fear of hydroplaning (or the sandy equivalent), zoomed down the road and up and over the dunes. As we traveled further from our bus and deeper into the desert all vegetation seemed to vanish and nothing but golden rolling sand dunes surrounded us for as far as we could see. 

We arrived at a little oasis where we were greeted by our own little herd of camels. I was the first to hop up on a camel's back and I quickly dubbed him Clyde. 

Fun fact: when camels stand up with you on their back, it is terrifying. You lean forward and then fall back, all the while with this massive creature beneath you. But my heart quickly stopped pounding from fear and started beating for the incredible views I could see from Clyde's back. 

Cross off #103 from My Life List! 

Following behind in a perfect little line (except for Clyde who didn't like waiting his turn), we wandered through the desert. The wind was brutal and the sand got everywhere (seriously, I am still finding it, three showers later) but the relaxed amble of the camels and the wave-like patterns in the sand were incredible. 

I've always had a love for horses (I think many girls go through a stage in their younger years where they dream of owning a horse before they actually realize the cost behind it) but for some reason, I've found that my love for riding a camel runs far deeper than riding a horse (it could be that the horse's trot was merciless on my bottom and the camel's slow stroll pitied my bum). You can see why for thousands of years different people in different parts of the world have chosen the camel as their companion through the harshness of the desert. 

Being a girl from Buffalo, New York, I am very much familiar with sledding. I had my Pocahontas sled growing up that I would take down to the river with my mom and my brother. It was wet. It was cold. It was white. 

If you can sled down a hill in the snow, why not try it in the sand too?

Taking one of the super beat up, broken, and completely falling apart "sleds" one by one each of us conquered the dunes of the Gobi Desert. Standing at the very top, it's a bit intimidating. You see how steep the hill is. The wind beats at your back, threatening to push you over before you're ready. But you know how it goes--when in Rome! 

I only managed to slide down twice because once down, we had to climb back up the hill. It sounded easy but about halfway up, myself and a young French girl just turned and looked at each other and decided that right there on the dune was a perfect place to die. 

It's just incredible seeing sights like this--they belong in books or movies or your imagination. How can they be real? How can you touch them? Hear them? Smell them? As I push myself down the sand dune, I couldn't help but feel like Rey on Jakku from The Force Awakens (sorry for the major nerd out but it's true!). 

I can see the similarity.

While the grasslands were beautiful, it is the desert that I would demand that everyone gets to see at least once in their lifetime--to see that what is harsh can also be beautiful and life changing. 

Until Next Time,
Amanda

PS: Happy Hump Day!! See what I did there? ;)
55 days... 

In the Footsteps of the Khans

The spring in China is definitely in need of as many holidays as we get in the fall semester. Luckily, this past weekend was the May Holiday (basically our Labor Day). Two years ago, The Big Four journeyed to ZhangJiaJie (Avatar Mountains). 

This year, we wanted to explore a bit more of the Mongolian culture that is on the fringe of life here in Bayan Nur so we decided to head east to the capital of the Inner Mongolian autonomous region (and the namesake of a pretty delicious restaurant), Hohhot.

Hohhot (ᠬᠥᠬᠡᠬᠣᠲᠠ in Mongolian and 呼和浩特 in Chinese) is the capital of Inner Mongolia and just two cities next door from Bayan Nur. The name of the city actually means "Blue City" and by exploring Inner Mongolia for just a day, you can easily see the significance of the color in Mongolian culture. Blue represents the sky (in China, the color of the sky is referred to as "Inner Mongolia Blue") but it also represents eternity and purity.

By Chinese standards, the history of Hohhot is not very long. Established in 1557 by Altan Khan (descendant of the famed Kublai Khan), Hohhot was initially a small town that sprang up around the still standing Da Zhao Temple 大召寺. At the time, the town was known as "Blue Town" (similar to it's nickname today, "Blue City"). Altan Khan used the temple and the small town to try and convince the Ming Dynasty of his right to rule the Western and Southern Mongol tribes at the time. Over the next 200 years, the Mongols and Han Chinese teetered back and forth between peace and war until the beginning of the 18th Century, when the Qing Dynasty Emperor, Kangxi, sent in troops into the region, keeping Mongol attacks at bay.

Altan Khan, founder of Da Zhao Temple and Hohhot

Perhaps it's the fact that we've been in China for so long, but both Adam and I agree that the Mongolian culture is far more exotic than the Chinese culture we've grown so accustomed to. Because of that, we didn't really have a deep desire to explore yet another large, industrial, Chinese capital city. The allure of the Mongols was too strong for us, so joining a tour with a local guesthouse (Anda Guesthouse if anyone is ever in the city--the BEST hostel I've stayed at in China), we left the city of Hohhot in the dust and journeyed three hours northwest to the rolling grasslands of Inner Mongolia.

Now as you're driving through the grasslands of China, you do tend to notice that almost every aspect of any culture in China has somehow become a tourist attraction--temples, shrines, mountains, and in the case of the Mongolian culture, even yurts. There are dozens and dozens of yurt resorts dotting the grasslands. As we continued to drive, I was beginning to get a bit nervous seeing the hoards of concrete yurts everywhere.

Resort yurts made of concrete, not animal skins

First mentioned by Herodotus over 3,000 years ago, a yurt, or sometimes also known as a ger (гэр), is a round structure meant to be moved from place to place. It has been used by nomadic people all throughout Central Asia for centuries. Using wood or bamboo, they weave the wood together in a sort of latticework all throughout the perimeter of the structure and then cover the frame with wool. Today, tarps add a second layer of protection, especially against the wind.

Adam, Kevin, Alyssa, Kristen, and Andy

When we arrived at our final destination, we were greeted by a Mongolian family at their personal farm. Cows, sheep, dogs, and chickens roam freely, and nothing but the green grasslands surround you for as far as you can see. There were four "small" yurts that could hold up to eight people in one as well as a larger yurt that was to be the main dining area. Scattered through the small camp were Tibetan prayer flags flapping in the wind, a fire pit, and poop. Lots and lots of poop.

After a delicious homemade lunch of mutton stew with potatoes and carrots, we pulled on our traditional Mongolian boots (I'm pretty sure I had two left shoes on) to go horseback riding through the great plains of the grasslands.

It is said that "A Mongol without his horse is like a bird without wings." Horses are a key part of the Mongolian culture and have been since the 13th Century when the Mongols began conquering most of Asia and even parts of Europe under the rule of Genghis Khan.

Horses have also made their way into spiritualism and mythology of Mongolia--a blue ribbon tied around a horse's neck shows that it is the sacred horse of the herd; when a warrior died, his horse would be killed and buried with him to help him in the afterlife; mare's milk is used for rituals and blessings; if a horse was happy in life, his spirit will help the herd after him flourish; and even a person's very soul is called a "wind horse" and it can be seen on the Mongolian coat of arms.

Today, horses are used for races, herding, milk and meat products, as well as tourism. Many of the resorts along the grasslands also offer horseback riding excursions and even though we claim to be adventurers and not tourists, sometimes you just have to swallow your pride and ride a horse through the Mongolian grasslands.

The Mongolian horses we rode were a lot shorter than the horses we're used to seeing in America. My favorite part was the fact that they still had their winter coats so they were all fluffy too.

Edgar and Tango

It was amazing riding on the back of a horse quite possibly descended from so many of the horses that ran through the grasslands alongside the warriors and khans through the centuries. They confidently carry you along the grasses going back and forth between a nice slow amble and a trot (my horse, Edgar, actually busted out into a gallop which was the most terrifying five seconds of my life). You just scan the horizon--your eyes drinking in the sea of green--and wonder what history you are walking through in this place (and I also felt like a Dothraki warrior... or better yet... a Khaleesi!).

One of the aspects of Mongol culture that goes hand in hand with the horses is the art and warfare of archery. Now I don't mean to boast, but I was halfway decent at archery in high school but I willingly acknowledge that I would be dead in an instant if I faced a Mongol on horseback with his bow.

Archery has always been an integral part of Mongol culture. According to legend, it is said that, Erekhe Mergen, a great Mongolian archer, saved the Mongolian people from a drought by shooting down six suns with his arrows. 

History speaks of the Mongol's bows and arrows just as much as legend. In the 17th Century the Manchu people invaded and conquered Mongolia and ruled from 1644-1911 and at this time outlawed archery. The banning of archery almost destroyed the traditional art of bow making in Mongolia which has now been preserved since Mongolia's independence in 1921. Today, the famous Naadam Festival (Наадам in Mongolian, Naɣadum in classical Mongolian) helps to preserve the ancient games of Mongolian wrestling, horseback riding, and archery. Similar to the Olympics, it is held in the summer, usually in July. 

Mongol archers were also known for their deadly skill with the bow and arrow while riding on horseback. The world was conquered by Genghis Khan sitting on the back of a horse and archery had a hand in that. While riding full speed on the back of a horse, Mongol warriors were able to shoot off as many as six arrows in less than a minute. That, along with impeccable aim helped conquer a large part of the world. The Mongolians would draw their bows back with their thumb (the strongest digit), not their pointer and middle fingers. Using the Mongolian draw instead of the European draw, this allowed them to hold up to three arrows with their other fingers, helping to quickly shoot multiple arrows. 

Well, we were in the grasslands and our butts were sore from riding our horses... the only thing left to do was shoot some arrows while the grassland winds tried to knock us off our feet. Our newly made friend, Andy from Scotland, was a veritable Robin Hood hitting the target over and over again. While Adam and I didn't embarrass ourselves too much, Genghis Khan would still probably be disappointed in us. 

After a quick hike through the grasslands, a dinner of noodles, tofu, and some questionable meatballs, and a bottle of wine shared with the members of the cool kids yurt, it was time for our crappy fire. 

You think wood burns nicely? That's cute. No, here out on the grasslands, we like to burn poop. Not cow poop--that burns too quickly. We like goat and sheep poop. It burns for a long time and makes a mighty nice fire. And surprisingly... it doesn't smell at all. 

The weary travelers from the four yurts all came together in the cold night, sitting around a poop fire, listening to Janice Joplin and Simon and Garfunkel, drinking Snow beer, and laughing at the adventure that life is. 

Until, Next Time,
Amanda