Traditions run deep in Mongolia, as do the warmth and generosity of its people, writes AMY BYRNE
FLYING WITH Korean Air from London Heathrow to Seoul and then on to Ulan Bator, I finally met my 16 fellow travellers. We were a group from the United States, Canada, England, Ireland and Scotland, arranged by a holiday company – a brilliant way of travelling when on your own.
To travel in Mongolia is quite difficult unless you hire a car. A four-wheel drive would be best if you do, but there are hardly any signposts or maps, so you’ll need a guide. The two hired by our group spoke perfect English and knew their country inside out.
Mongolia is about the size of France, Spain, Switzerland, Belgium and Italy put together, yet it has only about 400km of tarmac roads. The rest is just dust. When we left the capital we travelled in three 20-year-old Russian jeeps. The drivers treated the vehicles as if they were their children.
One of the things that interests me most about Mongolia is its people’s Nomadic way of life, a tradition that is still strong – and is celebrated with the nationwide Naadam festival, in July, which takes over the whole country, just like St Patrick’s day in Ireland.
If you like the wide open spaces, you will love this place. Along with the amazing landscapes and a fairly raw culture, what stands out is the people’s love of horses.
When travelling around Mongolia, it is useful to have a few knick-knacks to offer people along the way, in gratitude for their hospitality.
Ulan Bator – perhaps the coldest capital city in the world – is taken over by the festival spirit each July, with the city’s inhabitants dressing up in their best clothes and coming out to meet and mingle with people they haven’t seen since the year before.
The Naadam festival lasts for three days, with wrestling on the first day, a horse race on the second and an archery competition on the final day, along with the wrestling finals.
The festival experience brought our group together, but nothing like the small villages of gers – felt-lined round tents made from cowhide that are a characteristic sight throughout Mongolia.
Each family has its own ger, and all gather for the main festival in the capital. En route to the horse race, which is a 12km circuit featuring riders from the ages of five to 13, we saw these villages from afar. Many families had travelled from hundreds of kilometres away, arriving up to a week before the festivities started.
The only times we stayed in hotels were in the cities of Ulan Bator and Avaikheer, which was at the beginning, middle and end of the trip. We spent the rest of our visit sleeping in gers.
Another main attraction were the gorgeous Buddhist monasteries we visited along the way, including the Gandantegchinlen Khiid, Eredene Zuu and Shank monasteries.
As Mongolia was closely allied to the Soviet Union in the middle of the 20th century, many monks were killed and many monasteries destroyed in an attempt to wipe out Buddhism, but the religion has come back slowly, with boys as young as five being sent to monasteries to be educated.
Along the way we visited two families. We had already passed a few solitary gers; our guides said it would be better to stop where there were at least two or three. The first family we met had three gers; it was a family of at least five children, who lived with their parents and their father’s mother; she had a ger to herself.
As we sat, home-made fermented mare’s milk and cheese was passed around, followed by a camel version. The latter, we all agreed later, was a little more palatable then the mare’s.
An uncle who also lived with the family proudly showed us his horse, which had won the local festival race. He stood with the horse for photographs, and as one of the children walked by he lifted her off her feet and put her on the horse’s back, for a share of the limelight.
A few days later, as we arrvied at the edge of the Gobi Desert, we came across a second family. On both visits I offered the gift of some photographs I had brought with me of the two horses I have at home, in Co Kildare. They were delighted, and passed the photographs around.
I could come up with a dozen more stories of encounters along the way to show there are still adventures to be had without going to extremes.
Dirty-faced but smiling children were constantly curious about us; housing estates made of gers instead of brick; the “flaming cliffs” that are home to some of the best dinosaur remains and eggs – and which lived up to their name in the evening sun; the 15,000-year-old cave drawings of the Khoid Tsenkherin Agui, featuring images of mammoths and ostriches, were just a few of many, many sights that will be hard to forget.
I would love to go back in 10 or 15 years, to see the changes. With luck they will be gradual, to give the people and their culture a chance to change, too.