A Mongol Journey

A Mongol Journey

“Where is everyone going!” I had expected to be constantly side-stepping horses but it is the automobile and SUVs that stampede though Mongolia’s capital with scant regard for the pedestrian. A romantic dream of freedom has, sadly, been gazumped by Mongolia’s emerging free-market economy; the true nomad way of life standing at a mere fifteen percent as the horse is out-numbered and replaced by the automobile, bartering by the dollar and the national currency, the Togrog and the right-to-roam by tourist ger camps packed cheek-by-jowl on the steppes where the only herding is that of tourists by the many tour and adventure outlets operating from Mongolia’s capital Ulanbaatar and in particularly unsavoury concentration in and around Lake Khovsgol National Park, where even the shamans in the nearby restricted area of the Tsaatan or Reindeer People, may eventaully come to embrace corporate spirituality and New-Age entrepreneurial nouse with Western fervour.

‘Do not preach against freedoms if you haven’t ever lost them’. This adage was rattling around in my head as, like an impetuous child I ranted and railed against perceived injustices in my homeland, the United Kingdom, to such a point I was blinded to the freedoms, economic, social, racial and geographical I have enjoyed since reaching maturity in the early 1980s. Mongolia, on the other hand has, during my life-time been utterly subjugated by the rule of Communism and Soviet occupancy until the fall of that socialist ideology in 1990. So what if today Ulaanbataar abounds with department stores whose main entrances lead to the myriad fragrant perfume counters and uniformed female sales-assistants filled with customers transported about a city that appears to have more cars than people.( Population circa March 2015 of 3 million). A succession of severe winters ‘dutz’, decimated livestock in the 1990s, at a time when all Russian financial aid was withdrawn;  rural dwellers adopted an urban and sedentary lifestyle in order to survive.

There is a feeling of a confined spending spree and a pressurized restlessness in this city, while the spaces beyond Ulaanbatar, its length and breadth the size of Western Europe, remain unfenced. One railway track links Russia and China with Ulanbaatar via the Trans-Siberian and Trans-Mongolian Express respectively passing through once daily and that is where rail transport begins and ends. A recently asphalted road links major towns though this is only a narrow highway east to west. For the most part buses and cramped Russian mini-vans carry people to be reunited with their Aimags or districts. Western-style high-rise company and apartment buildings are gradually replacing Soviet-style low-rise housing blocks and official communist schools and administrative buildings, though some have been converted into shops fronted by Western logos selling both Mongolian and Chinese copies of western goods.

Mongolians have taken to the use of smart phones with the same tenacity as their Western and Chinese counter-parts, so much so that the internet cafes mentioned in a 2011 edition of a Guide book have completely evaporated.

The traditional ger or yurt pocks the urban landscape aside wooden huts and houses in small enclosed areas testimony to Mongolia’s links with its nomadic recent-past. Plumes of smoke billow from their chimneys evidence of grandparents or older generations for whom the change from nomadism to communism to capitalism has been too bewildering or for whom the traditional ger is simply more comfortable, practical and communal than the isolation of the estates and luxury apartments of this changing landscape.

I had yet to ride a horse or enter a ger, their natural environment, or to venture into the distant countryside. Tourist-savvy Mongolians try to negotiate tours of every kind. Even a simple bus ride became a mine-field of polite-but-firm boundary-setting as I was offered a lift in a jeep to Moron in the North-Western Khovsgol Aimag for around $30 but was informed by the driver that if I wasn’t taking a guided tour he could not take me. There is a slightly claustrophobic feeling of being taken hostage, and though I have contributed to the local economy, the feeling of being goaded and carolled stymies the independence increasingly difficult to find over the three or so decades of backpacking and leaves me disinclined to spend.

On a budget, hence the winter airfare at a quarter of the price allowing me to see Mongolia out of tourist season when most of the ger camps are closed, I am spared to a large degree the dollar-sign gaze of this still developing industry and can only wonder that the five-hundred thousand tourists paying over two-thousand pounds for their return airfare have so much money that common sense is negligible.

The humble backpacker hostel has, over the years gone from a mere inn for shelter and water, one’s stay now comes with physical cold-callers strongly suggesting five-day tours, daily excursions, archery, horse-riding, etc and all this with a sense of urgency as those manning reception register exactly how long you will be residing in their particular honey-pot. In fact those staying for one day, passing through to catch the connecting Mongolia Express onwards are a sight more lucky than those remaining unaware they will be gradually hypnotized and drafted into spending more.

A day trip to Tarelj National Park organized by the hostel owner, the $60 dollar fee split between Bartek, a young Polish guy from Scotland, (the only gringo I've seen for two-months...Heavenly!), and myself, found us picking up a horse-headed fiddle player (Morin-Khor) and a Khoomi singer and, as pleasant as it was, on the return journey, after the rigours of a boiled abattoir, snow-clad forest and rousing endless choruses of Mongolian battle-song, when we declined a visit to the Morin Khor player’s workshop, the now drunk craftsman shouted. “You just tourists! You should come and buy things!”.Everyone ignored him and he and his singing companion were dropped off at a bus station in a huff while our hostel owner apologized for the loss of face. He told us later that he had been told, in Mongolian, to ‘make your tourists spend money’.

There will come a time, in the not too distant future when, as in most Western capitals, tourists will become so numerous that they will settle into the sedentary anonymity of the general population; and be treated accordingly.