UNDER THE ETERNAL BLUE SKY
A couple crosses another item in their bucket list with a trip to Mongolia
Mongolia. The name evokes images that are, in many ways, the opposite of the dense, crowded cities we’ve lived in. Genghis Khan and his army storming across the open steppe. Vast plains dotted every now and then with a single ger (traditional one-room circular homes made of a wood frame wrapped in felt) and a herd of livestock. An ancient nomadic culture that stretches back millennia. This was a destination on our travel bucket list, a place we wanted to explore before it made the New York Times’ “52 Places to Travel” list, but the prospect of planning a trip always seemed daunting given the distance and relative lack of information.
So, when a Mongolian friend from business school invited us to his wedding right around the traditional annual Naadam Festival in July, we immediately RSVP’d “yes”. It didn’t matter that it would take us 24+ hours to reach Ulaanbaatar from Los Angeles. This was our chance to indulge our long-nurtured curiosity, and we went all in.
Our first stop after a brief night in Ulaanbaatar, Mongolia’s capital city, was the Gobi Desert. After a short flight from Ulaanbaatar, we arrived in Dalanzadgad, which serves as the base of most expeditions into the surrounding Gobi national parks. We were greeted by our guide and driver from Nomadic Expeditions, the tour company that owns and operates the Three Camel Lodge, a luxury ger camp which would be our home for the next few days.
INTO THE GOBI
It quickly became apparent how critical it is to have a guide and driver in this part of the country: within moments of leaving the airport, you trade cell reception and frontier town amenities for traversing nameless dirt tracks that crisscross the unfathomably immense Gobi steppe, spreading out in every direction as far as the eye can see. The emptiness is interrupted just every few kilometers by a ger or some livestock (sheep, goats, horses, and camels) grazing.
We explored this magical part of the Gobi by car, foot, and horseback. We hiked into hidden nooks and canyons, and in one we even came face to face with a 60 million+ year old Protoceratops skull, one of many dinosaur fossils that are still hidden in plain sight across the Gobi. At Three Camel Lodge, we met one of Mongolia’s leading paleontologists, who returned home after receiving his Ph.D. in the United States because the opportunities to study fossils in Mongolia are far superior. “In the United States,” he told us, “40 paleontologists will study one fossil. In Mongolia, one paleontologist will study 40 fossils.”
One afternoon, we watched the sunset engulf the Flaming Cliffs in the vibrant fiery red and orange hues that are its namesake. The Flaming Cliffs, a series of sandstone cliffs famous for important fossil finds, reminded us of America’s Grand Canyon, except that we shared the view with just a handful of visitors versus the thousands that flock to the Grand Canyon on a daily basis. And, as this was the time of Nadaam, the traditional summer festivals, we joined the local crowds at the regional town’s own Nadaam festival, where we cheered on the horse racing and wrestling competitions and drank Airag, traditional fermented horse milk, with town dignitaries.
THE ETERNAL BLUE SKY
Our home in the Gobi, the Three Camel Lodge, appeared like a mirage every time we approached it. Named as one of National Geographic’s Unique Lodges of the World, its commitment to celebrating the traditions of Mongolia’s nomads while sustainably offering modern luxurious creature comforts is second to none.
Our ger contained a wood stove, a king-sized bed, and was attached to a second ger which housed a full bathroom complete with indoor plumbing. The main building, which housed the restaurant, kitchen, lounge and movie theater, was built from stones collected from around the area. It is a marvel of permanence, given that every other structure in a 50-kilometer radius seems to ebb and flow with the seasons, as nomadic families move with their herds around various seasonal pastures.
We met Three Camel Lodge’s founder, Jalsa Urubshurow, on our flight to the Gobi, and through conversations with him during our stay, discovered his story. Born and raised in the United States, far from his ancestral homeland, Jalsa’s connection to Mongolia was through his father, who spoke Mongolian at home and recited legends to his son. When Mongolia transitioned
to democracy after the fall of the Soviet Union, Jalsa’s dream of returning to his father’s homeland became a reality. He fell in love with the country and made it his life’s goal to expand accessibility to Western travelers. As the Three Camel Lodge nears its 20th anniversary, it’s remarkable that Jalsa continues to explore new territories, going deeper into western Mongolia and hoping to entice intrepid travelers to brave the bumpy travel for once-in-alifetime experiences.
Mongolia is known as the Land of Eternal Blue Sky. Its people worship this Eternal Blue Sky, and after a few days in the Gobi desert, we understood why. Each morning we walked to the top of the hill above the Three Camel Lodge for a few moments of silence before the camp stirred for the day. Gazing out across what felt like 100 kilometers of unobstructed visibility in every direction, the steppe seemed to blend seamlessly into the blue sky as if the sky was embracing and cradling it.
BACK IN ULAANBAATAR
After a few days of solitude in the Gobi, we returned to the hustle and bustle of Ulaanbaatar, or UB as it’s colloquially called. With about half of Mongolia’s population, UB stands in stark contrast to the Gobi steppe. In winter, this city of just about 1.4 million people can have worse air quality than Beijing or New Delhi, thanks to emissions from several Soviet-era coal-fired power plants and household coal usage, coupled with the city’s location at the bottom of a valley which traps pollution near the ground.
Explosive growth in the city’s population since Soviet times, exacerbated by climate change (droughts and harsh winters) and overgrazing, has resulted in an urban landscape that can feel thrown together in places. By some estimates, 60% of the city’s population lives in the sprawling ger districts on the outskirts of the city, which continue to grow each year as more people move to the city in search of new economic opportunity.
On the other hand, central UB feels like a modern city with a range of restaurants, cultural attractions, shopping, and nightlife to entertain locals and visitors alike. We gazed at the large monument to Genghis Khan on Sukhbaatar Square and then shopped for incredible Mongolian cashmere coats and sweaters at unbelievable prices at the Gobi Mongolian Cashmere store just across the street. We ate traditional hotpot, at Little Sheep Mongolian Hotpot, an international Chinese franchise chain whose UB location is the largest in the world and has an assortment of local Mongolian specialties on the menu.
We watched the Tumen Ekh Song & Dance Ensemble at the State Youth & Children’s Theatre, a cultural show of traditional Mongolian song and dance. While it primarily caters to tourists and primary school field trips, the show features traditional Mongolian Long Song and Throat Singing, both of which have been declared by UNESCO as Masterpieces of the Oral and Intangible Heritage of Humanity. The sounds that emerged from the performer’s bodies were transcendental, and sent chills down every spine in the room, Mongolians included. We also visited the Central Museum of Mongolian Dinosaurs, which, despite its small size, houses an incredible array of dinosaur fossils, all of which were discovered in Mongolia, with its proud heritage of paleontology.
Mongolia is at a crossroads. It is rapidly developing as a result of natural resource extraction and an open economy since the fall of the Soviet Union. UB is at the center of this transition and can feel like it is bursting at the seams with new residents, new construction, and more traffic. At the same time, the people and culture throughout Mongolia are still tied to the land and to traditional nomadic ways, with around a quarter of the population still living a nomadic lifestyle for at least part of the year. Even a number of the urbanite people we met still retreated to gers in rural provinces for holidays and family events. That this traditional nomadic heritage can still live on largely the same as it did centuries ago for many people, under the embrace of the Eternal Blue Sky, while the country is experiencing rapid growth and development, is fascinating to experience. Go visit Mongolia, it’s not to be missed.