she's clutching a mickey mouse colouring-in book
Jul 142010
Jul 042010
I find there are two things I keep saying about Mongolia.
First, that I frustratingly couldn't fit the country into my camera, and second, that its extremes of weather, and the swiftness with which one extreme followed the other, gave me climate whiplash.
I started off in UB, which to my delight was unseasonably warm for the time of year — daytime temperatures of around 27°C instead of the 15°C I'd expected.
Then I headed south, towards the Gobi, and the days got hotter. If you've ever been in desert country, where the only thing vaster than the deceptively-featureless landscape of burnt and baking ground underfoot is the boundless sky overhead, you'll know what I mean by that. Trees, and even shrubs, were non-existent; the only shade was that provided by the occasional passing cloud.
naturally, we thought a stroll was a great idea
our goal was a particular dune — and the camels knew precisely what to do when we got there
Here's the first hint of whiplash: the photo above was taken 5 hours after I snapped the camels on the sand dune. The day hadn't cooled any — in fact, at the bottom frame of that photo you can just see the spreading ripples of the spring which feeds this lake, and I'm standing there because I'd just dipped my handkerchief into that blessedly ice-cold spring. But, if you can believe it, that lake is only 10 kilometres away from the sand dune.
Two days later, after heading west and starting to curve back north, we were pounded by a dust storm that saw me doomed to carry my own body weight in Gobi dust in the weave of my pants for the rest of the trip, shortly followed by rain. Cold and decidedly biting rain that followed us as we headed further north, hoping to outrun the bad weather.
In vain. Three days more, and we set up camp by the White Lake, in Horgo National Park. Midday had been clear and sunny, but around 4pm the clouds rolled in, and they were darker than the rain clouds that had been chasing us.
oh yeah. tham thar are snow clouds
Having never been snowed on, I didn't know enough to recognise them as snow clouds — but I learnt soon enough when they spent all night dumping snow on the tent.
I will admit that the next morning I was not feeling my most chipper. Mainly on account of the fact that I was already wearing every article of clothing I'd brought with me, the alarming numbness in my toes was not only not retreating but instead was creeping up to engulf the entirety of my feet, and we were nowhere near the Siberian border, our northernmost and coldest point.
from dehydrating in the desert to bogged in the snow on a mountain pass: one week
When we did reach Lake Khovsgol, it was to find the lake still iced over.
melting fast — the ice was up to the shore just the night before
can somebody please tell me why i'm starving?
journal
Comments Off
Jun 292010
Mongolian men have no qualms about asking for directions when they're not sure of the way,1 which is lucky because I could count on one hand the number of road signs I spotted — and the road signs follow the same rules as maps in Mongolia.
Namely, they're just supposed to be, you know, vaguely approximate.
or, wait, is that downright confusing you meant?
Even leaving aside the whole left/right dilemma,2 I'd swear to you that monastery was far more than 35km beyond the sign.
Jun 272010
I suppose the most famous Mongol is as good a place as any to start.
When I first decided to visit Mongolia, mostly people reacted with a stunned blink and the question "…Why?" It's one I find impossible to answer briefly without sounding dismissive, and equally impossible to answer at length without starting to ramble and get repetitious, so in the end I gave up and grinned and said, "Because!" or "Why not?!"
Sometimes I'd throw in a comment about Genghis, because he was an astonishing person. And when it comes down to it, the perceptions and misperceptions about Genghis encapsulate and summarise the perceptions and misperceptions about Mongolia in general.
In Western society, Genghis is viewed as a warmongering soul — for obvious reasons.
To Mongolians, he's the man who united the disparate and warring tribes, thereby creating a people, and brought law. The Lonely Planet guide tells me that, at a time when ambassadors were considered fair sport, and their torture and mutilation the best way to send your return message, Genghis proclaimed them emissaries of peace, and inviolate, and from now on you'll send a return message by way of a note, thank you very much — thus birthing what we call diplomatic immunity today.
To say he's admired is somewhat of an understatement.
Chinggis (Genghis) Khaan
He presides over Sukhbaatar Square, he's on the money (from the 500 tögrög on up), and you can purchase Chinggis (or Chinggis Gold) vodka (among other similarly named products) at every turn.1 The international airport just outside of Ulaanbaatar has been renamed the Chinggis Khaan International Airport — an exceptionally grand name for an airport which has one gate, and one baggage carousel. I flew in at night, and outside the plane windows was nothing but the impenetrable black of unsettled wilderness, because the city lights don't penetrate out that far. UB is as small a city as the Chinggis Khaan International is an airport.
The first pub I saw, on driving into the outskirts of UB, was the Genghis Khan Irish Pub.
I couldn't find Sukhbaatar Square on my first day in UB — a feat made possible by the fact that Mongolians don't have street numbers and thus don't have street addresses, and their city blocks are often built around an interior courtyard design, which, combined with the Mongolian understanding of maps being "Oh, it just needs to be approximate, doesn't it?" (for values of approximate equalling UTTERLY WRONG), makes it difficult to tell which main street you've stumbled out upon. So I naively showed my map to a passing local and, pointing to the Square, asked by facial gesture for directions. Naive because Mongolians use the Cyrillic alphabet, and don't use maps. I may as well have showed her a soggy noodle and asked her to interpret precisely why I felt bemused by it.
She could, however, understand even my mangled attempt at pronouncing "Chinggis Khaan?", and thus, Chinggis to the rescue, I found the Square.
Where Chinggis was, that day, presiding over a school excursion.
These little punks followed me to the Natural History Museum, which is how I learnt that apparently the best method of punishing trouble is the same as the best method of pre-empting any thoughts of starting it: a swift clout across the back of the head, regularly delivered. Or perhaps, in light of the fact that it was delivered to every single child in the troupe, it's simply their way of counting heads. Hard to say. It appeared to be delivered without malice, possibly even with affection, but it wasn't soft.
Which is a trait I found throughout Mongolia, actually. The people are without malice,2 and I found them universally warm and friendly, with a sly and diffident humour — but they're not a single one of them soft.
I left a little bit of my heart with this man. He was too shy to pose for the camera without his dog, and even then he'd only look at his dog, not at the camera. But his smile says it all, and the lines that time has etched into his face are all good-humoured ones.
This little punk is about a year old (give or take). Mongolian boys have a hair-cutting ceremony at ages 3 and 5 (for girls the ceremony is at ages 2 and 4), and not before, which explains his pig-tails. (He was running around with only a t-shirt and nothing else, not even a nappy; there was no mistaking him for a girl.) His name is Temüjin — the name of a certain most famous Mongol of all, back before he went and conquered the world.
- I may or may not have drunk my own body weight in Chinggis vodka. What happens in Mongolia, stays in Mongolia. [↩]
- Well. By and large. I did speak to one Mongolian woman who told me matter-of-factly that her three elder brothers had all been murdered; and an Australian man living in UB who told me it wasn't uncommon for his staff to stab each other. Alcohol is a bit of a problem in Mongolia, marginally less so since beer is becoming a more popular drink than vodka. And, OK, they did have that nasty trick of pouring off the plateau and, well, conquering the world. So I don't mean without malice in the same way that, say, Tibetans and Bhutanese are without malice. But still. [↩]
Jun 202010
I could tell you that I have amazing friends, one of whom staged a stealth pickup at the airport yesterday, and didn't flinch from hugging me even though I hadn't showered since May.
I could tell you that Mongolia is Big Sky Country. Or that I am currently sporting the darkest tan I have achieved in the past twenty years. That I came home to a gloriously pretty copy of Shadow Bound. That the temperatures in early-summer Mongolia are colder than those I've so far found in Melbourne winter.
All these things — and more — are true.
But instead I will tell you that Mongolia has a quietening effect. It stills the heart, robs the throat of words, and fills it with song.
This is precisely why I travel.
t-minus 4 sleeps and counting
journal
Comments Off
May 232010
I hate packing. But after a day at it, I have shoved most everything I'll need into the rucksack. I'll have to wear my hiking boots onto the plane, and carry my warm jacket, and clearly I'm not buying ANYTHING while I'm away because there isn't a skerrick of unused space in said rucksack,1 but by and large it's done.
No doubt I'll spend the next few days unpacking and repacking in a vain attempt to jettison something, because that's normally how I roll.
The only major task outstanding is take notes on the faerie novel, and on the latest novel premise,2 in case I want to write and/or brainstorm, respectively, while I'm away. (For a while there I toyed with the clearly insane idea of bringing a print-out of the faerie novel with me to Mongolia. Luckily, space considerations rank higher in my head than even my panicked work ethic, so at home the novel entire shall stay.)
In lieu of content, I offer you a photo my friend took in Christchurch Cathedral at Oxford Uni:
all that time and effort and money invested in the headstone, scrapped, just because you forgot an 'S'? i don't think so!
- Oh for one of those fancy new sleeping bags what shrink down to virtually nothing… [↩]
- People are always asking writers where they get ideas — and every writer I know always answers that ideas are not the problem. Choosing which ideas to focus on and invest in, and finding time to work on the few you've chosen, is the problem. [↩]
May 202010
Dear Australian Dollar: Yeah, thanks. Really.
I hate foreign currency. Estimating how much I'll need, trying to figure out ways to access it while I'm away, and then the whole debacle that is changing from one currency to another just so that I can change to yet another currency in a few more days. Not to mention the fact that the US dollar, the ugliest monopoly money on the face of the planet, always gets up and kicks the Aussie dollar's backside precisely when I need to actually buy some. It's just such a damned hassle all 'round.
Travelling with ATM cards &c is, as far as I'm concerned, bloody brilliant. If only I chose to visit countries that had, you know, ATMs, I'd be set.
7 sleeps to go.
May 092010
I have 98 AA batteries for the trip to Mongolia. They may well take up the majority of my baggage weight allowance. The perils of trying to calculate how many batteries you'll need to see you through 3 weeks of a potentially avid photography spree.
I've also spent the weekend collating all the medicinal and toiletry stuffs I'll need. I'm a shampoo and toothbrush kind of girl, mostly, but travel to remoter places always requires so much more. First aid kits, emergency antibiotic kits, emergency contact lens solutions, stuff I'll hopefully never need but have to take anyway. My toiletries may well take up the majority of my baggage volume. Once I shove a sleeping bag and sleeping mat in there, I'm not actually sure there'll be any room left for, yanno, clothes.
I see a slight flaw in my packing plans.
This weekend also saw an email from my ASIM editor bearing news. Blog readers blessed with an eidetic memory will have noticed that the April 2010 publication date of the ASIM #45, the issue to feature my story, "Shaping Lily", has been and gone.
Apparently this is because the issue preceding it is running late, and thus we wait. However there is talk afoot of staging a revolution, in which case #45 will be published first. Nothing concrete yet on that front; I mention it now only in case it does happen, and the issue gets published while I'm away fleeing bubonic marmots, and you are all left unawares. So, consider yourselves suitably aware'd.
Apr 292010
While I was busy being jabbed by the GP1 the other day, I received a phone call from the Embassy of Mongolia. Cue wonder, and mild worry that something was awry with my visa application.
When I returned the call, I was greeted with a simple, blank "Hello…?"
Not entirely sure I hadn't misdialled, I gave my name and said I was returning a call, about my visa application. This was greeted with silence. And then a quick and hurried conversation in the background beginning with the phrase "A woman! She says is about visas!" and ending with my being transferred.
Rinse and repeat the greeting followed by silence. This time there's also a bit more silence, and then the comment, "Riiiiiiiiiiiight…. Um… Oh! This is about Susan, yes?"
I had already given my name three times by this point, but what's one more? Thankfully fourth time's the charm, and we established that the visa application fees changed six weeks ago, but of course websites are never updated swiftly so I'd short-changed them. Once we'd established that, and I'd promised to put in a note to explain who the extra $35 was for, all was well. I've since posted off the promised money order, with the promised note.2
What's the bet it gets applied to Susan's application?
- only one more to go and I'll have the whole rabies set! The pre-exposure set, at least. [↩]
- Incidentally, that's the second time I've made out a postal money order to the Embassy of Mongolia. Each time, the postal worker in question had Asian ancestry AND HAD NO IDEA HOW TO SPELL MONGOLIA. What the…? [↩]
Mar 252010
People, what is wrong with you? I tell you I'm going to Mongolia, and you make no comment?1 Perhaps it's because I put it right at the bottom of the post, and very few of you made it that far. Here, let me fix that.
I'M GOING TO MONGOLIA.
Travel insurance is purchased, flights are almost entirely paid for, and today I jaunted off to the doctor to discuss vaccinations. Did you know that Hep A + B, if you get the right number of shots at the right time, is lifetime protection? I did not know this. But it is good, because it means I don't have to have the jabs (more importantly: pay for them) again. The bad news is that the doc specifically and strenuously recommended the Fluvax, so I coughed over my $25 for said Fluvax despite my doubts as to the value of said vaccination. What's worse, though, is that I could have had this particular vaccine through work for free just yesterday. It's all about timing, people. And I have an arm that is aching just slightly and a wallet that's $25 lighter to remind me of that.
Of course I'm not going for a little while yet, so you'll have plenty of travel natter to endure before then 
Reactions so far have mostly been shock and bewilderment, sprinkled with a few responses of wide-eyed awe. Definitely outweighed by the shock and bewilderment, though.
And just as I was typing this up, the travel show on TV started a flick about the last country in the world to allow television, the only country whose capital city doesn't have any traffic lights, the one country in the world to officially rank gross national happiness higher than gross national product, the wondrous Bhutan. And now I want to go back! The agony of travelling: visiting a place ticks it off the to-visit list, but only to put it on the to-come-back-to list.
- Those of you who did comment are of course exempt from my present astonishment. [↩]