Ah the Mongolian Country Life

We were greeted in Ulaanbaatar by our three friends; Eric, Devon and Mike and Burma, a girl from Mongolia who served her mission with Eric in Oklahoma. We went back to the hotel, took a much needed shower, went to the store to buy snacks and a much needed pair of sunglasses to shield my eyes from the intense desert sun and the crazy sand wind. There was not much of selection so I ended up getting some hideous things with an atrocious gold design on the side. and then jumped in cars that Burma had arranged for us and headed about forty minutes outside of the city to a place called turtle rock to experience the TRUE Mongolian lifestyle.

On the way to our campsite we saw a couple of Mongolian men with a HUGE eagle stopped the side of the road. We stopped to look at the eagle and he let us pet it and let whoever wanted to hold it, put on this big glove and hold him. The eagles feathers were so thick and hard that it almost felt like a reptile. A little further along the road we saw aOn the way to our campsite we saw a couple of Mongolian men with a HUGE eagle stopped on man with camels. We stopped and he let us ride them for 1,000 tigirig (about a dollar) a piece. It is a fairly bumpy ride but it was fun.















At turtle rock there were lots of camps full of Gers. A ger is the Mongolian version of a tee pee. It is wider and shorter and made of lambskins and everyone in Mongolia used to live in them and LOTS of people still do. Right in the middle of the city there are a bunch of little neighborhoods that are divided up by fences just like a normal neighborhood but instead of a little house in the middle of each, there is a ger. Inside the Ger there is a stove that is right in the middle with a pipe through the middle of the roof. The beds are placed along the outside walls. The front door is really short and it is pretty warm inside. Especially when someone keeps the stove going all night. We had stew for dinner and then went wandering around in the hills.




You will notice huge fake dinosaurs in front of these Gers. Come to find out, Mongolia is somewhat of a dinosaur graveyard. They dig up all sorts of bones in the deserts.


We woke up the next day and had arranged for a lamb to be slaughtered. We watched and I was expecting to be horrified but it was so quick and clean. Nothing like what I expected. The Mongolian guides made a small incision in the lamb’s chest and then he stuck his arm in all the way and snapped the lamb’s spinal chord. The lamb didn’t even move. There was no blood during the whole slaughter because they kept all the organs in the lambs natural membrane. They put the pieces of meat into a large milk can with rocks that had been heating up in the fire and then put the can on the stove in the middle of their ger.













We left on a horseback ride with our two Mongolian guides. Mongolian horses are much smaller than what you are used to in America but ther are really strong and strong willed I might add. Mine had a real attitude problem so I cussed at it in Mongolian and hit it with the reins…she didn’t care.









We visited a Buddhist temple that was up on a hill and then went riding around all over the place before coming back to a delicious Lamb lunch in our ger.














Many of you unadventurous travelers have said my vacation didn’t sound all that great. It was in fact AMAZING!! How many of you have pet an eagle, ridden a camel, eaten fresh lamb or learned how to curse at a horse in Mongolian?

Stay tuned for part three, entitled, my Great Mongolian Romance 2007....