Mongolia

Intro

: After flying from Chicago to Seoul to Ulaanbaatar, Phase 1 of this 2-week trip to Mongolia was meeting up with my buddy Martin in UB, picking up our rental car and driving 1000 miles west to the town of Ulgii. We broke the trip into 3 segments – on the first day we drove UB to Bayankhongor, Day 2 Bayankhongor to Khovd, and Day 3 Khovd to Ulgii. Once out in Ulgii, we met up with a small group to go hiking in the Altai Tavan Bogd National Park near the borders with Russia and China.

Ulaanbaatar

: Traffic in Ulaanbaatar was surprisingly terrible. Even short distances took forever to traverse. This was just some truck I saw while stuck in gridlock trying to get from the airport to the city center.

: Mural on a wall in UB depicting the olden days

: Mongolia’s version of 7-Eleven

: Spiked for her pleasure

: The future that Genghis Khan once dreamed of

Road Trip

: Baatar of Drive Mongolia showing Martin and I the SUV we’d rented from him before handing it over to us

: Apparently signs like this along the highway in Mongolia are used to indicate upcoming rest areas, but I thought it looked like a Christmas tree running up and about to jump on a skateboard

: Gassin up

: Sunset just outside of Bayankhongor

: View of Khovd from the restaurant at the top of Steppe Hotel. I found it interesting that people keep yurts (“ger” is what they call ‘em locally) on their properties behind their modern style homes

: “Wanna know how I got these scars?”

: Golden swastika not too far from Tolbo Lake

: Here in Ulgii we turned our rental car over to a representative from Drive Mongolia and then spent a couple nights at a place called Eagle’s Nest Hotel

: “What is this – a center for ants!? How can we be expected to teach children to learn how to read if they can’t even fit inside the building?”

Altai Mountains

: On the left is our guide Bek welcoming me into the UAZ-452 outside Eagle’s Nest Hotel in Ulgii before we start the 5 or 6-hour drive out west to Altai Tavan Bogd National Park

: Random spot out in the middle of nowhere where we stopped and had lunch on the way to the national park. Down on the lower right portion of the photo, at the bottom of this hill I just walked up, you can see our van

: Area where the van dropped us off, also the area from where we’d be starting our hike

: I bought a couple of those camels from this lady to give to my nephews back home

: This sign was posted inside a pit latrine at our first camp. My favorite drawing of what you’re not supposed to do is the guy taking a piss on the outside of the outhouse. Of course, you wouldn’t know that that’s something you’re not supposed to do unless you’d first gone into the outhouse and saw this sign…or have basic common sense.

: Tagged for identification

: Loved Bek’s hat that just said “baseball” on it

: We’re on our way to climb Malchin Peak (the one on the far right of the photo) which stands at 4050m

: In the distance, far beyond the dead animal that sits in the foreground, is Khüiten Peak (4356m), which is the tallest mountain in Mongolia. China is right on the other side of Khüiten Peak

: Some random dude that stopped me and Martin to take selfies on Malchin Peak. I think the snowy side of the mountain is where Russian territory begins

: The view coming down from Malchin Peak

: The family from Denmark and my buddy Martin with whom I shared this hike. Having pizza for breakfast along with fresh fruit covered in mayonnaise (a Russian thing, we were told)

: Horse kid

: I think the people we visited in this yurt were ethnically Tavan people, but the majority of the people who live in this far western area of Mongolia are ethnically Kazakh

: Don’t know what the point of the metallic “backboard” was on this pit latrine aside from accumulating what’s turned into a calcified shit waterfall. And on top of that, the pit was almost full.

: That one nut looked like a tooth

: Probably one of the best-tasting meals (though unhealthy as shit), “khuushuur” is something like a deep-fried Mongolian empanada

: Camels were controlled by ropes attached to wooden spikes that’d been inserted into one of their nostrils and hammered through to the other side

: Former yurt spot, or some kind of nomadic person’s helipad? I’ll let you be the judge

: Those big piles and the top three feet of that wall were all comprised of dried-out pieces of yak shit, which of course is flammable and is used as fuel for cooking and heating homes. I didn’t think any people stayed around here during the cold months, but these people definitely look like they’ve been stocking up for winter.

: Visiting the yurt of an old woman. In the bowl at her feet is some of the aforementioned yak dung

: Young girl in the same yurt preparing some milk tea for our group

: Cheese and other dairy products drying out on the roof of the yurt from the previous couple photos

: In Mongolia, up in high places like passes, you’ll find piles of stones like the one in the photo – think they call ‘em ovoos. Tradition says that good things may come your way if you carry a stone up from a lower place then add it to the pile when you get there and proceed to walk around the pile three times clockwise. Here’s the Danish men trying to get lucky.

: Big bunch of goats following us up and out of this valley we’d crossed and slept in the night beforehand

: That black dot on the left side of this raging river is our guide Bek. At first I thought he was joking when he said we needed to cross, but he wasn’t. It was thigh-deep at parts and kinda hard to not get swept away

: Group of locals who drove over to try and sell us stuff when they saw us camping over here

: Bek showing off his haul of wild onions

: Another pretty good dinner made by…

: …the chef and her husband.

: It was really weird for me to see trees when entering this area. I didn’t see too many trees during the 3-day road trip out to Ulgii and really hadn’t seen any during the previous 5 days of this hike

: Our camels grazing along the river. That’s another thing I found weird. My brain has a hard time registering camels and pine trees in the same photo

: Artistic rendering of the man that lies below this headstone

: BOSS headlights and a 69 69 license plate on somebody’s old UAZ-452

Post-Hike

: Old-ass petroglyphs

: A Kazakh eagle huntress who put on these traditional clothes just for our benefit while visiting

: Dinner at the Kugyershin family yurt in the town of Ulgii

: Traditional Kazakh meal

: Martin spearing fish in the weird floor aquarium in the lobby at Khovd Hotel

: Khovd’s main square at night

: Dude, who is recycling handsaws in Khovd’s main square?

: This restaurant was a couple doors down from Khovd Hotel. Don’t know if this is a common design in western Mongolia or what, but…

: …I remember having seen and photographed a similar-looking building in Ulgii.

: At the airport in Khovd, ready to fly back to Ulaanbaatar

: The driver who picked us up at the airport in UB

: Predator vs. Genghis Khan

: I thought this was some sort of British kissing booth in Shangri-la Mall, but it was actually a frozen yogurt stand

: Looking back down at Chinggis Khaan International Airport

: The boob-shaped butter they served us on the plane