Predicaments

What should you do when there aren’t any garbage cans?  The Mongolian capital and countryside are littered with wrappers, cans, and bottles.  

Our group took a rafting trip in the north countryside with a Mongolian man helming one of the three boats.  A girl on his raft offered him a Choco Pie (a delicious marshmallow snack with a 30-year estimated shelf life).  He gladly accepted, opened the individually wrapped snack and tossed the plastic into the river.  She gasped in disbelief.  The Mongolian man panicked, understanding that he had offended her, he was momentarily frozen with social anxiety.  Five seconds later, he leapt into the river fully clothed and swam to recover the wrapper.  Priceless.  

Garbage and restroom facilities are relatively uncommon here.  There are random holes in the ground in the city filled with garbage, and the countryside doesn’t appear to have a standardized method for disposal of trash.

Bathrooms here are always an experience.  I now understand the value of readily available toilet paper, and find joy in toilets instead of holes in the ground with narrow weathered boards on either side for your feet.  The privacy afforded by an enclosed “outhouse” is to be celebrated too.   

The Gobi Desert

How can you not love a camel with foul teeth? The camel below was kind enough to take me for a ride on the sand dunes in the Gobi Desert. When our group’s minivan pulled up to the sand dunes, a nomadic family appeared on camelback, trotting toward our camera-carrying bunch with more camels in tow. For a five-dollar charge, I climbed aboard a camel and took a walk around the dunes. Mongolians call camels living dinosaurs, and after taking a ride, I would agree.

Full photo gallery and story after the jump

Up North

Northern Mongolia was a refreshing change of pace from Ulaanbaatar, with green rolling hills, blankets of red, yellow, and purple wildflowers, and no honking vehicles.  We took the Trans-Mongolian railroad up to the city of Erdenet, the nation’s copper mining hub, and then drove for a grueling eight hours to our ger camp.  I’m usually a huge fan of road trips, but I’m also a pavement snob.  

The “roads” in the Mongolian countryside are more suggestions than true infrastructure, and our minivan driver parked facing downhill in order to jumpstart the van after each stop.  When a hill was not readily available, we all piled out of the van and started pushing.  Our driver didn’t speak English, but I sensed that our cheering embarrassed him when the minivan engine finally roared after each stop.

Our ger camp host was a well-renowned Mongolian violinist named Chinbat who has performed for dignitaries across Asia and Europe.  He and his wife run the small camp in the summer and return to Ulaanbaatar where he teaches music in autumn. 

Full photo gallery and story after the jump

A peaceful protest against the Mongolian Parliamentary election results, held on June 29, turned into a full-scale riot the night of July 1 in the capital city of Ulaanbaatar.

Background

Mongolia became a democratic nation in 1990, after the fall of the Soviet communist rule. The country elected the Mongolian People’s Revolutionary Party (MPRP), the former communist party, to power in the first free election of 1990. The first noncommunist government was elected in 1996, but the MPRP regained power again in the 2000 elections.

Many Mongolian citizens are claiming that this year’s elections have been rigged and are calling for an investigation into the election. This year’s main election issue is focused around the development of Mongolia’s wealth of natural resources.

Mongolia’s countryside is rich in mineral resources, especially copper. The extraction of these resources is expected to generate significant wealth. The question now is: wealth for whom? The Democratic Party believes the mineral rights should be given to corporations for development, while the MPRP intends to maintain government control of the resources. This heated debate fueled citizen protest as the ethics of the recent elections came into question. There is a lot of money at stake for the people of Mongolia and the MPRP.

Full photo gallery and story after the jump