James Waldron's 6foot6 Mongolia travelogue

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Mongolia:

Stories and images
by Jim Waldron

Mongolia. Quick, point to it on the globe in your dad's study. Stumped? Ok, find China and look in the Northwest just below Russia. There you go. I got off the Trans-Mongolian Railway for a week and visited the country at Elstei, and the city at Ulaanbaatur. You don't have to go far to reach the country, about three miles out of town is as empty as the moon.

Stories

Surely I'll get around
to writing my impressions of this place.
Go there. It's great.

Net Cafes I've Known and Loved
If you can get wired in Mongolia
where else can you write your mom?

Photographs

Some favorites

See them all at once
Look at thumbnails of all the photographs from this country.
Each picture was made with the Agfa ePhoto 1280 digital camera.

Elstei
Only just outside of the country's largest city is a vast expanse of rangeland in every direction. Elstei is about an hour's drive over dirt roads and sits in the middle of low mountain ranges. It is truly inspirational, all green and gentle, spotted with gers and livestock. From our tourist camp we ventured by foot and on horseback to the surrounding families who work the land for a living. The light in the Summer is spectacular, and doesn't fade until late in the evening. Watch out for the fermented goat's milk. It packs a wallop.

Families
GaotherderSkins - the proud grandfather with the skins of wolves and badgers he'd killed
GoatherderBoy - rounding up the goats eight times a day
GoatherderEyes - retired intelligence officer giving the stare
GoatherderFace - old but not tired, spie-turned goatherder's face
GoatherderFatherBest - steely stare of the matriarch
GoatherderMan - working for a living, working very hard
GoatherderMilking - milking every two hours all day every day
Horseman - Mongolian horesman corrals horses for the tourists
MongolFam - the family portrait in their single ger
MongolFamBoy - happy boy with pet
MongolFamDad - father in traditional dress
MongolFamKids - wary kids looking at us tourists
MongolFamUncle. - a horseman by trade

Views
CamelClose- face to face with the world's most renowned spitter
CamelPair - like they were dancing in perfect unison
CamelProfile - could they pose more still?
Deadcow - just the head and bones left out on the range
Deadcow2
HiTension2ndBest - incongrous hi-tech through the green landdscape
HiTensionAngle
HiTensionBase
HiTensionBest - rather surreal view at sunset in the country
MHomeGer - a ger is the home to the country people all year round
MyGer - the tourist version at Elstei Tourist Camp
SelfPortrait - feeling rather outdoorsey
Sunset - with clouds at 10:30 pm
TelepostCorner - single wires off into the distance
Teleposts
Icon. - a goodluck pile of rocks and flag. Traditions explain that if you walk three times around the icon in a clockwise fashion and place a stone on the pile at each pass good luck will befall you

Ulaanbaatur
This is what I imagined a Soviet city would look like. The buildings are grey concrete, the streets are gritty and cold, the traffic is equally divided between old Russian-made vans and new Japanese sedans. The industrial center is filled with smokestacks, some belching coal smoke for power. This was the first place I'd been with a smattering of Anglo-saxon folks strolling around in large numbers. The Russian population here is quite high, with the bulk remaining Mongolian, still distinctly Asian, but taller, and lighter complexioned than those in Southeast Asia.

Ulaanbaatur is not without it's surprises. The young population is decidedly Western in it's clothing styles, huge platform shoes being the most noteworthy soon-to-be-forgotten fad, along with florescent tops and skirts. the largest, most hi-tech, glitzy disco I visited on my entire trip was in Ulaanbaatur. The Top Ten had all the state-of the art lights, soundsystems, and lip-syncing Spice Girls wannabes.

Apartments - a little depressing, concrete living spaces
Apartmentwindows - even the plainest buildings are not without their beauty
Buddah - Buddism still survives depite frequent purges in the political history of the country
BuddhistTemple
CapitolBuilding - looks like stalin was here
CitytoCountryview - not to far to the country
Granny - at the temple
Locals - at the temple
MuseumGer - traditional furnishings of a Mongolian ger
MuseumGerRoof -ceiling construction of a Mongolian ger
People - local apartment dwellers
Singha - inside another temple
SovietMural1 - for the Mongolian astronaut
SovietMural2 - for historical warriors

See the other places