It'S GetTiNg HaWT OuT ThErrRe!

The ice and snow has melted, the birds are chirping away and Mongolia's cattle is giving birth to their young. It's finnnnalllly Summer!  I have sustained an incredible sunburn where everything from my face and chest to my legs have peeled and have enjoyed warm hikes outside.
As Mongolia becomes more green, and school has closed, Mongolian's are visiting the countryside at a high rate.  When I got back from UB last week I was asked to go on such an excursion with people from my school. When I arrived at school at 9:45 (we were supposed to leave at 10), which means I gave myself reasonable time to situate my things (in Mongolian, 10 really means 10:30 or 11). The meeker packing started about 11:30 and we didn't really leave till about 12:15 or 12:30.

I made the mistake of waiting and being one of the last in the meeker and my teachers immediately had me sit in the tinniest spot available. I have found another spot in a meeker that I will never sit in again! It was a corner seat that was quite literally meant for a 6 year old. There were bags on the floor in front of me and I had to either cross my ankles or halfway perch one foot on the bag and the other onto someone's foot to my right that had their foot on the floor. Quite literally I had absolutely no where to put my feet. Also, in the Mongolian culture it is not only rude to show people the bottom of your shoe, but to step on their feet is extremely rude. Mongolian's are consistently cleaning and shining their shoes as well . There was also a much larger women leaning back on my knees (so what foot I could get onto the suitcase was being sat on and was falling asleep). All in all, there were 17 of us in the back of the meeker with suitcases, and two up front, plus the driver. Of course since this was a start of vacation and a celebratory time, the vodka was out and in full swing. If you are able to hold your ground and turn it down three times with a firm voice, you can stop drinking it;-)

About an hour out of Tsetserleg we stopped for food, bathroom breaks and rest. It was such an amazing place that we stopped at. I loved it. Rolling hills, a broken down Khasha. It was picturesque. Some of the Mongolian's played volleyball while some sat and ate snacks on the grass. After our stop I stated that I was unable to sit in the spot because I have bad knees. Not really a lie, as I have tendinitis from years of dance that still flares up. At that point was starting to act up because of the sitting arrangement.

 My Khasha Mom Nara and I.

My Conterpart Togohtoo.

 As you can see, Mongolian's love pictures. Over the weekend, when all was said and done I had gone through 4 sets of batteries (not that the batteries are great in Mongolia) and had taken over 300 pictures. In this blog, I managed to carefully select 79 pics!

 Mongolians are also not known for smiling in pictures. Everything is very serious so I always stick out like a sore thumb!

Mongolian's love Volleyball! They will play it basically whenever they can.

Around 5pm, we finally arrived at our destination!

I had, at this point no idea what was going on. It is so normal to just get out of the meeker for a a little bit and then rapidly pack things up and get back in the meeker. In this perspective, Mongolian life moves very quickly! So, when we stopped at 5pm I just assumed it was another brief pause in our journey. About 30 minutes after the stop I realized it was permanent because we went back to the meekers, got out our stuff and started setting up tents. It was such a beautiful location that I was thrilled to be staying there the night. I was also enthused to get out of the cramped travel quarters.


Tsagaan Kmairhan tourist camp; I am assuming that this was where we stayed, but this sign was slightly down the road!

I stayed in the tent (that's behind us with my Khasha mom and another coworker!

They hung the meat in the tree so that the local cows and other unseen animals couldn't get to it. I did wonder about squirrel interest however!

One of the pots started out as tea, then gradually became gittis (animal intestines) It is actually not bad tasting, just some parts like the stomach are tough to chew and not at al appetizing. 

Mongolians' love to sing. At night we stood around the fire singing Mongolian songs and dancing as we held hands. It was a lot of fun!

Since this was an end of the year celebration, gifts for hard work were given. Gifts usually included chocolates of some kind and vodka or darse (wine)

The next day I was awakened by Nara my Khasha mom telling me to come eat. I explained that I had brought trail mix and I am not used to eating meat in the morning to keep from having soup with mutton (sheep meat) in the morning. I love bacon but cannot get past mutton that early! It was really hard to get out of my sleeping bag that first morning because it was incredibly damp out. The tent walls were soaked (thankfully we had a pad under us or we would have been soaked too).  The ground was completely marsh-like. 

When i got up I was hurried out of my tent to join a walk with the group. I assumed it would be a short walk and since everyone was rearing to go had no time to brush my hair or face or sunscreen. Big mistake...HUGE mistake. The first stop was not far from camp, it was pretty much on the hill and it was this natural hot spring.

In this particular hot-spring it is not deep enough to sit in while wearing a swim suit. However, there is a place you can sit and rest. It is supposed to give you energy! First you sit on a set of rocks like you are in  a chair, on your hands. The warmth will go into your hands and give you energy.

After you sit in the chair on your hands, you are supposed to turn around and breath in the steam that rises from a little hole in the rocks. It was actually really refreshing after the previous nights festivities and waking up so damp. 
While I didn't know it at the time, I would need all the energy I could get for what was in store for me after leaving this are!

When we left to hot-springs we started hiking into the woods. Here is a local flower that you are supposed to smell, sit by or in a patch of them and again, they are supposed to give you energy. They were really beautiful flowers!

After 5 kilometers we got to this rock. цагаан уул (Tsaagain Olth). I forget the last part of the name, it was something that sounded like hairhoren. The first two words mean white mountain in mongolian. It was a sacred area in the middle of the woods that had been around for an incredibly long time. I believe someone told me the year 900 but you never know and Mongolian's will guess. This was our entire group and I didn't realize it until everyone had scattered but the man we asked to take the picture somehow put my camera on the fishbowl effect so it came out like this!

The rock lived up to its name Tssagan Uulth because it was seriously huge!
On the other side of the rock people would leave and light candles, milk in bottles as well as throw milk around the grounds, money and other tidbits.

The sign as you walked onto the premises.

On the walk back! Everyone was asking me to take pictures. I must remember to get better batteries next time!

Back at camp I hurridly went to the river to clean up, brush my teeth and put sunscreen on my already frying face. My Khasha mom then asked if I wanted to wash up in warm water and said I could swim in hot springs as well. At least that was what i was sure she said. So I got shorts and a tank and followed her and a friend to the shower rooms. There were three showers in one room and no changing room. It was awkward but one in rome..you get undressed as hurriedly as possible look at your toes and run to the shower. Afterwards I dried off with the shorts and tank because i thought I had misunderstood and there weren't really hot springs to swim in. I hadn't seen them! I was wrong. I quickly realized my mistake and was able to change in a changing room into my shorts and tee and soak in the pleasant pool of hot water. The natural minerals in the water made me feel so fresh and my skin so soft that it was a little slice of heaven after the previous days activities and the unexpected hike in the morning.

Before going to the hot-springs, this cow walked up to me and licked my arm as I was putting sunscreen on my arm. It started wandering the camp for food after that. I tried to feed it my apple core but this cow preferred bread (not super strange, and leftover meat) which i did find extremely strange. When he started to nudge people as they were sitting on the ground he was escorted away with sticks and yells of Yoush (a sound Mongolians make to cattle to get them to move from place to place.)

After we packed everything back up, including ourselves into the meeker we spent about an hour traveling to the Orkhon Waterfall.

At 20 meters, (if my math is correct that's 60 feet) this is Mongolian's tallest waterfall and wikipedia suggests that the it was formed from volcanic eruptions and earthquakes that happened approximately 20,000 years ago.

I had to get my picture taken here! and so did everyone else:-)

 

 Photo Bombed: this little boy managed to turn around just in time for me to take this pic. He was absolutely adorable!

When we left the waterfall we traveled another half hour towards a river and unpacked everything again. People spent a lot more time resting in their tents when we got there than they had the previous night.

My Khasha mom is a nurse. Mongolian's will often hook themselves up to an iv with saline solution when they are feeling tired or sick. In my friends health department, the ladies will tape the IV's to the walls in the afternoons frequently. I don't often see Mongolian's drinking water so this could be the problem. Mongolians often drink tea or suu tea tea (Mongolian Milk tea that usually has salt in it.

As night fell it got colder than it had been the first night. The wind was blowing like crazy and sitting close to the fire with a blanket allowed you a bit of warmth but also yielded a ton of smoke in your eyes. At some point in the night I had to give up and go to bed not because I was just freezing but because I could barely keep my eyes open from all the smoke that was blowing in them. Mongolian deels are smart, and super warm. There are deels for winter that are lined, as well as summer and fall and have been used by Mongolian's forever. Pictured to the right is my Khasha mom in her Deel, she also won that fancy tea set:-)

The next morning as we packed up a pack of Hawks started soaring above us and grabbing leftovers off the ground. It was really neat to see them!

That morning I had noodles, after sleeping completely covered from head to toe in my sleeping bag I welcomed the warm breakfast.

Another stop on our way to our next destination.Everyone got out to walk and wash up in the river. I got out to walk in case the bridge collapsed.

After about 45 minutes the meekers stopped and we walked up a ridiculously steep hill. I had barely put on my sunscreen and my hiking boots when we were off on another hike. I asked again how many kilometers this would be and no one seemed to know but I do know that this walk felt longer than the last.

This was supposed to bring you luck. The Mongolian who took my picture couldn't quite figure out the camera and she didn't tell me when she was taking it. This is my most successful "Mongolian picture face".

When we got to the top of another hill I was able to see where we had walked into the forest. This is zoomed in and the treeline is where we started.

We came across this sacred place in the woods and I was wondering if this was our end destination. I was at the front pack of the hike with a much older lady that went incredibly fast when she was hiking. We went around the stick tepee twice and we were on our way. 

This is a close up of a type of pine tree. I loved the moss that occupied the branches.

Tuvkhun Monastery was our final destination on our trek through the woods. The monastery is located on a mountainside which sits on the boarder of Arkhangai and Uvurhangai provinces. Bogd Gegeen Zanabazar who was a descendent of Ghengis Khan was recognized by the Dalai Lama and Panchen Lama as a living Buddha. In 1648 when he was he was 14 he chose to build the temple. Construction began in 1651 and In 1688 soldiers of Oirad destroyed the temple and in 1722 it was restored. In 1992 it was taken under state protection.

These steps take you up to the temple.

When we got into the Fence-line (Khasha) there was a well and they were giving people water out of it. Since I was out of water I got some. I didn't initially look and was thrilled at how cold the water was. It was only after I gulped down a large amount of water that i was told to look inside. The water had dead bugs at the top of it and I could have touched the top of the well if i had stuck my arm in. It was also not deep at all. I could see bottom. I was of course incredibly worried that I was going to get sick but luckily did not!

The meditation cave was very small. I would have been claustrophobic occupying it for that long!

The entrance to the meditation cave.

My group got very concerned
about how high up I was. They were all asking me to come down at this point.

The prayer temple was one of the three temples you saw when you came into the gates of the monastery.

The Lavrin Temple was one of the first temples when you entered the gates to the temple.

This temple sat halfway up the mountain in a little house.

The border of Uvorhangai.

This cave symbolizes rebirth. You are required to cover your shoulders and take off all your jewelry.

I'm ready!

I'm a new Jenn!

This hole that is situated next to the womb hole, goes to the other side of the mountain where you can see Arkhangai the province or aimag where I live)!

This tree was the last stop at the monastery.

It was incredible that you couldn't see the temple from the ground!

When we got back on the ground the Monks were chanting. It was really cool to see and to hear!

As I was leaving I got this picture of a monk on the rocks in front of the Monastery.

After we about six of us made it to the bottom of the hill we waited for the others to get back. After about 45 minutes it was determined by one of the workers that we would meet them near the Monastery instead of waiting for them to hike back. We drove for about a half hour and then waited another 45 minutes. Some wires must have gotten crossed because before I knew it we were heading back up the hill. For the next hour or so people were picked up and dropped off where we started to cook dinner. At approximately 9:30 or 10 we left and I arrived home around 2:30. I was exhausted from the long weekend and couldn't wait to see my bed and heat my Ger to a cool 80 degrees! I spent most of Monday recuperating and cleaning and shopping for food! It was an unforgettable three days and I was so happy I was asked to go!