I just got back from my trip to Olgii. Several times during the trip I asked myself why I was going. This question was usually prompted by a similar question from Boorma, the church member who went with me. She didn't see the point in spending several days on a crowded bus just so we could spend a day or two in the middle of nowhere.
She might have had a point.
I tossed around several explanations for why the far west of Mongolia was so appealing to me. Perhaps it was the mixture of cultures, the remoteness, or the mind numbing size and beauty of the glacier-capped mountains. However, as I tossed these ideas around in my mind I came to another conclusion. My dad had stated it quite well when I was planning my (since abandoned) trip to China: hell is a very interesting place.
To get to Olgii we boarded a bus in Ulaanbaatar. The bus was ancient, and had panels removed from it's sides for ease of access in case of a breakdown. Fortunately it was not particularly crowded, because tickets were sold by the seat in the ticket office. The luggage made it a bit hard to move around, but everyone had a place to claim.
On our way out of Ulaanbaatar we stopped. There was a group of guys by the road. When we stopped they gave the driver a friendly greeting, and then began piling on to the bus. This was... how shall I put it? It was the kind of thing that made one unhappy to be on a bus. Apparently the ten guys who boarded the bus had bought "tickets" from somewhere other than the ticket office. I expect the two drivers made a nice profit on the trip. Unfortunately their profit meant that I was smashed between a sweaty guy and the wall for the whole trip. Since I couldn't spread my legs my knees were jammed against the seat in front of me, and bashed even harder with every bump. I tried taking off my shoes and kneeling on the seat, but the Kazakhs apparently regard feet with even more disgust than the Mongolians, and they looked at this very disapprovingly. I let them look.
Now that the bus was properly loaded to normal third world standards, we continued on the trip. Nearly everyone on the bus was Kazakh. Most of the people which looked Mongolian turned out to be of mixed ancestry, but adamantly asserted that they were Kazakh. Several of the women wore headscarves, and a few people would go off to pray in the direction of Mecca sometimes when the bus stopped. Most of the chatter on the bus was incomprehensible to both Boorma and myself, but everyone could speak Mongolian if they wanted to so there was no problem communicating.
We took the southern route to Buyan Olgii, which goes along the edge of the Gobi desert. This was somewhat disappointing. I have heard that the northern route is quite beautiful, though the road isn't quite as good.
The bus had problems almost from the start. Driving across the packed gravel of the Gobi it would overheat about every ten to twenty minutes. When this happened everyone would pile out of the bus while we waited for it to cool down.
I consider myself an expert on nowhere. I have been to many places that claim to be the middle of nowhere, and I can now say that the western Gobi desert takes the prize (unless you count Antarctica). Mile after mile we went, with nothing to see but dust. Even though we were going along a relatively major road there were few stops. Every 40 miles or so there would be a few buildings by the road, though there were times when we went much further than that without seeing so much as a distant ger, or even a sheep. You know there's no one around in Mongolia when you don't see sheep.
The bus had trouble climbing hills. This was a problem, because the Altai mountains are "mountainous" in rather the same way that the Rockies or Andes are mountainous: in an uncompromising, mountainous sort of way; the kinds of mountains that aren't likely to move if you say please nicely. To climb even the smallest grade the driver would have to swerve back and forth across the road. Often the bus would simply stall, and sit there like a stubborn donkey trying to point out the fact that it was built in the 70's.
After 50 hours of bouncing around on dirt roads the trip ended, mercifully. I was somewhat terrified at the prospect of getting back on the bus at the end of our stay. One might say that I felt trapped and claustrophobic, despite the fact that the soaring mountains and wide expanses of the place made my mind jibber softly to itself in insane incomprehension.
Thinking casually of ways back that did not include the bus, I looked at my GPS and discovered an interesting fact. The distance from Olgii to the Afghan border (when measured in a straight line) is almost the same as the distance we had to travel to get there from Ulaanbaatar. If international borders were not an issue, it would have been faster and easier for us to get to Afghanistan than for us to get back to Ulaanbaatar, especially considering that the trip would be through China, which has decent roads (for the most part).
Olgii wasn't what I had expected. I had expected a mixture of middle-eastern and Mongolian cultures, but it turned out that there were somewhat more defined ethnic divisions. In some parts of town most people lived in Gers. In other parts people lived in mud-brick houses. Most signs were in Mongolian, some were Mongolian with Kazakh words, and very few were all Kazakh.
We found a Kazakh watermelon and named him Jondace, which I was told meant "lifelong friend".
Jondace agreed to be our guide around town, and he did a fine job of it until we ate him that night. He turned out to be quite sweet and juicy.
I made a point of visiting the mosque, mostly because I had never been in one. There are mosques near Ulaanbaatar, but it just doesn't seem the same because few people here are Muslim. In Olgii, however, most of the people are Muslim, or at least claim to be.
A new (and much larger) mosque is under construction, presumably using money donated from the some middle eastern country. The current mosque was built in 1992 with money from the UAE, but it seems small in relation to the population of the town. We went in and talked to a man (the Imam perhaps?) who explained what the script on the wall meant. I had heard that Muslims pray only in Arabic, and I asked him if many people understood the script or the prayers. He said that everyone studied Arabic starting when they were small children, so that they could understand it (or at least most of).
He didn't ask Boorma to wear a head scarf, which was odd because a list of rules printed in three languages asked women to "wear the head coverings provided". I didn't point it out, but Boorma noticed the rules later and was somewhat embarrassed.
The man told us when the next time for prayer was and invited us to come, but I declined. I would have felt rude sitting there and staring at people praying, and I certainly couldn't have joined them. We heard the prayers being broadcasted over the mosque loudspeakers later as we walked through the town.
A little later as we went through one of the Kazakh areas of town I saw two young Kazakh girls. I then did one of the most touristy things I have ever done, and asked if I could take a picture with them. They said yes, and the one who wasn't wearing her head scarf put it on shyly.
So... yeah. That and a few old women are my experience with "ragheads" so far (Kazakh men don't wear turbans, but then neither do most Afghan men). As far as their outlook on the world in general, I am coming to the conclusion that most practicing Muslims view the world in much the same was as conservative Christians do. I find it odd that the two hate each other so strongly.I must say I don't understand how one religion can produce such extremes. The muslims I have encountered here and in the US have mostly been of two types: either liberal and not particularly devout or sincere and kind. Comparing this to the images on the news I am forced to conclude that what we are seeing is an example of how people use religion to justify what they would like to do anyway. Some of my friends may disagree with this conclusion, and to them I will point out one part of history (of many) where Christians should be thankful for a similar assessment: the crusades.
So, yeah. We came, we saw, we wandered around, bought some hats, and then piled back onto the bus the next day.
Or rather we were going to pile back onto the bus. Boorma found a man who offered to take us in a van for T55,000 instead of the T65,000 that the bus cost. He said that he was going to take 11 people. Incidentally, the vans have 11 seats. I pondered this, and concluded that it was unlikely he planned to take one person per seat. Perhaps he wasn't counting the two seats in front. That was still pretty good: 9 seats for 11 passengers is a really, really good ratio in Mongolia.
Unfortunately had been a slight misunderstanding. By "eleven people" the driver hadn't meant eleven total, and he hadn't meant eleven passengers. Instead he had meant sixteen passengers, himself, a friend of his who smoked heavily whenever he wasn't drinking heavily, and a large load of sheet metal which he strapped to the roof.
For over 1000 miles we attempted to bounce around in the van. I say "attempted" because the van was so crowded that bouncing was difficult. Usually these vans carry up to seventeen people for short distances in the city (say, going to and from the market). We had eighteen people, half of whom drank vodka every few hours to stay nicely drunk, luggage for the eighteen people, and the driver's load of sheet metal strapped to the roof. I had possession of the corner of a seat. The floor would have been much better, but there was no floor to speak of. There was a seat, a six inch gap, and then the wall. Intense and uncomfortable pressure prevented me from moving back, forward, right or left. Every time the van swayed the five people sitting in our row of three seats would sway, smashing the person at the end into the wall.
So, for three days and over 1000 miles we traveled. I bounced up and down on one butt cheek the entire way, since there was no room on the seat for the other. The abused butt cheek in question is now filing for legal separation.
Boorma had some words for the driver, and as her mood worsened she shared these choice words with everyone else. I understood her poor mood. We had stayed with a friend of her's in Olgii whom she hadn't seen in a long time, but other than that the trip hadn't been that great for her. Her parents lived in the neighboring province and she hadn't seen them in over two years, so I offered to buy her a ticket that would take her back via that route. She declined, saying that she didn't want to take any of my money. I attempted to explain that an extra $20 didn't mean anything at all to me, and she looked around for a van that would take her. Unfortunately, by the time she found one she was too pissed at the world to take it. At least that's the best explanation I can come up with for why she came back with me.
We got back into Ulaanbaatar at about five in the morning, grabbed a taxi back to the school and then parted ways. I'll be leaving Mongolia on Wednesday, so I don't think I'll have anything else to write about. I'll probably go back to writing in my other blog, thoughts from chemistry, but I'm not sure.
A fitting note on which to leave Mongolia: wind and wide open spaces:
