The Fellowship
The airport was tiny, at least smaller than you’d expect, since it was the country’s sole international hub. The vastness of the surrounding grassland dwarfed the compound’s newly-constructed terminal, and as our plane swooped through the open country and touched down on the rain-slickened tarmac of Chinggis Khaan International, I felt like we were landing outside of a small town in Montana or Wyoming.
After all, the landscape was almost identical to much of that found in the American West: rolling green hills, pine-sprinkled mountains, and a sky so imposing it immediately announced itself as one of the story’s main characters. Periodic sunbursts lit up the landscape like flash bulbs, only to be smothered seconds later by swirling, bruised clouds that seemed to be doing their best to muster an evening squall. Judging from the puddles in the parking lot and lushness of the land, they had been recently successful. Little did we know how much more they would have in store.
The rain, it seemed, had followed us from Korea, where the swampy press of the summer monsoon had just set in. While less than a four-hour flight from Busan, Mongolia already seemed like a different world, with almost no buildings in sight and air so clean it made me momentarily curse my choice to live in a place so often choked by dust, smog, and dank humidity. Despite the fact that we were less than an hour’s drive from Ulaanbaatar—a grungy town infamous for its coal plant pollution—everything already felt magnificently unspoiled, and I was immediately glad to have made the decision to come.
It hadn’t been a quick one, as there are many things to consider before traveling to Mongolia. It’s a notoriously tough place to get around, and while it’s close to Korea by air, it’s also vast and undeveloped, with primitive infrastructure, when it exists at all.
The result is that if you want to travel deeply, you have to plan for it, and most importantly, pay for it. While prices for food and consumer goods aren’t high, once you’re out of the city you need people not only to drive you around, but also organize all of your meals and accommodations. This quickly adds up, and while it is possible just to roll up solo and see what you can manage on the ground, Mongolia is a country best experienced with a group and through a reputable tour company who can coordinate all of the details.
This, of course, requires cash.
So when Scott and Scraggs cast an invitation my way, I bit. We had been discussing the possibility of such a trip for a few years, but Covid put a hold on such shenanigans. Now that the viral dust had settled, it was go time, and I was honestly doubtful that this particular chance would come again. So despite the fact that I knew I would have to come up with creative ways to fund the expedition (which include getting a very skeptical wife to sign off), I committed to the thing a good six months before we even got on the plane.
All three of us were longtime expat residents of the city of Busan and firmly (or flabbily) in the realm of middle age. Scott and Scraggs were friends of mine going back to my first years in Korea, hailing from Canada and England, respectively. I’d traveled with both before, and we were eventually joined by Welsh Will, who, while a few years younger, had also spent ages with us in the Korean trenches. He also happened to be an accomplished photographer, so we were guaranteed top-notch pics, if nothing else.
This was, of course, a terrific opportunity to see a country that had long loomed in my imagination, though I hadn’t traveled with a group of friends for many years. I had spent the last decade heading out on my own to destinations such as Laos, Mexico, Georgia, and Japan, not to mention several long-distance walking jaunts in Korea.
In fact, I had managed to make a side career out of it, securing writing commissions from some of the biggest travel mags in the world. This caused me to grow accustomed to solo travel to the point where I realized I preferred it to running with a pack. I relished the freedom of waking up every day and doing exactly what I wanted to do, of never feeling weighed down by others. It’s perhaps a selfish way to explore, but also very gratifying, so I knew that adapting back to the group dynamic might take a bit getting used to.
We christened ourselves “The Fellowship of the Ger” (ger is the Mongolian word for “yurt,” the portable nomadic dwelling found throughout the country), meeting in coffee shops several times leading up to our departure, where, between sips of Americanos, we’d pour over a couple of massive, old school paper maps of the country.
And while we were all in it for the buzz of traveling to such a rugged and wild destination, we also had our pet reasons for going: Scraggs and Will were dedicated birders and stoked to take in the staggering number of species that call Mongolia home in the summer, while Scott and I were more interested in underwater life. We were going there to fish, hoping to hook into fat lenok trout, northern pike, or—if we were exceptionally lucky—a taimen, Mongolia’s gargantuan river predator that is also the largest salmonid on earth.
Dirty ol’ town
The Tara guesthouse sat deep in the midst of what appeared to be student housing for the local university—Soviet-style blocks of cracked and crumbling apartments ubiquitous throughout the capital. The little road leading from Peace Avenue (UB’s perpetually traffic-snarled main strip) into the compound was uneven and strewn with broken pavement and mucky potholes. A growing pile of trash festered just half a block from the accommodation’s front door, and as you strolled down the shaded concourse, you could catch glimpses of the claustrophobic lives endured by the local students through grease-smudged apartment windows lacking either curtains or blinds.
The overall effect was cheerless and dour, driven home by the scarred sides of buildings, stripped of paint and pockmarked by the unthinkably brutal winters that give Ulaanbaatar (often referred to as “UB”) the distinction of being the coldest national capital on the planet.
The four of us shared a four-bed dorm room with a private bathroom, though the toilet was Barbie Doll-sized and sat perched at an awkward angle where your knees hit the door any time you attempted to sit down and do your business. These bogs were clearly designed for tiny Asian girls to delicately deposit their rabbit poos rather than four large middle-aged white men who were guaranteed to lay waste to the unfortunate bowl.
Most hazardous were the bunk beds. The top bunks lacked safety rails on the sides, meaning that one careless late-night toss or turn could mean a potentially neck-breaking fall. Both Scraggs and I ended up with the top beds and positioned our backpacks between our snoozing bodies and the great abyss in an attempt to avoid drunkenly rolling our way into becoming quadriplegics.
It wasn’t until the first morning that we discovered the Tara Guesthouse also lacked hot water. While technically early summer, UB was still pretty chilly at the time and a steamy shower would have been welcomed. When inquiring with the staff member as she cooked our breakfast of fried eggs, toast, and hot dog franks, she informed me (via Google Translate) that, due to pipe maintenance, hot water was shut off for the whole area.
This concept of of communal hot water systems came as a surprise, as I had only lived in places where buildings have their own boilers. I had no idea it was sometimes done on a districtwide basis. This was likely a remnant of the city’s communist history, and while it sucked not to enjoy a warm shower, it also reminded us that there would be days ahead where we’d be grateful for a rinse off of any temperature, whatsoever.
The first thing that stood out about UB was the omnipresent Korean handprint on this former Soviet outpost. CU and GS25 convenience stores dominated the street view and Korean cuisine seemed to be the default setting for the city’s restaurants. They were everywhere. It’s not even as if there were loads of Koreans in UB; it’s the peninsula’s businesses, instead, that had moved in and taken advantage of a void that, for whatever reason, Mongolians failed to adequately fill.
Ulaanbaatar is a city that presents itself on its own terms. It doesn’t preen and ask for you to love it, but rather lives as a thrumming, very practical place of business and government. A lot of the buildings are flavorless old Russian blocks that tend to suck the joy out of the surroundings, though these are losing ground to the new UB, one of gleaming high-rises, as well as coffee shops, fashionable women, and even an E-Mart that beat out my local one in Busan when it came to variety and prices.
I immediately liked the unpretentious nature of UB, where the uglier old coexists with a shinier new, and the residents also possess this laid back, bullshit-free demeanor. Mongolians are a bit gruff and half the old dudes look like they could pull your arms off, but beneath the tough masks are a playful, warm people used to enduring ungodly winters and other hardships as just part of the daily slog.
The city is surrounded by verdant steppe and pine-covered hills—including the dominant rise of Bodg Khan, one of Mongolia’s sacred mountains. Much of the nation’s industry and commerce are concentrated in this slightly shabby burg that was also enjoying a sparkling boom thanks to the infusion of piles of mining cash. It’s a fascinating place with many levels of human existence and endeavors existing at once, and while perhaps not the most photogenic capital I’ve visited, its down-home charms immediately soaked into my skin.
Still, despite its modern creature comforts, it looked like a tough place to call home. The city maintains its tough facade in the form of two massive coal plants belching their smoke into the air of the Tuul River valley. Come winter the ridges rimming the city help to create a thermal inversion zone, resulting in some of the planet’s most severe smog.
Many UB’s buildings have obviously seen better days, and old drunks with rough, vein-exploded faces, staggered along the cracked sidewalks in search of more cheap vodka. I could also make out a certain weariness in the locals that lack of sun, frigid temperatures, and limited opportunity tends to etch into the skin.
We spent two days making preparations for our departure into Mongolia’s deep, wild interior, along with getting down with the hearty food and drink that the city offered up on all corners. This presented some challenges, as Scraggs was a long-time committed pescetarian. This meant that meat was off the menu, and Mongolia is a country where piles of meat are guaranteed every time you sit down to eat. It’s pretty much the country’s only food group. Luckily, UB has a variety of other options including a bang-on Georgian restaurant and a couple branches of Loving Hut, an international franchise that serves up nice vegan fare.
We wandered up and down Peace Avenue and its offshoots, including Seoul Street and Beatles Square, an outdoor space featuring a sculpture of the Fab Four. We checked out the historic State Department Store and spelunked the city’s Black Market, a sprawling labyrinth offering up everything from power tools to clothing to ger stoves to huge tubs of curds and yak butter. It is a fascinating, living and breathing complex, and the otherwise grumpy stall keepers always returned my greeting of “Sam bain noo!” as we shuffled by on a quest for supplies for upcoming adventures.
It was at the Black Market where I was approached by an old man in a cabbie hat. He gave me a smile, revealing a mouth containing three or four surviving teeth, and stretched out his palm, which contained some kind of commemorative medallion from the Soviet era. He gestured to it and back to me, obviously wanting to make some kind of a sale.
“Sorry old fellow.” I shook my head.
He pocketed the medallion and then stretched out his empty palm. “Moe-nee,” he wheezed. “Moe-nee.”
At this point I had no Mongolian tugrik on me. I had only managed to get a pittance out of the airport ATM the night before, and had yet to find a machine that would give me some more love. In fact, I had stepped away from the group to try my luck at a couple that I’d seen near the entrance to the building.
“Moe-nee,” the gramps continued. “Moe-nee.”
Scott wandered up and the old man approached him. Scott smiled and shook his head. As we tried to walk away, the old guy grabbed my hand and held on. He was gentle, yet insistent.
He began speaking Mongolian and pointed to me. It seemed as though he was asking me where I’m from.
“Me?” I asked. “USA. America. I am from America.”
“America?” His face lit up. “Ohhhh ohhhh.” He enthusiastically shook and patted my hand. I had obviously answered correctly. He then pointed to Scott.
“I’m from Canada,” Scott answered. “Ca-na-da.”
The old man’s expression suddenly darkened. Scowling, he shook his head and made a grunt of disapproval.
I could only laugh.
“What?” Scott replied. “You don’t like Canada?”
The Bizarro-world of the situation struck us both. Canadians—with their reputation for good manners and overall niceness—are so used to being showered with affection when they’re abroad that this came as a hilarious shock. It’s very rare that the USA beats Canada in an impromptu test of international approval, so I soaked up the praise while the getting was good.
I then suddenly remembered that even though I was out of Mongolian money, I did have a bit of USD on me. I reached into my pocket and fished out a crisp dollar bill, which I deposited into the hand of the grateful grandpa. After all, his response to my citizenship was well-worth him having a few sips of rotgut vodka on me.
Nice!
Sounds like an adventure.