Mongolia Part II: Ancient Capital, Buddhist Monasteries, and Horse Riding in the Orkhon Valley5/12/2018
After an amazing week in the Gobi, we said goodbye to our wonderful guide, driver, and the Australian couple we were traveling with, and met our new guide and Land Cruiser driver in Mongolia’s ancient capital: Karakorum. Karakorum was founded in 1220 by Genghis Khan (written and pronounced “Chinggis” in Mongolia). A center of Silk Road trading in the massive empire, Karakorum was extremely diverse for its small size, and home to people from all over the world. Despite his reputation for violence, Mongolians view Chinggis as a national hero, and emphasize his fair laws, religious tolerance, and successful leadership. Although Karakorum has long since been destroyed, we visited the Erdene Zuu Monastery, built from the ancient city’s ruins in 1585. We stayed at a tourist ger camp (in contrast to the nomadic families we usually stayed with), which meant we got to take one of the only two showers during our two weeks in Mongolia! In the evening, we watched a performance of Mongolian throat singing, in which performers make sounds I did not think were humanly possible, similar to a baritone instrument.
The next day, we visited the Karakorum Museum, where we saw artifacts from the destroyed capital. We then drove through the hilly, grass covered terrain of central Mongolia to the Ulaan Tsutgalan waterfall, where we stayed with a family.
The nomadic owner of the ger took us on a two-day horseback journey through the Orkhon Valley, a stunning UNESCO-recognized epicenter of nomadic lifestyle and the ancient Mongolian empire. We rode stout, Mongolian horses (genetically unchanged since the time of Chinggis Khan) through the breathtaking landscape, while clad in traditional robes (del) to guard against the frigid wind.
We spent the night with a yak-herding family, then spent the next day riding back to the waterfall.
We had originally planned to go to hot springs, but as the pipes were still frozen, we spent the next two days visiting small sand dunes (a bit anticlimactic after the sand dunes in Gobi), staying with other families, and going for walks and hikes.
On our second to last day in Mongolia, we visited a massive statue of Chinggis Khan on horseback – the largest equestrian statue in the world. We climbed up to a viewing platform between the fearsome ruler’s legs, before driving to the beautiful Gorkhi Terelj National Park for our last night in a ger.
On the morning of our last day, we hiked to a recently constructed Buddhist temple in the Tibetan Yellow Hat style, then drove back to Ulaanbaatar. Tour complete, Robert and I spent the afternoon at the National History Museum and the Central Museum of Mongolian Dinosaurs, where we got to see some of the fossils that had been excavated from the Flaming Cliffs. We ate dinner at Silk Road Bazaar, an upscale restaurant that served an eclectic mix of Western food. After two weeks of potatoes, cabbage, and mutton in various forms, we ordered a huge meal of everything we were craving: chips and guacamole, arugula goat cheese salad, chicken piccata, margherita pizza, flourless chocolate cake, wine for me, Johnny Walker Black for Robert, and espresso with dessert. Thoroughly stuffed, we walked to the State Department Store, the one-stop institution for anything you might want to buy in Ulaanbaatar. We got a small, stuffed Gobi camel – one of the only souvenirs we could fit in the carry-on size backpacks we’ve been living out of for nearly five months. The next day, we traveled for 27 hours (via Beijing and Washington D.C.) to Philadelphia for my college graduation ceremony.
1 Comment
barbara barsky
6/25/2018 12:33:18 pm
So interesting! Photos were wonderful!! ! The descriptions were so beautifully written, it was almost like actually being there.
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