The Mercy Corps office in Dalanzadgad treated us to breakfast before we set out to see the project sites around the city, and we all recovered from the drive with a well needed energy boost.

The first site we went to was a community wood working group that custom makes parts for Gers. With a grant of several hundred thousand Tugrik (a few hundred dollars) which came from Mongol Rally fund raising, they bought a table saw and some of the raw materials they needed to kick start the group. They are already building a reputation for the quality of their work and it was awesome to see that they are creating a sustainable business to benefit themselves and their community.

The next site was a similar set up, but this time making bricks out of recycled ash, to be used as construction material. Mercy Corps had helped them with a loan guarantee for some equipment and was providing business oversight & advice. They are already looking to expand production due to their success.

A few blocks away, we visited a building where women were making the canvass Ger covers and growing their business with grants from Mercy Corps.

We continued to a few more sites, one which made handicrafts for sale in UB, and another which made felt and clothing for school uniforms. These uniforms are a little funny to us… today was the first day of school and we could see the kids strutting all over town in their new duds. The girls uniforms look like French maid outfits, and the boys wear these suits that are straight out of a 1920’s gangster film… all shiny with pin stripes. It was a total crack up for us. At many of these project sites we would see the Mercy Corps contracts proudly displayed on the wall with Mongol Rally logos stamped right above them. The fourth site we visited was operated by a group of women who were all struggling to pay to care for their children with cerebral palsy. With the grants from Mercy Corps they were able to start a business that now affords them the ability to better care for the special needs of their children, creating a steady and recurring income that far exceeds the minimal amount the government was providing for assistance previously. It was awesome to see that for a few hundred to a few thousand dollars, the fund raised from the Mongol Rally could set these groups up in the community to start sustainable businesses. Just the fund raising from Baatar Hero could create several of these grants next year, and we only saw 5 projects in one town. I can only imagine what the impact is in aimags across the country from the funds of the entire rally.

After yesterday’s horrible day of driving and final break down, it felt completely worth it today seeing how the rally positively impacts these projects. It was incredibly touching when these women told us how much the rally funds help them and thanked us personally… their parting words, “Tell people at home about our work here”. So, while you may not all be able to do something like the Mongol Rally, you now know the impact that Mercy Corps is making in these people’s lives.

While it seemed our day couldn’t get much better, it was only just beginning. Zaya took us to a great restaurant for lunch, and after a few hours drive one some really nice dirt roads for a change, we found ourselves at the Flaming Cliffs just in time for sunset. The view was stunning… words can’t do it justice and I’m not sure photos can either. Tomorrow morning we’ll wake up early from our nearby Ger camp and look for dinosaur fossils at the foot of the cliffs before heading West to sand dunes and then North to visit some more Mercy Corps projects. If their is time, we may even be able to drive through Karakorum and visit the Erden Zuu monastery on our way back to UB on Friday.

We didn’t see any archery or horseback racing… but we think Muugi’s son pictured above is just about old enough to be a champion racer.  Seriously, little kids just a little older than he is do compete in horse racing… and win.  Just ask our friend Urtaa, he was a champion racer at 5 years old! It was great to see Muugi and Urtaa one last time before Tom and I fly off to London (tomorrow!!).

tugrik

Originally uploaded by autarken

Well, rich in our friends and experiences that is.

We’ve been lucky enough to befriend a former rallier, Chatham, from last year’s rally who lives in Seattle, and he kindly donated some of his Mongolian tugrik to us… then Joe Sabia, a SanFran rallier who also completed the journey last year (in his Fiat Seicento!), sent us his unspent tugrik too!! We are awash in tens of thousands of tugirk. Ok, so it’s a total of about $50, but still it reminds of being a millionaire in Italian lira when I was last there about 10 years ago, before they converted to the Euro.

I can’t wait until we have piles of Uzbek som that may barely buy us a meal!

Big thanks to Joe & Chatham for their donations to the cause.

And check out Joe’s now famous video from last year’s rally, Tupac in Kazakhstan!

Urtaa, who blew our guests away at our kickoff holiday party, played his horse head fiddle at the cultural center founded by His Holiness’ older brother, the late Tagster Rinpoche.

At the heart of Mongolian music and performance art, the morin khuur’s origin is said to be borne from the people’s love of the horse. With a horse head in place of the scroll and both strings and the bow made from horse hair, the morin khuur’s music unmistakably embodies the culture’s connection with Mongolia’s vast landscape.

Check out the article to read more about his visit.

Thanks to the internetz, you can experience more of Urtaa’s beautiful playing:
Click here for a video of Urtaa performing solo and here for his performance with the Mongolian Morin Khuur Ensemble. Both are amazing. Go Urtaa!

The show started out in Ulaanbaatar and the gigantic “Black Market.”  On a busy day 60-100 thousand people shop there for anything from clothing to food.  The animals are slaughtered just on the edge of the city and trucked in to the market where people buy the whole carcass and carry it home over their shoulder.  Sheep’s head is quite a treat, just like a turkey dinner is to Americans, and you’ll conveniently find a whole pile to choose from in the back of the market.  Not so easy to find are vegetables and if you do find them they are smartly pickled for long storage.  In fact, a few pieces of pickles veggies will cost you about $0.40 which is about the cost of an entire sheep’s head!  As this meal is reserved for special occasions and guests, here are a few tips for all my fellow Mongol Rally adventurers if you’re so lucky to be invited to partake in a sheep’s head dinner:

(1) After the hair is burned off, the head will be boiled for a few hours in a pot of root vegetables, which will probably be the only vegetables you’ll see the entire time you’re in Mongolia.

(2) The group elder will divvy up all the goods.

(3) Don’t be a pansy and ask for utensils.  Just dig in with your hands.  The only way to really get all the good bits is by gouging away at the crevices with your fingers.

(4) If offered the eyes, you must eat them both.  You can’t share, it’s really not proper.

(5)  Sorry boys, the palate is always given to girls.  Apparently you’ll really miss out, but you can have some of the tongue.

Mr. Zimmern then took to the Gobi – in a rather comfy looking Toyota Land Cruiser (what the…?) – to experience real country fare.  Upon arriving at a gracious family’s ger he was offered the traditional fermented mare’s milk.  Who needs refrigeration when you have fermentation?  According to Mr. Zimmern, who quite liked this drink,  it tastes like thin sour cream mixed with lemon juice; good to know.  This was followed by snacks made of cheese in just about every form imaginable.  They even had crunchy cheese curds fried in their own fat.  This particular munchie was something soldiers thew in their packs before heading off on a campaign, and it’s still carried by today’s herders for a long day on the steppe.

But even more ingenious was the lunchtime meal preparation.  Okay, this was a little gory, but I found myself marveling at this perfect example of how resourceful the Mongolian people are.  A goat was slaughtered and cleaned out reserving the body cavity.   All the innards were rolled in the goat’s fat and then wrapped and tied with intestine.  The hot stones were placed alternatively with the little packages of goodness inside the body cavity to cook, like an oven.  After the final touch of burning the hair off, the whole goat was opened up and devoured.  Everyone in that ger, including Mr. Zimmern, happily feasted with nothing going to waste.

Of course this isn’t an everyday Mongolian meal.  A family might go 1-2 years before preparing and eating an entire goat in one sitting like this.  But again it is this resourcefulness, even during an apparent day of gluttony, that is so intriguing.  And for a few minutes I traded my Western tendency to be squeamish for the great respect the Mongolians pay to the land, their animals, and to each other.  Their tradition of not having stakes for their gers or heels on their boots so that they don’t pierce the land is both a wise philosophy and a beautiful metaphor.  In a few months I’ll excitedly be packing my bag.  And although I’ll be sure to bring along wet wipes and Lactaid, I will leave my heeled shoes at home.

Click here to watch a few clips of the show.

Chasing the Sea by Tom Bissell was an entertaining and educational read. He adeptly blends history with his own experiences traveling through Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan on his way to report on the Aral Sea disaster. Bissell plays himself as a self deprecating Peace Corps dropout returning to the region on assignment, somewhat haunted by the ghosts of both his own past and the region’s. Now I’m inspired to visit “The Bug Pit” at The Ark in Bukhara (if you want to know, you’ll either have to read the book, do your own research, or wait until we are there to report back on it!). This was a great gift given to me by Kim’s sister, thanks Christina!


The Lost Heart of Asia by Colin Thubron, also a gift, was not quite as compelling as Bissell. Maybe I just didn’t identify with the older, more English Thubron, but what really was missing for me was *why* Thubron was there. It’s a simple well written travelogue, but it’s only reason for being seems to be that it is well written. I know this is non-fiction, but it’s kind of missing a plot that makes it interesting to follow. That said, it is, as I said, very well composed, and gives a detailed sense of the region.

Mongolia: Travels in the Untamed Land by Jasper Becker and In the Empire of Genghis Khan by Stanley Stewart were gifts from Kim’s parents at the outset of our plan to go to Mongolia. I can’t recommend both of these excellent books highly enough. Much as Bissell blends his experience with history, Becker takes the reader west into Mongolia from Beijing as one of the first journalists to cross the border after Mongolia’s democratic revolution in the early 90’s. Stewart comes from the other direction, taking a route similar to the Mongol Rally, from Europe through Central Asia and Russia across Mongolia’s western border… and that’s just the beginning of the journey! He crosses over 1,000 miles of Mongolia on horseback, also weaving history into his narrative. Both of these books left me with a better understanding of Mongolian culture, increasing my anticipation for departure.

Long Way Round is both a book and a DVD boxed set that is pretty much required material for every Mongol Rally team. I am sure we have all been inspired by Ewan McGregor’s and Charlie Boorman’s fantastic trek from London through Mongolia, eventually to New York, all by motorcycle. I think the inaugural Mongol Rally happened the same year as the Long Way Round, so I don’t think one was necessarily inspired by the other… but following the same route, with motorcycle engines as big as the cars in the Mongol Rally, and Ewan and Charlie’s fundraising work for UNICF throught the trip, there is much for Rally teams to identify with. You’ll be hard pressed to find a team who hasn’t watched or read this influential story.

In the Footsteps of Marco Polo is another great book/TV combo. The production on the video content is not as well funded or well produced as Long Way Round, but Denis Belliveau and Francis O’Donnell pioneered travel in this region when most of the former Soviet Republics were *just* opening up their borders, and they documented this with barely any budget on consumer grade equipment in 1994-95. The pair retrace the supposed route of Marco Polo from Venice to Mongolia and back, taking them through war torn Afghanistan, by boat throughout Southeast Asia, and through Persia as some of the first Americans ever to receive tourist visas for post-revolution Iran. This two year epic journey is beautifully captured in the companion book to the PBS documentary. The program doesn’t appear to be available on DVD yet, but if you can’t find it on your local public television station it’s available online here.

And of course, no travel research would be complete without a Lonely Planet library! We’re constantly referencing the following:

These are all highly recommended on the above Amazon.com links, if my recommendation isn’t enough, but be careful… when you are done reading all of this you will be packing your bags for next year’s Mongol Rally!

This Sunday marks Tsagaan Sar, the Mongolian New Year.  To celebrate, our new friend and rally mechanic adviser, Muugi, from Seattle Mongols put together a traditional wrestling tournament at the nearby Bitter Lake Community Center last weekend.  With a little help from our friend Glenn Bell, we acquired a wrestling mat from a local high school to help Muugi put on the tournament. 

The local Mongolian community turned out to celebrate with traditional music and treats before the tournament began.  Urtaa treated us again by playing some morin khuur before he joined in with the wrestling.  Tom wrestled too, and represented team Baatar Hero well.  He went up against the eventual champion of the day… which means that he did hit the floor, but not before impressing everybody by holding his own for several minutes! Way to go Tom!

We got to meet Urtaa’s family and got a lot of advice on our route from several people… including these kids who thought we were crazy.

Video coming as soon as I rip it from the camcorder.

We can’t thank everybody enough for their generous support.  These donations, both financial and in kind goods, along with all the enthusiasm and energy in the room touched us personally and provided us with a boost of confidence to continue working hard to make this endeavor a reality.

With the help of The Snow Leopard Trust, as well as items donated by the local Mongolian community, we held a silent auction which proved very popular. Crafts handmade throughout Central Asian republics from Mongolia to Kazakhstan were auctioned off with proceeds benefiting not just us, but also going to The Snow Leopard Trust which is protecting the endangered snow leopard in that region.

We were especially excited to present the Mercy Corps story and talk about them at our fund raising table because a few people from their local office came down after their own holiday party and joined us for the night. Donations for Mercy Corps have continued to pour in through our FirstGiving page after the event!

The Morin Khuur performances by Urtaa and his student Robert were a highlight of the evening.  They played both traditional Mongolian music and contemporary pieces that everybody was more familiar with.

This first event was a huge success by any measure.  We had so much fun and can’t wait for our next event.  With everybody’s help we are well on our way to Mongolia! Check out more photos of the event at Flickr.

See you at our next event!

- Team Baatar Hero

Alcoholism in Mongolia // Current