Metropolis

It's time for another three post marathon. These are, hopefully, more painful to write than to read so lets get to it. My dad just left after a 12 day trip. He got some great stuff for his website that should be up in a couple weeks. I'm trying to get caught up. We went to Amarbayasgalant monastery in a Russian Jeep and all over Arkhangai in a Toyota Prado (smaller land cruiser). It was definitely worth the extra money. We stayed two nights at a ger camp started by Rob Shore and his counterpart. I was going to book us a ger to ger trip, but he was most interested in shooting - IOW: photographing - monks. I'm glad we didn't have an actual translator with us because it could have brought up some painful memories.

Before we left for Arkhangai, we got to compete in the weekly pub quiz at Dave's and I got to go to a new club to see off a large group of M16s who were leaving early. Metropolis was a really big, nice place, but the guys were also really aggressive even by Mongolian standards and I won't be back. I was able to do a series of self portraits with most of the soon to depart and I'm happy with how they turned out. Check out the pictures.

Anyway, keep reading down for two more new posts and check back later to hear stories from my dad's trip. Believe me. There are plenty.

Dude, you're getting a deel

Before I left UB, I went to the market to pick up some material for a new deel. (side note - this word is pronounced like the computer brand which once prompted a question from my mother about why I needed a new computer in the first place.)

Nasaa's friend, who also made my last deel, was able to have it ready in time for Naadam. I got a new hat to go with it, and yes, Mongols do where cowboy hats as well as fedoras and sometimes baseball caps with deels. Naadam itself was typically sedate. There was a group of fans watching all the wresting and the end of horse races, but I didn't even see any archery. I did get some pictures of gar shagai where men flick sheep ankle bones and try to knock over tiles across a small playing field. All in all, I wore my deel for a few hours the first day. Oh well, there's always Halloween.

You Tube

After I got back from Tsenkher with Nasaa, I got a text message from my friend Danny asking why I wasn't up in Erdenet getting ready for the tubing trip down the Selenge river. I wasn't planning on going on the trip which had been talked about since our first summer. I'm not much of an outdoors type (I prefer calling it "between-doors") but I had just enjoyed my first non-work related trip to the countryside in a while and wanted to get away again. Plus, work was really slow and the water and power would be out for most of the week anyway. What was I going to miss?

So, I bought the last bus ticket, told Nasaa and my office that I'd be away for a week, packed a bag, and thought about buoyancy. After a 12 hour drive to UB, a night on a friend's floor, and another 7 hour drive to Erdenet, I was in the market haggling over the price of inner tubes. We gathered supplies - beer - and drove to the soum, home to Colin one of the trip's architects, that would be our embarkation point. We camped next Colin's ger and began inflating the tubes the next day. One Mongol, who had completed a similar trip from upstream on the same river, would accompany us. He had secured three huge tractor tires which we would use to make a raft. Check out the pictures.

We had intended to travel up to 200 km and reach Sukhbaatar soum near the Russian border, but that proved overly optimistic. We ended up going 70 km, as the crow flies, in three full days of tubing. The river was mostly shallow and winding so it would have taken us over a week for the whole trip. We had already lost five out of our original 13 members due to bad skin reaction caused by our chosen Chinese inner tubes. In the end, we stopped 10 km from the nearest soum and were lucky to encounter a group of farm workers who agreed to drive us into Darkhan where many were scheduled to take part in Peace Corps training. I got to see all the new trainees and dry out before heading back to site. It was something I won't soon forget. Thanks to M17 Hanna Kim for providing most of the pictures in my Flickr set.