Sain baina!

Greetings from Mongolia, the land of the blue Sky! 10 days ago I arrived by train in Ulan Bator, the capital. It was just the time of the Naadaam festival, the biggest national holiday with traditional competitions in horse racing, wrestling and arrow shooting. I was most impressed by the colourful traditional costumes, which are not only worn on holidays and which are still common in the country side.

The city is home for almost half of the 2,3 million population of this huge country with one of the lowest population densities in the world: 1,5 persons per square kilometer. Mongolia is populated by 15 times more livestock than humans, although this winter some 4,5 millions of animals died because of a very severe winter, that’s around one 10th of the whole livestock.

Many herders have lost all of their animals. This led to still more immigration to the capital, most of them living in the sourrounding Ger districts in traditional felt yurts under very poor conditions or even in the underground kanalisation system of the city. Their only hope are donations from the Red Cross and some national help, which is fed from the countries most important income: copper and gold mining. Among copper and gold, the most important export goods are wool, cashmere and leather.

The poverty in the capital is also expressed by many pick pockets, which try to grab (or even just cut off) your camera or wallet in every crowded place. Thanks to courragous Mongolians I still have all my items ;-)

I was offered to join a week trip to the Gobi desert in the south of the country together with 4 young Koreans, which sounded so interesting, that I already on my second day left for the desert. This was my first contact with the desert and I liked it very much. But you must know that only some 3 % of the Gobi are covered with sand dunes, the rest is more or less hilly steppe and lowlands with some oases and pitoresque canions, some so deep that they are ice filled also during summer.

We had a lot of fun together, so I still joined the Koreans for a two days horse trip to the nearby Terelji National park with its rock formations, hills and larch forests.

At the moment I am waiting to go for a 6 days horse trip in central Mongolia around White Lake near Tsetserleg, which is known as the horse breeders paradise of Mongolia and continue from there by hiking the mountainous area with beautiful lakes and some old volcanoes until I take the plane back home to Switzerland on the 10th of August.

Yours,

“Edshea”, (my Mongolian name, meaning mother ;-)