Never mind the Peace Prize, the Nobel economics folks did a great job, I learned recently from Deepali, by nominating Grasslands as the co-winner of this year’s economics prize. I’m thrilled about this. Now no one can ever again ask me why I like grasslands so much. Forests, I’d like to point out, never won anything. Actually, the prize went to Elinor Ostrom, the first woman to win the economics prize, and Oliver Williamson. But Ostrom’s most important work did center on comparing grassland degradation in Russia, China, and Mongolia. From Reuters:

When China and Russia imposed agricultural collectives, the grasslands became more heavily degraded than in Mongolia, where nomads moved herds with the seasons. When China later privatized some grasslands the land became even more degraded.

In other words, Ostrom showed that Mongolians (and other communities/traditional stewards of land) know what they’re doing–a fact borne out by Mongolia’s status as an oasis amid Asia’s surrounding environmental disasters. One interesting thing to me is how both Russia and China brought a very settled-agriculture mindset (the mindset of Han Chinese or Western Russian) to the arid steppe, only to see it backfire. I’ve recently been reading about Russia’s Virgin Lands Campaign in Kazakhstan, and the parallels with America’s Dust Bowl are striking. Russia plowed up most of Kazakhstan’s northern steppe for cotton. Then all the soil blew away and the Aral Sea dried up.

I don’t know what Ostrom addresses in her book, but I’d like to read it. If you really love grasslands too, you can also read about Inner Mongolia vs. Mongolia land use in The End of Nomadism, by David Sneath and Caroline Humphrey. My friend Jon and I recently officially declared it the world’s “most excitingly-titled, yet dullest book,” but it is informative.

In the meantime, congratulations grasslands, women, and Mongolia!

Louis Vuitton held the grand opening for their new store in Ulaanbaatar, Mongolia, on Friday. For opening night, they erected a new building in the shape of a giant Louis Vuitton gift box in the middle of Sukhbaatar Square. Sukhbaatar, by the way, is a hero known for kicking off Mongolia’s Communist era. Inside the gift/building, they had an awesome party. The theme was “nomad chic.” Everyone who’s anyone in Mongolia was there, drinking and dancing the night away. I wasn’t invited.

Nomad Chic, Nomad Sheep, but still no McDonald's

Whew. Worst blogger of all time. But I’m back now, and ready to try again. A lot’s happened since I last posted, and I’ve been a lot of places—to China and the Gobi Desert with my parents, to eastern Mongolia with a wildlife biologist doing a survey, and to Central Mongolia on my own. So, lots of stories.

First off, the Camel Hair Brothers. I was just thinking about these guys today, because it’s getting cold in Mongolia, and I’ve been wearing my own camel hair cardigan around (thanks mom!). This story starts, like every other story in Mongolia, with a really, really, really long car ride. Mongolia is a country twice the size of Texas, with a little under 1,000 miles of paved roads. Add to that lots of breakdowns and what you’ve got are journeys of a kind not seen in America since the days of the Oregon Trail. Most of the trips I’ve taken have been to Choibalsan, in the East, which is only 14 hours away. It’s when you head West that things get interesting. The time it takes to travel between the capital, Ulaanbaatar, and Bayan Olgii, the westernmost province, is 60 hours. 60 hours! And the way they do these trips is non-stop. No hotels. There are two drivers who alternate, but no one to alternate with you the rider, crammed into a physically impossible space, watching the sun rise and set repeatedly outside the bus.

I’ve never done the trip to Bayan Olgii, but I have made trips exceptionally long by international standards. I’ve learned to enjoy them. Setting out on one feels like setting out on an ocean voyage. Mongols dress up for the trips, and bring all sorts of stuff that they’ve bought in the city and are taking back to the countryside: motorcycle hubcaps, bikes, medicine, furniture, mattresses—you name it. During summer there was a lot of airag (fermented mare’s milk) on the buses. On one trip I took, the whole middle aisle was filled up with plastic jugs of the stuff, and we would stop now and again to have parties with people in towns we passed.

One trip I took was a 28 hour shot to Zavkhan province in Central-West Mongolia. I stayed there for a few days and then started heading back to UB. Zavkhan is out of the way, so there wasn’t a real, state-sanctioned bus. On the morning of the day I wanted to leave I headed to the market in Zavkhan’s provincial capital, where I found two guys who were going to drive their van back to UB. Anyone who wanted to join was welcome, for a price. I signed up, and waited. Ten hours later they called me and said they were ready to go.

Their vehicle was a jungle green Russian Furgon van. Inside I found twice as many passengers as seats, a purple ceiling, and black lights. Most surprising, though, was that all the upholstery was camel hair, and the drivers, who turned out to be brothers, had themselves changed into matching camel hair sweaters. From the rearview mirror hung a pair of miniature boxing gloves.

I found a seat in the back, and then we took off, but not yet for UB. First we had to do some errands. We picked up more and more people, stacking them tetris-style on top of each other. We dropped in for food and vodka at gers. We drove out to a strange industrial part of town, and stopped for a half hour for no apparent reason. I sat in the back and looked at the Soviet-era ruins, noticing, among other things, a full-sized elm tree growing out of a roof above a mural of a beautiful Communist woman holding up a sheath of wheat. We left an hour and a half after I joined the group. I’ve never been so uncomfortable, physically, but everyone was in wonderfully high spirits—laughing and singing and yelling goodbye to friends as we passed them on the street. Finally, we left the city.

Near midnight we stopped in the town of Tosontsengel for food. I was sitting in the corner of a little restaurant, talking with a guy I’d met during the ride, when a gigantic, very drunk man—a man not in our group—came over and started shaking my hand. By that time I knew from experience that this was not a good situation. Every drunk handshake seems to eventually end in drunk aggression, and he wasn’t letting go. So I was glad when the Camel Hair Brothers, who saw what was going on, called me over to sit by them. Of course, the drunk guy followed me, but soon he noticed the door to the kitchen and began trying to shove his way past a waitress to get inside. Before I knew what happened, the Camel Hair Brothers were up and a full-fledged two-on-one brawl was underway. I remembered the boxing gloves hanging from their rearview mirror.

It seemed like a good time to leave the restaurant so I went outside and stood with a few other passengers. The town we were in consisted of one dirt road lined with wood frame buildings, like Dodge City done in Cyrillic. I thought about On the Road, which I’d been reading, mostly because I didn’t have any other books. The first time I read On the Road, in high school, I loved it because the adventures in it seemed completely unimaginable. In college, I hated it. This time, though, I was reading it while catching share vans and sometimes hitchhiking and enjoying it because I could relate to some of the scenes—especially “the greatest ride in my life…a truck, with about six or seven boys sprawled out on it, and the drivers, two young blond farmers from Minnesota, were picking up every single soul they found on that road….I ran up, said ‘Is there room?’ They said, “Sure, hop on, ‘sroom for everybody.’” Soon, the drunk guy came flying out of the restaurant horizontally. Then the Camel Hair Brothers emerged, and we took off.

So much for buying a horse. I went out to Arkhangai Aimag, about ten hours West of Ulaanbaatar, this week with all the necessaries—saddle and tack, cooking stove, dried meat—only to find that the nomhu (calm) horses were an eighty dollar car ride away and the horses nearby were “soliotai” (crazy). Apparently, horses this time of year are fat on good grass, and want to relax, rather than be ridden by a fake cowboy. I’ll try again later, the idea being to cover some ground solo, travel the old-fashioned way, and hopefully get to know the countryside life a little more—something that’s proven pretty difficult to do on the cheap.

Anyway, it wasn’t a total failure. I got to leave all my horse stuff with a friend of a friend, so I don’t have to take it back, and did something I’d been wanting to do for a while: struck out for a hike in the countryside with no particular plan. Mongolia’s one of the few places I know of where you can camp pretty much anywhere, so all I had to do was pick up my bag and walk out of the town of Tsetserleg.

I headed north for what looked like a pass between two big, rocky hills. For a while I followed a dirt road, which soon became a cattle trail. After the cattle trail I followed a creek up into the hills, where I ran into a group of six picnickers fully drunk. As I walked by, they all stared at me in silence. But when I greeted them in Mongolian they smiled and waved me over. I offered some Nutella and they gave me some dried curds (the ultimate shepherd’s food—it’s rock hard but supposedly quenches your thirst). One of the men offered me a beer, but I had places to go. By late afternoon I’d made it up to the top of the pass, where I ran into a few, definitely soliotai horses. Beyond the pass, there was another mountain, so I climbed that, too, finding at the top a huge rock shaped like a staircase leading to a balcony, which I also climbed.

In the distance, I could see Tsetserleg. I pulled out my topographical map, trying to plan my next move. Part of my idea in taking the hike was that I would be able to see whether I really could get around with a topographical map and a compass. The answer is no. I was sitting atop the highest point for miles, but still had no idea where I was. I hadn’t brought much water with me, so I wasn’t sure what to do. But I figured I might as well go over the next ridge.

There I found a grove of pine trees, filled with small gray and white birds. The light was fading; the ground was covered in a thick layer of moss, rotting tree trunks, and spider webs. I’d attracted a good following of flies. The birds called back and forth with a steady oooo whooo. Altogether, the spot felt more like a rainforest than Mongolia. I climbed up on a rock and saw that the mountain I was on dropped off into another forested valley, on the far side of which I saw a stretch of steppe, a ger, and animals. If I could make it there, I knew I’d find at least a creek and maybe a well (I was also testing out some chlorine tablets I’d brought).

But first, down through the forest, stumbling most of the way. When I stepped on something that sounded like a flock of birds flushing right behind me, I was reminded that, when you’re alone, forests are spooky places. I got out my spoon, having once read that Mongolian wolves are afraid of metal. Finally, I hit a cattle trail, which widened into several trails, and then a road that broke out onto the steepe. Sheep grazed nearby. A squatting herder watched me pass. The valley was filled with gers.

I crossed a small creek and approached a group of people clustered around a corral.
Again, they stared, but again they all started smiling when I said hello. I asked a woman there if I could help her milk her cow, which turned out to be udderly difficult (sorry). Then I asked one of the old men if I could borrow a little water. Sure, he said, and we went over to their well, which consisted of a piece of board over a hole. A group of kids joined, all striding along beside with an air of great importance. One of the kids dragged up a bucket, and helped me refill. We sat for a while talking about usual countryside matters. How’s the weather? How are your animals? A young man stopped by and said that, really, I should buy a motorcycle instead of a horse.

I was by now confused about how to get back to Tsetserleg. Fortunately, the people at the well were able to point me in the direction of the main road between Tsetserleg and the next town. I walked towards it, passing herds of horses, and remembering why I was so caught up with the idea of buying a horse. There are few things so beautiful as a mare slowly circling to keep her foal out of your view as you pass. I climbed a small mountain, hoping to put some elevation between myself any drunks for the night, and pitched my tent in a small stand of trees.

The next day I set off early. Based on the road, I had a pretty good idea about how to get back to Tsetserleg, so I decided to take a shortcut over the mountains. Terrible idea. Mountains behind mountains, and all huge (if only I understood topographical maps). By the time I neared the peak I thought I needed to cross to get home, I was exhausted, and had to sit for a while to catch my breath. In the forest above, I saw something moving. I struck out. I don’t think I’ve ever seen so many wildflowers, or so many bugs. Each step set off an explosion of grasshoppers and moths. Suddenly, a badger sprang out of the undergrowth and tore off through the woods. Then a pair of horses, eyeing me warily. Whoever they belonged to must have been looking for them. They were definitely off the beaten path.

Finally, I reached the peak, very unhappy that I still couldn’t see Tsetserleg. I climbed up on top of a rock, and turned in a circle. Yes! Tsetserleg. Just barely visible below. It was all downhill, or so I thought, from there.

New pictures at right.

Though I’m back in civilization, I’m still busy. So, in the meantime, Mongolian pop music…

Probably the most famous song in Mongolia. On long bus trips, it’s required to sing along. “Mother Making [Delicious] Tea.”

Altan Urag. Just generally great. Note Alien horse head fiddle.

Actually a Korean group, but watched in gers throughout the country.

The Lemons. The song is a Strokes rip-off extraordinaire, but that’s 1980s Ulaanbaatar in the video.

Plugging myself now…A story I wrote about winter food in Mongolia, with pics by Brandt and myself, made the Atlantic Online’s home page. There will be more about other seasons. The story is here.

For the next couple of months: