Winter is coming ....

It's now about -10 degrees outside - very sunny, very bright but definitely very very nippy. I go out with my scarf wrapped round my face as my nose and cheeks really hurt after about 20 mins.

This week I went up to Darkhan, which is about 3 hours drive north of UB. The road is really well paved - probably because there are some mines up there. Darkhan itself is a really nice town - or two towns, Old Darkhan and New Darkhan - and its power station and factories are behind a hill, so that you don't see them from the town.

The hills round the town are really nice for walking in. I had a great walk on my last day, round a low ridge to the east and south of the town, watching the sun set. At one point a car left the road and drove up the dirt track towards me - it parked right next to me at the top of the hill, and 4 policemen got out, not looking very happy to see me. However it transpired that they had come to pray at the "ovoo", the big cairn at the top of the hill. I moved away to give them privacy; they walked round the cairn 3 times, murming prayers, and then scattered vodka on the stones. These cairns were originally built by shamans, as a big pile of stones holding a bare wooden mast that points to the sky. This signalled to the gods that the shamen were there, that this was a place where earth and sky could meet. However the ovoos have now been incorporated into Buddhist rituals, and are often now covered in prayer flags and offerings - rice and sweet food, empty vodka bottles, ornaments, scribbled messages ....

Sunny Choibalsan

Choibalsan looks like most other Soviet-built towns - lots of apartment blocks from the 1970s, all of which haven't really been renovated since they were built, so all are falling apart slowly .... But there is also the ger district, on the north side of town away from the river, where people from the countryside have moved to be next to the town, and put up their gers and built a wooden fence round them to create a yard, or "hasha".

The market, on the east side of town, is where you buy all the things the people from the countryside come in to sell - meat (of all animals, all bits) (including I'm told horses' heads with they eyeballs still in ...); "white food" - cheeses, milk, butter, curds; tools and scrap metal; fuel - firewood, scavenged coal, dried dung; apples, cranberries, pine nuts, tomatoes .... Also lots of stalls where women sell dried goods they bought wholesale - pasta, rice, biscuits etc, and beautifully arranged fruit and vegetables from China.

Volunteering in Choibalsan

And here are some of my fellow Choibalsanites!

(Back row standing)
Andie - Kindergarten methodologist (UK & Africa)
Yoke - English language treacher trainer (Netherlands)
Me - Kindergarten Methodoligist (Dundee)
Marteen - Hospital Manager (Netherlands)

(Front row)
Angus - Hospital Manager (Lewis)
Yann - Horticulture trainer & French language teacher (France)
Sarah - English language teacher (U.S.A.)

This photo was taken on one of our Sunday walks. Here we are at the big "ovoo" above Choibalsan. Joke's dog is probably taking the photo.

In the 20th century, the town was also the site of a major Russian military base, built to help Russia protect its territories from China. Around 1000,000 troops were stationed there; they pulled out, with no warning, literally overnight in 1991. One kindergarten teacher reports arranging to go to a Russian friend's birthday party the following day; but when next morning she arrived at the house, it was deserted. The site where the barracks were is now a wasteland of rubble, with a very dilapitaded statue of Lenin gazing out over it all. If you rake around, you can find Russian army buttons, mugs, shoes .... However the site has been well and truly plundered for anything re-usable by local people. At the cemetery, the railings have gone, and the wooden grave markers have been taken for firewood, though the circles of stones marking the graves remain inviolate.

Choibalsan

There has been a settlemet on the site of what is now Choibalsan for hundreds of years. The Kherlen River appears on any map of Mongolia, even though it is very shallow, and only a few meters wide. The settlement was a trading post on one of the many routes between the Far East and the Middle East & Russia; Chinggis Khan was elected king of all Mongol tribes on its banks.

Now it has around 30,000 people, including many Buriats, Chinese & other tribes who come to trade. The market is on the east side of town, past the Russian-built blocks of flats. There are many kindergartens. I am working in Kindergarten #14, which was the last gift of the Russian army to the town.

The road east ....

At dawn on 24th September, I left UB in the VSO jeep, heading east. Chukka, the VSO driver, was also taking Tsolmon and Urnaa, VSO programme officers who were researching placements and giving workshops.

For the first hour or so, the road was paved and the journey very smooth - we passed beautiful mountains with clusters of gers on their slopes, villages surrounded by wooden pallisades, and occasional mines, but the landscape was clearly becoming more and more empty. After a couple of hours, the tarmac ran out and we were driving on worn tracks across the ground, with Chukka our driver weaving right and left to find the most even ground. The land really is very very dry - our vehicle created a tremendous dust, and when (very very occasionally) a vehicle came close to us going in the other direction, we were blinded by the dust from their tyres. However it was amazing watching the landscape slowly change: the mountains became lower and further away, the rivers dwindled, the predominant colours shades of brown ....

At lunchtime we stopped at Ondorkhaan in a cafe. It is a collection of buildings and huts, with a population of (I'm guessing) around 2000, but with at least one school. Mongolia is a very "young country" - half of the people are below 25 years old. Anyway, we stopped just long enough to eat, and then got back in the car.

I really enjoyed the journey - it gave me a real sense of where I was, and how the climate really affects how the land looks and how people live. Also, we saw steppe eagles, a vulture, wild camels, and as the sun fell, gazelles. It was Tsolmon who spotted them first - they seemed to just rise out of the ground in front of us, probably around a thousand of them. Amazing.

We reached Choibalsan around 9pm, after 15 hours driving.