We started the day with a brisk walk up one of the canyons
to the north of the town, to enjoy the feeling of being surrounded by trees and
admiring the steep granite cliffs around us. On the way we also saw a spring,
where some of the locals had come to fill up their jugs of water, and a herd of
yaks! I thought yaks were confined to Tibet ,
but have now learned that they are ubiquitous in Central
Asia . They are a square looking animal, with a very angular rump,
a straight back, and an even curtain of hair. One in every herd seems to be white
(just like the famous black sheep among lambs), and the males sport viciously
sharp horns (fortunately they also seem to be a peaceful animal that doesn’t
mind people).
After our lovely walk we visited the provincial museum,
which has a very fine collection of musical instruments and children games.
Among the latter is the ancient game of knuckle bones. As the name implies, it
is played with the knuckle bones of goats, dyed green and red. You take four
bones and roll them on the table; depending on the way each bone lands you have
either a horse, a camel, a sheep, or a goat. From there on it is a lot of
poker, where the intent is to make pairs, threes, or fours. Each of the animals
has a different value, with horse being the highest.
We are beginning to feel a craving for fresh vegetables, so
we spent quite a bit of time looking for a vegetables store that Zoe remembered
seeing the day before. No success. Instead she bought a bag of dry milk curds
that are a very popular snack in Mongolia . They are very good, with
a slight fermented taste.
Today promised to be a hard driving day. According to our
maps only half of the way was paved, and we were going over a major mountain
pass, so we were braced to slow progress and bad trails. It proved to be
nothing of the above. At least 80% of the way was recently paved, and the rest
was newly graded decomposed granite that was as close to pavement as we could
have wished for.
The landscape is monumental and beautiful. We have left
below us the endless, barren steppe, and are now weaving our way to canyons
where some sort of pine trees drape the slopes with bold strokes of evergreen.
There is also lots of running water tumbling down the valley floors. And there
are flowers. Endless expanses of deep gold flowers, which on closer inspection
have a gossamer of pistils surrounded by a crown of delicate petals.
The trip is now taking shape. Our initial idea was to take
the northern route across the mountains, where we figured there was enough to
entertain ourselves even if we didn’t make it very far. Now it looks like following
the 48º N parallel we might be able to make the Altai Mountains in a couple of
days, which will give us two days of hiking in this famed mountain region (and
three days of hard driving along what is reportedly a boring but reasonable
route through Hovd, Altai, and Bayankhongor).
There also seems to be definite pattern to the geology of
the countryside. We are seeing a lot of granite, with now and then a screen of
high grade metamorphic rocks. Also, about 100 km from Tsesterleg we came across
the gorge of the Chuluut river, which has been formed by the river as it cuts
down through a thick sequence of basalt flows. Basalts? Really? As far as all
three of us can remember we are nowhere near a convergent margin, so they must
be related to a spot of intraplate volcanism. Or are we close to the suture
between the Asian plate and the China
subplate?
We followed the lava flows for about 30 km to a small cinder
cone located along the north shore of the Great White
Lake
So the route we followed was from Tsetserleg to Tariat,
Ikh-Uul, and arrived in Tosontsengel by 5 pm. It is a handsome town (all
Mongolian towns have the distinction of having very colorful roofs) even though
a bit dusty, but it is clearly off the beaten path, and the accommodations at
the Skyline Hotel are rather spartan and run down. Right by the hotel, in the
rather dusty central park, several men were having archery practice in
preparation for the Naran Festival in mid July (which all across Mongolia
includes horse races, archery, and wrestling matches). Our presence was
immediately noticed, and welcomed, and everyone laughed when we joined in the
traditional form of admiration for a good shot (a raising and dropping of the
arms in exultation). The only thing that was a little unnerving, is that there
was a cluster of men and children right around the target, to judge the quality
of the attempt, and to retrieve the arrows. The arrows have blunt points, but I
could just see one of the kids getting hit by a stray arrow (I can imagine the
horror of an American mother witnessing such an event!)
We finished the day with a hike to one of the local hills,
which overlooks the town and the beautiful meandering Ider river (actually the
confluence of three major rivers).
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