A little glimpse of Mongolian culture

The Mongolians are very, very proud of their heritage. People kept telling me about the names for different parts of horse equipment, giving me small bills so that I would remember the famous people depicted on them, and the government put up some shows so that the soldiers from all those different country would come away with a broadened knowledge of Mongolian culture. This woman is doing a fascinating snake dance (by the way, many Mongolian women are very beautiful):


I had heard about horse violins before, but this cello version was even cooler:


Definitely my favorite was this concert, with two women dancing to a throat song, acting entranced. It was very, very impressive.


And another dancer:


Finally, an archer shooting the traditional bone bow.


.

"Yurts and ponies"

The two top questions I get now that I came back from Mongolia are: "Do people live in yurts?" and "Do they ride around on ponies?" Well, no and no. But also yes and yes.

"Yurt" is a Russian word, and it's simply not polite to call their tents that. In Mongolian they are called "ger," pronounced with a strong "g," a short rolling "r," and an almost non-existent "i" that just barely bridges the two consonants.


They ones that are inhabited (not for storage) have stoves, a television, and very often a solar panel or two. Many of them have old motorcycles next to them, a wooden strucure for tying horses, etc.


On the inside there are usually Buddhist altars with pictures of Gods and family members, little prayer wheels, etc. The owner of this ger is not religious (the communists fought Lamaism early on, destroyed temples, and executed thousands of monks), so he has a bunch of pictures and horse riding medals. The container in the middle is full of airag, an alcoholic drink made from fermented mare's milk.


The little ger is the camp store. The big, ornate one in the back is the camp's recreation tent, and the miscellaneous stuff on the ground is another ger, which the storekeeper has taken apart to go back to Ulaan Baatar. It is easy to see in this picture how portable the whole thing is.


Many ger are built in semi-permanent clusters with hard corrals for wintering horses, gear storage, and hay. In this picture, my friend SGT Dirkes gets on a horse, and he guy with a yellow belt is wearing a traditional del.





Which brings me to the ponies. In Mongolia, they're horses (moir), and they're not small. People take offense when they hear that. They are really proud of their horses.

The Mongolian ministry of Defense convinced some local herders to wrangle some horses in the cantonment area. It was a real treat, and I got to watch the guys herd and catch horses fairly close. This picture shows the Mongolian lasso, at the end of a pole.


This man is trying to catch a horse from the ground:


Once the horse is caught, it is submitted by a man on the ground who twists its ears, and ridden bareback by a man (a teenager, often), who either falls or tires the horse.


Everyone in Mongolian horse families, young or old, rides horses.


The kids are put on horses pretty early, and by the time they're ten years old they'll be galloping around the hills.

.

Mongolia post #3: wildlife

I was largely clueless as to the identity of just about all the plants and wildlife I saw there, but I was sure impressed. This is a huge grasshopper that was common in the area (Tuv Aimag, Altanboulag Soum). This grasshopper looks like a specimen I saw in the Mongolian museum of natural history, which had two labels (!!!): Deracantha onos and Bradyporus multituberculatus. I think it is the latter. Well, I got some feedback - Deracantha it is - Thanks!


There was a lot of trapping activity by the locals in the area. These kids are looking on in glee as their dad prepares a fairly common local species, the Siberian marmot Marmota sibirica:


Birdwatching on foot in the high steppes of Mongolia is a little bit like pelagic bird watching in the middle of the ocean on a surfboard - not very effective... But I was able to tally about twenty species and caught glimpses of many, many other birds that well, I don't really know what they were...

common kestrel
black-eared kitehill pigeon
rook
Daurian jackdaw
red-billed chough
carrion crow
Eurasian hobby
black-billed magpie
domestic pigeon
Mongolian lark
Eurasian tree sparrowbarn swallow

demoiselle cranegolden eagle
northern wheatear
common raven
isabelline wheatear
great-horned owl (great observation while climbing)pied wheatear
white wagtail
Daurian partridge
horned lark

Mongolia post #2: hiking

The hiking was incredible around the training area. I was permitted to go hiking after the end of the training day, as long as I organized a group hike with other soldiers. Of course, pictures won't do it justice because like Patagonia the place is much too large to fit within any snapshots, but here are a few things anyway:

First of all, I found a 400ft high slanted slab of marble which made for great and relatively safe rock climbing practice:


This is the view from the top edge of the slab, with Sergeant Dirkes passing through a notch:


On top of most mountains, and along many roads, there are obo, a sort of cairn which have a pole in them, with some Tibetan prayer flags attached to the pole. Whenever we come by one, it is customary to walk around them three times and add a stone to the pile.


Most striking was the vastness of the terrain, so that I was only able to get anywhere after work by running for an hour or two at a time. I felt perfectly safe, since the people there are extremely friendly and always willing to take in a guest. As a result of the size of the place, almost everyone travels by horseback or on motorcycle, and sometimes in 4X4 cars.

.

Training in Mongolia

Mongolia was fantastic! In fact, I cannot just do one blog post for it so I will do as I did earlier for Torres del Paine - in a few themed posts.

This one is about the training, as the header very explicitly indicates. But I was not really able to take pictures during the training itself for one simple reason - the training was very good, and I didn't have the leisure to go around playing photographer.

First of all - I had been told our platoon would be the trainer platoon. That was not in fact true. The trainers were selected from each participating army - Indian, Nepalese, Mongolian, Thai and US. There was then one trainee platoon from each army, and a lot of Mongolian support. This system worked very well, and all the soldiers were very professional.

This Mongolian officer is telling us during an After Action Review that our Cordon and search method is "bad - very bad." "I made a list" - he says - "of all the things that went right, and all the things that went wrong. Eight things went right, and fourteen things went wrong. Very bad."



The Indian Army was very good - their officers are very proficient, and they have a lot of experience in places like Cashmere.


As for the Nepalese, they have a lot of UN experience in places like Haiti and DRC Congo. They also like to sing and dance, with drums in the tents at night, and with AK-47 magazines if they are stuck in formation long enough.



Many of the UN peacekeeping / peace enforcing TTPs were very similar to US army TTPs. Convoy operations, for example, were just like Iraq but with a blue flag and a different set of rules of engagement:


The range was fun, and I had time to take pictures there. Here is our motor sergeant reading up on the AK-47 and RPK before coming up to shoot:


And I really enjoyed being a safety and trainer for the M4 carbine live fire range. Here, SPC Thompson helps a Mongolian soldier safely clear a feeding malfunction.


The Mongolian army also had shoot the Dragunov sniper rifle. I know, that's not really UN related, but it is a very nice weapon so I was glad I got to shoot it.


The lanes for this exercise were: convoy, checkpoint, aid relief distribution, patrol, cordon and search (contraband interdiction), and disarmement. This is a picture of our platoon with a Mongolian contingent of role players and trainers, and a Nepalese officer, on a UN color BTR-60:

.