Hustai National Park - Ger Life

Around 9 AM my guide came to pick me up. Her name is Mugunchimeg Mir. A delightful young lady who speaks excellent English and is the best guide for photographers in her group. She leads me to a waiting car and it’s off to the countryside. This is my first real experience driving on these horrendous roads so I know I’m in for a numbing treat. What no one told me is that the agency decided to save money and got me a small car with driver rather than the promised SUV. There was nothing I could do but endure the discomfort of bouncing around in the back seat with my legs on one side of the car and my body on the other. The air was crisp and clear and it looked to be a beautiful day. We raced around town like we were late for the altar and then settled on to very rough roads in the countryside so the car was going side to side as the driver tried to avoid the biggest potholes. My head hit the roof only three times, pretty good, huh? Remember, this is the same head that bounced off a pole as I was congratulating myself on my Buddhist temple photos only 15 hours earlier.
In driving out to the Hustai National Park where I would stay for two nights in a ger, I realized that Mongolians all have a serious case of Uromysistisis. If you don’t know what that is, you haven’t been paying attention to Jerry Seinfeld. Check out this clip… http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OG6b7KJ1Ah0 (You will have to cut and paste to watch this.)
Mongolians favorite sport seems to be pulling over everywhere and going to the bathroom out in the great outdoors, right next to the road with cars passing closely. I figured it must be the Uromysitisis affecting them.
So we kind of roll through the grasslands, called steppes, we get lost going over the wrong unmarked hill, as there are no road signs but quickly go back the right way when some four wheelers show up and redirect my driver. While he pulled over to get directions, I emerged from the car to observe something flying around. It turned out to be a buzzard that was looking for a meal…



Finally, after two hours on the road, we pull into Hustai National Park Ger Camp. I’m escorted to my own personal ger. It is really quite comfortable with three beds in a semicircle around a small table and a stove that will be the heat source in the coming evenings. One of the workers comes in and lights my stove so I can relax before lunch. Lunch is a definitely Western affair with normal foods you would find in the Mongolian plains but also featuring things they can make with locally grown products. Cucumbers, tomatoes, carrots and cabbage are in abundance so they are featured in our salads. There were three soups all quite tasty, I tried all. Nothing special otherwise, just basic foods.
It was on to see another ger, where horseback riding would be available plus I would get my first taste of the local tea made with fermented mare’s milk. Yum. On our bouncy path to this location we stopped and picked up my naturalist guide for the next few days who works as a biologist in this park full time. We arrive at the ger of the horse family so let me take a moment and explain ger life. Most people live in two locations a mid-spring through mid-fall area and then a mid-fall to mid-spring area. The summers are spent on the open plains with livestock roaming a fairly large area as these nomads have no boundaries and no one owns any land in the traditional sense, on family history guides claims on property. By mid-Fall, they pack up the entire ger and associated equipment used to raise their livestock and they move to a place on the lee side of the mountains to spend the winter. The move of livestock, gers, personal belongings is a real tough move but people and their animals will survive much better in sheltered areas. Since the ger consists of one big open room, the entire family spends the winter, mostly indoors staring at each other. The family I visited had two children, one seventeen years old and a four year old. If the parents want to “spend time” together in the evening, they just have to out wait the children and stay up. If this were the case for us, we would have had only one child as Susan can’t stay up past 9 PM, but that’s a story for another day.
Here are some photos of the father and son in their “dels”, which are the traditional clothing men wear out in the plains. I’m told there are four types, with one being a ceremonial del. What they were wearing this day was the in-between hot and cold season dels.




Okay, so I tried to ride a horse. Mongolians are famous for their wood saddles that have extremely high peaks on them. Let’s just say, I’m guessing they are more comfortable for women than men as certain equipment fits better on some things.


On the way back, our guide spotted some Mongolian gazelles but the distance was too great to take decent photos. As we worked our way back to camp we came upon my target animal for this whole trip, the takhi. So now it’s takhi story time so you can understand these animals. Mongolia is known as the land of the horse as it has huge distances wide open spaces and no roads. Przewalski's Horse or Takhi is a rare and endangered subspecies of wild horse native to the steppes of central Asia, specifically China and Mongolia. At one time extinct in the wild, it has been reintroduced to its native habitat in Mongolia at the Khustain Nuruu National Park, Takhin Tal Nature Reserve and Khomiin Tal. The native population declined in the 20th century due to a combination of factors, with the wild population in Mongolia dying out in the 1960s. The last herd was sighted in 1967 and the last individual horse in 1969. Expeditions after this failed to locate any horses, and the species was designated "extinct in the wild" for over 30 years. In 1992, sixteen horses were released into the wild in Mongolia, followed by additional animals later on. One of the areas to which they were reintroduced became Khustain Nuruu National Park in 1998. The reintroduced horses successfully reproduced, and the status of the animal was changed from "extinct in the wild" to "endangered" in 2005.
I was in Khustain (or Hustai) Park where the population is 250 horses, the goal for the next day was to see them and since I had the biologist guide with me for the entire day, I was pretty hopeful.
So this is what I found as the light waned and we headed back to our gers for the night…





And to all, a ger night.