Thoughts on the Trip

It was really good (and kinda expensive for a road trip in nomad areas, but definitely worth it).

• Now we understand why people like Mongolia. UB has its highlights but is in no way enough of a reason to move to Mongolia, I think.
• Mongolia is huge. We have only seen a small part of it and yet it was bigger than any land we have seen before. You can go over mountains and valleys, seemingly endlessly, and still only cover a tiny part of the country.

Typical landscape



• Nomad life seems kind of inconvenient and hard (no running water, harsh winters, no electricity in most parts (although they do have solar panels), no doctors nearby) but also very freeing and peaceful and simple (in a good way, and in a bad way too, I guess). Waking up every morning to the view of nature and to the sound of nature (as opposed to traffic and air pollution) must be great. Waking up to the sensation that you are freezing to death at 3 am must suck. Living so close to nature and animals must be peaceful. Living so far from help (in case you need it) must be stressful. Going to bed with a breathtaking sky full of stars above your head must be amazing. Going to bed overly hot (because it's not like you can set a degree on the fireplace) just to get cold within two hours must be hard.
• People in the countryside (even if they came to live in the city as adults) have such a different value system, understandably. Their thinking is just fundamentally different from ours (as soft Europeans). When we saw a temple-like thingy (one of many) in the beginning of the trip, we asked Uka what it was. She said it was a small temple for a family. They build it for their ancestors or something, and 'go to church' there (Buddhist, of course). And it only belongs to that family. We said 'cool'. Together, we remarked that it must have been a wealthy family, building a temple for themselves. To this, Uka added, absentmindedly: 'They must have lots of animals'. This remark made us think. We would never have made this connection, and it came so naturally to her. When we think of wealth, we think of money. And they think of livestock. Makes sense, but it is so different.
• Religion and beliefs and superstitions and traditions are very important to Mongolians. They seem to be much more spiritual than Hungarians (apart from strongly religious people, of course). However, it's not in a showy, flashy way. They don't really talk about it, they just do it. I've already talked about all the traditions around Tsagaan Sar, but during these four days, we have seen ample evidence too. They have these Buddhist (and sometimes simply spiritual, not very Buddhist, I think) monuments all over the countryside, on tops of mountains, by the road, by province borders, wherever. They are usually made of rocks and wood, and there are colourful (mostly blue) scarves tied around the branches. Even on top of the Khorgo mountain (the volcano) or by the lakeside, there were huge piles of rocks/twigs with the blue scarf around it. And where they have these piles of rock, they also pick up some rocks of their own, and walk around the pile, and add these rocks to it, for good luck. (At one such place, Uka told us to walk around it three times for good luck, throwing a rock to the top of the mound each round.) And they believe visitors can bring luck. And milk brings luck too. Many symbols. And they go to the shaman for advice (even business advice!). But they observe these traditions silently, doing them almost absentmindedly, as part of their routine (like when their swimmers dip their medals in the pool, to show respect to the water).

A pile of rocks and sticks with scarves on top of Khorgo mountain
(with a view of Terkhiin Tsagaan Nuur)

• They have so much nature and so they seem not to be very careful with it either. So much trash, animal carcasses, bones, and dung everywhere. Kind of ruins the view, but then they aren't there for the view - they live there. But don't you want to live in a clean place? Apparently not. Sad.
• The landscape is so diverse here, it's kinda crazy. Yes, it's mountains and valleys. But the grass has a different colour or the mountains a different texture in the next valley over, or one place has volcanic rocks, the next different rocks, the next no rocks at all. Sometimes there are forests, sometimes just grass. Sometimes there is a river, sometimes floodplain, sometimes a lake. It's impossible to show these differences on the pictures we took (they all look the same, to be fair, captured with a phone camera, often from a moving car over rocky terrain), but it was amazing to experience in person.
• People use motorbikes all the time, everywhere, and even little kids can drive them by themselves. It's quite common to see whole families (3 or 4 people) huddled together on the bike, going somewhere.