May 8, 2018, Gorkhi Terelj National Park, Mongolia

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I came up with a plan last night, to walk from the Ulaanbataar 2 Hotel to the Aryapala Initiation and Meditation Center. It should be a few miles SSE, and I will have to climb over a small mountain. The good news is there is no snow this time, the bad news is that when I asked the head receptionist if they had hiking trail maps she laughed at me. I don’t think there is a trail, so I will have to use my compass, a screen shot of a google maps satellite photo, and my sense of distance to get there. I know that there are bears in this park. Are they brown bears? Or like black bears in the USA? I don’t know. I hope not to find out.

 

I have Mongolian breakfast soup. It is like mashed potatoes and sheep put in a blender. I don’t much like mutton, but the sheep taste becomes background noise after a while. The soup and coffee give me courage.

 

First, I head west from the hotel, then up a dirt road that heads for the woods. I hope not to set off someone’s dogs. I say hi to a couple of people I pass on the way. After a big field it becomes forest, and soon steep. I get hot from the climb, and have to double back and back again to gain altitude in a zigzag. The buds are hardly out on the trees. I hear birds, a few buzzing flies, a bee. Tiny flowers, the kind that live through early snows, sprout up here and there. The forest is starting to release a scent, pine needles and plants, that will be strong in summertime, but it isn’t hot enough. Now it is just the beginnings of a fragrance. I see a few trees cut down with chainsaws, and plastic garbage, maybe people are logging illegally?

 

Cow dung and horse manure is all the way to the top of the first ridge. There I find some sort of a witchy teepee, made of wood. A shelter? Or something a shaman would use? Nearby I find the bottoms of two cloven legs, fur still attached. Something large has been eating up here.

 

Now it is hot, especially in the thin parts of the forest where the sun gets through the evergreens and the paper birches. Then at the top of another rise the wind rips out of the valley and cools me off.

 

Some of the smaller trees are bent over in arches from the weight of long-gone winter snow. A few more cut down trees, trash and plastic bottles, then no more. But I find a shiny rabbit-shaped pink party balloon. I cut a hole in it to deflate it and can’t help but to inhale a little of what I hope is helium. I say “Rabbit” in a squeaky voice. I put it in my bag to throw away later because if I dropped it again I’d feel like I was littering.

 

On the ground I walk over thousands pine needles, tinier than I have ever seen in my life, like dried angel hair pasta, even smaller. In places they are so deep they crunch like snow.

 

At another ridge, I cross a rock field, the wind whips into a gust that makes the trees bend and crack. Small branches fall, then it is silent.

 

I follow animal paths now, like those pictures that look like a face one way, and a vase the other, once you start to see them you can find them, and even follow them across the rock fields, but you can’t focus too hard on them among the stones or you’ll lose the way.

 

When confronted with new things I grasp at things I know, one part of these woods is Oregon, another is Maine, another is Colorado, but they aren’t. They are Mongolia, and I’ve never experienced this mixture of evergreen needles, tree, wind, lichen, rock, flower, brush. I lost the animal path and make my own way until I find another. South-Southwest, set on my compass rhumb line, should drop me in on the monastery from the back. I’ll have to drop down a cliff.

 

Twice I stop to eat from a loaf of bread, drink water, and seabuckthorn berry juice. I love it when I find something I never heard of in my life. In Sweden it was lingon berries. Here there are two berry juices I never heard of, seabuckthorn berry and something called “Ners.” 

 

I see two logs on poles next to trees, it looks artsy, but I am sure it has some use. Also, there are marks just high enough for someone to reach with an axe, marking the path? Trees to cut down? Pine sap bleeds from the cuts. I had thought bear sign, but it doesn’t look right to be bear sign.

 

I see a bird, some kind of wild fowl, and it walks ahead of me until I get close. In an explosion of noise and a flap of wings it flies off. I remember startling a duck like that once in Maine, and when it took off it let out a wet smelly crap.

 

I follow SSW until I come to an overlook. I see what I think is Turtle Rock, which should be south of the temple. At first, I think that I may have overshot it a little, but I look at the satellite photo and realize that I didn’t, it isn’t here, but over the next rise. The winds positively screams, and unlike at the rock field, it does not stop. I make for the next ridge, across windswept fields, angel hair forest, pine needles, and then a burnt forest with dozens of trees thrown down the hill like twigs. Those that still stand are charcoal black and most of them are dead.

 

I find two lean-tos in the middle of it all. They look as art house as the logs and the teepee.

 

Just out of the forest fire woods I come to a cliff. The wind is howling so fast upwards that I can hardly stand up, and it is like being in front of a powerful fan. I can’t breathe right, it is flattening my nose. I peek over and see the temple, far below with a yellow roof. It feels like a swoosh in basketball. Nothing but net. I found it. A compass, a satellite photo, and there she is.

 

It is a very steep grade. I want to start the trip back by 3:00, and it is 2:00. Can I make it down and back in an hour? Probably not, but I have come this far. The way down starts in a crack between massive rocks, then there is dry grass, flattened by snow, and then rocks and shrubs. Some of the flowers are neon electric blue and violet. It takes me 30 minutes to get there, watching my step. I left the UB2 at 10:00 and by now it is 2:30.

 

The temple is colorful and new, with a bright yellow roof. I walk past a row of prayer wheels, red, yellow, blue, and pink, to the entrance where a Mongolian family is at the doorway with a guide. An old man, an old woman, a married couple and their little boy. The older man, says “hi,” I say “hi” back, he asks me where I am from, I say the USA, by then I have exhausted my Mongolian language skills. He keeps asking me questions and he can’t understand how I could talk with him for a few sentences in Mongolian and then have nothing else. He’s baffled.

 

We leave our shoes at the door and enter the temple. It is cold, and the interior is ringed with paintings of enlightened beings. The old woman walks around the temple, going from left to right, stopping and praying at each of the paintings. The man goes straight to the Buddha and prays there. I follow her around, and read about the enlightened ones. They all started off wealthy, as kings or rich nobles. They get enlightened and renounce everything. Why don’t the people who don’t have anything get enlightened, if the rich people who get enlightened give up everything?

 

I drop money in the box and wai the Buddha. Others show up and one woman bangs an ancient bell three times. After her I do the same.

 

Outside there are prayer wheels and I spin all the wheels on the west side, then walk around and spin the ones on the east, following the old lady’s lead.

 

A woman in her fifties asks me if I would take a photo of her and her group, as they sit on the steps of the temple. I do. They look like retirees. They are famous Mongolian actors she says. “Sure they are,” I think.  “Mongolian Richard Gere,” one of them says, pointing at a friend. “Mongolian Julia Roberts,” says another. While the photos are clicking they are singing in Mongolian, a throaty song, and then some of them burst into another impromptu song together. I ask for one of them to take my photo at the temple, they think I mean take a photo of me and them. Why not. The woman sits with me, and in between photos I learn that the woman’s kids live in Los Angeles, and she spent 8 years in Chicago. I shake all their hands and make my way back. Famous actors, I think, Mongolians have a great sense of humor.

 

Everyone is leaving by the stairs to the parking lot. If I go that way, I’ll have to walk miles south to turn and walk miles north along the road. Instead, I go back the way I came. At the temple it is quiet and warm, but by the top of the pass the wind is screeching again. After I get over the ridge I stop and have the last of the bread and seabuckthorn juice. I’ve grown accustomed to it, even the bit of sour to the taste.

 

I head down into the burnt forest, to make my way east to get to the road and follow it back to UB2. On the way I find snow in the coldest shaded spots, and pass a spooky looking scarecrow in the woods. I come upon a cow and am thankful that it isn’t a bear. For a second I saw its brown fur through the trees and was worried. I pass a herd of horses grazing, and steer clear of a log cabin, dodging massive piles of manure before I get to the Terelj Highway. Along the way I see a sign that I think means no logging and watch for bears. Yikes. 

 

By the time I get back it has been an eight-hour hike, but awesome. Before this trip I thought I’d really like to take a few days to get away and hike. I got some of it in Kyrgyzstan, and now here. Today was a mountain adventure, I think tomorrow I will follow the river and head north.

 

After dinner, I ask the head receptionist if the people in the photo are actors. I know she is going to say they aren’t, and it will make for a good laugh.

 

“Oh,” she marvels, “Very famous.”

 

Where did I meet them? At the temple? She names them, including the woman sitting next to me, the one who asked me to take the picture. 

 

“She is Battsetseg,” she says, “He is Gursed. She is Tsempilmaa and he is Tsogoo. Oh,” and she points to the man with glasses, “He is Ravdan.” She can’t remember the other two. 

 

“Very famous Mongolian actors,” she laughs aloud, “very famous.”