My Mongolian Moustache!

  Ulan Batar (and all over Mongolia), Mongolia
Sunday, April 6, 2008

UB - From the highest point I could get up

Ulan Batar - The coldest capital city in the world!
UB's (Ulan Batar's ) shift toward capitalism has transformed it from a soviet styled Russian town into a city with busy roads, lots of cafes and modern shops. Although there appears to be construction of new building going on everywhere, you only have to walk 5 minutes out of the centre to see people living in Gers. It has a population of about 1 million people and sits in a basin surrounded by four mountains. It experiences huge climatic extremes with the winters reaching as cold as -49degrees C and the summer +38degrees C. Although it is now moving to towards spring, with the days sunny and pleasant (apart from when a sand storm hits!!), as soon as the sun goes down it still turns cold (and apparently quite dangerous).

Our moon

The world is not enough. Not content with just traveling the world, I decided to take a trip into out solar system and galaxy. Mongolia being 1350m above sea level (which means it gets very few clouds (as hot air rising creates clouds) and with it not being a particularly big or bright city it gets hardly any light pollution. This makes it an ideal place to build an observatory which I decided to head out to. I arranged to be picked up by a local driver at about 10pm, he turned up at about 11:30pm and then raced out of the city at a worrying speed, avoiding holes and big cracks in the road by a small margin and even overtook a police car with its lights on. After about half an hour of rally driving, we turned off the 'road' in to what looked like someone's back garden, drove though that and then a field in to the pitch black. Now avoiding wildlife that froze in the cars beams we drove through a drainage tunnel, wing mirrors touching both sides (& the driver explaining 'shotcat', I hope he meant short cut) and towards a mountain which we could see silhouetted on the horizon. We finally made it to the mountain and winded up a steep track towards a distant light. When we got there after then being chased by stray, wild and probably rabid dogs we made it to the observatory where we were greeted by a very friendly Mongol who spoke quite good English. He showed us some photos he had taken which he seemed very proud of and then we headed to the observatory. This was a walk along another pitch black path, only lit by his phone light and through about 3 bushes. After my first look though the telescope which was made in Germany and imported from Russia in the 60's, all of this was forgot! I was astounded by what I saw, we first looked at the moons Northern pole, which was bedded in creators created by meteorites which I could clearly see and then the Southern pole where we saw a huge mountain range.

Saturn and its ring

Already very impressed with this, he then showed me Saturn which bear in mind is about 1378 million kilometers from us, that is incomprehensibly far away. I could clearly see Saturn (sixth planet from the Sun and the second largest) and its prominent system of rings which it is best known for and makes it the most visually remarkable object in the solar system, and I can assure you it is! I could also see Titan (one of Saturn's moons) which is the second biggest moon in the solar system and actually bigger than Mercury. We also saw lots of other things, including new stars (which burnt blue), stars older than our sun (which burnt red/orange), Mars and a number of constellations. The best fiver I spend in a while, really worth the visit if you get chance!

The Ex Champion entering the ring

Mongolia being famous for its archery, I decided to visit the tourist information to try and find if there was any where I could watch or, even better participate, unfortunately I was told no. I then asked if I could go paragliding as Id seen it advertised cheap and mentioned in the lonely planet. The answer I quite bluntly got to this was no, the instructor is dead, (he apparently died last year in the strong spring winds (probably best I didn't go then). One last try was Mongolian wrestling, the woman wondered off casually for about 10minutes with out saying anything to me, then just as I was about to leave, she returned smiling and retorted 'Mongols wrestle Russia, tonight, big fight,,6pm, palace, bye'. I went back to the hostel and told everyone, who were all really up for it, we all had a couple of beers and headed down. The atmosphere was great, with the Mongols patriotism adding to the mood in the stadium which was set it what looked like a huge Ger. It went straight in to some fighting for about an hour and then a huge ceremony which was attended by what looked like all of the ex champions of wrestling, one even in his wheel chair, they all received huge respect and applause from the crowd and were all presented with a white towel. Then for the big fight, the crowd literally went wild then when Mongol guy, crushed and then threw the Russian out of the ring, the place erupted! The style was less like Sumu which I expected and involved much more grappling similar to Brazilian jujitsu.

Natural History Museum

In UB I also went to the National Museum of Intellect, The Mongolian Museum of Natural History which were both very impressive and well set out, the Natural History also had some huge dinosaur skeletons (Mongolia also being nicked named 'dinosaur land'). I went to the Museum of Mongolian National History which was good and had a whole floor about the Mongolian Empire and Genghis Khan who was known for his ruthlessness, which became obvious at a teenager when he killed his half brother for stealing one of his fish. In 15 years with his Gorge Bush attitude 'your either with us or against us' destroyed many tribes and created to largest land empire the world has ever seen.

THE Moustache! Big time!

Now to explain the title, on a cold evening out on the town back in Moscow (and after a few to many beers), myself and I guy I had met were discussing Borat and Kazakhstan, which lead to us deciding that it would be rather comical to make a bet to see who could grow the best moustache and get the best picture of it in Mongolia, as although not together we would both be there in the next month.... Being competitive and not wanting to loose a bet, that is exactly what I did, hence the rather random, strange and comical pictures of me with a moustache!