25May08
Trip Start
Feb 15, 2008
1
9
13
Trip End
Ongoing
UlaanBaatar,
Mongolia
Sunday, May 25, 2008
For the past ten days I have been having a fabulous time travelling around the eastern aimags (or counties) of Mongolia, so there is lots to tell in this blog entry! The trip allowed me to visit some regional veterinary diagnostic laboratories as part of my grant from the Royal College of Veterinary Surgeons. I was assessing the laboratories' capabilities in diagnostic pathology and also their preparedness for disease outbreaks such as avian influenza or foot and mouth disease. The trip was combined with a scientific investigation of my boss - Professor Sodnomdarjaa. Prof Sodnomdarjaa is a specialist in metabolic disease and was touring local herding families in the east to enquire about the levels of hypophosphatemia in their animals. Hypophosphatemia is very common in eastern Mongolia due to the lack of phosphorus in the soil in this region. So we travelled together with an accompanying scientist Batzurig, and our driver Batsenga over 2000km through the Gobi desert, through the Steppe region of central Asia, and on to the more mountainous region of Hintey
Guesthouse in soum
.For those of you who are looking at maps, on day 1 we travelled from Ulaanbaatar to Saynshand, due south. We then travelled to a small soum (or village) called Erdene near the Mongolia - China border on day 2. Day three we drove over 300km to Bayuun Urt, the capital city of the Sukhbaatar province. We spent a day in Bayuun Urt, and then on day 5 we travelled to a small soum due west of Bayuun Urt. Day six we drove to Choibalsan, the capital of Dornod aimag. After spending a day in Choibalsan we drove north west to stay at another small soum before day 9 driving to Ondorhaan, the capital of Hintey aimag. Day ten we returned to Ulaanbaatar.
I was very impressed with the four regional veterinary laboratories I visited. They had all recently received funding from agencies such as JICA, the EU, or FAO which has enabled them to improve the quality and range of their equipment. The staff were also all very enthusiastic, friendly and eager to show me their work. All four labs I visited had a very good mix of older, more experienced vets, and younger graduates who were recently out of veterinary school with high energy levels! If anyone requires more information about the regional vet labs, send me an email and I'll give you more details. The only problem I had with the laboratories was the height of their doorways
Note the solar panel and satellite dish!
! Right at the beginning of the first inspection at Saynshand I walked smack into the concrete lintle over the doorway to the laboratory building and spent the next five minutes sitting on the ground wondering where I was! I'm comparatively tall in western countries but really tall in Mongolia, and this fact was reinforced by this experience! Very kindly, the guys I was travelling with always proceeded me into new buildings for the rest of the trip, and pointed out low doorways (there were many!), so I avoided a repeat of the head banging. As part of Professor Sodnomdarjaa's work we visited a number of traditional Mongolian herder families across the plains in the east of the country. The countryside in these areas was absolutely superb - there really are not words to describe how breathtakingly beautiful it was. I have looked at the photos I took during these parts of the journey and a lot of the photos show just wide open spaces punctuated by the occasional ger (traditional Mongolian house) and livestock grazing on the plains. The photos really do not capture the vastness of the countryside.
I saw quite a few examples of the five livestock animals in the Mongolian countryside: sheep and goats (of which there are about equal numbers in Mongolia), cattle, camel and horses
Camel and sheep flock
. Most goats are for cashmere production for the Chinese export market. The sheep are for meat, their wool is used to make felt for covering the gers, and they are mainly the Mongolian Karakul breed (pronounced crackle!). The cattle are for milk and meat, the camels for transport, milk and meat, and the horses mainly for transport although horse meat is eaten in Mongolia too. The horsemanship I saw from the herders was really something special. We needed to take blood samples from particular cattle in each herd, and the herder would jump on his horse separate it out, lasso it with a rope on a pole, and then jump off the horse and hold the cow still while we took our blood sample. Mongolian horse saddles are very unusual, they are small wooden constructions. They actually look very uncomfortable, and I can't imagine how the herders can ride all day and so effortlessly! On numerous occasions I was offered a ride on one of the horses, and even on a camel once, but I have little faith in my riding ability and was too worried I would fall off so I declined gracefully! As well as the livestock I was lucky enough to see wild gazelle, marmots, little gerbil things, and many birds including enormous eagles.There were also many children living with their parents in the gers. Normally the children would be away at boarding school at the local village or aimag centre, but because of the hand, foot and mouth disease outbreak in China (don't get confused - this is a human disease caused by an enterovirus and has nothing to do with the animal affliction foot and mouth disease!), which has spread to Mongolia, the schools have all been closed
Solar panel and satellite again.
. So all the children have received an especially long summer holiday this year! A traditional nomadic life seems particularly fun for children - lots of fresh air, exercise, all the children I met looked to be having a ball!When ever we visited a herder we were always invited into the ger. The steppes on some days were bitterly windy, as is so often the case in springtime, but inside the ger it was always cosy, warm and bright. The families hang brightly coloured tapestries around the wall, and there is a big stove in the centre of the ger, fueled by dried manure since there are no trees on the steppes. All the cooking is done in a great big semi-spherical cooking pot which fits into the top of the stove. The most common meal was meat stew with a high fat content. Because of my celiac disease I wasn't able to eat the food we were offered at almost every ger, but it smelt good, and the guys assured me it tasted as good as it looked! The majority of the gers have all mod cons, which is slightly strange in the middle of nowhere! A lot of them have solar panels to provide electricity, with car batteries as backup. They also have satellite dishes to provide television, and most if not all herders also have mobile phones. I was amazed by how clean every ger was too. It's a dusty environment in the desert and steppes, and there are up to 8 or 10 people living in each ger, so I would have expected them to be quite cluttered but they were organised, spotless and beautifully tidy
Cairn
. The herders pack everything up and move 4-10 times a year, depending on pasture availability. During winter they usually stay in the same place, with their animals corralled in winter steddings for 3 or 4 months until the snow melts. It was cold enough for me in the icy wind in May - it would be a pretty tough life out on the steppes in winter when the temperature drops to -20 or even -30. One herder explained to us how they choose a new site for the ger when they move around in the warmer months. After choosing the general area based on pasture and water availability, they used to choose the new site of the ger based on geographical reasons - sheltered by the hill behind, not too close to the vehicle track, etc etc. However these days they walk round with their mobile phones held up in the air. Where they get a signal, they site the ger! Traditional Mongolian herding moves into the 21st century! I have to say that mobile phone coverage in Mongolia is extraordinarily good. There were probably only 3 or 4 days when I didn't have a signal, and we were in some very remote areas, well off the tourist track. Twice we came across the mobile phone company vehicles which are setting up masts and outlets to bring coverage to new areas as fast as they can.
The trip also involved regular vodka drinking
Myself and the veterinarians of Ondorhaan
! Vodka is a strong part of Mongolian culture, and is drunk as part of welcome, farewells and most meals. Luckily Mongolian vodka is top quality, really smooth, and I never had a hangover, I was just fairly permanently smiley. When ever possible we stayed at hotels in the aimag capitals, however on three nights we stayed in small soums. These little villages usually had about 1000-2000 inhabitants, most of them living in permanent gers. Each soum had an elected governor and was the centre for the surrounding countryside, sometimes hundreds of square kilometres in area. The soum contained a school, veterinary establishment, a shop or two, a guest house and usually a minibus stop!
So I can now heartily agree with everyone here who has promised me that the countryside of Mongolia is totally different from UB. I strongly urge anyone who visits Mongolia to spend only a few days in the capital city before travelling out and around the countryside. I absolutely loved my trip and am looking forward to some more travel around the country, hopefully sometime next month!
I am now back in UB writing my reports on the trip, and catching up with my emails
Local jeep and our fabulous 4WD!
. I have begun to receive the parcels of reagents and equipment I have ordered from overseas and will be able to begin laboratory work in earnest. Many many thanks again to all of you who have been so generous in providing reagents - Sionagh, Colin, Chris, Karen, Judy, Martin, Derek, everyone. We are now able to include appropriate positive controls in experiments and to compare Mongolian and international standards, which is making a real difference to the quality of science we are able to achieve here. And also thanks to all the companies who are making the extra effort to send products to Mongolia, usually for the first time ever. It takes time and effort to organise shipping to such an unusual destination, and its always slightly worrying to both parties when the online parcel tracking systems loose sight of the package somewhere round Taiwan or the Philippines, but so far (touch wood) everything has eventually ended up here in one piece!Regards
Pip
