Great Walls, Vodka, and Galloping the Mongolian Plains

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I can tell a lot about a country by their airports. Tokyo’s efficiency, Beijing’s brusqueness, Dubai’s endless construction, Lima’s chaos. Ulaanbaatar? After much fretting about the visa in Canada and China, the airport officer here was cheerfully cracking jokes, and we ended up hugging before I got out his office. The airport was small but clean, while the women in the passport control booths had sharp cheekbones and warm eyes. I was greeted by my honcho Nomin, Vodkatrain’s local guide, who not only had a sense of humour, but she was crazy cute and friendly. Ulunbaataar at first looked like Bolivia, then Albania. Low buildings, no-lane traffic, dust and dirt. There is not a single McDonalds, Starbucks or KFC in the entire country. This is my kind of place.

In the 1200’s, the Mongols were a fierce nation under the leadership of Genghis Khan (pronounced Chingiss Khan), who built the largest land empire in history, stretching from China to Europe. By the 1400’s, it had collapsed, although Genghis Khan remains Mongolia’s most famous figure, much like Ataturk in Turkey or Mao in modern China. The Chinese conquered Mongolia for a few hundred years, splitting the country into Inner and Outer Mongolia. Inner Mongolia is today still part of China, while outer Mongolia was more or less taken over by the Russians, which is why it subsequently became a communist country backed heavily by Moscow. When the iron curtain was cut off its rings, Mongolia was thrown into turmoil until the present democracy was established (with the communists still arguably the most popular party). Many people here miss those stable glory days, and struggle, like many third world countries, with the complications of a market-based democracy. Today, about half of the country’s 2.6 million people live in the capital of Ulaanbaatar; with about 40% of the population living rural nomadic lives the way Mongolians have for centuries. The Mongolian language is full of “shhh”s” and “tsitsi’s” and when spoken softly, sounds almost magical, like elfin. Written in the Cyrillic alphabet as established by the communists, it resembles Russian, with more quirks. That’s the background aperitif; let’s move directly onto the main course of vodka.

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