My trip preparation for Mongolia was different from most trips that I’ve taken. I only prepared for the rocks. I scoured maps, read academic papers, and gathered all my field tools. I spent dozens of hours flying over southwest Mongolia on GoogleEarth. I didn’t speak a word of Mongolian and had no idea what I’d do once the plane landed; I relied completely on Uyanga and my advisor Francis to take care of all the logistics.
Most foreigners in Mongolia have a list of activities they want to accomplish and sites they want to see. They want to check off a certain number of birds on their birding list; they want to sleep in a ger; they want to drink the horrid fermented mare's milk called airag; they want to see a sampling of Mongolia’s sand dunes, lakes, and mountains; they want to watch a shaman perform; they want to ride a camel, horse, and/or yak. I was so uneducated about Mongolia that I didn’t even know that there were camels until The Machine drove past a herd of them.
I had a wish list of my own, but it was a wish list with GPS coordinates of campsites and awesome rocks. Contrary to popular belief, most geologists don’t actually dig beneath the surface of the earth. Archeologists go on digs but geologists stay on the surface What I wanted to find were continuous beds of sedimentary rock that were well-exposed at the surface of the earth. Rocks covered by soil, grass, snow, trees, or parking lots are useless to me. Ideally, the beds are tilted 30-45 degrees so that I don’t have to walk huge distances or scale cliffs to see a record of ancient time. The best exposed rocks are usually in rivers or along ridges, which means that I spent the past 2.5 months climbing to the tops of mountains and wandering through canyons in the Altai Mountains.
I had high expectations for these rocks. I had read about them, seen pictures of them, and been thinking about them for months. They housed stories of global glaciations, tectonic collisions, unusual mineral deposits, wild fluctuations in chemical signals, and the biggest evolutionary radiation in the history of the earth. In these mountains you can walk through the abrupt transition from microbial Slimeworld into a world with complex life. I like to think of my research as a giant, 300 km-long 4-D puzzle (time being the fourth dimension). Last spring I was so focused on preparing maps and papers for these rocks that sometimes I forgot that I was going to be studying them in Mongolia. I had expectations for Mongolian rocks, but for little else Mongolian.
Because I never went in search of anything but rocks, when I encountered wildlife, stunning views, or Mongolian culture, I was surprised and delighted. I discovered ancient cliff paintings in a few of the canyons that I worked; I stumbled upon several crane nests that were at least 10 feet in diameter; I wandered into holy caves with healing properties. I’ve seen a wolf, a leopard, falcons, eagles, vultures, foxes, marmots, snakes, wild goats, and colorful insects while hiking. Once, during a remarkably loud storm with sideways rain and hail, I came within an arm's length of a vulture, thinking that it was my field assistant Gerald hunched over a rock.
When we ran out of meat, the driver Mogi complained so much that a horseman killed and skinned a marmot for us. We boiled it and ate it with knives out of a bucket. I’ve been welcomed into gers and offered fresh yak cream and goat stew and dried dairy products. I’ve been the recipient of the legendary Mongolian hospitality. I have summited more peaks than I can count and gone swimming in mountain streams, waterfalls, and alpine lakes. We didn’t have the necessary paperwork to do research around Khuvsgol Lake, so in an attempt to convince the locals that I was a tourist on vacation, I went for evening horseback rides along the lake.
Aside from my horseback rides, nothing I ever did in Mongolia felt contrived or kitschy. I checked off most activities that tourists write on their Mongolia checklists and I stumbled upon more wildlife than most Mongolian wildlife junkies ever find on one of their tours. But after two and half months in the country, I still feel like I know barely anything about it. I know nothing about Mongolian politicians, pop stars, or city life. I met tourists who had been in the country for just a week and could navigate Ulaanbaatar better than I could. I can’t wait to return to the Altai Mountains, but my preparation for next summer will most certainly involve more than just a wishlist of GPS coordinates.
Actually, this sounds like a really interesting way to experience/learn about a new place. Most of the time, we stuff our heads before we even arrive with all these preconceived notions of what we should see or do. But a ton of my best travel experiences have been times when I just found myself in a place, or encountered an interesting person, unexpectedly.
ReplyDeleteI'm always impressed at how you're able to really think about and relate your experiences in meaningful ways!
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