'Glamping' in Mongolia, the nomad empire of eternal blue sky

It was in the low 40s outside and the comforters and thick blankets that had been provided were in full use. But the night was clear and I knew I would miss a wonderful opportunity if I were to stay huddled in my tent trying to keep warm. Despite my urging, my son who was half asleep refused to get out of bed so I decided to go it alone: I put on a thick jacket over my pyjamas, donned a hat and stepped outside. It was pitch dark and there was nothing for miles around; no buildings, no lights, no cars, no sounds, no one. But this is what I was here for — to be completely cut off from the distractions, worries and annoyances of modern life. I looked up. And there was the object of my desire, a sight I had been anticipating for months: the entire universe was spread out across the sky resplendent in all its glory.

Many years ago when I was still in high school, I spent a substantial part of one summer reading a voluminous tome called The Empire Of The Steppes which was an exhaustive history of the many migrations and invasions that emanated from the East Asian steppes, changed the course of history and created empires that resonate in my mind to this day: the Xiongnu, the Xianbei, the Rouran, the Turkic, the Uyghur, the Kyrgyz, the Khitan and, most famous of all, the Mongol. Ever since reading that book, I have always had the desire to see for myself the wellspring of these momentous migrations and storied empires. Here, on this wind-swept meadow looking up into the sky, over 40 years after I had immersed myself in its history, I was in Mongolia at last.

It started when my brother stepped into my office one day and asked me out of the blue if I wanted to go to Mongolia. I said yes without hesitation. Four months later, eight of us hardy adventurers flew to Beijing on the first leg of our trip. After a day spent enjoying the exuberantly capitalist pleasures of a decreasingly Communist Beijing, we flew to Mongolia’s capital city, Ulaan Baatar, where we had lunch and did some shopping for provisions. We left the city on a paved highway and then went offroad an hour later. After driving through an eerily treeless and barely inhabited landscape for three hours, past hills and valleys punctuated by makeshift altars called ovoo, we reached our destination.

Jalman Meadows is an extremely wide expanse of grassland at an altitude of about 4,000 feet above sea level. It is surrounded by hills and mountains and is extremely isolated (to urban sensibilities at least). There is no electricity, running water, telephones, television or the Internet. The closest neighbor was at least a mile away. Our camp was made up of about 20 round, cone-shaped, felt-lined and completely portable tents called gers. Gers have only one door and no windows. It has a small opening at the top called a toono for the stove’s chimney. One ger served as a library and game room; another one a boutique selling cashmere, felt and other goods; and another one our common bath. In the distance were two outhouses. The majority of the gers were for sleeping and housed two single beds, a small table with two stools, a cupboard, a sink and a wood burning stove to keep the occupants warm during the cold summer nights. At the center of our camp was the restaurant ger where we would congregate for our meals. The restaurant ger came complete with a small wine cellar and a full kitchen attached to it. As one younger member of our group told me, “This isn’t camping. This is glamping (glamour camping)!”

We arrived at around 8 p.m. but the sun was still high up in the sky and dinner beckoned. After being escorted to our gers by our bellman (an enormous yak pulling a cart), we all headed to the restaurant ger. To our surprise, it was full. There were at least 10 Germans, two Americans and a Scotsman with his Mongolian wife and their children. We were all warmly received, perhaps in tacit recognition of the bond we all shared — a desire to be out in the true frontier. Dinner was more European than Asiatic. This being a land-locked country with almost nonexistent agriculture, the cuisine tended to be heavy on meat and could explain why Mongolians love the manly sports of archery, riding and wrestling. All that testosterone built up from eating meat needs an outlet!

And so, loaded as we were with testosterone, the next three days were spent trekking, climbing, horseback riding, mountain biking and visiting the locals — activities geared towards maximizing our enjoyment of the immense natural beauty around us and, for those of us who were much too immersed in sedentary civilization, towards getting in touch with a variant of nature different from anything we’d experienced before. Archery, rafting and hunting were also available. The only thing we didn’t do was challenge each other to wrestling matches, bristling as we were with testosterone.

There are many who would not take too kindly to what we went through on this trip. My wife is certainly one of them. One look at a picture of the toilet and she absolutely refused to go. The fact that the camp outhouses had a long drop instead of a squatter would not have assuaged her one bit. Neither would she have relished walking around in an anorak at night with a miner’s lamp on her head. She would have been absolutely livid at the thought of having to make an appointment to take a bath so that the camp staff could heat some water beforehand or at the thought of pumping an unwieldy contraption to have a shower. But on that night when I surveyed the heavens and actually felt the earth on its orbit or on that early morning when my son and I trekked for an hour in the cold, thick fog or when I felt a nip in the air as I sat astride the same type of horse that these hardy Mongolians used to conquer the world, I could feel the blood rushing through my veins, heady in the thought that I was treading the same ground as those empire builders and mighty warriors of yore.

It has been a long, precipitous decline since Chinggis Khaan ruled over the largest land empire the world had ever seen. There have been times when Mongolia actually regressed into a mere assemblage of ragtag tribes unable to rule themselves. They’ve had to endure episodes in their history when they were ruled by China and then by Russia, locked in the withering embrace of Communism. “All through the 20th century, Mongolia sat on the Table of History… unacknowledged by anyone… its feet trampled upon, its opinions unsought and mind twisted.” After Mongolia shook off the Communist yoke, it went into a torturous transition into democracy and a free market economy. Now the country is entering a new phase which, fuelled by the enormous riches underneath those grasslands, could turn it into one of the wealthiest nations on earth.

Just a few miles before we got onto the dirt road that led us to Jalman Meadows, we were stopped in our tracks by the sight of an enormous equestrian statue of Chinggis Khaan. There he was — the archetypal nomad whose DNA survives in 25 percent of all Asians — immutable, brutish and splendid, surveying the endless landscape and possibly wondering what lies ahead for the land which he relentlessly and implacably forged into a nation.

* * *

For more information, contact Intrepid Travel. Tel. nos. 856-4575, 856-5017, 0920-950-6147. Fax: 897-8377. E-mail address: paul@intrepid.ph. Website: www.intrepid.ph.