Mature Flâneur
Lost in the Gobi Desert
In Mongolia: Trees to Rocks, Roads to Rivers
We were lost in the Gobi. Miga, my Mongolian driver and guide, had just turned the car around for the second time. He was driving back down into the bone-dry riverbed we had left 15 minutes earlier. I noticed he has a ‘tell’ that revealed his uncertainty: he would rub a forefinger along his jawline as he drove, looking to the left and to the right.
We were about 200 kilometers inside the Gobi Desert, and about 50 km from the nearest pavement — what you, dear reader, might consider a proper road. To Mongolians, the whole country is a road. Much of the land is so hard and dry, people drive pretty much anywhere. In fact, the few paved roads tend to be rutted and filled with treacherous potholes. Driving is often easier off-road, especially when there are no other cars as far as the eye can see.
Now, you might surmise that I would be anxious, seated in the passenger seat with only a half-liter of water. But I know there are two kinds of lost. Lost can mean you don’t know how to get where you are going — no problem, you can figure it out; or lost can mean you don’t know how to get back to where you started from — that can be tricky in a place as big as the Gobi. But I trusted Miga. He has been here before; he would figure it out.
(If you missed the first part of my Gobi adventure with Miga, here it is:)
A herd of horses galloped along the opposite ridge top. Miga headed in that direction. When a man wearing a bathrobe and driving a motorcycle appeared right behind the herd, Miga hailed him and he stopped for us. Of course, it wasn’t actually a bathrobe; the man was wearing a deel — the traditional Mongolian padded, calf-length coat. He was a modern nomad, working his day-job.
We drove up the sandy ridge to where he waited for us. He and Miga chatted amiably for several minutes, there was much pointing and arm gestures that mimicked going round a bend. I realized, watching them, that while the desert was vast, it was not at all empty. People had lived here for at least five thousand years, first hunting, then herding animals. For herders, this is not a forbidding wasteland. At the right times of year, this part of the desert produced enough vegetation along the dry riverbeds to support their flocks and herds.
Thanks to the herder’s directions, twenty minutes later we arrived at our destination: a rocky ridge called Del Ull Mountain. All along the top of that ridge, little metal markers had been placed, each one identifying the location of an incredible work of art. The whole ridge was a combination art gallery and historical archive, carved in stone between Mongolia’s Bronze Age (2500 BC) and Medieval Era. More than 5000 have been discovered so far. We inspected just a small sample:
Beneath the dark brown surface of the rock, the stone was white, and so by scratching and chopping with stone tools, these early artists produced extremely detailed, vivid etchings. Wild animals predominated — bighorn sheep, ibex, camels, deer, cattle, even wolves. Plus hunters on horses, of course.
I’ve seen similar prehistoric rock carvings in Portugal, Norway, France, but never on such a strange surface as this. It was brown, smooth and shiny, almost like it was varnished like it was…wood! Suddenly it clicked. This was petrified wood. I asked Miga, and he told me 50 million years ago this area was a forest. He pointed at a rough black seam running along the top of a nearby ridgetop. “Coal,” he said. Of course. Coal mining in the Gobi is one of the most important industries in Mongolia (and biggest environmental challenges). Coal comes from ancient carbon, that is, from vegetation. I knew that intellectually. But here on this barren hilltop it still blew mind my to realize this desert once was filled with giant trees.
When at last we departed Del Ull Mountain, we headed north in the direction of the capital, Ulaan Bataar. It had taken seven hours to drive to the desert from there the previous day, so I buckled in for a long drive back under Mongolia’s “Eternal Blue Sky.” Mongolia gets on average 230–260 sunny days per year. Though we had had some rain on the drive down, the sky was clear as we headed back towards the paved road, and on up to the town of Mandalgovi, the “Gateway to the Gobi.” Sadly, it was now our exit ramp.
At Mandalgovi we stopped for gas. Then, to my surprise, Miga veered off the highway onto a dirt track through the steppe. Aha, he knows a little shortcut! Because his English was limited, Miga and I did not chat much on the trip. So, he did not bother to explain to me that this was not a shortcut, but a rather long detour through the steppes to visit a famous rocky area popular with tourists for its natural beauty. I guess he thought I’d like to see it.
Hour after hour we drove along red-rutted tracks through a sea of green. I noticed how thin the layer of grass actually was. Just a half-inch difference between this verdant steppe land and the desert. We passed herds of grazing animals and every now a white nomad tent. Only one car passed us…an old Prius. I suddenly recalled I had seen a lot of Priuses in Mandalgovi. Even some of the nomad tents had a Prius parked outside. I conveyed this Miga, who told me basically that secondhand Priuses are shipped from Japan to Mongolia. Gas prices are high and distances long, so the hybrid’s fuel economy makes it one of the most popular in Mongolia — even out here on the steppe.
Clouds gathered on the horizon — the horizon we were heading for. They were dark, disgorging heavy rain. Just as we entered more rugged hills, the first drops hit our windshield. Miga turned the car around and took a different track. He rubbed his forefinger along his jawline. “Oh shit,” I thought. “Are we lost?” Now the rain was coming down hard. Miga made a few more turns, and then pulled into a nomad camp, obviously to ask for directions. No one was home, but a few minutes later two nomads on a motorbike pulled in behind us. Their deels were soaked through. The three men chatted for a while, then Miga (now also drenched) got back in the car and they got back on their bike. Miga followed them.
Ah, I thought, they are leading us towards the right road! The path they took us on followed a valley uphill toward a pass. But the dirt road itself had turned into a river. It flowed fast, about ten feet across and God knows how deep. To avoid the flood we drove on the grass to one side, higher into the hills. Passing through a tributary, the motorbike went into water that flowed over the wheel axles. We followed more slowly and I prayed we wouldn’t get stuck — or pulled into the current. But our car was solid — a Lexus SUV.
Now we were on higher ground, but the terrain was rocky and wet. We bumped along, over a hump, to where the track narrowed and dropped steeply, and there we spied a truck, stuck in a rut, blocking the road. The nomads got off their bikes and started unwinding a thick wire cable from the back of the truck. Miga turned around and got out of the car. Ah — this was the nomads’ truck, and we were helping them pull it out. Once the cable was attached to the rear of the Lexus, its powerful engine roared and pulled. After several tries, up the hill came the truck.
“Mongolia, big country, not much people…We help each other,” Miga eloquently explained.
We drove back not more than 100 meters, to where a rocky road ran through the mountain pass ran, which was incredibly convenient. That road, however, was just as steep and rutted as the one where the truck got stuck. We slowly bounced our way down through the rain, and once again had to follow alongside a road-become-river into the next valley. Miga explained that this was an area of scenic beauty that attracted many tourists called the Mountains of Small Stones. Frankly, we could not see much through the rain. So much for the Eternal Blue Sky.
We arrived back at my hotel in Terelj park near Ulaan Bataar at 9:30 pm, after more than 13 hours on the road. The day was utterly exhausting and yet totally exhilarating. I felt I had seen a good swath of the steppes. I had experienced the real Mongolia.
The next day, however, at a museum we visited, Miga pointed to a map of Mongolia on the wall. “Yesterday, we drive here to here,” he explained, his fingers spanning a tiny distance south from the capital. I’d glimpsed but the tiniest fraction of Miga’s amazingly vast homeland.
***
Great News! Mature Flâneur, my new book, can be pre-ordered now, and will be available next month. Please order your copy today!
In case you missed my other stories on Mongolia this month, here they are:
