Flowers and Insects

I'm back in Ithaca. But I got behind on putting pictures up, so I'll keep doing it even though I'm home.

I think I need a different lens...

...because I couldn't focus on these two things at the same time. But maybe I just don't know enough about taking pictures.

These purple flowers were very pretty, so I was taking a picture.

The helpful little girl with whom I was walking picked one for me. I could hear my grandmother disapproving from beyond the veil. We don't pick wildflowers.

Weeks later, hiking somewhere else, these orange flowers reminded me of the purple flowers. But I'm not sure why, since they're very different.

I like the drama of this shot. Photo credit for the orange flowers, Ellen!

But where are the insects?

This is a picture of an ant.

Brother and I were hiking together and we had to stop so I could rest, and he saw this really beautiful moth. Hooray!

You're right, that's not an insect.

Maybe one makes tea from one of these flowers? I even have some tea, which might be the tea in question. Sometimes it's hard to tell what people were teaching me about plants.

A few weeks later, I saw some of these in full bloom but forgot to take a picture. There were fluffy purple bits all over the magenta bits. It was very dramatic.

Yes, this is not a flower. And it's growing in horse poop. But it reminded me of the little dudes in that Miyazaki movie.

A selection of livestock.

Various kinds of livestock from various locations around the Hovsgol (Khuvsgul? Хөвсгөл, for sure -transliteration is such a problem) at various times during the trip. No particular unifying theme, other than that they all have four legs. I'm sorry I didn't get any good closeups of fat-tailed sheep or cashmere goats. I don't have a good excuse; there were cashmere goat kids climbing upon me on more than one occasion, I just didn't take pictures. You know. Because.

Normal grazing in the countryside. No fences, just animals.

A nice group of haineg in the midday.

This is a haineg - yak/cow cross.

This might be a haineg. Could also be a yak. I'm not sure.

I will note that I don't really know how to spell "haineg". I just learned to say it. It might be "khainek" for all I know.

I think this is a haineg calf. At least someone told me it was.

This is the calf of a Mongol-breed cow. The Mongol cows are really cute.

Here is a baby yak.

Grown-up yak.

A white reindeer bull with his herders. He was about to have blood drawn.

Reindeer.

Female reindeer at milking time. Her antlers are pretty small.

This reindeer calf is tied up away from his (her?) mother so that the mother can be milked.

An example of the lichen the reindeer eat. It is soft, in case you can't tell from the picture.

Calf eats lichen. Nom nom nom.

Some cattle and horses hanging out together. The reindeer are all off to the right; I couldn't get them in the same frame.

In the environs of Улаан-Уул, part 2

Some of the following things happened in actual Ulaan-uul; some of them happened somewhere to the north, in what might have still been Ulaan-uul but might not have.

Two calves staked out to graze. They might be haineg calves. Their mothers are off grazing somewhere more exciting.

 Because it's a dairy-centered livestock herding, the calves are usually confined separate from the cows for some part of the day so that more milk can be obtained at milking. In different families, I saw calves staked out near the ger by day while their moms roamed, all the calves confined to a paddock overnight while the moms roamed, and cows and calves both staked out.

Someone climbing a tree.

Some boys I went walking with got really enthusiastic about pinecones. They climbed some pretty intense trees looking for them.

Also some small trees.

The pinecones were for eating, or something. At one point they built a fire and roasted one. I didn't see any nuts, and it wasn't clear that anyone actually swallowed pine cone. We didn't share any language, though, so I didn't worry too much about figuring out exactly what was going on.

The pink part is where he ripped off part and started chewing it.

And now for some scenery with less narration:

Some herding going on. I think you can faintly see on the left horizon a pointed structure.

Same ovoo as in the photo above; different day, different angle.

In the environs of Улаан-Уул, part 1

Between and around traveling on to see the Tsaatan, we spent a total of some number of days in and around Ulaan-uul, visiting Nansa's families and friends and seeing some livestock. The actual town that is the sum center is apparantly called Төгөл; I never once heard it called that.

It is incredibly beautiful, though. Ulaan-uul means "red mountain".

One of these is the Red Mountain - I think the pointy one. It is a sacred mountain! And I can understand why.

The days were warm and pleasant and the nights cold but not too cold, both times we were here. I can't think of anything even sort of negative to say about this town. Everyone I met was nice. The rainstorms were dramatic. There are pleasantly-challenging little hikes around the area.

The tire tracks in the foreground are more or less the main road out of town. Some of the animals grazing are yaks, some are Mongol cattle, and some are the cross called haineg.

The town that is the sum center might have 1500 or 2000 people living in it. It was hard for me to get a definite answer from anyone about it. There are pictures from the 1960s of reindeer down here, and I saw them (but didn't have the technology to make them digital). There are no reindeer in Ulaan-uul now, because it's too hot in the summer.

Can you see the town?

I took a picture from a hill just out of town a bit, looking back towards and past it to the west.
Some days later, on a different hike to a nearby higher peak, I took a similar picture.

What about now? Can you still see it?

I would like to include a map but there is a little technical difficulty in that I can't find one. I will spend a little energy solving that problem and see if I can add a map in later.

Мөрөн

From Ulaanbaatar, we traveled northwest by bus. The bus trip was supposed to take about twenty hours; it actually took seventeen, which was nice.

Some people might think that it would have been nicer to go by airplane. Indeed, some westerners of various descriptions I met in Khuvsgul province were a little shocked that I had elected to go by bus. But it was really okay! It was not actually much more unpleasant than a really long flight. Maybe a little more crowded - but we got to stop and get out periodically, too. Granted it would have been very confusing for me if I had not been with Nansalmaa, but I was with her, so it was fine.

Also we had quite a bit of luggage, which I think would have exceeded the weight allowance of the national airline. Also I will admit, I was not at all enthusiastic about flying on the national airline. I don't like flying.

Also, flying would have cost something like $500 round trip. The bus cost about $50, and I got to see a lot more of the country.

I asked google maps how to get to Murun from UB, and got this answer:

It looks deceptively as though there is a road.

I have no idea at all if this is the way we went. It might have been something like that, at least.
I will mention now that on the way back, the same trip took 22 hours instead of 17. Partly this was because there had been a lot of rain, washing out the "road" (which although in some places was an actual bona fide paved road, was in most places unimproved dirt and in many places more a few competing consensus opinions about the best way to drive across a field than an actual road). Partly it was because of a slow driver who liked to stop a lot. And we definitely went a different way - the route on the way back included a mountain pass so steep that the bus couldn't make it up while loaded, and we all had to get out and walk about a mile up to the top of the pass. This happened just at twilight, and I really enjoyed sitting in the grass around the ovoo at the top of the pass sharing cookies with the five or so children who had made it up to the top first with me while we waited and hoped that the bus could make it up, unloaded.
I'm sorry I don't have pictures of that but it was really too dark.

Anyways we got into Murun in the morning, and went to a summer house belonging to some member of Nansalmaa's family.

Wood stove for cooking and heating; the rest of the kitchen behind.

I'm sorry if the face-smearing is creepy but the point of this picture is the painting on the bedframe. Just ignore the creepy face smearing.

We slept there for a while and then waited for the minibus driver to come pick us up and take us on to Ulaan-uul. I will note at this time that I really love the painted decorations all over all the furniture in gers and houses. So much orange! So much yellow!
I wish I could have taken more pictures, because I was in a lot of gers with a lot of different neat stuff, but it seemed pretty wrong to be taking lots of pictures of the inside of homes of people I had only just met.

Murun is ... well, it wasn't that interesting. There was a big open market, and electricity - but no running water or wastewater plumbing.

Typical street.

A fence and some houses.

I'm not sure exactly why but this makes me think of Dr Seuss.

The only other interesting thing that happened was we went to the meat market, which smelled bad and was really disorganized. Most of the meat available was sheep and horse - the horse has much yellower fat. The meat was cut up every which way, not so much into discernible "cuts".
I didn't take pictures because I didn't want to open my bag in there.

Returned to the City

Worth the trouble.

After quite a lot of travel, I'm back in UB for now to do my lab work. I will put up pictures from the trip soon, as well as from other upcoming excursions. But for now, because I have spent more than 36 hours in buses and jeeps on roads that are not actually roads, just one picture. Reindeer grazing in the evening sun in the west taiga, with spring flowers and a little evening mist.

A Very Large Statue of Chinngis Khaan

...and other adventures east of the city.

(All photos that are of me, photo credit Enkhdalai. Thanks!)

I was taken to the countryside east of Ulaanbaatar today to see some things. The focus of the trip was a very large statue of Chinngis Khaan, but we saw some beautiful countryside and whatnot also.

The city itself is big enough, but you don't have to go very far outside it to get to open, lightly-inhabited countryside.

This might be 40 km out of the city.

Not much further than that, and we come upon Stainless Chinngis himself; I gather that this is the centerpiece of a resort-cum-conference-center that is still in progress.

He is very shiny, and very large.

Inside the building at the base of Chinngis are various things, including a really interesting museum full of bronze age artifacts, a restaurant (which was closed), opportunity to dress up in Bronze Age Mongolia Costume (I did not take advantage of this opportunity), and also a very large boot.

Possibly the world's largest boot.

The view from the top of the horse's head is really great.
In most directions, one can see the surrounding countryside, which is currently green and blooming.

Also one can look directly into the giant stainless-steel gaze of the man himself.

Do not mess with this man. This man invented the Rule of Law.

On the way back, a few other things happened.

This is not fake.

If it looks like I'm worried that the giant eagle is going to eat my face, it's because that is exactly how I felt. The Kazakh man to whom the eagle belonged kept telling me to shake the eagle so she would become unbalanced and spread her wings, but I didn't really like doing that.

The eagle, however, was uninterested in my face.

The eagle just wanted to have water dumped all over her head, and she got that.

I also had an opportunity to get over my fear of camels.

These camels don't look scary but I knew a camel once who hated me.

I got on the camel.

This was even less exciting than it probably looks. But pleasant enough.

I'm told that the snow here only stopped a very few weeks ago; so now all the hills are green, and right now there were purple flowers blooming everywhere. I like them.

I'm sorry if these flowers are anticlimactic. They are very small and beautiful.