МОНГОЛД АЯЛААД ИРСЭН АМЕРИК ТАНИЛААС МААНЬ ИРҮҮЛСЭН ЗАХИА

Dear Mr.Demberel:

I am writing this letter to thank you for encouraging my son, Mark, and me to visit Mongolia. We did so this July and had a wonderful time.We also want to thank the Ulaanbaatar company, Selena Travel, which planned our tour, and the excellent guide/interpreter, Dori, who was with us throughout our stay in Mongolia. We had our own van with a very helpful driver, Ganbaa, to take us to the various sites.

Mark and I spent about one week in Ulaanbaatar, which coincided with the Naadam Festival, and about one week traveling elsewhere in your beautiful country.
I will try to summarize for you what we experienced, and give you some comments and suggestions that may be of interest to the people who promote Mongolian tourism.

We arrived in Ulaanbaatar by air from Moscow (having started out from San Francisco, California, where I work as a lawyer) on July 9, two full days before the start of the Festival. This served as a valuable warmup and gave us a good glimpse of life in the city before the big crowds arrived. It also helped to dispel the effects of jetlag. We strongly recommend including such a prelude in the itinerary for anyone else who comes for the Festival.

Even without the Festival, Ulaanbaatar has plenty to offer, especially the Gandan Monastery, the Museum of Mongolian History, and the Museum of Natural History. We were impressed with each of these. The Museum of Natural History needs repair, but that does not diminish the impact of the treasures that are on display. The exhibits of dinosaur bones are exciting, especially the two "fighting dinosaurs" that were discovered locked in mortal combat. But here I have another strong recommendation. It was a difficult task for explorers to find these bones in the Gobi. It is also very difficult to find where these bones are exhibited in the Museum building. All it takes are five or six simple signs, with arrows, starting from the entrance hall, directing the visitor "To the Fighting Dinosaurs."

Our favorite spot was Sukhbaatar Square. We spent pleasant hours there on different days, just observing the people who come and go. The colorful marching band played on two occasions, once for a wreath laying at the statue, and also as part of the splendid ceremony with the nine horsemen carrying the  Nine White Flags to the stadium. It's a fine place for visitors to spend leisure time.

I will not attempt to comment on the Naadam Festival itself.  It is an amazing spectacle, justly famous, and superbly run at each of the venues. You surely receive sufficient feedback about it each July from others.

Instead, I will offer some observations about our days away from the capital, seeing the beautiful scenery,  and staying in ger camps.

The most charming of all was the Steppe Nomads camp, east of the city in the Gun-galuut Nature Reserve. We rode horses there along the wide stream among plentiful livestock and across the steppe. In the evening a ranger drove with us toward Mt. Baits where we were able to spot bighorn mountain sheep. Only two hours from Ulaabaatar, this site seems ideal for anyone wanting  to take an overnight trip into the countryside.

With only one exception, we have nothing but praise  to offer about this ger camp, or about the other ger camps at which we stayed along the way ( the Khogno Khan camp, the Orgoo camp outside Kharakhorum, the Great Gobi camp by the bed of the River Ongi, and the Bayanzag camp near the Flaming Cliffs). All have excellent facilities, serve adequate food, and are staffed by conscientious and attentive personnel. The camps are an asset of your tourist industry that deserves greater publicity. In my travels I have stayed in ger (yurt) camps in three other Central Asian countries, and in my opinion the Mongolian camps are the best of all.

The only negative experience we had in the four camps was on arrival at Khogno Khan. We were initially told that they had no room for us, that they were simply overbooked. Having spent the entire day driving the difficult 350 kilometers from Gun-galuut, we were shocked by this news. Fortunately, Dori persuaded them to somehow make a ger available there for Mark and me.

I must report one negative feature of all gers, in a humorous vein. The low doorways kept colliding with the top of my head. Despite repeated reminders to be careful, I seldom escaped unbruised when I tried to go in or out. As the accompanying photos show, however,  Mark and I have great admiration for the ingenious and serviceable ger, both its outside and its inside.

We congratulate the government for giving a high priority to the restoration of the Erdene Zuu Monastery at Kharakhorum. Even as it stands now, it is a site that is well worth the effort it takes to get there. The photo shows me standing next to one of the stone turtles outside the compound's walls.

We then headed south across the Gobi steppes, eventually reaching the Flaming Cliffs. The effort required for this was considerably more challenging. The roads got worse and worse and much of the time the van was driving where there is no road. Again, it was definitely worth the effort.

The vastness of the bare steppes was awesome. Here and there we crossed the paths of herds of camels. We climbed up the Moltsog Els Sand Dunes and looked down from the crest of the Cliffs.

But the constant jarring in the van took its toll on my back (I am 74). So we elected to modify the itinerary in a way that might be considered for other travelers who have made it down to the Gobi. Instead of driving in the van, we flew back to Ulaanbaatar. Dori found us an airstrip (I confess I don't know just where) and a flight with two empty seats, and off we went, while Dori and Ganbaa embarked on the two-day drive north without us.

My back rapidly recovered, and a dividend of this modification in our schedule was that Mark and I were able to spend two additional days at ease in Ulaanbaatar, without the swirl of the Festival and its crowds. It was the conclusion of a remarkably rewarding two weeks in Mongolia.

Sincerely,
Curt Karplus