The last day of Our two month journey to Mongolia. We had an restless sleep last night, Mervyn was sleeping sitting up because he was coughing too much and I, well, just could not sleep.
In the morning we rechecking our packing and adjusted every thing again to get correct weight in our bags. We were just a little over and hoped that would be ok. A lot over means the dreaded excess baggage. Tugsoo came down and suggested we really aught to post our painting home instead I’d paying excess on them. There are 10 kilos in the works on paper and photographs. So off to the post office we went and the strange shape didn’t concern the ladies who know us now. Cost, $130 instead of $400 at $10 kilo excess baggage on korean airlines. And one less bag to worry about. It should follow us home in about ten days. The ladies are great, they scotch taped the whole package to waterproof the cardboard outer case.
More rest then lunch with Tugsoo’s family. And we watched a movie of dollops choice. Toy farm or so, etching like that. She had already watched once today. She is starting to say a lot of English words. She wants very much to learn English. She is only four and I am certain by our next trip she will be speaking good English.
Apparently there were two more newspaper articles published today about our show in Mongolian newspapers. Unfortunate that we were. Unable to get any to being home. I am hoping Tugsoo will send them on.
The family came to the aiort to see us off on our midnight flight. They decided it would be better to get out of city early because of the traffic and head out to the hill and enjoy the last moments of Mongol countryside.
Well, was that a surprise. We drove out up into the beautiful lush green hills to the national park only to see the development of large houses that would not look out of place in the wealthy suburbs of Melbourne. Large McMansions some three and even four stories taking several block sizes to bu old. There were new apartments being built. Houses and houses under constructional there were paddocks that did not look anything like Mongolia anymore. Fences everywhere. Steel picket fences, timber fences, dry stone rock fences, cement block rendered fences. Some with a ger and no house inside the fence. It appears as if the community here had come out and out a tape about a plot of land and made their claim. All the the building work is illegal. All of the houses and apartments are build in the national park. This is what the Mongol political corruption is all about. My friends say these houses are owned by political party members and embers of parliament. Some want the houses to be demolished. The law forbids houses to be built on this national forest and still it goes on with a ferocious intensity. The houses are on cleared land and I wondered what came first because the back houses are in the thick treed forest.
In this forest live all of the wild Mongolian animals. Bears, wolves, deer and the small creatures. The land houses sit on have the remnants of herders flocks of sheep, some cows and horse roaming through the building sites. It all appears incongruous.
We drove up through the houses to the gates of the old soviet hotel Tugsoo wanted to show me only to find guards and a gate barrier. Nope. We were not allowed any further. The guard said they were repairing the road, but his comment seem thin on the truth. What was happening further up the hill? We may never know.
We go elsewhere,Tugsoo said. We came back down through the many builders carrying soil and materials by hand and w it’s buckets. We went up another hill and this one was so beautiful… Till we noticed the white marks in the grass and tape carving up the landscape. This alley too soon will be an illegal housing lot. This is the new Mongolia. Welcome…
At the back of this road we came upon a ger camp. It was the best kept ger camp We have visited. Historical, clean. There were gers constructed of the earlier time ger with the higher roof and these gers were highly decorative. Missing was the broken glass, papers and rubbish strewn around other ger camps. The largest ger on the world claims fame here too. The camp is set beneath a forested hill.
We stayed here for dinner. The Restaurant ger was clean and decorated its the many skins of wild animals. Most of them I am saddened to report were the grey and white skins of snow leopard. At first I could not believe these skins could be real as their were too many. Hundreds! They had come from confiscations at customs we were told.
During dinner we were also accompanied by a wonder traditional young man playing the horse hair fiddle and singing a throat song.
