Heading Out for Cats!

Up bright and early for a long drive out to the snow leopard camp.  I managed to get a shot of the giant traditional boot on the way out of Khovd.

It wasn't long before we turned off the paved road, onto what passes in Mongolia as a road.  I had trouble seeing that road, and there were multiple choices of paths one could take.  Often, when you could see the "road", it was time for drivers to choose a different route to take.  Over time, I came to realize that in Mongolia, what passes as a "road" is more like a "concept of a road!"  Bruce, I've never asked you to navigate this type of area!

For the longest time, it was just plain, barren ground.  Bina said it would get green once it warmed up.  There were ice and snow patches that would melt to make water on the dirt, and there were a few spots where a patch had melted and there was some green.  Not much, but some.  There were some small birds that were impossible to photograph.  Bina said they were horned lark or Mongolian lark, with the horned lark being most prevalent.  We did see a sand grouse, but it flew away before I could get an identifiable shot.  After a while (a couple of hours), we came across a herd of camel.  Livestock herds here are camel, cattle, horses, and goats.

We also drove past what appeared to be deposits of bentonite, similar to the Bentonite Hills in Utah.  I found resources that indicated bentonite is found in the Gobi, but we were on the Western Steppe.  The fact that nobody has documented it in this inhospitable land doesn't mean it's not there.  But it could easily be another mineral causing these colors.

About halfway through, around lunch time, we found some pavement for a few kilometers.  That gave us an opportunity to stop for gas and grab some snacks from the back of the car.  We saw lots more livestock, including goats, cattle, and horses.  I only took pix of the goats crossing the road. 

At some point, after we passed a tire on the ground, we turned off the pavement, down the embankment (which wasn't small), and back on the concepts of roads.  This would be the last pavement we would see for several days.  I was so surprised at leaving the road like we did that I didn't even think to snap a picture!  I have to admit that, while I never stopped being amused by it, I did grow accustomed to road signs being replaced with tires and animal skulls with beer bottles or pieces of fabric sticking out of them.  And somehow, these guys knew where they were going - which tire, which animal skull, which shrub  to turn at.  The closest we came to getting lost was one of them deciding that we should be on the track next to us.  After another several hours, we pulled into our ger (yurt) camp.  I didn't take a camp shot this time.  I took one on almost the last night when we came in from looking for wildlife, so the lighting on it is much different than these.  I did get some shots of parts of the camp including the rock formation that looks a little like a snow leopard!

 

These guys with Soaring Expeditions are awesome.  They rent the gers from local herders and members of the closest community.  They also hire locally.  When we arrived, we settled in, had dinner, and got ready for our first day out.  I didn't take pictures inside my ger until the second night, but I'm going to go ahead and show you the inside now.

My ger had a little page that had 10 interesting fact about the Mongolian ger.  This included statements about what some parts stand for, the direction they are oriented, the fact that they are one of the oldest housing forms, and that the traditional gers are made with no nails or screws.  In fact, the ger I was staying in was mostly tied together, but you could tell that more recent repairs were made with screws.

Heat escaped through the top, and the smoke escaped through the chimney from the wood/coal stove.  My ger also had lots of decorations on the wood in the ceiling.

We did have a chemical toilet, so I didn't need to go outside if I needed to go.

As you can see, I had already exploded around my ger.  I had two beds and a table in my ger.  I also had a sink and a mirror that was just high enough to reflect my boobs every morning while I was brushing my teeth!  We had a light bulb that was run from a battery, and once Yumchin returned with the Starlink, we had wifi while the generator was running.  We did not have showers, but I brought wipes and could heat water on the wood stove.  I was also wearing merino wool, which is good for eating stink.

All the time leading up to this trip, I was afraid I was going to get cold, but the ger was definitely well heated.  I actually had to ask the guy who kept the fire going to skip a time or two.  It was so hot, I had to sleep over the covers until the fire burned down.  I slept well, though.

Up the next morning and headed out for our first search.  The trackers headed out before we had breakfast, so they were already searching.  When we headed out, Bina would take the spotting scope out and our driver would take binoculars and search along the rocks in the next slope.  We always searched from far away and then determined the best way to get as close as we safely could.  We saw an ibex (which I missed), and then got a call from the trackers that they had Pallas' cat.  So, off we went.  We sat in the car and waited for him to come out of his burrow.  Here is my first good look at him!

They live in burrows that they take over when marmots move out, and they eat gerbils.  He turned and looked all directions, and at one point, a falcon swooped down and grabbed the only gerbil we saw.  We have to take away his vicious cat card, because when the falcon came, the cat jumped back down into his burrow.  Of course, the falcon is about the same size as the cat!  Pallas' cat is about the size of an average house cat, about 6-10 lbs and 18-26 inches.  They are soooo fluffy, too!  I got lots of pictures, but he never came out of his burrow, so I'll show different sides of his head, including when he was looking behind.

It's hard to see the back of his head.

and when he was looking in my direction

But mostly, he just had the top of his head out and his eyes.

After lunch, we went back out.  We checked a different area, and we found an upland buzzard,

elk

ibex,

bearded vulture,

and another Pallas's cat walking along the top of the rocks.  Nobody got any pictures of him before he went on the other side.

When I started trying to load my pictures into Lightroom and see what I had, I learned that my tablet wouldn't recognize the .CR3 files that are the raw shots from the Canon.  Remind me again to never travel without my laptop!  It was very difficult not knowing what I'm getting!  

Another person joined us in camp today, too.  She's from Hong Kong and will be guided by Yumchin.  She had been to see snow leopards before in the Altai Mountains, but wanted to get closer looks.  Apparently, the Margaz Mountains (where we are) are a much better place to see them than the Altai are, which is what Bina had told me when we decided to make the itinerary flexible.  

It was a very good sign that on our first day out, we saw cats!  An awesome start!

Welcome to Mongolia!

We made it to the airport in plenty of time, and I sat around and tried to upload my photos and write my journal.  I made the decision to make this trip without my laptop, and I was already starting to regret that choice.  Typing on the screen keyboard isn't easy, and the mobile apps are less consistent than the same programs on the computer hard drive.  Not to mention, I bought the tablet for a completely different purpose, and it isn't as fast or strong as I anticipate when working with photos or journaling.  But, it's too late now.  I've left home without my computer, so just make the best of it.  I got the journaling done (of which half of this entry was lost by the time I got home and started writing the blog), and most of the pictures loaded (after 3 tries) and uploaded to the cloud, and we made our plane to Ulaanbaatar on time.  I had redundant saving with me on a large, brand new SD card and a 1TB external hard drive, so anything that didn't load to Lightroom Mobile on the tablet, was still available.

We landed around 2:00 am-ish, and as promised, we had a driver waiting for us when we cleared customs.  My companion had to get the cash out, again, as I still had no way to access cash, but we weren't likely to need any cash until after the snow leopard camps unless we chose to go to town during our day at the hotel.  We got in the taxi and headed for the hotel.  When we got to a cross roads, the driver pointed out the city lights for Ulaanbaatar and turned the other direction.  Our hotel was supposed to be secluded and a good place for birding, so that wasn't unexpected.  After a while, we turned off the paved roads, and started down barely visible dirt roads.  The driver kept calling someone and turning around, obviously lost.  I didn't check time, but we must have traversed these areas for at least an hour.  My phone battery was running down, so I only took one picture.  

We sat in the back, quietly cutting up, and discussing which horror movie it was most like.  I always send Bruce and Chrissy a message when I board a flight, when I land, and when I get to the hotel, and we have daily "proof of life" message requirements when one of us is traveling.  Plus Bruce likes to track me on Life 360 when I'm gone.  So, I sent a couple of tongue-in-cheek texts to Bruce, who kept asking me the name of the hotel we were going to, and I couldn't remember it and didn't really have enough battery to look it up.  My idiot self didn't even think about grabbing one of those extra chargers out of my camera bag and plugging my phone in!  I told him I thought the cabbie was lost, and his answer was, "I know." Apparently, he had been tracking the whole debacle.  But it was a fun adventure, and suddenly, our driver pulled back out onto the pavement for a few seconds and off onto a different dirt road - this one with a sign that pointed to the Mongolica Hotel and Resort.  When we arrived, we were escorted up to our room, basically the penthouse suite.  Color me impressed!

I sent this video to Bruce and told him we had made it to our hotel, and his response was, "Charge your phone!"  Nothing about glad I wasn't Mongolia Chainsaw'ed or anything like that.  Just the instruction to charge my phone.  Anyway, I plugged my phone in, unpacked the CPAP, and fell asleep.

I woke the next morning around 9:30 and went downstairs, still in my nightgown, which can double as a long, black dress in a pinch (or not in such a pinch, and I'm just lazy).  This place has a pretty swank restaurant, but the guy said he'd bring breakfast up to us and confirmed that the water is not potable so would need to be boiled in the kettle if we didn't drink the bottles.  I got a message from the guys from Soaring Adventures to enjoy the day around the hotel, and that the driver would be back for us at 4:00 am the following morning to take us back to the airport where we would meet Bina, one of the principals and our tour guide.  I took absolute advantage of a day that I didn't have to get dressed and read my book while looking out the windows.  And the view from the window was good.  There were some birds, a herd of untamed domestic horses (that's an important distinction here), and a couple of kitty cats.  And I did some laundry, washing our traveling clothes.

A nice, early night to bed, and up bright and early to meet our taxi driver at 4:00 am for the ride back to the airport.  He didn't get lost this time.  He even joked about knowing the way this time!  And we met Bina at the check-in for our flight to Khovd.  The first thing I learned is that his name is pronounced with a long I.  I had been pronouncing the I as a long E, so that's going to take some getting used to.

I got called back for luggage inspection.  I had to open my suitcase to show them that what they thought was a whip was actually my tripod, and what they thought were small batteries (that aren't allowed in checked bags) was hand warmers.  We talked for a bit and learned that the mama snow leopard they had been watching was still there with her three cubs, who are now about one year old and will stay with her until they're two.  And we were going to Khovd, where we will drive over and meet an eagle hunter tonight and then head to the snow leopard camp in the morning.

We got settled onto the plane - and then came back off because of a "technical issue".  Personally, I'm glad they found it and fixed it.  While we were waiting in the airport, Bina gave us some cultural information, animal preservation/conservation,  language information, and pretty much any information we asked for.  He said it's only a 2 hour drive from Khovd to the eagle hunter, so we should be fine.  We went to the "Nice to CU" store and got some snacks.  We had fun trying to properly pronounce the town we were going to, and eventually reboarded our plane and were on our way.

Upon arrival, we met our driver, who took us to our hotel, where we checked in and had lunch.  Then we headed to Polbo, about a 2-hour drive, just as promised.  It was a pleasant drive and pretty scenery.

This statuary was just on the way out of town

One of the only signs of civilization between Khovd and Polbo, fronting a beautiful rock hill.

Lots of goat crossing signs

I especially liked this one

We went through part of the Altai Mountains

And skirted the highest peak, Tsambagarav, with an elevation of just under 4,200 m (13,500 ft).

When we reached Polbo, we met 69-year-old Leikham, a seventh-generation Cossack-Mongolian eagle hunter.  And just now, while writing this, I'm realizing that he may have been saying Kazakh-Mongolian instead of Cossack-Mongolian, which would make much more sense, since we were quite close to Kazakhstan.  These are two very different cultural groups, and Kazakh fits much better with a nomadic eagle hunter than the Russian warrior Cossack does.  Anyway, I digress.

We learned quite a bit about eagle hunting.  They catch them wild, preferably as fledglings or stolen directly from the nests, but sometimes trapping older birds.  It takes a little over a month to train a fledgling and a little over 3 months to train an older bird.  Most of the training is to teach them to kill but not eat the prey.  During hunting season, they feed the eagles washed cow lungs.  This is to keep them healthy, but hungry enough to hunt and come home for more food.  During the off season, they feed them rabbit.  Mongolians do not eat rabbit.  They only use female eagles for hunting because they're larger and stronger than the males.  They generally keep them for 6 or 7 years before releasing them in the wild again so they can breed and keep the species promulgating.  Sometimes, they will have an especially good hunter, and they will keep her longer, sometimes up to 13 years.  The tradition of eagle hunting is passed down based on interest, not based on birth order, and no descendants are required or pressured to take up the sport.  Recently, women have started entering the field, but Leikham is not a fan of that practice.

As is the practice in Mongolia, when visitors come, they put out food.  Most of this spread was candy and the Aaruul, a fermented yogurt made from some type of milk curds (cow, yak, camel, or goat).  He also had milk tea, which was yak milk and tea powder.  I thought that was quite good.

He also showed us many of the awards he has won for horse racing and eagle hunting (mostly on the walls) as well as the coats and hats he has made from the hides of animals, mostly fox legs.  They may not eat rabbits, but they do eat fox, and while I was never clear what they do with the rest of the fox hide, I'm sure it gets used.  These people are very thrifty.  Not much goes to waste.  The fox leg pelt is used in his coats and hats because that's the softest part of the pelt.

The inner lining of this coat took the fur of the legs of 30 foxes.  It's one of his most prized possessions.

This coat and hat are made of wolf, an animal too large to be taken by an eagle.

After talking and learning, we went outside and met Ana, his current eagle, with whom he is very happy.  She's a very sweet girl, and we even got to hold and pose with her wearing the fox coat.

As we drove back to Khovd, we drove through a short-lived but significant snow storm.  Still not really enough to put much on the ground, but it blew hard and obstructed visibility.  Didn't seem to faze our driver, though.  

When we got to Khovd, there were lights up all over town.  This is apparently the normal state of streets in Mongolian towns.

After dinner, we went to our rooms for a good night's sleep and a good shower.  Tomorrow, we leave for the snow leopard camp.  I won't have overnight electricity to use my CPAP, and we won't have showers for a while.

A Long Layover in South Korea

To kick off this trip, my travel companion and I started off with a long layover in South Korea.  We booked a tour through Viator.  When we got to the airport, and I was getting ready to go to the ATM to grab some cash, I hit my first snag.  Before leaving home, I sorted out my regular debit card since I don't usually carry it with me when I travel.  Unfortunately, we stopped using Charles Schwab, which is the debit card I usually carry and I didn't mentally process that that one wasn't in my wallet, so I didn't have a debit card with me at all!  Had it not been for my travel companion, that would have been a terrible thing because I also didn't have any PIN numbers for my credit cards since I never get cash advances from them.  She was able to get some cash out, and we settled in to wait for our tour guide.

Chance Kim with Outdoor Korea picked us up on time, and off we headed.  First stop was the DMZ.  On the way there from the airport, we drove near the border, including some guard shacks on the southern side of the Han River, which marks the North and South Korean border along Incheon, where the airport is located.  Our guide told us that if you look closely, there are few to no trees on the mountains on the North Korean side because they have stripped the land of trees for wood for heating fires and construction.  Though North Korea has been attempting reforestation, it was noticeably bare on the northern side of the river.  Apparently these efforts have not reached the southern border.  

Once we reached the DMZ area, we walked around the public area to see things.  As expected, there were lots of historical markers.  Korea had been a Japanese colony until the end of World War II, at which time, like much of the world, the peninsula was split between the United States and the Soviet Union.  The goal was that Korea would eventually be reunified, but the sections couldn't agree on whether to reunify under communist rule or as a democracy.  Ultimately, North Korea invaded South Korea, resulting in the first time the UN sent military force to support a member state.  When the fighting was over, North and South Korea went back to their original split borders with a demilitarized zone between them as a buffer.  South Korea has included a Civilian Control Zone, which expands this area.  North Korea apparently has a similar zone.

When the Armistice Agreement was signed, there was an exchange of prisoners of war across the Freedom Bridge.  Some civilians managed to cross from one to the other side, as well, before the bridge was closed off.  Now, citizens of South Korea go to the end of the Freedom Bridge and write their dreams of reunification on ribbons which get tied to the wall at the end.

There are a couple of statues at the beginning of the bridge.  They look like just a depiction of a male and female South Korean service member, and I can't find anything that discusses their significance.

There is also a small park that runs under the Freedom Bridge.  It doesn't seem to get a lot of use, but that could be because we were there early in the morning.

To the right of the Freedom Bridge is a bombed out train that had been used during the Korean War.  It appears to have been manufactured by Mitsubishi.

There is also large Peace Bell that gets rung periodically.

And there is a park where people gather once a year to pray and ask the ancestors to reunite the country.  Most of these people who come to this park are old enough to remember family members from whom they have been separated since the end of the Korean War, so this park gets used by fewer people every year.

After walking around the park, I had to store my camera back in the car because it wasn't allowed on the military base with a tour.  I did still have my phone camera, though.

Once on the base, we went to see the Third Tunnel.  Since the Armistice, North Korea has continued to aggressively pursue reunification with South Korea under communist rule, which is a nice way to say they're continuing to try to defeat South Korea and dominate the entire peninsula.  One way they have done this is by digging tunnels under the DMZ and into South Korea.  Based on the size of these tunnels, the intent is to move ground troops, though one tunnel is large enough to transport artillery and small armored vehicles.  One of these tunnels, the third one found, is open to tourists.  It is large enough to transport 30,000 ground troops with light weapons per hour.  Before the concrete barrier which blocks the tunnel from being used, it is over 300 meters at an 11-degree incline.  Our guide told us that these tunnels were located by the South by boring PVC piping into the ground and pumping water into it.  If the water keeps running, there is likely a tunnel, and they bore through the bedrock to reach it and plug it with a concrete barrier.  Multiple other reports, however, state how these tunnels were discovered by accident, with the first tunnel being discovered by a South Korean troop on exercise noticing steam rising from the ground.  Upon inspection, voices were heard, so the soldiers started puncturing the ground with bayonets and other items until the ground above the tunnel collapsed, and the two countries exchanged fire for a short period of time.

By the time the Third Tunnel was located, there were defector reports of the tunnels being dug along with information that Kim Il-sung had ordered the tunnels built in 1971, to be completed by 1975.  The South Koreans had been searching for tunnels for several years, and in 1978, work the North Koreans were doing in the Third Tunnel caused an old bore hole to burst open.  That bore hole was marked and supported with a PVC pipe in the tunnel to help keep the tunnel from collapsing in that spot.  The fourth and last tunnel was discovered in 1990, but there are believed to be many more that have not been discovered.  However, the North Korean government has seemed to abandon any attempts at winning the Southern part of the peninsula through ground action and has recently been working more on ballistic missiles, having detonated some testing missiles as recently as last week.

Before we entered the Third Tunnel, we had to put all of our belongings in a locker.  That included batteries, gloves, and cell phones.  There were no pictures of the tunnel.  We  put on our hard hats and headed down to the actual tunnel.  It was an eerie feeling, descending approximately 73 meters below ground, passing by MOPP stations in several places along the way.  MOPP is the masks and clothing worn as protection from the use of nuclear, biological, and chemical weapons.  Coming back up that 11-degree incline was brutal, but I made it with just a couple of rest stops.  And, after a short rest, I had enough energy left to take some "tourist shots" outside when I got my phone back.

After we finished the tunnel area, we headed to the Dora Observatory.  We entered the 3-story observatory and looked out at the DMZ and beyond into North Korea, including into the North Korean village of Kaesong, also known as Propaganda City.  This city has always been basically uninhabited, but was built as an attempt to get South Korean citizens to defect to the North.  The observatory has an amphitheater with several rows of seating to look over the North and an outside section with the large binoculars for looking out.  Despite signs all over the place stating there are no photos to be taken, we were allowed to retain our cell phones.  So... 

Taken somewhat surreptitiously, so it's not the greatest, but you can see the little town that was built to try to entice South Koreans to defect to the North.

After the Dora Observatory, we stopped by a gift shop.  Our guide bought us each a rice soda.  It was pretty good, but very, very sweet.  When we finally got back to the car, we headed to lunch.  He asked if we wanted Western food, Korean food that is intended for Westerners, or what Koreans eat.  We told him we wanted what Koreans would eat on a fairly regular basis.  So, he ordered Army Stew.  It's a mix of broth, hot dogs, sausages, greens, hot chili paste, and ramen noodles with the necessary Korean ingredient - a slice of American cheese.  It was absolutely delicious, and I'm going to have to try to duplicate it for dinner once in a while here, at home!

Then we headed to town, Seoul, to see the hanok village.  A hanok is a traditional Korean house.  Many of them have been demolished in favor of high-rise apartments that can house many people in the same space, but in the larger cities, some traditional villages still exist.  In Seoul, the Bukchon Hanok Village exists in the center of town, between the palaces.  We drove close to the village and parked, then walked through the Bukchon Hanok Village.  We looked in some shops and were able to find postcards to send to the young children in our lives, but since it was a Sunday, the post offices were closed, so we weren't able to get any stamps to mail them from South Korea.  

I took this driving past one of the palaces.  You can see the corner guard post and the palace wall.  There are 5 palaces in Seoul, and I'm going to have to go back to spend a day seeing them along with other things.  You can get into one of them for free if you're wearing hanbok (traditional clothing).

One of the first walls we encountered was a tribute to many important historical figures.

Hanoks do not frequently have holes in their roofs.  We couldn't come up with any reason why this one would be built this way.  We thought about maybe a courtyard in the center of it, but we couldn't be sure.

The streets between the buildings (both old and new) were very small, but people still drove down them and parked.

This is the roofline of the village.  You can see a few modern buildings have been built through here, but new regulations don't allow any more to be built.  Also, according to our tour guide, all new construction has to be single story so they aren't bigger than any of the palaces.

Another view of the roofline

People in hanbok (traditional clothing).  You can rent it at many stores in the area.  Apparently, one of those stores had recently gone out of business and sold hanbok for ridiculously cheap.  There were TONS of people (both men and women) wearing hanbok.  Wearing hanbok also allows you free entrance to one of the palaces.

Because Bukchon Hanok Village is a residential part of town with a few stores and cafes sprinkled about, visitors are encouraged to stay quiet, and there are even quiet hours during which sightseers are not allowed in the area.  There were several people carrying these signs reminding visitors to keep the noise down.  She was not covering her face to avoid my photo, this was how she was holding the sign, and the picture just turned out this way.

One of the major streets (alleys?) of Bukchon Hanok Village.  It was very busy!

After walking through the village, it was time to head back to the airport.  We had an evening plane to catch to start our primary adventure in Mongolia!