Just when my work seemed to be going so well

Just when my work seemed to be going so well one of my projects has collapsed. On Monday we travelled by train for 8 hours, arrived in sainshand in the evening, checked into the hotel and celebrated my birthday with a meal and a bottle of vodka. On the Tuesday we visited Khamaryn Khiid monastery and in the evening met with the governor to discuss the project. This should have been a routine meeting, we had met in January, sent draft proposal, agreed cost share and received itinerary including 2 or 3 days looking at cross border tourism with China. So i was shocked when the governer said this was the first he had heard of the project, he was not prepared to fund it. Shocked I agreed to meet the governer again the next day. Phone call, copies of e mails confirmed that the aimag government had known of the project and agreed the scope, tho there were claims that certain e mails had not been received. The main reason seems to be the governer did not wish to work with our Mongolian consultant Gantemur, claiming Gana had a conflict of interest. The governer omitted to mention that apparently his wife has a tourism business working with chinese tourists. So I returned to UB 3 days early, my Chinese visa unused, disappointed and a bit wiser about realities of working here.

But I was pleased to have the chance to visit Khamarin Khiid again

Dinosaur bones in Gobi

Spring in Mongolia

Spring in Mongolia is notorious for changes of weather. On Saturday 18 April, after a week of glorious sunshine Tom and I set out for a night out camping in Khan Khenti Protected Area in search of the elusive black billed caipercaillie. Our plans were thwarted when we woke on Sunday morning to a blizzard and two inches of snow.

A new flat

My flat is in the green building

Views from the window

I moved into a new flat at the weekend, my former landlord's son had returned from Korea and wanted the flat. I am pleased with my new home, tho not as smart as my former penthouse, it is closer, a 5 minute walk, to the centre of town, quieter as it is not right above the largest road junction in UB, and better laid out. The furnishing is spartan but i like the space. The fridge does not work but at present I can use the balcony as freezer, unfortunately the milk was solid after being left out overnight. There is even a TV and I spent an hour this morning watching BBC World News for the first time for a year.







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Back to UB

I returned to UB on 21 Feb after a 4 week break enjoying the tropical beaches of lamma island hong kong. UB was still cold. I was also just in time for my third new year celebrations, the Mongolian New Year, tsaagan sar is linked to lunar cycles and this year was at the end of febuary. Celebrations are largely family based and involve eating large amounts of buzz, mutton dumplings. One of the customs is to decorate significant hills and trees, a link to shamanistic religions.

Returning to UB I was struck by the pollution, a dirty haze and an ever present acrid taste of dirty coal. Just before I left for HK I was interviewed for a magazine about tourism potential of Ulaanbaatar. A difficult interview, as although I really enjoy living here it is an ugly city, with heavy pollution, poor infrastructure and transport and the few historic buildings do not bear comparison with similar sites elsewhere in the world. I did not wish to offend my Mongolian colleagues by criticisng their city but at the same time I did not wish to give unrealistic expectations about international tourism. I do think Mongolia is a great destination, but that greatness is because it is the last surviving nomadic culture in a harsh beautiful and largely undeveloped landscape. UB is just the jumping off point, not a destination in its own right.

The cold weather gives me a chance to indulge my pleasure in wearing hats, and Mongolia must be the best place in world to be able to wear what would in the UK be a silly hat, and get away with it.

Sainshand

Sainshand is the capital of Dornogobi aimag, the eastern Gobi. I made a sort visit in the middle of January. I traveled by train, with a new interpreter Uuganaa. Train journeys are comfortable, but slow, in a 4 bed compartment, but the timing was tiring, leaving at 4 pm, and arriving at 2 am with a 9 am meeting with the aimag governer.

Uuganaa is from Bayan Olgi in the west of Mongolia and has just started working with our Mongolian partner. She had worked as a tour guide during the previous summer and told me that before then she had thought she would like to marry a westerner, but having seen them as tourists she had chnaged her mind. The westerners were so helpless, like children, and could not do basic tasks. I can understand her change of mind, I am continually impressed by some of the Mongolians I work with who have made the transition from nomadic herder to multilingual entrepreneur.

Our trip to Sainshand was at the request of the governer, - to develop proposals for development of a tourism strategy and a land use plan. There were two main issues for the tourism strategy: the development of cross-border tourism with China, and the management of Khamaryn Khid monastery, one of the most famous and visited monasteries in the country.

After formal meetings we visited the monastery. At the time it seemed bizarre. The monastery is kilometres south of Sainshand, my first impression was, - Is this it? there were two restored temples,


a central stupa and an untidy collection of buildings and gers which were the homes of the monks.


After a quick visit to the monastery we were shown the other sites, an ovoo in the form of two breasts,

meditation caves, some petrified logs.

We then went to what was called the world energy centre where the Mongolians looked at a distant mountain, threw a glass of vodka into the air and said a prayer, three times. I left bemused, sure there were visitor management issues at the site, the control of cars, interpretation, the gobi landscape was magnificent but I was doubtful about its value as a tourist destination.


We returned to UB on the night train, arriving at 8 am. That night I met up with Tom and Konchog for a birding chat, Konchog told me that Altangerel who I had met had played an imprtant role in the preservation of monastery documents and texts during the communist period and the next day Konchog gave me a copy of a book The Lama of the Gobi about the life and times of Danzan raja, the nineteenth century Buddhist monk, poet, womanizer, drinker who had built this and many other monasteries. It was a great read and I realised how much I had missed, what a great story there is to be told about the site.

Snooker and pool

I have got used to seeing pool snooker tables outside in the street, but this one seemed so Mongolian.

New Year

The new year dawned with a spectacular sunrise as the sun climbed over the mountains and hit Ulaanbaatar's pollution.
My main resolution is to spend more time birding,-last year i managed 199 species in Mongolia without really trying, if i make an effort how many can i see in 2009? 250, 275? ......

So far on 18 January i have seen 34 species,- winter birding is hard work here,the daytime max has been -11C, so its tough for the birds, and also for the birders. I started with two walks into the mountain forest to the north of UB, a short bus ride, then a walk-2km or so and i am into the woods. Highlights were three toed and black woodpeckers and bullfinches. One of the fun thing about birding here is that several species look completely different to those of the same species in england so the nuthatches here do not have any chestnut on the flanks as they do in uk, long tailed tits seem quite happy in the extreme temperatures whereas in the UK their numbers decline dramatically after a cold winter, and then the bullfinches look totally different, or some of them do. There are at least two races, one which has red or pink on the underparts as in England, tho there is less pink, and another which has no red or pink at all but is a grey bird, this is described either as a race of the Eurasian Bullfinch or as a separate species.

The last two weekends I have joined with Konchog, Abu (a visiting german birder) and Ishee to drive further afield, last weekend to the woods above Mansheer, this weekend 100om west of UB to Hustai.

On both trips mammals have been as interesting as the birds. Hustai is the main site where the Prewalzski horse has been successfully reintroduced to Mongolia and we saw several herds of the beasts. We also saw plenty of red deer, 10% of all Mongolian red deer occur here.But the most exotic mammal for me was the siberian flying squirrel we saw happily munching away on a larch tree. I did not know there were flying squirrels in the taiga, apparently they can be found from Finland to Kamchatka. Konchog has copied a picture onto his blog www.danzanravjaa.typepad.com

So here are some pics of our multi national team, Konchog an american,Abu german, Markus Brazilian and Ishee, Mongolian.


and my quiz for the day, what is this bird?