87’ tall Avalokitesvara in Gandan monastery!
A prayer hall at Gandan
BJ outside tonight’s accommodation, a Mongolian ger (yurt)
Inside the ger!
The endangered Mongolian wild horse, in one of the few places it has been reintroduced :: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Przewalski's_horse
Hustain Nuruu - Biosphere Reserve - Hustai National Park
Our view last night from the 20th floor, overlooking the Parliament building in the capital, Ulaanbaatar (UB)
Gandan (the Avalokitesvara is inside!)
Gandan
This is just *Day 1* in Mongolia, and we already can’t wait to bring you here!
This is just *Day 1* in Mongolia, and we already can’t wait to bring you here!
This is just *Day 1* in Mongolia, and we already can’t wait to bring you here!
This is a partial menu of the pujas (prayers) you can pay to have performed for you at Gandan
Gursed buying us some pujas!
Our puja receipt 😂
Flying into UB
Such interesting prayer wheels!
One giant aisle of this UB market was candy!
Our ger camp
We finished this evening with a Mongolian beer!
This is just *Day 1* in Mongolia, and we already can’t wait to bring you here!
Hustain Nuruu - Biosphere Reserve - Hustai National Park
Wild horse bones in a gulch
This is just *Day 1* in Mongolia, and we already can’t wait to bring you here!
A nursing wild horse
This is just *Day 1* in Mongolia, and we already can’t wait to bring you here!
Stomping in the watering hole
Space shuttle debris that landed just miles away!
Tiny jockeys (and their next album cover! 😂) More about this in another post!
Not such an effective fence? 🤔😆🐐🐐🐐
Our 2nd ger camp
The road is a popular place to hang out!
Since I took an accidental “happy model strutting out of a ger” photo of BJ, I think we’ll make that our theme!
Inside of our 2nd ger.
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BJ, Aggy & Gursed taking a walk under the happy Buddha face!
We’ve gotten some rain—good for the nomads!
My first taste of airag getting readied—fermented horse milk!
Aggy & the airag
I think airag is absolutely delicious! It has a light yogurt-y taste! 🐴🥛
Hands down, these are the best-looking camels we’ve ever seen (and we see a lot of camels! 😂)
Well, I guess BJ owns a horse now
Lots of grazing
Globe thistle, or as Aggy said, Horse Chewing Gum (they love it!)
This is when I *thought* the uphill portion of the hike was over (I was wrong 🤦♀️😆)
Macro photography
Mongolian wrestling! We’ll post more about this sport soon!
A red deer we saw on our hike—so lucky!
Grazing with some sand dunes in the background
Takin’ selfies with BJ’s phone
A small but important Tibetan Buddhist temple
Marijuana flourishes here (but is not consumed much at all)
Photo shoot
You can’t wait to hear more about Mongolian wrestling, can you? I think we can all agree right now that this sport wins “Best uniform,” yes? For players AND referees!
This is the mountain we hiked over!
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A stripe of yellow (canola flowers)
BJ & Aggy on the downslope of our hike
The flowers seen on yesterday’s hike 🌼
The goal of a match is to get your opponent to touch his upper body, knee, back, or elbow to the ground.
The Zasuul (literally meaning a "fixer") of the wrestler is an on-field guide and coach of the wrestler. In lower round competitions when there are many wrestlers, most wrestlers don't have their own zasuuls. Successful wrestlers and those that get to the higher rounds get their own zasuuls. A Zasuuls' role is to hold the hat of his wrestler while he wrestles and give him encouragement and motivation on the field. For instance, if the match is going slowly, a zasuul might slap the butt of his wrestler to encourage him to engage his opponent faster. Zasuuls are not technically coaches in the literal sense. They are usually an elder and a friend of the wrestler who is there on the field to serve as a guide and help set up a fair competition.
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The zodog is a tight, collarless, heavy-duty short-sleeved jacket of red or blue color. Traditionally made of wool, modern wrestlers have changed to lighter materials such as cotton and silk. It is fastened at the back with a simple knotted string, and the front is cut away, leaving the wrestler's chest exposed. According to legend, on one occasion a wrestler defeated all other combatants and ripped open the zodog to reveal her breasts, showing to all she was a woman. From that day, the zodog had to reveal the wrestler's chest.
One of the defining features of bökh is a dance wrestlers perform as they enter the contest field and exiting at the end. Different locales have different dancing styles. In Mongolia the wrestler imitates falcons or phoenix taking off.
This is where it gets wild:: there are NO weight classes, age limits, or time limits in a match. It is not uncommon to see a toddler wrestling a grown man during the Mongolian Naadam festivals (we actually saw that!)
Bökh means "durability.” Wrestling is the most important of the Mongolian culture's historic "Three Manly Skills", that also include horsemanship and archery. Chinggis (Genghis) Khan considered wrestling to be an important way to keep his army in good physical shape and combat ready.
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Horsing around with Moon Pies in their mouths (after a race)
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Tough but sweet 😉
After a big race
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Classic Mongolian saddle and stirrups. These stirrups changed the face of the world at the time. This is worth a read::
https://www.google.com/amp/s/arstechnica.com/science/2017/05/the-mongols-built-an-empire-with-one-technological-breakthrough/%3famp=1
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Walking the horses after a race
The winner of the race
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Now you have some context for his bad-ass album cover 😂
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A Chinese-style temple in the background, a truly Mongolian-style ger temple in the foreground!
The protector Sri Devi
The protector Mahakala
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Prayer wheels of different designs
Holy texts, wrapped in brocade
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Portable shrines
A big (slightly) boozy bowl of horse milk in the morning at the monastery!
I love the 4 Friends crock!
People bring airag to the monasteries as a donation and toss it in the pot.
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When your car gets stuck in the mud... that’s a good time for a lunch break 😂
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Sunset last night
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One of the best things I’ve ever eaten! Urum, a sort of clotted cream (cow milk), topped with sugar, on top of a freshly fried dough. Our host originally made it into a sandwich for me but I’m a little too messy for that! 😂
Yummy yummy yummy! From the top left: airag, a fermented horse milk drink; the urum clotted cream (which they called butter); fried bits of curd; a plate of preserved goat meat; more airag; a young curd cheese made from horse milk (delicious); little, aged, sweet yak milk goodness; aged cheese chunks from cow, goat, and sheep Milan’s; and in the center, hands down the BEST yogurt I’ve ever had (made from yak’s milk, but you’d never know it).
Our amazing host frying up some fresh bread (no ovens, so bread is fried)
The mares must be milked every 2 hours, and only a small amount of milk is acquired each time.
Our spread!
These aged yak-milk dollops were sweetened with sugar! Seemed like something that would be a traditional winter holiday treat in the USA!
The urum, clotted cream 😍🥰🤤 This is what is skimmed off cow milk after boiling and cooling
This is what is left after you boil down yogurt and fry the curd in oil! (Photo of process in the comments)
This was great—a horse milk curd cheese not aged so long (yet!) VERY tangy! Like a manouri Greek cheese.
Aggy will kill me for posting this, but I love it! ❤️
Gursed taking advantage of the delicious traditional nomad bread.
Agiimaa explaining the different vats of milk products!
A sheep stomach bag used for storing butter (for up to three years!)
One of the ger dogs lying next to a sheep skin drying (soon to be part of a winter coat!)
Explaining the difference between manure (for fuel) gathered in winter/spring/summer.
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The year’s first foal wears a blue khatak scarf, an honor
What a WONDERFUL morning!
Yesterday’s sunset from the edge of the Gobi desert 🌞
All of the nomad’s gers and livestock in the valley 😍
The bandanna was unintentional, I didn’t wear it for horse riding! 😂 (I was wearing it on my head before I put the hat on!)
By all accounts, there are 70 million livestock animals in Mongolia... and 3 million people!
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Such a unique prayer wheel
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A sheet of rain coming across the valley
Livestock in the distance
So many flowers this summer!
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They call these “fat stones” for their resemblance to...well...fat! 😆
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BJ, ready for anything 😂
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A scenic place to get stuck in the mud!
A Buddha protecting the waters below near the ruins of Ongi monastery
🐮❤️
You may have noticed there’s a distinct lack of trees in our photos, so most often you’ll see these majestic birds sitting on the ground! It’s a very strange sight!
This nomadic family was moving their location by about 20 km (Ps, this boy is 6 years old!)
This nomadic family was moving their location by about 20 km
This nomadic family was moving their location by about 20 km; their ger (broken down) would be in the vehicle.
The son in the nomadic family we met led us to their summer home on his motorcycle—he is 14 years old!
The outside of our nomadic hosts’ home yesterday
❤️
These rock formations in this valley signify ancient burial areas
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A high spot above Ongi monastery ruins
This mountaintop had some cellphone coverage 😂 It’s nice to travel with other travel professionals who also know how to get stuff done on the fly!!
Hiking with Aggy
Prayer wheels in Mongolia come in all shapes, colors, and sizes
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A locust! I’d never seen one before our trip to Mongolia
Gursed shows is a special sacred well at the Ongi temple ruins
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Our ger camp mascot
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This is completely unedited, save for straightening! 😲 (25-second exposure). I stepped outside to see the International Space Station go by (get the ISS app if you don’t have it yet!) which then turned into a whole photo shoot 📷✨💫✨
Thank you to Aggy who had to brave a windstorm shower of camel pee to take this photo 😳
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Unedited stars ✨ (25-second exposure)
🥛😍💫 (25-second exposure)
The Bactrian camels of Mongolia are just stunningly gorgeous creatures. Read more about these two-humped camels here: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bactrian_camel
From wiki:: Bactrian camels have a remarkable ability to go without water for months at a time, but when water is available they may drink up to 57 liters at once. When well fed, the humps are plump and erect, but as resources decline, the humps shrink and lean to the side.
BJ posing on his beautiful camel
The sunsets have been lovely in our Mongolian travels!
A little blurry but still beautiful. (This was an impromptu 1 AM photo shoot, where I learned how to use BJ’s newest camera via Google while he was asleep, using a buckwheat pillow as a makeshift tripod on the ground 😆)
Black tailed gazelles!
Kashmir goats 🐐 dot the landscape, even in the Gobi.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Khongoryn_Els
My floppy-humped, floppy-faced camel
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Black and white....
....or color?
This was round 5—only 8 wrestlers left, down from 128!
Singing before the start of the horse race today
The finish of the 2-year-old horse race—10 km (with jockeys age 6-12)
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I couldn’t crop this photo, I just love everything going on on the sidelines, including the omnipresent white fedora
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Heading off the the starting line, 10km away
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The loneliest basketball hoop
Tonight’s sunset
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There’s Jupiter on the far right!
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A beautiful hike through Yol Valley this morning!
A beautiful hike through Yol Valley this morning!
A beautiful hike through Yol Valley this morning!
Some local campers were keeping their airag (fermented mare’s milk) cool in the stream!
Love the random red rocks, love my weird shoes ❤️
A pika! https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pika
Mongolia’s symbol, the Soyombo 🇲🇳
A beautiful hike through Yol Valley this morning!
A beautiful hike through Yol Valley this morning!
A beautiful hike through Yol Valley this morning!
A beautiful hike through Yol Valley this morning!
A beautiful hike through Yol Valley this morning!
A beautiful hike through Yol Valley this morning!
A beautiful hike through Yol Valley this morning!
A beautiful hike through Yol Valley this morning!
A beautiful hike through Yol Valley this morning!
A beautiful hike through Yol Valley this morning!
A beautiful hike through Yol Valley this morning!
A beautiful hike through Yol Valley this morning!
There was a great little museum nearby—dinosaur egg fossils!
Had to get my foot in there for 🦖 bone size reference!
BJ and one of our mascots, Kyle the Condor, pose with the namesake of Yol Valley, the bearded vulture.
Oh my 😳
We were so lucky to have Gursed introduce us to the Venerable Thupten Ngodup.
We were told that we were VERY lucky to be visiting today, as some precious artifacts were in transit from the President of Mongolia, via the Nechung Oracle, to be placed inside the Avalokitesvara at Gandan Monastery. Included is a relic that is said to contain the hair of Padmasambhava, the Buddhist master responsible for bringing Buddhism to Tibet and Bhutan.
To learn more about Padmasambhava, visit https://www.learnreligions.com/padmasambhava-450201
No matter what your beliefs, receiving a blessing from the head medium of Tibet and chief oracle adviser to the Dalai Lama is a gift!
The Tarbosaurus Bataar 😲🦖
The outside of the 8th Bogd’s Winter Palace
A specimen inside the Choijin Lama Museum—one of the finest collections of Vajrayana art we’ve ever seen!
Inside a ger temple, complete with a relatively new “Four Friends” display
The bathroom area outside the ger temple... any chance to remind yourself of the impermanence of life!
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Prayer beads can be borrowed inside many temples!
A stunning Avalokitesvara
A fierce Sri Devi
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A wonderfully intricate butter sculpture
Detail
A roof detail
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Thangka (painting) detail
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Inside UB’s dinosaur museum
What an honor to meet this shaman today 🙏 He’s been practicing since he was 13 years old & feels it’s his duty to serve humanity
The shaman’s shrine
Those are some big doors!
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Protoceratops!
Posing with 🦕
The first Mongolian astronaut’s spacesuit!
😍
Looky what I found—margaritas in Mongolia! 😆
Lama Pürevbat showing us one of ten volumes of this series of instructional art books he created (every painting and drawing inside is his!)
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Aglag Buteel Monastery
One of the softest dogs ever! Outside Purevbat’s residence
One of Pürevbat’s creations
❤️🙏❤️
BJ and the jewel-vomiting mongoose
The jewel-vomiting mongoose (gotta love Tibetan Buddhist iconography!) Here's the scoop: Buddhist Sanskrit texts offer explanation for the mongoose’s association with wealth. It was said that wealthy people in ancient India carried a purse made of mongoose’s hide and that when they gambled they often shook the purse. The mongoose or mongoose’s hide then regurgitated gold coins and other precious things from its mouth.
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The carvings are so deep!
Lots of critters live here, including THIS turkey!
🦃
Piggies! 🐖🐖🐖
Lama Pürevbat is an extraordinary human being! He just kept bringing out more and more volumes of his work, of collected books of interviews with him, of his museum's book, his magazine, etc etc!
More of Pürevbat’s creations
An emaciated Buddha image
This was before Buddha realized the middle path was best (not the one of self-indulgence OR self-torture!)
❤️🐽
This ger-shaped boulder is naturally occurring inside the monastery
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Sometimes the way through is the way around!
Such a gorgeous mountain setting
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Reclining Buddha
Loved the stripes on the babies!
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Blessing the area’s natural spirits with milk
The sculpture in the foreground represents the fat of a sheep’s tail, served traditionally around Losar (new year)
We’re Very serious about modeling our new cashmere hats (with some Aperol Spritzes 😂) The cashmere here is divine and cheap (BJ’s hat was $10, mine was $18!)
Paul is barefoot 🦶
A GIANT set of mala beads, donated from Japan
We too a swing by the so-called “Black Market” (and snagged a few giveaways for you—stay tuned!)
Cheese, glorious cheese!
A dairy aisle
Agiimaa told us, mostly serious, that every Mongolian must have three things—Reindeer boots (above), an iPhone, and a Prius 😂 (You can’t even imagine how many used Priuses are in Ulaanbaatar!!)
Child jockey protective gear 🏇
Beautiful brocade in the market
View of Gandan monastery from our hotel
🇺🇸 ???
😤 🤣
😍 in love with the Shaman’s puppy
Did you know that contortion is a Mongolian art?
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Our generous nomadic hosts
😘
Little did I know I’d be ruined for life by the deliciousness of her freshly fried dough, clotted cream, and sugar 🤤
South Gobi
Kashmir goats (aka Cashmere goats!) 🐐
The mix of traditional gers and big buildings in UB is fascinating
Mongolian nomad GPS
This is how you Really enjoy fresh clotted cream from a Mongolian nomad family’s kitchen! 😋
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This 131-foot tall zinc statue of Chinggis Khan is truly a site to behold!
Contemplating his mortality 😉🐕
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I love this statue of Chinggis Khan in Sukhbaatar Square
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What a pleasure to get to hang out with these goobers our last full day!
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That’s one big boot.
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The restaurant ger with a touch of ambiance!
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A yak cart taking our luggage to the car!
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The perfect hostess
Learning to slice cheese with a string
❤️
