Bat Ulzii

This story begins with a conversation with my director’s daughter at the end of May:
“My mother will take you to Bat Ulzii this weekend.”
 “Oh?”
“Yeah, maybe she didn’t tell you.”
     Bat Ulzii is a town north of mine that has a famous waterfall and monastery, as well as the highest concentration of yaks in all of Mongolia. My director took me there with her family as a going-away present. (My school is also having some Mongolian clothes made for me. Very sweet!)

       So off I went on a 2-day trip with my director, her husband, her oldest daughter (who speaks really good English), and her husband’s driver. You need a professional driver because they have to have the routes memorized (there aren’t any roads, signs etc.)
       Our first stop was Tuvkhun monastery, which is built into a cliff face. There was a tour guide with a handful of tourists giving talking about the history of the place. My director kept nudging me to “go listen,” so I had to trail awkwardly behind them. I only heard snippets, though, so I didn’t learn much history from it. (I got the distinct feeling the guide was trying to shake me.) 

Tourists climbing the rocks.  They were definitely trying to shake me!

This tree apparently contains a deity

Outside the monastery

        Since the Monastery is built into a mountain, exploring it involves climbing over up a lot of steep inclines lined with loose rocks. At every point, Oyunma, my director’s daughter, would yell, “If you’re scared, you don’t have to do it! You can just stay there.” But I didn’t think standing and waiting at the bottom of a mountain sounded like a whole lot of fun. Plus the teenage monks made it look so easy scrambling along the rocks in their long robes and sandals. So at short intervals she would ask if I wanted to continue and I would say yes, until finally we got to the Womb Cave. Here’s the thing about the Womb Cave: you have to climb horizontally on the cliff face above a huge sheer drop. The whole family just climbed over without hesitating, but then called out, “No really, Joyce, you don’t have to do it. Just wait for us if you’re scared.” Had they not said anything, I might have just followed them without thinking, but upon looking at the drop, I thought, “Is the Womb Cave really worth a slight risk of my life? Probably not.” On our way up to the area, Oyunma had explained the cave: “It’s a tunnel and if you crawl through it and then crawl back, it’s like being reborn. Do you want to be reborn?” I said, “No, I think once was enough.” Also, if you’ve done a lot of bad things in your life, you’ll get stuck in there, apparently. 

View of what we were climbing

The womb cave is on the right

             Just as I had decided to hang out and wait, my director’s husband (who says my name like “Josheh”), yelled, “Oooh is Josheh scared? Hahaha!” Then the driver, who’s so short and slim that he could actually manage to climb rocks gracefully, yelled “Go go go! It’s easy!” I responded with, “Easy for you, pixie man! I have 20 lbs on you!” (I have really got to get out of the habit of saying things like that out loud before I go back to the U.S.) Ultimately the taunting got to me. (The volunteer who used to live in Bat Ulzii had a similar experience. She had refused to climb over until an extremely pregnant woman she was with did it. She finally followed out of embarrassment.) As I was edging my way like a spider (or am I thinking of Spiderman?) over the rocks, all I could think was, “I just turned 24 and I’m STILL being peer-pressured into doing idiotic and dangerous things.” But when you’re a volunteer, everything you do gets recorded and repeated. If I hadn’t gone, the word would spread around my town that Americans are big chickens. (My friend Erin lives in a very small town, and people will watch her as she does her shopping and whisper to each other, “The American bought flour. And potatoes.” This information will then spread from person to person. We joke that she is the star of the most boring reality TV show in history.) So in the interest of representing Americans well, I went ahead. It actually wasn’t bad as long as I didn’t look down or think about what I was doing. (Maybe I should have, though, as on the way back my director kept yelling, “Joyce—sain baraarai!”—Hold on tight! She was probably imagining how she would explain to Peace Corps that she killed her volunteer.) 

   

         The Womb Cave is a tunnel in the cliff that you have to climb through on your belly. I was really hesitant because it was quite small and I am bigger than your average Mongolian, but my director did it, and she is a plump middle-aged lady. The scary thing is that when you look into it, you can’t see where it ends. I was instructed that women have to turn counterclockwise at the end before coming back, and I kind of assumed it opened up into a wider area. No, as it turns out it’s just a tunnel and after sliding along like a worm, you have to twist yourself (counterclockwise, of course) in order to come back. I did have a moment at the end while trying to pretzel myself into the correct direction where I was overcome with claustrophobia and was pretty sure I was going to die there. (Fortunately, I was not thinking about all the bad things I’ve done in my life, because that’s how you really get stuck!) But I wormed my way back out safely. As my head became visible Oyunma snapped some pictures and her dad told me, “Cry! You’re being born!” But I opted for a bright, “I’m just hanging out in a tunnel!” smile. 

Under the Womb Cave

           Afterwards, I asked what happens if someone really does get stuck (surely this has happened to a fat person at some point), and Oyunma said vaguely, “They, uh, handle it.” Handle it how?? I’m glad I didn’t ask before I went in.

       After the monastery, we drove around looking for gers. At each one, we’d ask if they had an open ger we could use for the night. Finally, we found one and settled down for the evening. This particular group of 3 gers was in the middle of nowhere surrounded only by yaks and beautiful mountains. When we stopped and rolled down the window, I was startled to hear American hip hop music blasting from one of them.
        I had been warned that I had to bring my own food, as the family had only brought some slabs of meat to boil. So I brought a can of soup. I didn’t even consider they that wouldn’t know what to do with it. “Do we need to put it in a pot or something?” But since the pots had been used for meat, we ended up just leaving it in the can and putting it next to the stove to warm up. Then I ate it mostly cold out of the can which was surprisingly not bad and made me feel a bit like a cowboy. 

        Food in general is always an issue when I travel with Mongolians. While 2 years ago I would just accept food so as not to be rude, I’ve started saying no. It’s not that I don’t want to be polite, but by now I have a pretty good idea of what will make me extremely sick. Of course, locals don’t believe me: “What are you talking about? Yak cream doesn’t give ME diarrhea!” But recently I’ve been standing my ground. It’s really hard, though, because there is no polite way to reject something being offered to you in Mongolian. I’ve asked quite a few Mongolians who speak English for alternate phrases, but they don’t have any particularly good suggestions. Basically, someone offers you something by saying, “Ideh uu?”—“Will you eat this?”—and all you can say is, “Idehgui”—“I’m not gonna eat that.” So rude! I’ve tried “That’s OK,” “That’s not necessary,” and “I’m full,” but they all result in my being handed the food. (“No thank you” seems to just confuse people because “No” means “I don’t want it,” but “Thank you” means, “Ooh thanks very much, I’ll take it.”)
           I’m always instructed to bring my own food on trips, which actually works out great for me. But then I have to explain what I’m eating at every meal. I gave everyone on this trip some peanut butter on bread. My director actually liked it and asked where she could buy it! As we were eating lunch before hiking up a mountain, Oyunma told me to eat as much as possible or else I would “fall down”. While they ate a baloney-type meat and bread, I snacked on a trail mix I had made out of almonds and dried cherries. The family was extremely worried about me. “What are you eating? Nuts? You’re gonna faint!” I have a really hard time explaining that things other than meat can actually give you energy. They give me the same look that I give to people when they say things like “My kidneys hurt because of the heat.” It’s a “Whatever you say, crazy lady” look.
             Anyway, while staying in the ger I learned how to wash your hands outside in teams (one person pours water from a bucket over your hands while you scrub) and that if there’s no outhouse you should bring a really long del to drape over yourself while you pee. Genius! I don’t appreciate that in the countryside going to the bathroom hole is a group activity, though. The combination of not being in an enclosed structure and having people waiting 10 feet away makes me very nervous.
             The place we stayed was so beautiful that in the morning I walked around taking pictures of the landscape. When I returned to my ger a little girl who had been following me opened the door to her family's ger and yelled, “The foreigner was taking pictures!” Really? How is that in any way interesting? 

"A Yak and his Basketball Hoop" would make a good children's book.

The river

         

      The next day we hiked up a mountain to a sacred area where you can go to pray for things. According to shamanism, the higher the place, the more energy it has. So Chinggis Khan used to sit on top of a mountain for days in order to meditate and get energy. (Although women apparently have different energy, so they should go to flat places.) I wasn’t too happy when I found out the plan because hiking is not my preferred hobby. In fact, if you asked me what my personal conception of hell would be, I’d say, “Hiking. Just hiking and hiking for all eternity.” And this was a really steep mountain. Fortunately, I had middle-aged people with me so we stopped about every 20 feet (at which point my director’s husband would smoke 2 cigarettes before moving on). I still felt like my heart was going to explode, but that was more my pace. It was worth it though, because the place was beautiful. And the family gave me a hatag (the blue scarf thing) to tie to a tree and make a wish. Since we had given offerings (hatags and throwing rice) at both the Buddhist temple and this place, I asked what religion they were. Oyunma said, “We’re poorly Buddhist and poorly Shamanist.” I said it was good that they had both covered, just in case. On the way down, we bumped into my 11th-grade student who was on her way up to wish for good results on her university entrance exams. Hey, it can’t hurt!

No one could explain why we were wrapping string around this....

Tie a hatag anywhere when you make a wish