| Ride Mongolia's Steppe |
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The fact that anyone is coming to Mongolia at all would shock the bejesus out of the millions of people who were alive during the Middle Ages. In those days, Mongolia was ex tartarus, a region of hell. It all began in the late 12th century, when Temujin—an illiterate genius who grew up to be Genghis Khan—consolidated scores of nomadic tribes into a disciplined army that poured from the plains like a plague of locusts. Light and nimble, the Mongol warriors rode small horses standing up and used their longbows to easily skewer sluggish knights burdened with heavy plate mail. As the armies sacked Khwarizm, burned Baghdad and Kiev, and pushed into Poland, they sent mobs of terrified refugees fleeing to the next kingdom.“In 25 years the Mongol army subjugated more lands and people than the Romans conquered in 400 years,” writes Jack Weatherford in Genghis Khan and the Making of the Modern World. Though they carted off sapphires, brocade, and princesses, to nomadic warriors the most useful booty was domain over a rich and creamy grassland. Today, however, most journeys to Mongolia must begin in the capital, where I meet up with the group at the country’s only five-star hotel. Outside, the streets are slick with summer rain, and leathery men wander by, peddling cigarettes. Home to one million of the country’s 2.7 million people, Ulan Bator is a city built by those who largely didn’t need one, which helps explain why it feels like a concrete ache on the velvety skin of Mongolia. Buildings are uninspired hulks of cement, and thick clots of buses and trucks congeal at intersections. Though friendly and safe and mind-boggling in pockets (until recently, people still slaughtered sheep in their apartments), it is a city best left quickly. Except for a couple of town streets and one highway, Mongolia has few paved roads. So when bad weather grounds our flight, we roll out across the open landscape in Land Cruisers for Hustai National Park, a reserve of birch trees and wild horses, two hours west of the city. On the way, Bactrian camels lumber across moist swales covered in stubby green grass, and the scent of wild onions wafts through the windows. It’s midafternoon and still cloudy by the time we roll into Hustai, a 193-square-mile park of steep hills and open plains surrounded by a 1,150-square-mile buffer zone. Anxious to stretch our legs, we immediately set out for a hike with Usukhjargal, a park biologist who, like most Mongolians, goes by one name. His means “increasingly happy.” 
“Look, there!” Mr. Happier says, pointing to a hillside peppered with stubby dun horses bearing white bellies. They are Przewalski’s horses, a breed that roamed the plains when the great khans’ cavalries were at their strongest. Mongolians call them takhi, or spirits. “This is one of three places where you can see them in their environment,” Usukhjargal says. “They went extinct in the wild, but we reintroduced 15 here in 1992. Now there are 200.”Before long, dusk seeps into a periwinkle sky and we return to camp, a collection of about 30 gers with bright orange bagana, or support beams, holding up circular felt walls and small wooden doors that face south for warmth. Inside each is a comfortable bed surrounded by a hearth and a table with a thermos of water. It doesn’t seem like much, but out here it’s pure luxury. Prince Philip has stayed here. After a meal of succulent meatballs and a glass of big Bordeaux, I head off to bed. The summer night is now so crisp that I can see my breath curling toward the hint of a chalky moon. When I push open the door of my ger, a blast of heat from the hearth whacks me hard. I crumple onto a thick camel’s-wool blanket so warm and snuggly that I have little doubt why the Mongols fathered so many children. THE NEXT MORNING THE ETERNAL BLUE HEAVEN, the Mongol name for the sky, returns, and we hear the helicopter long before it arrives. We load up, and Erdenee, our pilot, plots a smooth course east, back over Ulan Bator and along the Tuul River. Red deer and horses run along ridges and valleys that drift into plains so big and phony-looking that they could be Olan Mills backdrops. Out the porthole I see the Wind Horse ger camp, tucked on the riverbanks. Here we plan to meet some of the country’s leading conservationists, ride horses, and lob lures into the river for lennock. When we step from the helicopter, a man with a deeply weathered face and an orange sash fastened around his waist approaches us. Denihuu, 65, reaches into the folds of his flowing del to produce a smooth glass bottle with a heavy jade stopper. It’s snuff, and offering it is a formal greeting. Irene Wurtzel, the playwright whose work has appeared on stages from Broadway to Europe, accidentally inhales way too much. “I think I just cleared out my sinuses,” she says, the brown powder dusting her cheek. |
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