Traveler Editor in Chief Keith Bellows, and Suzanne Roberts, winner of the “Next Great Travel Writer” essay contest, have been exploring Mongolia and sending dispatches along the way. In her last dispatch, Suzanne continues her quest for the “Real Mongolia,” this time finding it in the Gobi desert.

Legend has it that the Gobi Desert was created by the stampede of Genghis Khan’s horses, flattening the scrubby desert. In the distance, outcrops of rocky, black hills bubble from the plains, reminding me of a desert not far from where I live, the Black Rock Desert in Nevada, home of the famous, or infamous depending on whom you talk to, Burning Man Festival. But here, meager grasslands cover the sand, providing food for the Bactrain camel, wild horse, and wild ass. This ancient inland sea is also home to the endangered wild camel and Gobi bear, the only desert-dwelling bear in the world (and there are only about 30 left). The Gobi occupies about a third of Mongolia, but it is one of the most sparsely populated area in the world, with only one person per square kilometer. The area is rich in coal, copper, and gold, and China, Japan, and Canada are all getting involved in mining. This will create jobs and revenue, but I can’t help but wonder about the environmental implications upon this amazing ecosystem.

We drive into the “city” of Dalanzadgad, and warped wooden fences enclose small parcels of land that contain gers, motorcycles, and cars in various stages of disrepair. We stop at a convenience store for batteries and water. A khadag, a piece of blue silk hangs from the ceiling, a welcoming sign. The store carries various sundries—sodas, snacks, beer, vodka and more vodka.

We load back into the all-terrain vehicles and bump along the roadless desert to the Three Camel Lodge, an eco-lodge that practices responsible and sustainable tourism. They take advantage of wind and solar power and use both local products and people. The roof of the main building was built by local artisans in accordance with traditional Mongolian Buddhist architecture, without using nails. The tourist gers here are luxurious with in-suite bathrooms, queen beds, robes, and slippers—a nomadic Four Seasons.

Before lunch, I set off for a hike across the plains to, well, nowhere. Crickets and geckos scurry out of my way as I cross the desert. A shepherd on a motorcycle herds sheep, waves as he zooms past. A couple of gers dot the otherwise empty landscape. Sadly, I collect a couple of plastic water bottles next to the dirt “road” we came in on. Although the plastic bottles are few and far between, they are an ominous reminder of what may be in the future as the Gobi becomes a more popular travel destination.

After lunch, we head for the “Flaming Cliffs,” named by Roy Chapman Andrews, the American explorer and alleged inspiration for Hollywood’s Indiana Jones. Andrews stumbled across dinosaur eggs and fossils in the area in 1923 when he was looking for the animal that would link humans to apes. After the discovery, he led subsequent expeditions to recover dinosaur bones, leading to the discovery of previously unknown species, such as protoceratops and velociraptor. Many of the dinosaur skeletons in the Museum of Natural History in Ulaanbaatar were found in this area.

At the top of the red cliffs, vendors sell fossils and dinosaur bones, which our paleontologist says are real. One little girl selling her wares tells me she wants to grow up to be a paleontologist, so I introduce her to Dr. Ichinnorov, who has come with us to the Gobi. Dr. Ichinnorov is a researcher of stratigraphy and paleontology at the Mongolian Academy of the Sciences in Ulaanbaatar. The tour group we are with, Travcoa, has arranged for her to give us lectures and accompany us to the site. Admittedly, I have never traveled with a tour group before, but details such as these create amazing learning opportunities and experiences.

On the way back from the Flaming Cliffs, we stop at the camel breeders. They invite us into their ger for fermented camel’s milk. Although Keith and I are the only ones brave enough to try the milk, I find it quite delicious—a bit like plain yogurt, really. I bring gifts of crayons and colored markers for the children and spend some time coloring with the little girls; then we are off for our camel rides. Zu, an 83-year old granny who is traveling with us, is among the first in our group to hop onto a camel, making her an inspiration to us all.

After our camel rides and another bumpy jeep ride, we return to the Three Camel Lodge, get cleaned up, and enjoy wine on the terrace—not exactly “roughing it.” The sun sets, washing the desert horizon with a swath of yellow light, and I realize that this too—in addition to the bustling city life of Ulaanbatar—is the “real” Mongolia.

The next day, we make an early start to hike into the gorge at Yolyn Am in the Zuun Saikhan mountain range. As we wind through this rocky gorge, hundreds of jerboa—rodents that the Mongolian call “ground mice,” but look to me like pika or giant hamsters—scatter across the grass. Streams cut through the green canyon and we hike up past many ovoos, circling these sacred rock piles three times for fortune and fulfilled wishes.

Vendors race past us on horseback to set up their wares, and I buy a camel-hair hat, which I am happy to have when we reach the shady ice-filled canyon, and the temperature suddenly drops. Who would have thought there would still be ice in this hot desert? The terrain of the Gobi is astounding in its diversity—scrub, sand dunes, mountains, canyons and glacier all within 100 kilometers—truly making it one of the natural wonders of the world.

For more information about traveling to Mongolia, go to www.travcoa.com or www.nationalgeographic.com/traveler.

Traveler Editor in Chief Keith Bellows and Suzanne Roberts, winner of the “Next Great Travel Writer” essay contest, have been exploring Mongolia and sending dispatches along the way. Today, Suzanne gets a hefty dose of local wrestling and horse racing culture.

The hotel phone rings at 8:30, waking me from a short albeit dead sleep. “You want to come to Naadam?” Keith asks. “We’re leaving right now.”  After my adventures at the Mongolian disco, I hadn’t managed to properly set my alarm. But, I wasn’t about to miss Naadam, so I flew out of bed, threw clothes on, and was on the bus within five minutes. Eriin Gurvan Naadam (Naadam for short), means “Three Manly Games” and is the most anticipated and important festival in Mongolia. Naadam consists of the nomadic sports that date back to the days of Genghis Khan—horseracing, wrestling, and archery, and although they are considered “manly games,” girls and women participate in all but the wrestling.

The horse riding is a long-distance event, taking place on the open steppes, but the wrestling and archery happen in the stadium in Ulaanbaatar. We arrive and walk around the grounds, which are bustling with activity—vendors set up little shops, selling everything from children’s toys, traditional hats and dels (the long Mongolia robes), sunglasses, and all kids of food and drink. Because I missed breakfast, I choose what I think is a pizza. As it turns out, the “cheese” is really carrots and the “pizza sauce” is ketchup. When I ask our guide Oyunaa what it is I am eating, she says, “It’s pizza.” I was right after all—Mongolian pizza.

Before we enter the stadium, I decide to get some pictures. First, I offer a man in traditional dress some money for a picture of him with his horse. We negotiate the price with hand gestures, and once we have settled on 1100 tugriks (about one US dollar), he tries to get Keith up onto the horse. Apparently, the negotiation charades had not gone as well as I had thought, and we had just paid for a horse ride. Somehow, we get the horse man to understand that we wanted him on his horse, and I get my pictures. Then, I see a group of military men whose commander is wearing a black silky LAPD (Yes, Los Angeles Police Department) warm-up jacket, and I follow the soldiers behind a cement building, ready with the camera. I quickly learn the reason for their retreat behind the building—the ladies room is in the building; the men’s, behind it—enough with the camera.

The stadium is full of tourists and locals, and the ceremony begins with a welcome from the president, followed by a colorful procession of soldiers, horse riders, archers, Olympic athletes, dancers, and singers. There is much song and dance, traditional costumes, and five giant mechanical flowers open up their petals to reveal brightly-dressed contortionists, making up the acrobatic stamens and pistols of the flowers. Around the contortionist flowers circle Buddhist monks, shaman, and gods, as well as leaping Russian dancers. All the while, soldiers in Khan-era uniforms pose in warrior stance.

After the impressive opening ceremony, the wrestling begins. The wrestlers wear tightly-fitting speedo-like pants called shuudag and an open-fronted jacket called a zodog. Legend has it that after a woman (dressed as a man) won the wrestling competition, they designed open-fronted jackets so this embarrassing episode would never happen again. (Although girls and women do participate in the other “manly” Naadam sports of horse racing and archery, they do not participate in wrestling.)

The crowd begins to leave the stadium even though there will be anywhere from six to eight more hours of wrestling. According to Oyunaa, “Mongolia is a big country with lots of space, so we do not have time limits. No space limits. No time limits.” This means that if a pair of wrestlers are well-matched (which usually means about the same size—there are no weight categories either), a single match can take hours. We don’t stay that long; instead, we wander over to the archery. The archers are traditionally-dressed, but modernize their outfits with sunglasses and high heels for the ladies. The women of Mongolia love their high heels—even some of the policewomen wear stilettos with their conservative uniforms.

The following day we head to the mini-Naadam in the Gobi desert. Although we saw the big Naadam the day before in the stadium in Ulaanbaatar, the mini-Naadam allows us to watch the wrestling and horse racing up close, sometimes too close—the wrestlers often push each other into the audience, scattering the crowd. Rather than 512 wrestlers as in the big Naadam, only 14 participate in this mini-Nadaam. The early rounds eliminate the wrestlers wearing designer jeans—the serious competitors wear an open-fronted jacket and decorated Speedo-like shorts.

Some of the wrestlers are paired so well, they are at it for hours. There are no time regulations and no weight classes, so by the later rounds, all the skinny wrestlers are out—from my very limited experience watching the sport, the biggest ones usually win. And in this particular competition, the heftiest wrestler won himself a color television set.

During the competition, our guide Oyunaa comes up to me and whispers in my ear. She says, “That’s the one I like. He’s hot,” and points to a wrestler who is waiting for his turn.

True enough, he is hot, so I tell her, “I will get his picture for you.” Just as I snap the photo, he sticks his finger way up into his nose and really goes for it. I bring my camera to Oyunaa and tell her, “I got a picture of your boyfriend.”

“Let me see. Let me see,” she says and takes the camera. She falls off her chair laughing but says, “I don’t care. I still like him.” In Mongolia, the wrestlers are the national heroes, so a little nose-picking would hardly be enough to work against them in the eyes of their admirers.

The wrestlers finish, and we move off to the finish line at the horse races—in the bigger Nadaam, the horses race up to 30 kilometers (depending on the age of the horse), but this horse race is about half as long — still a long way to gallop on a horse. The child jockeys are between the ages of five and 13. Although both boys and girls race horses, in our race, there is only one girl. I bet on her, of course, subsequently losing my money. In Mongolian horse racing, it is the horse that wins and not the jockey, so in the bigger races, the horse trainer can win lots of money or even a car, as in this year’s Naadam.

The jockey of this winning horse is a 9-year-old boy who has been competing for three years. When I ask his trainer how long he has been riding, he says, “That is the same if I ask you when you first rode in a car. You were a baby. How can you know? Usually children can control their horses by the time they are three or four, but they ride on them much earlier.” After the race, the top five horses are celebrated with mare’s milk poured on their heads and blue ribbons and medals tied around them. This is the end of our mini-Naadam. Everyone leaves—some on horses, some on motorcycles—and the horse trainer walks off toward his jeep carrying his new color television set and boom box.

For more information about traveling to Mongolia, go to www.travcoa.com or www.nationalgeographic.com/traveler.  

Earlier this month, Traveler Editor in Chief Keith Bellows and Suzanne Roberts, winner of the Next Great Travel Writer Contest, traveled through Mongolia together and sent us dispatches from their trip. Over the next few days we’ll be publishing the last few recollections from their journey. Today Suzanne describes a night out at the Mongolian disco.

One evening during our trip, we are asked to attend a special dinner to celebrate the beginning of Naadam, the national festival celebrated annually in Ulaanbaatar. The event featured the centuries-old tradition of Mongolian throat singing, dancing, and an amazing little girl who ties her body in knots. Girls in Mongolia start training for contortion at the age of five and are ready to compete in international competitions by the age of 12. This little girl could not have been more than about eight or nine years old, and she did things with her body that I would not have thought possible, including supporting herself on a skinny pole by her teeth.

After dinner, I recruit a fellow traveler, Rucker, a wide-eyed 24-year-old aspiring photographer, to check out a disco in Ulaanbaatar. Although Mongolia was Rucker’s first trip outside of the United States, he is game for anything and happy to be dragged off to a disco. But first we have a beer at an Irish pub, a smoky venue full of locals, expats, and foreigners. A Mongolian singer with a sequined top hat sings “Killing Me Softly” in perfect English. The pub closes early for Naadam, so we head off to Metropolis, a super chic discotheque near the Chinggis Khaan Hotel.

This swanky disco is known for attracting the “children of diplomats.” A round bar occupies the center of the first room. Past the bar, a larger space with leather couches, a glowing neon bar, a dance floor, and a “VIP only” upstairs balcony full of scantily-clad women in stilettos glitters with strobe lights and vibrates with the beat of “trance” music. The space-aged theme reminds me of the queue area of Disneyland’s Space Mountain roller coaster. After being told to move from a couch that was reserved for “one man,” we find another couch, and strike up a conversation with a Mongolian man called Ivan.

“Do you come to this club often?” I ask.
 “Yes,” he says. Big grin. 
“What are some of the other clubs you like to go to?” I ask him. 
“Yes,” he says again. 
“Where is Chinggis Khaan’s grave?”
 “Yes.” He smile and nods.

I take a photograph with him, and although Ivan is cute as can be, I move on to find someone whose English-language vocabulary is a little larger than Ivan’s.

I meet Yaruunaa, a 23-year old woman who ends up taking quite a liking to Rucker. I ask her about the country’s reverence of Chinggis Khaan (known to us Westerners as Genghis Khan). Chinggis Khaan is on the money, postage stamps, the beer, and the vodka. His face looms over the city of UB, laid out in white stones against the green grass of a nearby hillside. Hotels, restaurants, ger camps, and the international airport are named for him, and at the moment, they are at work erecting a gigantic (I have heard 40 meters) statue of him. According to our guide Oyunna, Chinggis Khaan was not celebrated until the fall of socialism in the 1990s. She says, “They never even mentioned him in school.” Since then, he has been resurrected as the ubiquitous hero of Mongolia, the great leader who consolidated the tribes of Mongolia, created a system of trade, and pushed Mongolia’s borders out to include more than 30 countries on the modern map. “In twenty-five years, the Mongol army subjugated more lands and people than the Romans had conquered in four hundred years,” according to Jack Weatherford in his book, “Genghis Khan and the Making of the Modern World.”

I want to know what the younger generation of Mongolians thinks about their national hero. I ask Yaruunaa, and she says, “Omigod. That was like so long ago. Hello? I mean, it is embarrassing.” But when I ask her about the possibility of their finding his grave, she says, “Oh no. I mean, I am a little superstitious. Maybe we shouldn’t find it.” Many of the Mongolians I spoke with are not in favor of finding the grave of Chinggis Khaan because it would be against the wishes of the great leader and therefore considered very bad luck. They do, however, hope that if the burial site is found, it will be in Mongolia. Chinggis Khaan died in present-day China, and citizens of both countries claim him as their national hero; both hope he is buried in their soil.
Then Yarunnaa adds, “We share his name and eat it for 100 years,” and she skips off to the dance floor with Rucker. I follow them, knowing I will regret dancing until dawn tomorrow sitting under the hot sun at the Naadam festival.

For more information about traveling to Mongolia, visit www.travcoa.com or www.nationalgeographic.com/traveler.

Traveler Editor in Chief Keith Bellows and Suzanne Roberts, the winner of the Next Great Travel Writer contest, are blogging this week from Mongolia. Keith sends us this dispatch from the steppes of Gorkhi-Terelj National Park.

On our way out of town we stop at the Gandantegchilen Monastery—the biggest in Mongolia and a survivor of the 1930s Stalinist purges, during which hundreds of monasteries were razed and countless monks executed—and which Suzanne blogged about yesterday.

We head out 70 miles north toward Gorkhi-Terelj National Park, a 2006 location for The Amazing Race. It is in the steppes, which are uncharacteristically green due to this summer’s above-average rains. We drive 90 minutes or so, stopping briefly as the rain drives down in sheets at an ovoo, a sacred mound of stones crowned with a tangle of blue flags.

Thought to be an ancient tombstone or shamanist altar where horses once were sacrificed to the gods, ovoos guard hills and passes. We follow tradition and, for good luck, circle the cairn clockwise three times, tossing on stones as we go. We pass fields of yaks and sheep and cows—Mongolia supports 30 million livestock (a sheep goes for $100, a cow is worth $400). An old graveyard spills down a hill. We pass dilapidated buildings, gers singly or clustered in tiny encampments, and a dreary army barracks abandoned by the Russian army in 1990 and now occupied by Mongolian forces.

The gracefully hillocky country is ribboned with spiny ridges and palisades of granite that look like piled cannon balls and billowy clouds—you can read faces and creatures in the deeply weathered rock. Moose, weasel, wolves, and brown bear roam forests of cedar, pine, aspen, and larch. We rumble down a dirt track pooled with water to Melkhi Khad (Turtle Rock), one of the park landmarks—the jumbled granite outcrop that indeed looks turtle-ish, but there’s little else to see except the insides of a gift shop in a ger. Inside are pointy-toed sheepskin slippers, soft jackets, leather and fox fur hats, Genghis Khan T-shirts, postcards, leather wallets and boxes, horsewhips, jewelry, and prayer beads. Ten minutes more and we are at our ger camp—Guru.

A string of Mongolian ponies huddles in the downpour. We dump knapsacks in our gers after entering through a wooden door on which hangs a small padlock hardly necessary in such a remote place. My ger is about 15 feet across and slopes to a peak about 7 feet high at a three-foot circular window. A small iron wood-burning stove has turned the structure into a sauna. There are three narrow single beds, a small table set with three glasses, and a thermos of hot water for tea or coffee. A bare light bulb hangs in the center. The ger is spartan but cozy and, by nomadic standards, I am in a suite—a ger this size comfortably accommodates a family of ten. I try to remember some of the Mongolian conventions relating to gers: When sleeping, men on the east side, women on the west, you keep the back of your head facing north toward the entrance (gers always exit toward the south); you never point boots toward the fire; and whistling is verboten—bad luck.

Later, we’ll see the staff erect a ger, something nomads do in 30 minutes. Five accordioned lattice walls are arrayed in a circle around two pillars that support a central oval. Eighty larchwood poles fan out from the oval to form the skeletal roof, all lashed with horsehair. This is covered in sheep felt—a single layer in summer, four layers in winter—then overlain with canvas and a white sheet anchored with ropes. Modernity reveals itself at our camp: nomads use felt from actual sheep sheared in June to allow grow back before the forbidding winters descend, while here the felt is synthetic and imported from, yes, China. And the ger crew consists mostly of teenage Mongolians that seem, well, less than nomadic. One wears silky skin-tight black jeans and a silver-studded T-shirt with a “55″ on the back. Another sports a Jimi Hendrix gimme cap.

Lunch is horhog, a traditional meal of lamb and vegetables cooked over hot rocks in a closed pot and served communally. We are each handed a greasy, scalding rock in a napkin, which we gingerly roll across our palms—Mongolians believe the grease and heat boosts stamina and reduces fatigue. We eat soup as the rocks cool, then dig into the mounds of fatty lamb and vegetables. We drink tea and coffee with powdered milk. Desert is a Kit Kat bar. The rain continues to sluice down, putting the kibosh to riding or hiking. Some travelers watch The Story of the Weeping Camel—an extraordinary story of Mongolian herders’ efforts to reunite a mother camel and her estranged calf.

Later, the rain slackens and by 5 p.m. the sun casts long shadows. After dinner, around 9, the light fades. I sit on the steps of my ger as darkness falls to reveal a sky whose deep black is broken by a starland of whorls, clouds, and pinpricks that reminds me of the summer-camp heavens of my youth in northern Canada. The soundtrack is a silence so deep you could be in a sensory deprivation chamber. It is noisier in the ger. As the stove creaks and clatters with the heat, logs pop and the wind rattles the walls of the ger. I sleep until dawn breaks at 3:30 am. Horses whinny outside. Birds whoop. I struggle against the early-morning cold and trudge to the crest of a nearby ridge and watch daybreak extend its hold on miles of green, hilly openness punctuated by the occasional cluster of cattle. As I descend I watch the horses gambol on the slopes. I grew up riding, and my father would tell me stories of Genghis Khan and his great equestrian warriors. I’ve read somewhere that a Mongol without a horse is like a bird without wings, and remember that a Mongol euphemism for going to the bathroom is to “go see my horse.”

After breakfast, I mount a runty black Mongolian pony and spur it across a table of green grass. Its tack consists of primitive rope reins and a crude wooden saddle with a metal pommel and stunted stirrups. Despite my best attempt at the Mongolian supplication for equine speed—it sounds like “tchoo, tchoo”—I go a very little ways very slowly.

Shortly after I dismount, we pull out of camp as sheep spill down the slopes like ants on hot sand and a modern herdsman sits astride a motorcycle preparing to gather his cattle. I recall what our guide said earlier: “You can’t really live out here anymore unless you herd cattle. It’s just too hard to make a living. There’s little else to do.”

Several miles down the road we encounter a nomadic family—who have one foot in the old world—herding—and another in the modern world, mining. The grandparents own the two gers and are hosting for the short three-month summer break their 38-year-old daughter (seven other grown children are scattered throughout Mongolia) and her three children—the youngest is a one-month-old in a stroller (in Mongolian hoorhon huuhed, or cute baby) and the oldest is Bulgaa, 16, who has a cell phone in her front pocket. Father is at home 250 miles away in Erdenet, a mining town that boasts the world’s fourth largest copper deposit. His salary has helped make them well-off by steppe standards. The main ger comfortably seats a dozen and we are served green milk tea, goat cheese, yogurt, bread, and aarwl—a milk and sugar candy.

A small TV is tuned to Mongolia’s Super Bowl, the Nadaam Festival (more about this in a future blog). A Mickey Mouse clock tells time. A freezer serves as table and food storage. Bulgaa, who chews gum as we speak, has a computer at home (and an email address and High 5 online profile), and speaks English superbly. Despite the economic pull of the city, at least today she recognizes the power of her grandparents’ nomadic roots. “I like the country better than the city. It is prettier and freer. And the air is so fresh.” She does admit, though, that she has little time to relax here—she must collect dung and feed it to the stove and help herd the cattle. Despite her father’s mining work, the livestock remain central to the family’s life. Which is why Suzanne scored a linguistic coup when she asked Bulgaa’s grandmother: Uher mal targan uu? (Are the cattle fattening well?)

When we leave we pass a solitary basketball hoop and, then, the Ghengis Khan Golf Course with its condo-like apartments. Another country club looms ahead. Here and there are satellite dishes. We have been told that the Japanese and South Koreans are investing heavily in Mongolian tourism. Building more and more camps and hotels. I look at the mostly virgin hills, the vast open spaces, and wonder how long it will be before full-blown resorts push the herders off their ancestral lands.

For more information about traveling to Mongolia, go to www.travcoa.com or www.nationalgeographic.com/traveler.

This week, Traveler Editor in Chief Keith Bellows and Suzanne Roberts, winner of the “Next Great Travel Writer” contest, are blogging during their trip through Mongolia. Today Suzanne writes of her visit to the Gandan Monastery.

At the gate of the monastery, a woman crouches into the street, scooping rain water from the gutter with a paper cup into a thermos. Street children wearing plastic sandals and wet socks sell bird seed, and three old women sell small bottles of ablution, so visitors may cleanse their faces in preparation for prayer. Pigeons rise with a flutter into the gray sky. We’ve come to the Gandantegchinlen (Gandan) Khiid Monastery to hear the morning chants. One of the few remaining monasteries after the communist destruction in 1938, Gandan is the largest in Mongolia with hundreds of monks.

 We enter the temple and and see monks sitting cross-legged on wooden benches, reciting the Tibetan chants from yellowed parchment paper. Colorful prayer flags hang from the ceiling—each color a symbol: red, prosperity; green, fertility; white, purity; yellow, eternity; and of course blue is most important to the Mongolian people because it represents the blue sky, and Mongolia is known as “the land of the blue sky.”

Although the younger generation is not as religious, a majority of Mongolians are Buddhist, and the monks play an important role in their lives. If a mother would like a husband for her daughter, she goes to see a monk, who will read her sutras and pray for her daughter. Some even come to find out which day would be most auspicious for a haircut. I am hoping to go back and have my sutras read. In the countryside, I had my fortune told with the ankle bones of sheep (they roll them like dice and then “read” the bones). My fortune was “He can tell you but you must go after your work to had more attention.”  Though I am not sure exactly what that means, I am a little worried about the verb tense—hopefully a translation error.

The prayers, according to our guide, are only pure and powerful if they are chanted in Tibetan. Three young monks—perhaps six or seven years old—sit together. One mouths the words, another chews gum. An elderly monk wearing sunglasses sits on a high wooden chair on the outside of the circle. He acts as the conductor, tracking each chant with prayer beads, as well as watching the young monks and keeping them “in line,” though the children still whisper to each other and quietly giggle. After the chant, they are served white rice. We leave them to their meal and proceed to the temple of Migjid Janraisig, which boasts a statue of the god measuring over 25 meters high.

The rain now falls steadily, replacing the land of blue sky with a gray canvas of clouds. This summer has been a wet one, which has painted the hillsides green. The people are very happy, because rain is important to the pasture lands. We enter the temple, and I pay my five dollars to take a picture of the enormous statue, which was consecrated by the Dalai Lama in 1996. This statue replaces an earlier one that the communists took to Leningrad; even now, no one knows what happened to it. One theory is that it was melted down to make bullets. This new statue is quite impressive—copper, gold, precious stones, and covered with silk. The Mongolian people donated the money, and Nepal and Japan donated the gold. I walk around the statue, and the blue eyes seem to follow me, which is appropriate since Janraisig means “the god who looks in every direction.”

 We leave Janraisig and enter Ochidara Temple. The walls are painted red and gold, and elaborate dragons wrap around each column. Some monks chant, while others play drums or blow into seashells. Devoted Mongolians bow their heads in reverence and clasp their hands in prayer. A high-ranking monk in the middle distributes the holy water by shaking a small feather into the air. The drum’s echo and the incense mingled with sweat create a trancelike atmosphere. I, too, bow my head in reverence for this amazing scene.

For more information about traveling to Mongolia, go to www.travcoa.com or www.nationalgeographic.com/traveler.

Traveler Editor in Chief Keith Bellows, and Suzanne Roberts, winner of the “Next Great Travel Writer” essay contest, are currently exploring Mongolia. Today, Suzanne takes a moment to suss out the intricacies of the Mongolian dating scene.

Yesterday, Keith and I came across Andy, a twenty-something redheaded American expat from Iowa who teaches English to wealthy Mongolians at the small school around the corner from the university. He claims to like living in Mongolia except for the “brutal winters” (he says he saw his breath from September to May—the average temperature in January ranges from a high of four to a low of -16 degrees Fahrenheit). Also, Andy says that when he takes a Mongolian lady out for a date, the Mongolian men become angry because they believe that “foreigners are trying to steal their women.”

After speaking with Andy, I became interested in the Mongolian dating scene, and I asked our guide Oyunaa, a beautiful young Mongolian woman (one of whom, I am sure, Andy would be happy to “steal”), about it.

Oyunaa says that a couple will date for about six months and then the father of the man will go to the family of the woman to ask for her hand. In the countryside, the tradition is stronger, complete with the theatrics of the family’s refusal and the staged “kidnapping” of the bride. Over dinner at the posh Winter Palace, I ask Oyunaa about Mongolians marrying foreigners. She says, “That’s okay,” but adds, “just not Chinese.”

I ask her what will happen if she married a Chinese man, and she responds by laughing at such an impossibility and then says, “My father will kill me.” To see if this is the case with other young women, I ask Nomingerel, the travel agent working in my hotel, the same questions and get roughly the same answers, so when I press and ask, “But what if you fell in love with a Chinese man and married him. What then?”

With a deadpan face, Nomingerel answers, “Then I kill myself.” Interestingly, the Mongolians have forgiven the Russians for the Stalin-era purges led by the communist Mongolian government–purges that destroyed more than 700 monasteries and killed tens of thousands of monks–but they haven’t forgiven the Chinese for colonization. According to Nomingerel, “The Russians are our brothers.”

“And if you marry a Russian?” I ask.

“That’s okay.”

“Korean?”

“Many girls do–for the money.”

“Japanese?”

“No problem.”

“And American?”

“Yes, that’s okay, too.”

As it turns out, the young Mongolian men might not like an expat like Andy dating the women, but the fathers of Mongolia are fine with it. The Mongolians, in general, seem to like Americans, especially the music. Yesterday, we listened to the American hits of the 80’s over Mongolian BBQ (I have eaten more red meat here in three days than I have in the last ten years—no exaggeration). And as I write this, Madonna is singing “Beautiful Stranger” over the radio. Apparently, President Bush visited Mongolia in 2005 and called the U.S. their “third neighbor” after China and Russia, though I can’t figure that one out, perhaps via Alaska? At any rate, the “third neighbor” business went over exceedingly well. Personally, I have found our “third neighbors” here in Ulaanbaatar warm and welcoming, and I look forward to exploring the other “face of Mongolia,” the nomadic culture of the countryside.

For more information about traveling to Mongolia, go to www.travcoa.com or www.nationalgeographic.com/traveler.

This week, Traveler editor in chief Keith Bellows and the “Next Great Travel Writer” contest winner Suzanne Roberts are visiting China and Mongolia, and they’re writing about their experiences as they travel. Today’s post is the first from Suzanne, and she writes of her search for the ‘Real’ Mongolia.

I began thinking about what it means to find the ‘real’ Mongolia when I realized a couple of days ago in Beijing that the ‘real’ Beijing is both the glass windowed high-rises and stylish shops and the winding alleyways of the hutongs, where the boxer-clad denizens ride rusty bicycles past vendors displaying plastic bins of quivering prawns, green snails, and fish still flopping. Both are the ‘real’ Beijing and contribute to the character of the city. I arrived to Mongolia wondering: What constitutes the ‘real’ Mongolia?

Before leaving for Mongolia, I imagined green hills sprinkled with the traditional tent-like houses called gers and horse-riding nomads tending their flocks. From the plane, I did see herders moving sheep, green hills, and the small round gers on the hillsides. But as we approach the city of Ulaanbaatar,  a patchwork of Soviet square concrete-block buildings, glass high-rises, and construction cranes are scattered across the skyline. As it turns out, the ‘real’ Mongolia is both country and city, nomads and skyscrapers.

Our hotel hints at this Russian influence with its sparkling chandeliers juxtaposed against the shabby gray carpeting and concrete walls. My enormous but spartan room overlooks a statue of Lenin. Keith and I leave the hotel and wander around the city.

We happen upon the University of Education, an austere concrete building with incense billowing from the restrooms and a giant tile portrait of Sukhbaatar, the national hero of Mongolia who led the revolution against the Chinese. Because it is the summer holiday, only a handful of students and teachers are around. We peek through an open doorway and find a woman at work her art studio. Her name is Bulgantuya, and she is a professor at the university and an artist who has shown her work as far away as Beijing, Seoul, and San Francisco. She proudly shows us her workspace, a room no more than about two by three meters stacked full of paintings.

She climbs onto a chair and pulls her paintings down from the rafters. She depicts ethereal women, queens and goddesses, in front of the Mongolian steppes. She also shows us her artist husband’s beautiful paintings, allegorical renderings of one of the Mongolians most valuable animals, the horse — used for riding but also for the coveted mare’s milk, which they ferment into a type of ‘white beer.’ Keith contemplates buying one of Bulgantuya’s paintings–the Mongolian queen. “How would I get it home?” he wonders, and as I begin to offer suggestions regarding the hotel, the post office, DSL … he finally shakes his head and says, “My wife would kill me.”

Bulgantuya tells us about her hopes to study art in the future in the United States, but a visa is very difficult to obtain for Mongolians, especially since some who leave never return, and with a population of about 3 million, they can’t afford to lose anyone. In fact, mothers who have five or more children receive the order of “Glorious Motherhood” (with first class awards going to mothers of eight or more). Both classes get an award that amounts to about $43 per year from the Mongolian government, on top of the small monthly allocation all children receive.

After leaving the university, we pass a chef pulling sheep carcasses out of an SUV to bring to a local restaurant; we dodge a few open manholes; and we pass advertisements for a clothing line called “Gobi,” which boasts the slogan “Where elegance meets quality,” along with a beautiful model wearing a cashmere garment that is a cross between traditional Mongolian del and low-cut evening gown. In fact, many of the Mongolian women, even those in the countryside, wear mini skirts, lacy tights, and stiletto heels. An American expat named Andy we met suggested that because the winters are so cold here, everyone only has three months to “show off their goods,” so to speak. “The rest of the year,” he said, “all you see are people’s eyes.”

For more information about traveling to Mongolia, go to www.travcoa.com or www.nationalgeographic.com/traveler.

The “Next Great Travel Writer” contest winner Suzanne Roberts and Traveler Editor in Chief Keith Bellows are currently on their way to Mongolia. They’ll be blogging about their experiences, and today Keith tells us a bit more about his favorite spots in Beijing…

Ninety minutes at the Great Wall of China leaves me breathless. After an up and down hike taken under unremittingly overcast skies, the smog is back after yesterday’s hiatus and so is the gridlock. The Wall is engulfed in tourists, a surging, smoking, ill-mannered melee that clogs the ancient ramparts that once repulsed Mongol hordes but now, frankly, are painfully overrun. Do I regret coming? Not at all—filter out the human stampede, and the landmark remains stupefyingly impressive—and I see but a smidgen of its 4,000-plus miles.

After a stop at a jade shop that gives me sticker shock (and where I learn that I was born under the sign of the rabbit and so exhibit great wisdom) we crawl back into the city at a pace that approximates that of navigating a crowded parking lot.

Beijing is back to normal. 

Before dinner, I flip through the China Daily (“I hope that isn’t the only paper you read,” a Beijinger has warned me. “It will give you only the good news).  Still, I learn that the Bible will be distributed free throughout the Games (there were rumors that China would break rank with tradition); that two women claiming the same dead husband are suing his company for death benefits; that the health of residents in Wuhan is being threatened by a surge in the yellow weasel population; that police officers in Nanning arrested a man who walked the city’s streets nude for three hours to retire a gambling debt; and that a 55-year-old Kaili farmer recently graduated from primary school after six years of study. Important stuff.

The real shocker—in a meaty business page section on China’s emerging green initiatives—is word that Shanghai’s 80-year-old Jin Jiang Hotel is going eco (last year it claims to have saved 202.8 tons of oil, 1.54 million kwh of electricity, 25,558 tons of water, and 2.07 million Yuan with its “Green Hotel Program”). This is an example of China’s effort at eco sensitivity. It aims to decrease energy use in new buildings by 65 percent before 2020 (by 2015 half of the world’s new building construction will occur in China, according to the World Bank; over the next 20 years, say McKinsey Global Institute predictions, the country will construct up to 50,000 new skyscrapers).

That night, Suzanne and I take a 20-minute cab ride to the Red Capital Club, a restaurant I visited on my last visit to Beijing. It is tucked away in an ancient hutong alley in the Dongsi Jiutiao region. We wander past open doorways that offer a peak into locals’ kitchens, living rooms, and inner courtyards. Shirtless men stand around in what appear to be boxer shorts. The second floor of a small dwelling houses a menagerie of chickens and pigeons that will likely soon grace dinner plates. Outside the door of the restaurant is a vintage black limo, one of six once used by Party apparatchiks. Inside, the place is filled with couches, easy chairs and memorabilia of a 1950s era  when Mao Zedong and his Red Army cronies ruled China. They supposedly lived nearby and the club’s wait staff—dressed in Red Army uniforms—serves dishes said to be Party favorites and named after the likes of Mao and Deng Xiaoping. The cigar bar is filled with period paintings, photos of Party bigwigs, ceramic statues of Mao (pick up the old porcelain phone and you can hear him on the line).

We sit in the outside courtyard of the 200-year-old house and order plates of broccoli, cauliflower, shrimp, chili chicken, and mushrooms. Each dish on the banquet-style menu comes with a story—for instance, Marshal’s Favorite (minced pork and hot green peppers) was supposedly a staple of the epic Long Walk. The pricey food isn’t as good as the ambience, but servings are huge and come with kitschy carved vegetable animals—roosters, pigs, cows.

We have the leftovers packed to give away to some of Beijing’s legendary homeless. One problem: Search as we might, we can’t find any. “They are all gone,” the doorman tells us when we arrive back at the hotel. “They have been taken away. Given tickets to go home.” Or, I later learn, dispatched to one of four shelters built for the Games. It’s another example of Beijing’s Olympian facelift.

The next morning I awake to three TV channels that drone endlessly about the Olympic progress—in fairness to the Chinese this is likely to be the first Games in recent memory that will be ready on opening day. And the papers are filled with Olympic chest-beating and minutiae:  the 100,000 volunteers are the most in Olympic history; a record 4 billion people are expected to watch the Games; the Olympic Torch relay was the longest in history; 4,500 doping tests—25% more than in Athens—will be administered; a staggering 400 million students in 500,000 Chinese schools have been given lessons in Olympic etiquette, history, and lore; the $43-billion costs of the Beijing Games is the greatest ever and its ticket prices are the lowest; 4,104 Chinese babies have been named Aoyun (Chinese for “the Olympics”); an estimated 15,000 will be married on the 08-08-08 Olympic opening day—auspicious because of all the eights.

Tomorrow we head to Mongolia, the so-called “sandwich country” between China to the south and Russia to the north. 

For more information on traveling to Beijing, go to www.travcoa.com or check out Traveler’s Places of Lifetime Beijing photo gallery.   

Last year, National Geographic Traveler and global travel operator Travcoa partnered to host the “Next Great Travel Writer” essay contest. The winner, Suzanne Roberts, won a trip to Mongolia with Traveler Editor in Chief Keith Bellows, and the two have just begun their journey. They’ll be sending us dispatches from the road while they’re gone, and making us jealous in the process… Today’s post comes from Keith Bellows, the ultimate Traveler himself.

Full disclosure: I’m routing through Beijing and headed to Mongolia as part of a tour group. This is decidedly strange for me—as editor of National Geographic Traveler I’m used to traveling incognito, usually alone, and completely free to discover places on my own. Going in a group with much of my route preordained is not how I normally make my way around the world. But more than a year ago Traveler and Travcoa, a global travel operator, partnered on a contest to pick the next great travel writer. The winner was Suzanne Roberts, who is studying for a doctorate in creative writing at the University of Reno, Nevada. My assignment: to go into the field with her to offer support and coaching. Her assignment: to write an article about the experience that we’ll run on our website.

It’s just under a month until the Olympics. I’m riding in from the “old” airport (not T3, Beijing’s newest and the world’s largest) after a 14-hour flight from Newark. Clearing customs was easier than getting money from an ATM machine. My baggage made the carousel before I did. The airport was virtually deserted. The squeaky clean thruway from the airport seems swept of traffic and the torrential rains from day before have left the sky uncharacteristically clear blue and smog free. This is not the dingy, auto-clogged Beijing I had encountered when I was here last October.

The place is papered with the “One World” Olympic Games motto. The city has gone gaga over the so-called Green Games—it has spent $20 billion on an environmental clean-up that includes installing new water purification plants, retrofitting gas stations, upgrading power plants, cutting power usage, installing solar power generators, planting millions of new trees. Countless factories are going offline and in one area alone more than 260 steel plants will shut down July 8. The streets bristle with flowerpots. The roads are lined with newly minted apartments. Freshly poured concrete is everywhere. Old women roam the streets hunting for plastic bottles, which they redeem for roughly $7 a thousand.

The 80,000-seat Olympic Stadium—trumpeted here as the world’s largest bird’s nest, its nickname—opened a week ago. Rem Koolhaas’s strange but striking national television building is days away from losing the last cranes that hover around its perimeter. The twin 750-foot-high L-shaped arches—the locals call the result “Underpants,” an accurate description—are big enough to house 200 television stations.

I head out to one of my favorite guilty pleasures—the Silk Palace and Pearl House. Less than a mile from the Forbidden City, it’s a seething shrine to commerce (its slogan is “Market with Confidence,” which may be pushing things if you don’t keep your wits about you). I slog the mile from my hotel through a gauntlet of global generica—Sizzlers, Starbucks, Subway, Pizza Hut, Fridays until I reach what is uniquely, authentically Beijing—a free-for-all of a market that once dominated city streets but that has been relocated to a seven-floor emporium. While it is packed with every imaginable product found at home (at steeply discounted prices), it is also the place to buy genuine Chinese. And while the impending Olympics have brought more tourists, they are heavily outnumbered by the locals who come to shop, gawk, and browse hundreds of stalls staffed with sales touts who screech, cajole, flirt, bray come-ons, brag, step into your path, grab you by the arm—anything to draw you into their web. Unless you want to buy, you keep your eyes locked ahead while chanting a mantra of “No, thanks.”

But buy you should. Leave wallet, passport, and valuables in a hotel lockbox and bring only your ATM card and cash in 100 Yuan notes discretely stored in a belly belt —vendors will stick you with the credit card fees if you use plastic.  Last time I was here I stocked up on silk scarves and pajamas, gifts from Lu’ Wholesale Sea Water Pearl and Ya Yuan Jewelry, a faux Rolex and several mock Mont Blanc pens.  A guide has told me that knockoffs have been outlawed. “Very hard to find now,” he said. “Place very closely policed.” Not true, considering the abundance of Gucci shoes for less than $100 and iPod mimics at $150.

But the genuine articles are still a steal and fierce, aggressive bargain is mandatory (“They won’t respect you if you don’t get tough,” insisted the guide).

“Mister, mister, you come see my shirts here,” a young girl implores. “Very good quality. Good price.”

I hesitate.

“Come, I give you special deal. Just for you.” She smiles winningly and pulls me into her booth.

I inspect Polo shirts at 580 Y each (slightly less than $10).

“Too much,” I say.

“How many you want?” she counters.

“Four.”

She bows to her calculator and taps out 2000 Y.

“Too much.”

She gives me a stricken look.

“How much you want to pay?” she asks.

I tap out 500 Y.

“For all four,” she asks incredulously. “You crazy.”

I make to leave her booth.

“Wait, wait,” she begs. “Seven hundred.”

I consider and counter with 550.

“Six hundred,” she replies.

I accept. Four shirts for less than $10.

Within the next hour I buy two custom-fit blazers for $200 and three pairs of reading glasses made to order in less than 30 minutes for $25.

I’ll leave the custom-designed underpants to Koolhaas.

For more information on traveling to Beijing, go to www.travcoa.com or check out Traveler’s Places of a Lifetime Beijing photo gallery.