{"id":308,"date":"2019-09-19T05:31:14","date_gmt":"2019-09-19T05:31:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/fromlondontomongolia.com\/?p=308"},"modified":"2019-09-19T06:05:19","modified_gmt":"2019-09-19T06:05:19","slug":"to-ulaanbaatar-and-back-opel-makes-it-the-book-house-a-margarita-and-home","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/fromlondontomongolia.com\/index.php\/2019\/09\/19\/to-ulaanbaatar-and-back-opel-makes-it-the-book-house-a-margarita-and-home\/","title":{"rendered":"To Ulaanbaatar and back: Opel makes it, the book house, a margarita and home on day 53"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

by Robin Ewing
Sept. 10, 2013<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Opel made it! Last week, she arrived at the Go Help office in Ulaanbaatar by tow truck. Munhuu, the mechanic who rescued her, says he\u2019ll soon have her back in tip-top shape. I\u2019m thankful she\u2019s no longer stranded in the harsh lands of western Mongolia, locked up in the back of the only shop in Tolbo, population 1,000 (I would have guessed 15).  <\/p>\n\n\n\n

We didn\u2019t make it to Ulaanbaatar much\nfaster. From Tolbo, it took us another hard week. We entered west, where the\nborders of Russia, China and Kazakhstan converge. It\u2019s majestic here, high and\ncold, the vast steppe stretching up to the Altai Mountains that rise like\njagged shark teeth. Shaggy baby yaks and skittish goats wobble by. Massive\nGolden Eagles, their wingspans up to 8 feet, perch like sentinels in the road. They\nhunt wolves. The nomads who have lived here for thousands of years must be\nsupernaturally tough.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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The Altai Mountains stretch across the Bayan-\u00d6lgii province, the highest province in Mongolia.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n
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Kazakh eagle hunters raise their Golden Eagles from birth. With a wingspan of up to 8-feet, these massive birds hunt foxes, rabbits and even wolves with their razor sharp talons.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

In central Mongolia, we skirted the\nnorthern edge of the barren Gobi Desert. On one particularly monotonous and bone-rattling\ntrack, the din too loud to talk, I took to counting discarded goat hooves in\nthe road. I saw 15 in an hour. We were averaging 9 mph so the little furry brown\nlegs weren\u2019t hard to spot, especially when lying next to the full horse skeleton\nor herd of Bactrian camels with limp, drooping humps. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

It was an incredible week. We camped in\nplaces so beautiful they seemed unreal, got lost once (apparently, there are\nfour town in Mongolia named Altay), nibbled on hard cheese made from drained\nsour milk, got towed across two rivers and crossed a lot more, patched a hole\nin the oil pan with superglue, drove through a thunderstorm at night, tried and\nfailed to order vegetarian food in a restaurant, fixed a flat or two and played\ncard games by flashlight in a muttony ger. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Many Mongolians wear the traditional deel. In Genghis Kahns day, the deel was big enough to carry baby goats or human children inside to protect them from the cold.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n
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With few road signs, asking for directions is needed when four towns in Mongolia are named Altay.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n
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Dylan Bernstein’s charity fund-raising beard and moustache find a home in a Mongolian river.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Driving into Ulaanbaatar was anti-climatic.\nThe city is a dump, smoke stacks graying the sky and drab soviet-era apartment\nblocks lining the streets. There are piles of dirt everywhere. Nearly half of\nMongolia\u2019s population live in the capital and they all seem to have a car. The\ntraffic is horrendous. We asked directions to the center but only one person answered\nus, in German. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Upon further exploration, Ulaanbaatar is an\nodd but interesting place. Older women stroll by in the deel<\/em>, the traditional padded Mongolian dress, while young women\nfavor miniskirts and heels. Expensive cars ply streets lined with Irish pubs, European\nbakeries, pizza joints and a microbrewery. North Korea even has its own restaurant.\n<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Mongolians love Genghis Kahn. There are at\nleast four different Genghis vodkas for sale in convenient stores. On the main\nsquare, in a small building just next to the statue of Genghis Khan, is a\n70-million-year-old dinosaur skeleton, the Asian version of the Tyrannosaurus\nRex. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The money pouring in is obvious. Mongolia\nis one of the world\u2019s fastest growing economies, thanks to direct foreign\ninvestment in the mining boom, the poverty rate has dropped significantly and\nlife expectancy is up. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

But the city still feels rough. Neo-Nazism is slightly popular<\/a>. A large homeless population lives in the sewer tunnels underground, and alcoholism is a real problem. I went out alone late one night, parched and looking for water, and got followed by a large, creepy man. He was so drunk he was easy to out walk.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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A home in the ger district of Ulaanbaatar. Sixty percent of the capital’s population live in the low-income ger areas. Many nomadic families moved here after their livestock were killed in the severe winter dzud of 2010.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

One afternoon, we visited one of Go Help\u2019s\ncharity education projects called the Book House. The one-room building, walls\nlined with books, is in the fringes of the city, down an alley in one of the\nsprawling ger districts. Extreme winters have killed livestock and forced\nthousands of destitute nomads to pitch their gers here in small fenced-in\nyards.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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On the day we visited, the book house was\nclosed. The librarian, whose ger is next door, opened just for us. A few kids hung\nout watching YouTube videos about dogs on the only laptop and playing made-up\nninja games. One confident little girl took Owen\u2019s photo on her sister\u2019s phone and\nthen got Alex and Yoav to teach her guitar. On other days of the week, we were\ntold, about 20 children come daily for English lessons and various activities. It\u2019s\na much needed operation, a safe, welcoming place for the community to hang out,\ninteract, read and learn. One little boy gave me a handmade felt ger as I left.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Go Help is a small operation. The charity\nis run by a handful of volunteers and a few staff members, whose salaries are\npaid from rally entry fees, out of a donated office space in UB. There is also a\nvolunteer in London and a five-member board of trustees. Its primary income is\nfrom its rallies. In the last five years, ralliers have donated 270 vehicles\nand raised $600,000. Most of the money raised goes straight into health and\neducation charity projects. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

We took the bus back to the city. Owen had\ndropped the van off at the car wash and they had called to say it wasn\u2019t\nstarting. We pushed it down the street back to Go Help.  The day before, as we walked up to the\nbuilding, another team was being towed in. Munhuu has a lot of work ahead of\nhim. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

No van meant we walked or took taxis.  In Ulaanbaatar, everyone is a taxi. Just wave\nyour hand and within a few seconds, someone pulls over. Anywhere costs a few\ndollars. It\u2019s a great system. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

On Sunday, the Bandits left for England and Yoav and I went for margaritas. I was sad it was all over. If someone had given me a car to drive back, I would have gladly done it. The next day, 53 days after leaving London, we flew one of Hunnu Air\u2019s two international planes direct to Hong Kong. It took less than five hours to get home. Driving is a lot more fun.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Thank\nyou to everyone for all the support, emotional and financial, from start to\nfinish. It was an incredible trip, full of meaning and adventure. It\u2019s still\nhard to believe anyone is actually reading this blog. If you are, a special\nthanks to you! More photos to come soon, especially for our sponsors whom\nwithout, we couldn\u2019t have done this trip. A large portion of your money went to\nGo Help, which I believe is a valuable and sincere operation doing great things\nfor the people of Mongolia. Thank you! <\/em>And I still have a few stories left. They might come out yet. -Robin<\/em><\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

by Robin EwingSept. 10, 2013 Opel made it! Last week, she arrived at the Go Help office in Ulaanbaatar by tow truck. Munhuu, the mechanic who rescued her, says he\u2019ll soon have her back in tip-top shape. I\u2019m thankful she\u2019s no longer stranded in the harsh lands of western Mongolia, locked up in the back […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":298,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"off","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-308","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-blog"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/fromlondontomongolia.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/09\/IMG_2769-e.jpg","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/fromlondontomongolia.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/308","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/fromlondontomongolia.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/fromlondontomongolia.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/fromlondontomongolia.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/fromlondontomongolia.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=308"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/fromlondontomongolia.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/308\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":331,"href":"https:\/\/fromlondontomongolia.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/308\/revisions\/331"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/fromlondontomongolia.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/298"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/fromlondontomongolia.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=308"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/fromlondontomongolia.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=308"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/fromlondontomongolia.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=308"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}