We
took a bus 30km out of town to a "conference centre" where we sat down
for a traditional Mongolian lunch comprising a lamb soup (lamb ribs and
potatoes in a stock soup) followed by a main of beef chunks with grated
carrot and more potato. It was quite tasty. We had a few hours to fill,
and so I joined a few others for a short walk up a ridge line behind the
centre. It was beautiful overlooking the rolling mountains, flood
plains and UB in the distance.
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| Looking towards UB |
Gartuuga,
one of the guys we went up with is a very proud Mongolian, and told us
about the region. How the houses we could see were "summer houses" as
they weren't connected to central heating. Apparently, each Mongolian is
allocated some land at birth. He also explained that the stone ovoo's
which we had climbed up to were used historically to mark the
territories, and had quite a spiritual significance. He gave us each
three stones, and we had to walk around the rock ovoo three times
dropping a stone each time, and saying our prayers to the local spirits.
It would have been great to stay up there longer, but it was freezing
so we quickly went back to the conference centre.
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| Rock ovoo overlooking the Summer houses |
Dinner
was similar to lunch, but fuelled by vodka shots. I tried to avoid it
as much as possible! Gee these guys can drink! Then we went downstairs
at 8pm for a "disco". It very much reminded me of Craig’s Karaoke night
last year – there were laser lights, music playing in the background,
and everyone dancing around (ok, I guess we were singing at Craig’s, not
dancing, but it did have a bit of a living room feel).
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| A night's not complete without vodka |
It was a great day to meet some more people from the office – I just hope I can remember everyone’s name on Monday morning!
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