Sunday in Mongolia

Today is Sunday. We had a relaxing morning at the hotel, and then our hosts picked us up for an afternoon out. For lunch, we went to an Indian / Mexican restaurant. Never thought I’d have enchiladas in Mongolia! Then off to the cashmere factory. We weren’t able to see the factory, but did visit the store outside. They use cashmere for everything – dresses, skirts, coats, sweaters, gloves, scarves, hats. The quality varies a bit, but I would imagine a scarf they sell here for about $20 USD would be well over $150 in the US. It is made of goat or camel hair. I wish I could see the manufacturing process. I would imagine it is very interesting!

At the end of the day, we went to church. Our hosts go to a multi-national church, so the service is in English. We worshiped with people from Mongolia, China, Korea, Japan, US, England, Australia, Ethiopia, Niger, Nigeria, Nepal, Cambodia, Philippines, and I’m sure other nations as well. Imagine all those accents in one place singing worship music! What a wonderful sound! The band was very good too. Female drummer AND bass player in the band! Then back to the hotel for a quiet evening.

A few other observations about Mongolia. Did I mention it’s cold here? Not as cold as I thought here in the city, but still daytime highs only in the 0 to 10F range. When the sun comes out, it probably gets up as high as 20F. The wind can be quite strong, making it feel a bit colder. There isn’t actually much snow here. I pictured feet of snow, but at least near the city, it’s more like inches, and we’re told that this is a lot of snow. It is simply too dry here to snow much.

The city is surrounded on three sides by mountains. When you go out from the city and get into the mountain area, you find that there are also very interesting rock formations where it looks like someone just dumped a huge pile of rocks in the middle of a field. Apparently, millions of years ago, this area was under water, so the rock formations probably have something to do with that. When we drove to the statue yesterday, we also went through a very sandy area – in the mountains. Seems odd, but if the area were originally under water, I guess it makes sense.

In the city, even though it is so cold, you can hear birds in the morning. Can you imagine how strong that bird must be? The animals here all have very long fur, even the horses and cows. For the people, heat is piped in from the central power plant. On the outskirts of the city, these pipes are above ground. At some point, they are buried, and heat is brought to the businesses and apartments. If you are an individual, it appears you are on your own to burn whatever you can find. Most try to bring in coal (low grade) or wood, but they’ll also burn tires, or anything else that they find. That can make the air here a bit hard to breathe sometimes.
Tomorrow, we’re going about 400km east of the city. We were told to dress warm and at one point were asked if we have sleeping bags. I’m hoping that’s not a bad sign, as we did not bring them. I’m sure they’ll outfit us with something if we really need them. No post for the next day or so, as we were told not to expect much in the way of service. So, I have my coat, my long underwear, and my bottle of water, and off we go!