Derbys, Mongolian Band, and Meetings

I went to drinks with Underseas Voyager Project Guy at an expat function in the second fanciest hotel in Ulan Bataar.  I had planned on trying to meet some miners and seeing if I could make any interesting contacts in the Gobi.  Instead, I found myself berated by an English girl from Bristol.

“You know there is no.. not really… a market in Mongolian livestock, you know? Not like how we think of a market”

“I know.  I had a meeting with Mercy Corps yesterday afternoon where we discussed that.”

“So then why are you doing a supply chain analysis here?”

I shrugged. “My master’s program requires me to do an international consultancy or internship of some kind.  The UN is footing the bill for me to come here. But, yeah, I know I’m kind of on a fool’s errand. Nothing to do, but to just do the best I can, and hopefully something interesting will come out of it.”

“Okay….” She inflected upward, then sipped her Tiger beer.

Her skepticism struck as a bit rich.  She organizes the Mongolian Derby, (which she insists on pronouncing DAHRBY), the longest horse race in the world, modeled on Genghis Khan's postal system that transverses the Mongolian Steppe, over 9 days and 1000 km long. And I’m the one on the fool’s errand. And she’s giving me skepticism for trying to do the first quantitative analysis of the Mongolian livestock value chain that takes into account the full offering of livestock products (meat, hide, fiber, dairy), substitution effects between animals, and rates of return.  At least I don’t organize a 1000 km horse race in the middle of butt f**** nowhere Mongolia.

OK, maybe I am crazy.

I’ve spent my first week in UB taking as many meetings as I can organize. It’s been limited due to what contacts I was able to make while in the US, but still things have gone well as can be expected. When one says I’m a researcher from UC Berkeley on a project that the UN is paying for, people seem at least willing to give you the time of day.

I should have gotten more done, but Derby Girl insists on dragging me to Mongolian rock shows.

Tuesday, I finally make it out to the countryside.  I fly to a town on the far west side of the country, Khovd. There, I meet up with some PCVs who know the local middle man, and we go from there.  After a few days in Khovd, I travel by bus to Uliastai.  This is a place even Mongolians say is remote (but of course there’s Peace Corps). According to reports, this province has the highest number of livestock in the country.

UB has been an exciting place, but everyone tells me that it’s there least favorite part of Mongolia.  I have to get out to the countryside, they say.  I did a long run out of the city today. What little of the steppes I saw, made me yearn for more.

 Looking down at UB.

 Ger town at the edge of the city.

The Steppe

Quick Post: The Mongolian Election

Mongolians go to the polls on Wednesday.  I won't be in UB to see it, but it would be interesting.

A Little Bit About the Mongolian Elections on Wednesday

Welcome to Mongolia

At the Beijing airport I met a guy who was also going to Mongolia.  I asked what he was doing there, and he said that he worked for an organization called the Undersea Voyager Project.  Yes, the Undersea Voyager Project, in Mongolia.

What’s even funnier is that he’s complete legit.  In the winter, oil tanker trucks drive into Mongolia over the then frozen Lake Khövsgöl in the far north of the country.  And an estimated dozen of them have fallen through the ice, and are sitting at the bottom of the 262 meter lake. To date it seems that none of these tankers are leaking, but these sunken tankers represent a ticking chemical bomb threatening to contaminate 70 percent of the country’s fresh water supply.

So welcome to Mongolia.  A country hundreds of miles from the ocean, where it makes sense to be an undersea salvage operator.

***

UB is a rough place.  I’ve seen about a fist fight a day here. Never felt threatened myself, but it does make one wary. The city itself is about 1.7 million people, housed in anything from ultramodern skyscrapers to decaying Soviet apartment blocks to ger towns.  And I’ve come to realize that ger town is the polite way of saying slum. In terms of infrastructure development, the town seems to be about at the level of Jakarta, though nowhere near the size.  The cottonwood trees are seeding, flinging white fluff balls throughout the city.  They say in two weeks that UB will be so full of the stuff that it will look like snow had fallen in July. (That's of course if snow doesn't actually fall in July.)

Near one of the temples. This seems typical of the town.  I saw some pretty large slums on the way to the airport, but could get the camera out due to not trying to fall on my face due to the sudden stops the bus driver would make.

At least Mongolians have some decent taste in music.

The main square in UB.

The new, ultra-fancy Blue Sky hotel.  I drank some beers at the top of it, but forgot my camera.

The second you get out of the city, the roads turn from atrocious to worse.  But the steppe of in the distance is incredible.  I’ve only seen it on my two trips to the airport (once to get my lost bag, once to deal with immigration). I should get there next week when I go visit some Peace Corps Volunteers in the west side of the country.

View from the car ride back from the airport.

Peace Corps Volunteers have offered what is the greatest bright spot in this Mongolia experience so far.  I am in awe of these people. From their stories, Mongolia life is harsh.  The winters long (it snowed two weeks ago) and cold (-30 C). And some of them live in gers. And they chop their own firewood. The food, while not as bad as reported, is pretty darn dull. To get from one side of the country to the other by bus takes in excess of 60 hours.  That is 60 hours on a bus to get to the nearest slice of cheese. And a lot of them sign up for a third year.

The research has been going surprisingly well, thanks to my fellow PCVs and contacts I’ve made through Berkeley.  I don’t have time to write about it all now, but the issues facing small herders in Mongolia strike to the heart of issues of development in general, and what makes Mongolia unique place. People have been very welcoming, and have been gaining a lot of qualitative data.  I take heart in this, but the more I learn, the more nuanced the industry becomes, and the more daunting the task I have undertaken.

The hard part begins next week, when I fly off to the far west of the country, and will hopefully have a chance to interact with herders, changers, and traders.