Colleen and I brought our Alpacka brand packrafts to Mongolia with intent to explore the rivers that surround the village of Sagsai, and beyond. And were not disappointed!

Sagsai, Mongolia is uniquely located at the confluence of three rivers: the Turgen, Sagsai, and much larger Hofd. From what we gathered through a Google Earth review, the Turgen starts in the mountains roughly 40 km southeast of town. The Sagsai is a much more formidable river starting at the base of the Altai mountains to the southwest. The Hofd (one of the longest rivers in Mongolia) is fed by the snow fields and glaciers of the Altai mountains to the west, with waters moving through Dayan Lake and the Khurgan and Khoton Lakes, with the White River as a major tributary feeding directly from the base of Potanin Glacier, the longest in Mongolia.

Most everyone in the town enjoys afternoons and weekends relaxing in the shallow meander of the Turgen, from a splash in ankle deep ripples to leaping from grassy banks to land near a friend who splashes back in return. It is, in many ways, a paradise for kids, playing mostly without supervision, only the goats and sheep watching from shore.

Colleen and I took an afternoon to run the Turgen (last four photos, below) from where it exists the canyon with intent to come back town, but after a half dozen butt-scoots and near miss with a rusty steel bridge just six inches off the water, we packed it up and walked back to our home.

The Sagsai, however, presented a much more impressive run, from the bridge a dozen kilometers southwest of town, crossed by every vehicle headed to the high, summer pastures and the Altai National Park. One of the parents gave us a ride, and then watched curiously as we inflated our boats and prepared for our maiden voyage in Mongolia. While the river presented little more than Class 1 or light Class 2 rapids, the joy was in the complete unknown as we spent more than two hours paddling down the Sagsai until we merged with the much larger Hofd, and then another two hours to the north side of town.

Without a map, beta, or any awareness of what we would experience, we honestly didn’t know what to expect. A review of the horizon across a very flat landscape gave us confidence there wouldn’t be any waterfalls or massive drops. But of equal concern was wire fencing, or braids that would force us to get out and walk. Aside from one brief butt-scoot when the river had split twice, we found our way from bridge to the familiar pastures where the women brought their grazing animals each morning in roughly four hours.

We were pleased to see hawks, geese, and cranes with massive white wings. The banks were a saturated green unlike anything we had seen, to date. Our next paddle would be the Hofd from Sagsai to Ulgii, a commute the locals do in the winter, on the frozen river, in a Toyota Prius.

The Naadam Festival is a truly nation-wide event. It has origins that call upon centuries of tradition, with archery, wrestling, and horse riding as the primary events. It brings a majority of the population of the capitol city Ulaanbaatar into the country for a week of festivities, competitions, car camping, and more.

Our experience of Naadam was entirely in Sagsai, where we lived for one month. Our host family’s daughter Nezerke walked with us from our home to the southwest corner of town where the one-day festival was held at the town stadium. Vendors were setup to sell similar products available in the many local shops, with the addition of soft serve ice cream and familiar carnival games. Slowly the stadium filled with members of the local military base, tourists, and locals. There appeared to be far more tourists at the festival than we believe were staying in town, perhaps coming up from Ulgii for the day.

Many of our students greeted us but were keen to find their friends. The mayor spoke, and then a few others. Archery was the first competition, held in a field further down the road. The bows were a relatively soft pull, with arrows whose points were covered in a leather or cloth ball. The goal was to lob the arrow such that it would strike just to the front of a large ball of what appeared to be twine, on the ground, causing it in turn to roll backward past a certainly line, but not too far, if I understood the objective clearly. [I recognize that what I observed contradicts the explanation I have read on-line where mention of stacked cylinders must be knocked down. I will review my video to confirm, then reach out to our host family for their explanation.]

Colleen and I were invited into the fenced area, joining our host who we later learned is an air traffic controller in Ulaanbaatar. With his brother and friends he had been competing for many years, traveling to several Naadam festivals in one week. We were given hot milk-tea, sweet-cheese snacks, and fermented mare’s milk.

We returned to the main festival to watch the wrestling. In its formality, grace, and obvious application of balance and strength it reminded me of Japanese sumo wrestling. Some of the battles were quick to be over, while others found the two men in a single, share posture long enough to have been mistaken for a statue, only to be broken again by one quick, ultimate move. The take-downs were far from brutal. Rather, as English teacher Esther noted, they were gentle. And when the the round was won, there was a demonstration of flight with the motion of arms outstretched and legs prancing. It didn’t feel like the goal-post antics of the NFL players, but a demonstration of respect for the opponent and the sport.

The horse racing was perhaps the most engaging, but Colleen and I needed time to ourselves after an intense three weeks. We opted to just sit on our fold-out bed and drink tea, eat biscuits, and write emails. It was a wonderful way to close a day of observing and learning in Mongolia.

[story coming soon]

With the close of our second week in Mongolia, mid way through teaching at the Khusvegi English & Nomadic Culture Camp, American teachers Esther and Atina, students Inju and Sunkar, and visitors from Germany Maria and Anna joined teacher, tour guide, and camp co-founder Bakhitgul Altaya (“Bakha”) and Sagsai teacher Naska on a trip to the southern end of the Altai Tavan Bogd National Park. We ventured to the summer home of the nomadic herders, a valley principally occupied by families from Sagsai. We were guests of Bakha’s brother Erkin and his wife Kunai, a second ger (yurt) setup to house us, and to provide a place to cook.

As with any overland adventure in Mongolia, the drive is the most challenging part for those not accustomed to bone jarring 100 kilometer per hour races across high, open volcanic valleys interrupted by the occasional launch of the entire vehicle when a dip or hole is hit. The slower, more technical portions of the drive are certainly worthy of kudos to the Russian-made UAZ-452 4×4 vans (that put even the most formidable Toyota Land Cruiser to shame) and their drivers, but the Mongolian tendency toward competitive racing (sans functional seat belts, if presented at all) when arriving sooner offers no benefit to anyone, results only in bruised, exhausted passengers. As the locals are able to sleep through the entire experience, I recognize that one could argue that I am simply not accustomed to their norm.

We learned that these remote places are within the national park, yet continue to be the summer home to long-standing traditions of nomads who make the four or five days walk in September (return to the lower villages) and February (return to the high, cold mountains before the ice and snow turns to slush and mud). Unwritten social norms dictate which villages and which families claim certain spots to erect their gers (yurts) and graze their animals.

We had the great fortune of spending time time with Bakha’s grandfather, Uabi Akhsakhal, the oldest living Kazakh nomad in Mongolia. At 95 he is yet alert, keen, and wanting to meet everyone who ventures into his domain. He sat with us for more than an hour, Bakha translating (often with tears moistening her eyes and cheeks) as he shared with us several stories of his youth, life as a nomad, and the beautiful way in which his people have lived from the land for centuries.

Uabi was born in China, where some of his relatives yet live. He has been coming to this valley, just below treeline, a few kilometers from the international border, for his entire life. More than a decade ago the Mongolian military abandoned a guard station not far from where we sat, asking him to monitor the border and report any sightings or trouble with those who come through the pass. Bakha told us of times when “people in plastic clothing” (synthetic jackets) would sneak into camp and steal food or animals before retreating back to China.

Uabi shared many more stories each capturing our attention as though we were visited by the ghosts of generations past, sitting with us to share the bread, sweets, and milk-tea. None of us held back tears when Bakha translated his closing remarks, asking that the next generation continue to appreciate and protect the land, that they too come to this place that he has called home for so many years. It is our intent to return next summer to capture Uabi’s stories on film.

This rang true for us as motorcycles are replacing horses, and off-road vans replacing caravans of animals in the migrations. It makes sense. And there is inherently nothing wrong with upgrades and hybrid solutions. But when the human animal becomes complacent, comfortable in temperature controlled homes and vehicles, food derived from single-use plastic packaging instead of from the hand-carved bones of the herd, it becomes less and less likely that each subsequent generation will find reward in that level of labor, seeing these mountains as a retreat, a vacation, and place to visit with family and friends rather that integrate into a nomadic life of direct engagement of the resources that abound.

In our entire time in Mongolia we didn’t see any wildlife beyond a single fox, a few big horn sheep, squirrels, and marmots. No deer, bears, or wolves (which we are told do roam across this part of the country). No signs or tracks. Yet we were never more than a meter from domestic animal footprints and dung, the sweet smell of manure hung in the air day and night (save the few days we were in the capital city of Ulaambaatar). A herd of animals was sometimes counted in the hundreds, just one or two herders keeping them gathered and moving.

We asked about the wild animals, and the answer, while anecdotal, was telling when Bakha said, “We used to see deer and bear, but no, no, we don’t see them anymore. I don’t know where they have gone.” I say (without having conducted research) that perhaps a reduction in the number of animals that feed upon this land (now more than 70,000,000 domestic grazers in Mongolia) could make room for a return of the natural ungulates and their predators. But as with any natural resource controlled by humans, How does one justify a reduction in domestic animals (and associated resources and income) to increase wild game? An new economic ecosystem must be built, perhaps one that shifts toward tourism.

On the second day in the Altai Colleen and I opted to not join the others for a hike above treeline and to the base of a snow field. Instead, we inflated our Alpacka Rafts and ventured down the river that ran adjacent to our host’s home. While we are experienced paddlers, there is always a sense of excitement for venturing down a body of water for which there is no map, no written guidebook, and no one to tell us, in advance, what lies around each bend. We could see the general flow from a high point, a relatively narrow, shallow stream that terminated in an ancient glacial kettle pond that itself fed into Lake Dayan (Даян Нуур), the lower of three lakes fed by a south running river from glaciers in the northwest corner of the Altai National Park.

The run was just one and a half hours, and without incident. We were met by the gaze of a few dozen yaks who stopped grazing when we passed, their heads and eyes following us closely, for surely they had not seen something quite like this before. We could not help but utter a silly yet later repeated anthropomorphism, “What the yak is going on here?!” Just before the kettle pond the water ceased to flow and paddling against the wind was less than fun. We made our way to the grassy shore, packed up and walked back to our home site, just in time to make dinner.

A hi-light of the trip was teaching Bakha’s brother, his wife, and two of the Khusvegi students Inju and Sunkar how to kayak. We found a small riverside pond where we could safely place each into one of our boats where they practiced forward, backward, and spin-left and spin-right. Colleen then helped each into her boat, placed a bit downstream and below the rapids as I paddled out from the pong to meet them for their first-ever movement on the surface of water. Their joy was contagious. What struck us most was the fearless charge into this endeavor by Bakha’s brother and his wife. They took to the water as though they had been doing this for a lifetime.

It reminded me of something Bakha said in the context of the Mongolian horse riding tradition that dates back to even before Chinggis Khan, “The horses, we know them, and they are a part of us. When Mongolians ride, it is like flying—with our horses, we can really fly.”

On the water too, they were flying.

Colleen and I realized early in our stay in western Mongolia that learning the Cyrillic character set was necessary in order to communicate in Kazakh with any degree of functionality. It felt daunting to rewire our brains to accept new sounds associated with several otherwise familiar characters, and to learn new characters too. But there was a turning point when I realized that Cyrillic is based on the Greek character set, with some modifications. This at least laid a foundation of familiarity, and when compared from Greek to Cyrillic, made sense for both shape and sound.

What’s more, if you were to take each sound in the English language and assign a unique letter such that each letter has (with a few exceptions) one sound and each sound has only one letter—you have, essentially, Cyrillic. This is why there are 42 characters, many more than the 26 characters in the Latin character set for English. This actually reduces confusion once you get the hang of it. The Wikipedia articles for Cyrillic and Kazakh share a great deal more.

In relatively short order, truly just a half dozen hours of study over the first two weeks, we were able to read (even if sounding out new words one letter at a time) and with some challenge write the Kazakh language. It was, for me, thrilling to know that my passion for learning languages was in no obvious degree hindered by my age. In fact, learning to read and write a new character set seems to have built a stronger foundation for the vocabulary. That said, Colleen gained a larger vocabulary than I did, and very quickly too, which was simply enjoyable to behold. I was more fascinated by and engaged in the written characters and history, while Colleen could hear a new word just once or twice and integrate it into her vocabulary. After a few weeks we were able to say and receive the common greetings, ask basic questions, count change, and pick out key words in informal conversation.

The use of Google Translate was valuable in that it allowed us to convey complex concepts (English to Kazakh). Most of our host family members, co-instructors, and community organizers were also using Google Translate (Kazakh to English). However, the number of times it was wrong, and I mean hilariously, completely wrong was fascinating. I found that writing with pen and paper in a notebook was far more effective for two reasons: it forced me to conduct a more thorough translation with both Google Translate and one of the two printed dictionaries we brought with us; and by writing the Kazakh words in Cyrillic I was actually learning the language, not just pressing a button on my cell phone and forgetting what had been transcribed a few seconds earlier.

There is no short cut, no easy way around it—if you want to learn to read, write, and speak a new language, you have to just do it!

[story coming soon]