Following one month teaching English at the Khusvegi English & Nomadic Culture Camp, Colleen and I were ready for an adventure of our own. Having lived in Sagsai, Mongolia we had learned how to find transport with local drivers. We returned to the Altai National Park, but this time to the northwest corner at the borders of both China and Russia, at the base of Potanin Glacier, the longest in the country.

As with our trip to the south end of the Altai Tavan Bogd National Park, the drive from Sagsai to the higher mountains found my body rising off the seat and my head impacting the roof more than once. My hands ached from holding the internal frame of the vehicle. I kept trying to relax, but to no avail.

We arrived to the ranger station, starting point for most expeditions, midday Thursday, July 17. We immediately hit the trail, walking on a two-track road that split to a walking path on one side of a small creek, the road continuing on the other. From where our driver dropped us to the foot of the glacier was 15 kilometers. We had come to Mongolia primarily to each English and to run rivers with our pack rafts. Backpacking was not something we had planned. Fortunately, we had a 3-season Big Agnes tent (that has survived massive snow storms, gale force winds, and a flash flood), sleeping bags, stove, pots, a healthy mix of home-made dehydrated foods, one Osprey expedition backpack and one day pack. Our footwear was light, but adequate for what lay ahead.

The hike in saw a Toyota Prius, by far the most popular vehicle in Mongolia, with a lift-kit (which is standard in this country) that enabled it, somehow, to crawl over boulders and cross streams as one might expect from a Subaru Forester or Toyota Land Cruiser. Clearly, Toyota is missing a tremendous marketing opportunity for what the rest of the world believes is little more than a street vehicle.

With the sun setting and temperature dropping, we stopped roughly two kilometers shy of base camp and set up our tent in the protection of a small dip in the grass-covered, ancient glacier moraine. Only two days later we learned that camping outside of base camp is not allowed, for good reason, to focus all disruption of the land in one location. That said, we left no trace of our having been there other than the footprint of our tent, which will recover quickly once the grass stands tall again.

Friday we filled our day pack with food, water, and rain shells and set out for base camp. As expected, an international contingency of climbers were gathered, each supported by formidable teams of horses and camels, tents, cooks, and guides. We met an American expedition lead by a man in his late 60s or early 70s who had a great deal of experience in mountaineering around the globe. They would the next morning head up to upper camp, half way across the lower glacier, and on the morning thereafter rise at 3AM to summit at roughly 4,200 meters (14,000 feet). This effort was later described to me by a Czech cartographer as a relatively straight-forward walk up a glacial ramp.

We spent the better part of the day walking along the edge of the glacier. While Colleen and I have spent quite a bit of time in and around (and sometimes on) glaciers in Iceland and Alaska, this was a unique experience. Due to the way in which Potanin runs ’round a nearly 90 degree bend to join several other glaciers down valley, it’s edge is radically exposed. The massive moraine we climbed up, over, and down again gives visceral evidence of the size and volume of what was a much larger ice foundation in the recent past.

While in awe of the jagged mass that lay at our feet, we were simultaneously met with a deep sense of sadness for it was clear, even in that brief visit, that as with nearly all glaciers in the world today, this one is retreating at a pace that simply isn’t natural. The chill air that tumbled from its white, striped fleece felt like the last breath of a dying beast more than a compelling adventure. And as we stood just meters from a roaring creek that gained momentum with each twist and turn, I found that I was quickly sinking into a sand, stone, and water mixture that I had mistaken for being solid just seconds before. In my effort to break free I fell to one side, cutting my shin and elbow and scraping my hand. By no means a dangerous outcome, it was a reminder that this entire vessel is shifting, never static, for as the summer melt produces waters that feed rivers and lakes and all who consume downstream, these molecules will soon find themselves in pastures, bellies, and later, towns.

Despite the complete lack of trees for thousands of square kilometers, we were unable to locate our campsite as it rested in a low spot, hidden from view from all but one direction. Tired, our food consumed, and feet exhausted from the effort to move across jumbled terrain, we were not lost but had in fact lost our camp. I had failed to take readings with my compass prior to leaving camp. But then it occurred to me—we had photos of various features across the glacier to our west, taken from our camp that very morning. We reviewed the photos, two and then three giving us an accurate understanding of our need to move higher or lower, north or south, east or west in order to place one feature correctly juxtaposed to another. Within minutes we had found our tent, nestled below the outline of the perpetual green that stretched from ridge to cinder cone to glacier.

The second night I suffered from acid reflux, something I had never dealt with before. A combination of high altitude, dehydration, and likely too much salt (MSG) in a package of ramen. We took the next morning slow, returning to base camp in search of an antacid (which we failed to include in our med kit). We enjoyed a day of photography, writing, and simply taking it all in. That night a storm blew through that challenged our small, two-person tent. We were initially woken by a light rain that quickly grew to a strong downpour compounded by gusts of wind that forced the tent to roughly 50% of its normal height. Fortunately, we had six guy-lines to keep the Big Agnes upright, and two of them were anchored to the same stake, resulting in more of a pivot than a static line. This worked to keep the lines from tearing off of the rain shell. We sat upright for a good bit of the night, pressing our hands against the internal walls of the tent to reduce the pressure built with each blast of wind. At the same time, we were ready to stuff everything into our packs and hit the trail by headlamp if in fact the tent failed. Somehow, this thirteen year old shelter held, a testament to the design and quality of fabrication as well as our working knowledge of how to make the best of a such a situation. It is, in the end, another great story to tell.

The next day we returned to base camp for the third time, and spent our forth night there, not wanting to further test the limits of our gear should the storm persist. The camp manager is a trained Mongolian engineer and meteorologist who both supports visiting teams as well as tracks the movement of the glacier and analyzes data from four local weather stations. He was kind enough to give us a North Face tent complete with insulated floor, at no charge. This kind of generosity was our regular experience of the Mongolian culture, from start to end of our journey. We also met a young lady who happens to be the daughter of mayor of Sagsai, himself a renowned mountaineer. As the least populated country in the world (per land area), we repeatedly met locals who extended a growing network of colleagues and friends.

Our hike out was without issue. The ride back to Sagsai, as with the journey out, in a Russian van with leaf spring suspension, a tendency to stall when shifting, and the sweet smell of unspent fuel filling the cabin, from time to time.

Since our first arrival to Sagsai, Mongolia, a town of roughly 5,000 where we would live for one month while teaching at the Khusvegi English & Nomadic Culture Camp, we were intrigued by a growing awareness of the number of rivers and bodies of water integral to this foreign land. Mid way through our stay in Sagsai we ran the Sagsai and Turgen rivers, but it was not until the close of the Khusvegi camp that we had time to run the Khovd river from Sagsai to Ulgii, a larger town of some 27,000 an hour drive over a saddle mountain road.

The locals told of how in the winter they driver their Toyota Prius on the Khovd from Sagsai to Ulgii and back again. Yes, a Prius! Keep in mind that every Prius is lifted, that is, a lift kit raises the clearance and larger, more versatile tires are added. It’s really quite something to see a Prius with more ground clearance than a Subaru. But when we said we wanted to paddle from Sagsai to Ulgii, we were told it was dangerous, and we should consider otherwise.

Fellow teachers Esther and Atina were keen on joining me and Colleen. We found a tour operator in Ulgii who rents inflatable row boats and provide PFDs. He’d drop off the boats in Sagsai and pick up again in Uglii, at the bridge on the west end of town. We attempted to make this work, but a combination of weather and end-of-camp celebrations made it difficult to get the timing. In the end, Colleen and I walked from our home stay to the river, inflated our Alpacka rafts, and launched.

The Khovd is the sixth longest river (516 km) in Mongolia, with its source being Khoton Lake, third in line from a body of glaciers in the Altai Mountains on the border with China. We learned that a local outfitter supports a float trip from Khoton Lake to Ulgii each year, about one week on the water. At Sagsai the Khovd is very wide, more than 100 meters across in places. But just after we launched from the grassy shore, goats, sheep, and cows looking on, we were immediately embraced by faster moving water as the canyon formed and flow increased accordingly.

The float reminded us of the San Juan river in Utah with rising volcanic formations and quick transitions from dense green along the water to grays, reds, blacks and browns increasing with distance from shore and a rise in elevation. As Colleen is almost always the first to spot wildlife (I affectionately call her “eagle eyes”) she didn’t disappoint. Less than twenty minutes from start she pointed to a high ridge line river-right where a mountain sheep with beautiful, curled horns moved, perfectly silhouetted against the morning light. I grabbed our Canon Powershot SX740, a fabulous compact with 40x optical zoom and incredible ability to macro-focus on its own lens. I held it as stable as is possible when sitting in a packraft on a moving body of water, but when I pressed the shutter nothing happened! I pressed again and again—nothing! Then I realized it was still in 10 second timer mode from our final shot on-shore. Argh!

The sheep was gone, but we were later rewarded with several mountain goats, horses, and even two herders who made their way into the canyon through a passage invisible from the river. We felt at home. It just felt right, to be moving with the water as only a human powered boat can move. Once you push off, there is no going back. Your choices are reduced to left or right, and when to eat a piece of left-over, cold pizza, between rapids. There is no making things happen. Flat water, rapids, sunshine or snow—you just keep going. You just flow.

We had been told it was a four to five hour float, but in just two and a half hours we could see the edge of the town of Ulgii, three hours from shore to shore. We took-out just before the bridge, downstream from a family who had erected a tent for the day. We had seen hundreds of people, over the course of our month in Mongolia, enjoying every body of water to which they could drive their Toyota Prius or SUV, or in some occasions, a UAZ 4×4. Sometimes a tent, sometimes just sitting on portable chairs. These are a people who know how to enjoy the outdoors, to cherish the green grass, the vast blue sky, and the cold, clear water at their feet.

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]