My Time In Mongolia

I wouldn’t say nine years have gone by quickly. The winters were long and there were many times where I wished I could just leave and be beside the ocean in New Zealand. But I wouldn’t trade our experiences for anything. We have met so many amazing people, seen some incredible sights, and had some wild adventures.

When we first moved to Ulaanbaatar, Mongolia, there were no traffic rules, no sidewalks, and open man holes everywhere just waiting for people to fall into. There were homeless people living in the steam pipes outside our building, no one ever smiled, foreigners were not well liked at the time, and packs of wild dogs roamed around the streets. I hated walking to work because I was scared of falling over on ice, or being hit by a car every time I stepped onto the street. Not to mention seven months of the year is brutal winter. It felt like we had been transported a different planet.

My husband, Michael and I moved to Mongolia on the 8th of March 2012. It was the end of winter, but to me it was the coldest I had ever been! Things improved when I realised how much there was to see outside of the city once spring arrived. Endless grassy steppes, beautiful forests, fields of wildflowers, lakes, rivers, and no fences and so much interesting wildlife. You can camp anywhere and drive anywhere. I lived for the times we could get out of the city and explore the countryside.

During my time here I’ve worked as a project manager in mining, done a lot of study online, started writing and taught myself how to write a book, and in the summer Michael and I lived and worked out at gold mines in remote Bayankhongor. Our times gold mining were the most memorable. Living in camps on the edge of the Gobi desert for months at a time was interesting to say the least. I both hated it and loved it. Living in a communal camp is not something I enjoy, neither is Mongolian food. But I saw so many things in nature I would never have had a chance to see otherwise.

We saw eagles everyday, we saw wolves, rare vultures, moulting camels, and came across kindergartens of baby goats at the river. I enjoyed seeing the herds of goats come by every day and watching the local herders gallop across the river valley on horses. We had a camp cat (named Rabies) who appeared out of nowhere and adopted us; she was the friendliest cat I’ve ever met, considering she just appeared out of the desert.

At times it felt like we were living in a wild west movie. We watched the illegal miners camp across the river with binoculars like they were an enemy army. Our guards patrolled our land vigilantly, and there were a few incidents where threats were made with guns. There were days when we collected water from the well at the local soum (village) and stood there surrounded by sheep and goats as I tried to Skype my mum in a spot of Mobicom reception. We paid for groceries with gold, and outside the shops horses were hitched up while their owners popped in to buy vodka.

There were times when we were cut off for days by flash floods, we saw incredible dust storms, and at night the stars illuminated the desert landscape with the vibrant milky way splashed across the sky. We ate more yak than beef, lived on mutton noodle soup, and I reluctantly tried horse and marmot meat.

The work was hard, and I was usually in bed before the sun had set because I never really toughened up to the lifestyle. I missed the Internet and Netflix, and was so sick of Mongolian food I ate a lot of instant noodles and KitKats. Looking back, it was a great experience. I loved that Michael and I were there together, and it was good that my complaining didn’t destroy our marriage. We can survive living anywhere now.

Over the past year Mongolia has taken extreme measures for Covid-19 prevention, but it is now getting out of hand. As we are leaving, the borders are still officially closed, schools have been closed for more than a year, we have spent most of the past year in lockdowns, and we will be leaving amidst another strict lockdown.

Prior to Covid, and over recent years, Mongolia has turned into a modern country that is much easier to live in. Traffic rules are enforced now, you can cross the road safely, supermarkets have produce year round, and there are a lot more international restaurants than there used to be. It is now a place worth travelling to if you want a bit of adventure and to experience a really unique culture.

I have so many great memories from Mongolia, which I’ll share as a random mix of photos and bullet points. This could easily turn into a book (maybe one day it will be) but I hope you enjoy my stories and that they inspire you to go on your own adventure to Mongolia one day.

I once saw a man sitting at the bus stop dressed in a traditional Mongolian deel. This is a common sight, but what was not so common was sitting on his arm — a beautiful golden eagle. It had a leather hood and sat calmly as people bustled around it at the busy bus stop. It’s common to see eagles in Mongolia, but this was the one and only time I saw one catching a bus.
Watching Aisholpan the Eagle Huntress and her eagle White Wings in action was a highlight at the Ulaanbaatar Eagle festival.
One night as we were driving to our new camp on a bumpy countryside road, we stopped to let two wolves walk cross in front of our car. They paused and studied us. I was holding our camp cat in my arms and was worried about winding down the window too far. Eventually the wolves looked away and trotted back into the darkness. A Mongolian colleague in the car said it was a good omen to see them.
I will not miss the dodgy landings at Chinggis Khaan International Airport. The issue with the runway is you can only land in one direction. So if the wind direction is wrong they will either cancel your flight before you go, fly back to wherever you came from after circling the airport for an hour, or the worst, attempt the landing. I hate flying normally, but some of these landings have been terrifying. One time we nearly drove off the end of the runway. Many times in winter you are landing in -30 degree weather with ice everywhere, and others have been very questionable, especially after circling the airport for an hour. The good news is a new airport is opening this year, but it’s a much longer drive to get to.
I have panned over one million dollars’ worth of gold, in the old timey way! The most efficient way to get the cleanest gold is always panning, and I did a lot of it! Once you get good and into the swing of panning it can almost be like meditation. The downside is it screws up your wrists and it can get extremely boring. I’m pretty over panning now, but I do enjoy seeing the gold.
I saw a rainbow in the countryside that actually led to gold. The rainbow bowed down valley where our next gold mining area was! I took this as a good sign (and there was a lot of gold there).
So many dogs to make friends with! Living out at the mining camp, we seemed to attract random dogs from around the valley and beyond. One day we had eight dogs in our camp hanging out and none of them were ours. Most were friendly, and it was nice to have dogs around when you are working, even if they were just there for the food. I’ve found many friendly dogs around Mongolia. But there are also guard dogs at herders gers—don’t approach these unless you know them.
Watching how cashmere is actually obtained is quite disturbing. It is nothing like sharing a sheep. They use giant metal combs and ‘comb’ the top layer of hair off the goat, leaving a short layer of hair below. But it is not gentle. If you need to get through 150 goats in the hot sun in one day, you are going to get impatient. So they hold the goats down and rake off the top layers of cashmere hair, sometimes leaving the animals bleeding from where the sharp metal combs rake into their skin.
One day we were walking back from lunch to the office when we noticed smoke pouring out a window in the new Shangri-La hotel that was being built. Next minute, the windows exploded and black billowing smoke and flames started pouring out. The flames spread and caught onto the outer material that was covering the unfinished building. Like a snake, the flames coiled their way up the whole side of the building, across the top and down the other side. Soon fire trucks turned up, but their piddly hoses and ladders only reached the bottom floors. We were a few hundred meters away and could feel the extreme heat of the flames while standing on the road in front of our office. Somehow they got it under control and the people trapped on the roof were okay.
At the camp we had a pet baby goat for a while. He got left behind by his herd and when we tried to give him back to the herder he didn’t want to goat. We named the goat Dumdum and let him wander around our camp. There was definitely something wrong with him. His ears went in different directions, he walked funny, and he everything about him wasn’t quite right. But he followed us around everywhere and tried to make friends with Rabies the cat. The herders probably thought we were weird for keeping him.

Lake Khovsgol is one of my favourite places in Mongolia. The lake is surrounded by wild Taiga forest that extends into Siberia. Yaks wander lazily around the water’s edge and wild flowers can be found on the tall hillsides and in the fairy tale forest. The lake is freezing cold but is vast and so picturesque.

We celebrated a colleague’s birthday with marmot meat, horse meat and vodka in a ger in the middle of nowhere. It’s polite not to turn down food in a communal situation like that. I tried the marmot and didn’t get bubonic plague, so that was a win. Horse meat is quite oily and strong tasting. Vodka is always good, Mongolia has the best vodka.
We have stayed in ger camps all over Mongolia. It is a great way to get away for a weekend and have somewhere in nature to stay, but without having to set up a tent or bring your own stuff. Ger camps are affordable are there are so many within a few hours drive of Ulaanbaatar you never have to go too far if you don’t want to.
Across the road from our old apartment there was a manhole where homeless people lived because it had the hot steam pipes running through it. One morning in winter we left our apartment to walk to work and next to the manhole was the dead body of one of the homeless men. There were often drunken fights outside the manhole, and that night I guess the man hadn’t made it back in and froze outside. He was lying there frozen with his eyes wide open. A policeman had put a cone next to him and was sitting in his car down the road. I found this incredibly sad and quite disturbing. Another time I saw a dead person frozen on a park bench. You don’t see homeless people around the centre of town as much anymore, I often wonder what happened to them.
We saw some crazy dust storms over the years. In Ulaanbaatar the whole city gets dark, the wind picks up and roars between buildings. The light has an orange eerie glow that has a fun apocalyptic feel about it. It’s nice to watch from inside, just close the windows. In the countryside you see a dust storm coming from miles away. They are billowing dark clouds that rolls over the hills like something out of a movie. It is quite a sight to see. If you are in a car, it shakes you around like a tornado (sometimes dust storms are mini tornadoes). If you are in a ger, the walls flap around you and wind rushes through any gap it can find. If you are outside, all you can do is close your eyes and mouth so you don’t get sand in them. It feels like you are in a movie if you are outside in a dust storm, everything around you disappears and goes dark. It’s fun if you don’t have to be anywhere, but it’s hard if you are trying to get work done!
We had many weekend countryside trips with friends. There are so many ger camps within a day trip of Ulaanbaatar that it’s easy to get away. We had many weekend adventures of hiking rafting, drinking, having picnics, and others went horse riding (I don’t like horses).
Staying in a ger camp is -35 degrees where the toilet is outside. An experience in itself. The camp hadn’t been told we were coming, so there were no fires ready and no food at all. We made do with all the snacks we brought with us and made our own fires using horse poo we found around the gers outside. Later some wood was found, and the ger got so hot we had to have the door open half the time. The next morning the car wouldn’t start, so the boys got it warmed up Mongolian styles—by lighting a fire under the car.
Hiking through the forest at Lake Khovsgol, my sisters and I heard thundering footsteps coming closer. We jumped onto a log and suddenly a herd of horses burst out of the trees. They raced past us as we stood in awe watching them. It was one of the most amazing sights I’ve seen. Article about Hiking at Lake Khovsgol
I will not miss all the fires in Ulaanbaatar. There is a serious lack of fire safety here, and the buildings are all so outdated. In the time we have been here the State Department Store nearly burnt down, Saruul market did burn down, the black market had a huge fire, the Shangri la caught fire. I’ve seen around ten high-rise buildings under construction on fire, and one year Bogd Khan mountain closed down because of a huge forest fire. It’s scary, and Mongolia is not prepared to deal with fires.
Every single year when the river starts melting, idiots still try to drive across it. During this melting period, I’ve seen a different car fallen through the ice every time I’ve been past. It’s safer not to drive on it. Lake Khovsgol has hundreds of dead bodies and sunken vehicles in it from people who try to drive on the ice.
Mongolian food—something I will not miss. I’ve tried most of the foods and living out at the mining camps we only had Mongolian food available. I never did get a taste for it, and now I don’t eat mutton or lamb at all. Checkout my article about Mongolian Foods.

Another great adventure was exploring an abandoned Soviet airbase. This was a surreal experience and just another random thing we came across in the middle of nowhere. Article on the Soviet Airbase
I was so excited to spot a Pallas cat on my birthday. This rare cat was on my bucket list of animals to spot, and I knew it was unlikely I would ever see one. For my birthday we went on an off-roading adventure through Hustai National Park and we actually spotted this elusive cat! Made my day. Checkout my Guide to Hustai National Park.
My coldest day. It was -48 degrees Celsius sometime in January. I don’t think I went outside for long, I think I just walked out to the car park to just to say I had been outside in that temperature haha. At this temperature you can feel the icy air hitting your lungs, my eyes always start to water in the cold so my eyeballs feel like they are freezing over. Icicles form on your eyelashes, and inside your nose your nostrils turn crispy, if you squeeze your nose you can feel the ice crackling. The skin on your face is so cold it feels hot but also freezing, and even with gloves your fingers go numb. My feet never get cold because I have reindeer boots, they are basically magic boots made of reindeer and sheep’s wool that save your feet in winter.
The first rain in Spring. This is possibly my favourite day of the year. If you’ve never gone without seeing rain for seven months, it’s hard to describe just how wonderful it is to smell rain on the road, or hear that clatter of raindrops on the roof, or feel the first drops on your palm. It’s like experiencing rain for the first time. In 2020 the first thunderstorm rolled in on the 1st of May, we watched the dark thunder clouds crept across the city slowly. We sat on our balcony and watched forked lightning in every direction, flashing purple as it hit the mountains and distant buildings. Eventually the clouds moved toward us and unleashed a torrent of heavy rain over the city. It was amazing! Of course the streets instantly flooded, but watching from outside our apartment was perfect. I’ll remember that rain for a long time.
Visiting a camel herding family in the Gobi Desert was another interesting trip. We drank fizzy goat yoghurt, watched camels being milked, learnt how to make a little felt ornament, and went for a ride on some camels.
One time I saw some cows in the city centre walking past UB Mart on the road. I like that you can randomly see animals anywhere in Mongolia, though not so common in the middle of the city!
Crazy drivers- Mongolia is full of insane drivers and endless traffic. There are so many occasions where I thought I might die. In Ulaanbaatar drivers drive as if they are riding horses, they weave in and out of lanes, cut each other off, block up intersections, drive in places that aren’t roads, and honk horns endlessly. In the countryside the hazards are huge holes in the roads, livestock stepping out in front of your car with no warning, cars driving 100km an hour on the wrong side of the road toward you, dangerous overtaking, and most of the cars have the steering wheels on the wrong side. I won’t miss this!
Endless hours spent sitting in the car on bumpy roads. I get motion sickness so this is not a fun part of travelling in Mongolia for me. Our drive to the mine was twelve hours from Ulaanbaatar heading west, and a lot of this was off-road. The longest I stayed working at the mine was 55 days. This was a bit too much looking back. But I hated the drive so much. At the end of 2019 they started doing flights from Bayankhongor and this saved my life. I got to catch a flight home, and it was so much than a full day of driving.
Canoeing up the Tuul river for an overnight camping trip was a fun experience. We ate Khorkhog on the banks of the Tuul river and camped near a stand of birch trees. In the night Shaman drums started up from in the forest. There was a shaman ceremony taking place in the forest and this made for a very creepy, eerie backdrop. Shamans are quite scary, so it didn’t make sleeping easy!
My favourite trips were with people who came to visit us! Thank you to everyone who made the journey to visit us in Mongolia. Though we didn’t get many visitors being so far from New Zealand, it meant a lot to us from those of you who made the trip. It was so fun to be able to share some of the things we discovered in Mongolia with friends and family!

Summary

Thank you Mongolia for having us so long, even if it seemed you were trying to drive us away a lot of the time. And thank you to all the wonderful people we have met and those who have helped us over the years.

If you ever get a chance to visit Mongolia, I recommended taking it! It might not be what you expect or what you plan for, but either way it will be an adventure.

Let me know in the comments what photos you like best! Or what you would like to see in Mongolia…

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