Sneak Peak: Ulaanbaatar

The first hours of Mongolia.

20 October 2011

The train arrives in the dark of the early morning. We are all shaken awake by the sheet collector around 5 am and out in the cold by 6. Ben and I both have an address on Peace Avenue, so we decide to walk it together. With what little clues we have, we set out into the dim pre-dawn for what unknowingly will become a three hour trek.

Both of us carry poorly scrawled maps of places sprouting off Peace Avenue, and neither of those maps contain our homes-to-be. It wouldn't make a difference anyhow, since not a single road is labelled nor building numbered. Fortunately, when you're lost with another traveller, nothing seems quite as hopeless. The threatening situations of lost, cold, dark, illiterate, and getting mugged on a street called Peace are much diminished.

* * * * *

By now the city has come fully alive. The streets crawl with honking, dusty automobiles and over-laden buses, and once empty sidewalks are teeming with people. The staring is intense, but whether its the height, beard, whiteness, piercings, evident lostness, bulging backpack, or a combination of all factors, I can't be sure. Fed up with aimless wandering, we decide to stop someone. Who better to locate Gandan Monastery than two monk boys, geared up in their golden robes with sleeves hanging past their hands and maroon belts holding the garb together?

"Excuse me, can I ask you a question? Do you two happen to know where we can find Gandan Monsatery?" Ben asks. Silly British courtesy. I pick up the directions and point to the word Gandan and ask, "Gandan: where?" The gap-toothed monklets turn and point their droopy sleeves up the hill.

This particular hill is mounted by a major highway which runs along the eastern edge of the slums. As we climb up, a painfully obvious temple, reminiscent of pictures I've seen out of Bhutan, rises above the dingy hovels. Monastery? It has to be, but just to be sure we turn and look back down the hill to see if we've passed anything bigger and more Buddhist.

Jaws hit pavement. The sun has just crested the mountains in the southeast, turning a pale dawn into a golden painting. The city is like stacked sheets of gold, each further layer brighter than the one before it until finally the city fades into the sky. The dust rising off the now busy roads gives every roof, every corner, every antenna a golden aura. It's so magnificent that neither of us can move or speak.

For those who've heard about my Chinese...immigration complications...fear not, it's all sorted. Best thing that has happened to me was getting deported from that awful country. The universe works in mysterious ways.