Yon column: No, I am not the least bit jealous
As I have often written, running in a strange new place while traveling is at the top of my list of things to do. However, when it comes to finding unique places to run, no one has Terry Meek beat as she proved yet again with a trip to Mongolia.
Mongolia is a landlocked country surrounded on three sides by China, with Russia sitting on the northern border. Of course this is a geographic formula for problems.
Modern humans arrived around 40,000 years ago. Sometime around 1206, Genghis Khan began uniting the Mongol tribes and with brutal force created the largest contiguous land empire in world history, stretching from present-day Poland in the west to Korea in the east, and from Siberia in the north to the Gulf of Oman and Vietnam in the south. But wars involving China and Russia would break the empire apart.
How could you not want to fly to Mongolia to find new running experiences? And so, Terry Meek climbed on board a US Airways flight to Charlotte, crossed the United States to Los Angeles, and then flew across the Pacific Ocean to Beijing and finally to Ulaanbaatar, the capital of Mongolia. As Terry said, “Mongolia seemed so unique and unknown to me.”
The trip was based in the capital city, but every four days they flew out to a new remote location, returning each time to the fancy hotel in Ulaanbaatar to “sleep, recharge electronics and take a bath.” On her first run, Terry explored the capital and met a new friend.
“As daylight breaks at 5:30 a.m., I head to the streets to shake off a little jet lag. In the early morning, there are only a few lone individuals heading to or from work or collecting plastic bottles, on what are usually gridlocked streets. Navigating safely over the obstacle course of broken sidewalks and streets, ditches, pot holes, sawed-off poles sticking up from the sidewalk, and crumbling curbs is more important than speed.
“I pass a number of stores and businesses, but the businesses have few windows and the signs are written in the Mongolian Cyrillic alphabet. After about a half-mile, Yellow Dog, a scraggly, blond, medium-sized stray dog becomes my local four-legged, street-smart guide. We run until the sidewalks end in construction and become impassable. Yellow Dog and I turn back and head for my hotel. Yellow Dog runs back to the place we met and then finds an empty plastic bottle to play with. I wave goodbye to my canine companion.”
I know I would have enjoyed that run.
“At the Terelj National Park, we stay in a ‘ger camp,’” Terry reports. A ger is a tent-like structure set up around a multipurpose stove. For many nomadic families, the ger is hom. And it gets packed with their belongings as they seasonally move from place to place. “When I awoke at 5:30 a.m. I was toasty and warm under the wool covers in the ger.”
It is difficult getting out from under the warm covers, but like many runners I believe there are few things better than running in 50 degree weather.
“Unlike in the city, the air is crisp, the land is a beautiful green, and the mountains are majestic. The paved, pothole-ridden roads have been replaced with precarious dirt roads and paths. I run past herds of free-range horses, cows and shaggy yaks grazing on the grass in the valley and up the hillsides. As I do my cool-down walk down the dirt path back to my ger, I find a herd of horses, oblivious to me, sprawled across the only path to the ger camp. It is fascinating to see the foals wobbling on tiny legs, juveniles gleefully nuzzling their heads and acting just like children playing, alpha males snorting at and challenging each other, and a pregnant female plodding along.”
The next stop, the Gobi, has over 30 distinct ecological and geographic landscapes and is bordered by the Altai Mountains. “Gobi” means “waterless place.” The ger camp is located in a desert steppe in the middle of nowhere, flat and devoid of trees or bushes, covered with a hard dry soil and dry tufts of grass-like vegetation.
“The sun rises with a brilliant pink hue visible on the horizon through the clouds. There are no roads or paths to guide me, so I just run toward the sunrise. As I approach the familiar white dome of a ger, a dog begins to bark and I reverse direction. These dogs are trained to protect family herds from poachers, wolves and other predators. I don’t want to be confused as any of these, so I pick a new direction. Another ger and another dog, and I make a 90-degree turn and run toward a smattering of dark dots. Tiny white flowers of wild onion plants pepper the ground. Out of nowhere, a couple zipped toward me on a scooter and then quickly disappeared.”
When I asked if she would do the trip again, Terry responded without hesitation: “Yes.” “The trip was one of my top trips and provided an experience that one could get nowhere else in the world.”OK, now I am green with envy.
Mongolia is a landlocked country surrounded on three sides by China, with Russia sitting on the northern border. Of course this is a geographic formula for problems.
Modern humans arrived around 40,000 years ago. Sometime around 1206, Genghis Khan began uniting the Mongol tribes and with brutal force created the largest contiguous land empire in world history, stretching from present-day Poland in the west to Korea in the east, and from Siberia in the north to the Gulf of Oman and Vietnam in the south. But wars involving China and Russia would break the empire apart.
How could you not want to fly to Mongolia to find new running experiences? And so, Terry Meek climbed on board a US Airways flight to Charlotte, crossed the United States to Los Angeles, and then flew across the Pacific Ocean to Beijing and finally to Ulaanbaatar, the capital of Mongolia. As Terry said, “Mongolia seemed so unique and unknown to me.”
The trip was based in the capital city, but every four days they flew out to a new remote location, returning each time to the fancy hotel in Ulaanbaatar to “sleep, recharge electronics and take a bath.” On her first run, Terry explored the capital and met a new friend.
“As daylight breaks at 5:30 a.m., I head to the streets to shake off a little jet lag. In the early morning, there are only a few lone individuals heading to or from work or collecting plastic bottles, on what are usually gridlocked streets. Navigating safely over the obstacle course of broken sidewalks and streets, ditches, pot holes, sawed-off poles sticking up from the sidewalk, and crumbling curbs is more important than speed.
“I pass a number of stores and businesses, but the businesses have few windows and the signs are written in the Mongolian Cyrillic alphabet. After about a half-mile, Yellow Dog, a scraggly, blond, medium-sized stray dog becomes my local four-legged, street-smart guide. We run until the sidewalks end in construction and become impassable. Yellow Dog and I turn back and head for my hotel. Yellow Dog runs back to the place we met and then finds an empty plastic bottle to play with. I wave goodbye to my canine companion.”
I know I would have enjoyed that run.
“At the Terelj National Park, we stay in a ‘ger camp,’” Terry reports. A ger is a tent-like structure set up around a multipurpose stove. For many nomadic families, the ger is hom. And it gets packed with their belongings as they seasonally move from place to place. “When I awoke at 5:30 a.m. I was toasty and warm under the wool covers in the ger.”
It is difficult getting out from under the warm covers, but like many runners I believe there are few things better than running in 50 degree weather.
“Unlike in the city, the air is crisp, the land is a beautiful green, and the mountains are majestic. The paved, pothole-ridden roads have been replaced with precarious dirt roads and paths. I run past herds of free-range horses, cows and shaggy yaks grazing on the grass in the valley and up the hillsides. As I do my cool-down walk down the dirt path back to my ger, I find a herd of horses, oblivious to me, sprawled across the only path to the ger camp. It is fascinating to see the foals wobbling on tiny legs, juveniles gleefully nuzzling their heads and acting just like children playing, alpha males snorting at and challenging each other, and a pregnant female plodding along.”
The next stop, the Gobi, has over 30 distinct ecological and geographic landscapes and is bordered by the Altai Mountains. “Gobi” means “waterless place.” The ger camp is located in a desert steppe in the middle of nowhere, flat and devoid of trees or bushes, covered with a hard dry soil and dry tufts of grass-like vegetation.
“The sun rises with a brilliant pink hue visible on the horizon through the clouds. There are no roads or paths to guide me, so I just run toward the sunrise. As I approach the familiar white dome of a ger, a dog begins to bark and I reverse direction. These dogs are trained to protect family herds from poachers, wolves and other predators. I don’t want to be confused as any of these, so I pick a new direction. Another ger and another dog, and I make a 90-degree turn and run toward a smattering of dark dots. Tiny white flowers of wild onion plants pepper the ground. Out of nowhere, a couple zipped toward me on a scooter and then quickly disappeared.”
When I asked if she would do the trip again, Terry responded without hesitation: “Yes.” “The trip was one of my top trips and provided an experience that one could get nowhere else in the world.”OK, now I am green with envy.
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