Back to the steppe

Embarking on our first return journey to Mongolia in 21 months, our opening experience of any note in Ulaanbaatar (if you don’t count the surly border guard complaining that Altaa did not look like her passport photo) was to find that our stowed luggage was still in Beijing, one of our transit points, despite an English-speaking terminal official insisting that it would be loaded onto the onward-bound flight. A camp, courteous clerk in Frankfurt airport, another stop-off location, said that our tickets only had our suitcases destined for the Chinese capital, rather than the Mongolian one and that we were to check once on Chinese soil; that Mandarin mandarin on reflection seemed a mite too airily sure in her assertions, but then we had to take her word – what else could we do? Yet we were left with the overriding impression that our bags were having an unscheduled overnight flit in Beijing. At least we hoped they were in Beijing. When our suitcase did not appear on the carousel and the baggage handlers told Altaa the aeroplane was fully unloaded, the integrity of fellow passengers at baggage reclaim gained traction in my thought processes. If you’re one of the last off the plane and through passport control and the luggage is careening serenely around, how are you to know of some unscrupulous person making away with your packed contents. You could even be further down the conveyor belt and someone could (with difficulty, given the 20kg inside) nab it. For sure, we had put nothing of enduring value inside – clothes and presents – but these could be replaced, but still it is an unsettling idea. For both of our suitcases not to be there was a relief of sorts. Oscar Wilde’s dictum that committing a mistake once might be seen as accidental but to do so twice looks positively careless was not so disheartening in this situation. We logged our concern and made off. The bags were flown in the next day for our collection.
Altaa’s brother, Sukhee, was supposed to pick us up at Chinggis Khan International Airport. Unfortunately, a confusion meant that we had to sort out a taxi for ourselves from the vultures hovering in the arrivals hall (lucky then that Altaa had spare togrogs for the fare). Both of us noted how much English and how little Mongolian was plastered on walls and above buildings from the airport on – even energy generation was not immune with a Soviet-era construction having Power Plant #3 emblazoned across the exterior of the turbine hall (it might have been there all along but was the first time I can recollect noticing it). Aside from this observation, the return left something to be desired with Ulaanbaatar’s outskirts and indeed much of it at large being highly unprepossessing. It was ever thus though and people in general come for the countryside.
I shall write more of the these vanguard days, but Altaa has sorted out her documentation renewing her residency card to claim the 70,000 togrogs dispensed to every Mongolian adult by the government, so now it’s off to Darhan, Mongolia’s third city, en route to Eruu (pronounced Euro) district in the northern Selenge province. The journey continues.