Sun, Sand and Sainshand

Recently I journeyed out of Ulaanbaatar with six fellow volunteers to Sainshand for some fresh air in the countryside. By fresh air I mean intense wind and dust, and by countryside I mean the vast Gobi desert, famous for its death worms and rare sightings of the Gobi bear.

Our ten hour train ride was crammed with homemade food, games and police checking for booze as purchase or consumption of the like is prohibited on the first of each month in an effort to reduce alcoholism.

We arrived at 3.00am only to find that we didn’t have a room booked for the night in question. No one seemed to mind stripping off in the foyer to get changed and jumping back in the van with our new жолооч (driver, pronounced joloch) who we found at the train station.

Our жолооч turned out to be a winner. He cranked the tunes and sung for an hour as he drove us out to the Khamryn Khiid Energy Centre - where people visit to absorb energy, cure sickness and make wishes – then left us in the van to try and catch some shut eye before sunrise.

What I had anticipated to be a tourist attraction turned out to be much more, with hundreds of Mongolian Buddhists lined across a hilltop waiting for the sun to peek over the horizon, with their offerings of milk in hand. An energetic elderly Mongolian man commentated the final countdown on his portable PA whilst everyone got their spoons and cups at the ready.

After our milk bath, we visited four other sites where we cleansed ourselves in smoke, crawled through the rock of rebirth, hiked up Wish Mountain and visited a temple. I was definitely feeling energised afterwards and privileged to have taken part in a common ritual amongst so many locals – I think we were the only Westerners there.

Nothing was too hard for our жолооч, he always found the best parking spot, kept our bellies full of buuz and suutei tsai, and if he saw us point at a horse he wouldn’t hesitate to swing the wheel and drive straight off the road into the middle of the field of horses, like we were on an African safari.

Before a night of karaoke and dancing on a bouncy dancefloor, we dined out, and low and behold, bumped into someone we knew. Garry Austin, from the University of Queensland, was visiting Mongolia to speak to students who would soon move to Australia and had made a side trip to Sainshand to provide a sermon at the local Catholic Church. We were extended an invitation, and so made our way to the service the next morning where we were greeted with open arms, quite literally. The small church community gave us such a beautiful welcome where we not only had to stand up and be acknowledged, but we were sat front and centre, asked to introduce ourselves on stage and dance along to a special song in our honour.

The church was affiliated with an NGO that was established to support the locals in every way possible, from teaching them how to grow their own food, to matters of health, education and so on. Garry spoke about the Royal Flying Doctor Service in Australia and how Sainshand had the resources to create something similar.

The wonderful things that the leaders of this community were doing for their people made me miss home and think of all of the generous and hardworking people I know that volunteer so much of their time to developing the Sunraysia region.

When I spoke to Garry after the service and told him I was volunteering with Jargal DeFacto, I discovered not only did he know my supervisor, but he had been interviewed on his TV show. And I had watched it a few months back.

Six degrees of separation? More like two in this country!