June and July are the wettest months in this part of Mongolia, and the last few days have illustrated the fact well. Parts of roads have become canals filled with murky water and parked cars are small island chains along the curbs. The rain has settled the dust, and tempered the heat we felt upon our arrival. It has also made for some humorous circumstances for student and adult participants alike.
Rachel and I were scheduled to travel to the countryside Tuesday night in advance of a lecture on vegetation monitoring at a biological field camp for a group of Mongolian college students. We were planning to stay in a hotel near the camp Tuesday night and proceed to the site on Wednesday morning where we would teach, then have a traditional Mongolian lunch before our return…but the best laid plans of mice and men…
Our hosts picked us up in an appropriate vehicle for the trip considering we would be heading onto unimproved roads: a well-aged, but very well-kept “Russian bus,” as it was introduced to us (if you think of how Arnold Schwarzenegger might pronounce “Russian bus,” it will give you the same introduction). The bus was well equipped with several bench seats, one facing backward behind the driver and two more facing forward. Only one or two of the many side windows opened near the back, and the rest of the windows were fixed in place. The interior was very clean in spite of the muddy conditions and it was obvious that the driver took great pride in maintaining the vehicle.
After a quick start and restart from the hotel parking lot (we had forgotten some materials for our presentation), we were on our way through the crowded streets of UB. And the rain intensified. We had to make a quick stop at the market to pick up supplies for the traditional Mongolian lunch and some of our hosts navigated the traffic on foot into the market, quickly returning with three Walmart-ish plastic bags laden with vegetables and at least 10 pounds of mutton placed somewhat haphazardly in the bags which were promptly knotted and laid on the floor at Rachel’s feet beneath one of the fixed windows of the Russian bus, and we proceeded down the road.
But not for long.
Suddenly, traffic in front of us ceased to move and seemed to surge backward toward us. Indeed, there were reverse lights heading our direction. The main road out of the city and our intended exit was closed. No advanced warning, no flashing signs, no orange cones, just a few flatbed trucks parked perpendicular to the prevailing traffic. I say prevailing because the flow of traffic, both pedestrian and vehicle traffic in UB seems to only hint at a direction of travel. At times it is an amorphous blob of slow and fast-moving particles mixed together, but back to the “Russian bus.”
After accomplishing a relatively swift turnaround, we decided to attempt another route out of the city. And the rain intensified. Since it was raining heavily and muddy water was splashing to near window-high on the “Russian bus,” the one sliding window was opened only a small crack, and the interior was sweltering from humid afternoon weather and the warmth and breath of 7 bodies crowded into a relatively small space. Ever so slowly, a dripping developed from the top of the window next to Rachel’s seat, which was also directly above the plastic-swaddled bundle of mutton at her feet.
Our second attempt took a more direct route toward the mountains surrounding the city, which resulted in a trajectory up steeper slopes with raging rivers flowing downhill toward us and nearly carrying away a small group of men attempting to push a stalled late 90’s sedan from the midst of surging traffic and floodwaters alike. After that, it becomes difficult to provide much detail on the happenings outside the “Russian bus” because the windows were so obscured with fog some of the things which I thought I saw might not be very accurate, and partly because the heat, erratic movements of the bus and slowly increasing smell of raw mutton may have affected my observation skills just a bit. The slow drip from earlier had become almost a steady stream of rainwater dripping past Rachel’s face and directly onto the mutton bag. Somewhere around this point did our host call the governor of the aimag we were hoping to reach and found that the rain had made the roads nearly impassable and that we would not be able to reach our destination.
After returning to our hotel nearly 3 hours after our departure and never reaching the edge of the city, it was definitely an interesting first tour of UB, and an interesting introduction to the rainy season.
Brian A. Mealor
