Kelly's trip to Mongolia, November, 2004

Up

Hello friends and family!

Yes, I just completed another work adventure to a spectacular country.for the past two and a half weeks, I was in amazing Mongolia, the homeland of Genghis Khan! Mongolia is the land of blue sky, where the snow-capped mountains meet the fabled Gobi desert. It was also the first nation in the world to introduce paper money and is also noted for having the highest number of horses per capita.just a little trivia incase your on Jeopardy.

I stayed in the capital, Ulaanbaatar, (or UB as the locals call it) for the majority of my visit. UB, which means the Red Hero is named after the conqueror of the 1921 Revolution. UB is a great city full of museums and temples, shops and restaurants. I was blessed to be there for their 365th anniversary. The city reflects both aspects of present day Mongolian society and the nomadic culture. There are high-rise buildings amongst traditional gers, nomads in time-honored dress next to businessmen in suits and there are traffic jams complete with roaming cows. While in UB, I treated myself, one of my co-workers and her beautiful daughter to the Swan Lake ballet by Tchaikovsky. What a remarkably elegant performance!

Many Mongolian families live in traditional housing named "ger". The ger consists of a circular felt-covered dwelling that can be dismantled in less than 60 minutes. The gers have beautiful decorated doors that face south. Typical nomadic Mongolian families move their ger four times a year, in search of fertile grazing land. It is not uncommon for as many as six family members to live in one ger. Although the unique nomadic culture is dying out, there are still 20% of the population that are the shepherds of the wind moving from area to area with their herds of horses, yaks, goats and cattle.

The country is re-known for its cold winter (it can plummet to 85 F during January), although it does stay remarkably sunny. Fortunately, when I visited the weather stayed a comfortable 15 to 50 Fahrenheit.

Mongolia is the best place to cashmere products and is one the world's leading producers of raw cashmere.so yes, I did a bit of shopping too.

Until next time.

All my love,

Kelly

01 Mongolian wall hanging	02 Kelly in her favorite hat	03 Mongolian parade	04 Carol and Kelly
05 street phone service	06 An offering	07 A ger	08 Bogd Khaan Winter Palace
09 temple in the winter palace	10 bogd khaan	11 Little Mongolian girl	12 largest budda in Mongolia (27 meters)
13 Budda2	14 UB from the temple	15 Ger with temple	16 My favorite temple
17 Animal statue	18 well used prayer wheels	19 Nancy spinner the prayer wheel	19 Nancy spinning the prayer wheel
20 beautiful temple	21 Just outside UB	22 Yak	23 The countryside
24 The famous Mongolian horses	25 running horses	26 My curious buddy	27 Typical ger
28 Making felt boots	29 felt boot2	30 felt drying room	31 A herder1
32 Herder2	33 Mongolian landscape	34 Odon and Kelly	35 Odon and PCV Nikita
36 fake palm trees line the street	37 gers in the countryside	38 Halloween	39 Little Red Riding Hood and Grandma
40 The most loved couple	41 Halloween kids pic	$42 Don\%27t mess with me%21$ 42 Don\'t mess with me!	43 The PC Mongolian Crew
44 Watch out for Grandma	45 Grandma, Cereal Killer and the Sheriff	46 Odon and daughter	47 1921 Revolution Statue
48 Ceiling of the theater house	50 A herder

Photo album generated by album from Dave's MarginalHacks on Sun Nov 7 12:38:04 2004