Arkhangai Trade Fair 2010

by Mark

This past weekend was the 2010 Arkhangai Partnership Trade Fair.  The two organizations I work with (Mercy Corps and Knowledge Network) were responsible for bringing nearly 200 businesses from 7 different aimags into one locale.  The event was 3 days long.  Including the great weather, everything went wonderfully.  The diversity of products was incredible, and the produce being sold was of varieties we hadn't seen in town before. Things like real lettuce...canned salsa...packaged pizza.  I'll let the pictures do the rest of the talking.

Fried Fish from Hovsgul Aimag

Salsa - this was burn-your-mouth-spicy-HOT!

Notice the stuffed Badger, Marmot, Squirrels, etc.

A few of the performers

Arkhangai's Governor handing out the "Grand Prix", or top prize in the trade fair.

More pictures will be posted on Facebook in the coming days - as soon as we figure out why our Internet in town has been going at a snail's pace.

Soaking Up the Warm Weather

Photos from a hike that Mark and I went on today:

That's our town, Tsetserleg, in the background

If you click on this, you should be able to see a bigger version. We just got a new program that allows us to stitch photos together so we were able to combine a few photos to get a good panoramic shot of our town.

Know anybody coming to Mongolia?

by Kara

I know this is a long shot, but I'm looking for people are coming to visit Mongolia sometime between now and June 2011 and who may be interested in helping the Mongolian Helmet Project. Donors in the US are helping me collect new and used helmets for child jockeys to wear during the Naadam horse races. This year, in an effort to save money on shipping costs, I'd like to arrange for more helmets to be delivered in hand to Mongolia. Even if the person you know can only bring one helmet, let me know! Thanks!

The citizen's have spoken

Click on the pic to see an option for viewing a larger version

   I just thought you all might like to see my cheesy, smiling face on the 4th page of the August edition of Mercy Corps Mongolia's newspaper "Citizen's Voice".  We were spotlighted for our work in our aimag and asked to list everything we've worked on in the past year specifically.  Obviously you won't be able to read the text, but you can see my co-workers in the pic!  I'm sitting next to my director Dashka and next to him is our driver Tsogoo.  In the back row is Azaa (directly behind me), Jackie my translator is next to her, and next to Jackie is Baagii (our Program Officer).  Wonderful people.

Traveling for Tourism

by Mark

For the last two weeks of July I was a trainer for the soon to be M21 class of volunteers.  I was away from my work in Arkhangai, and thus my return in early August prompted a rather quick, albeit necessary trip to the neighboring soums in our aimag.  My job was to gather information/documentation, as well as take photos of all of the businesses that will be taking part in the Travel Arkhangai website project we will be launching in January of 2011.  We have roughly 30 businesses interested in the project, and so I spent about 6 days gathering photos and business biographies from nearly all of these businesses.

While some of these photos may end up on the site, there are many here that were just "extras" and simply show some of the fun we were having on our trip.  Along with all of the traveling, we took the time to stop and see historical sites in our aimag, as well as simply stopped to pick berries along our route.  I managed to get most of the photos I needed...and returned with a fever that I most definitely needed less so.  It was a great trip with my translator and Mercy Corps driver, and I learned a lot about our already wonderful aimag on this adventure.

Now that I've returned, I'm actually writing this from UB, as we are back in the capital to see the new volunteers swear-in, and to attend our Mid-Service Training.  It's hard to believe we've been "at work" for over a year now.  Anyway, enjoy the following pics.

Ger Camp in Tsenker soum - you too could enjoy staying in this beautiful camp for only 25000₮.  That's about $19.00/night.

Or right next door you could stay at this resort (yes, that's a rather large log cabin!).  However, rooms range from $35 to $95 each night!

You would however get to eat in a nice restaurant that looks like this and you could find yourself conversing with the Prime Minister of Mongolia - yes, he has been here.

You could also swim in this wonderful pool heated by the local hot spring.  It's something like 120 degrees when the water is put in...you have to wait about 2-3 hours before you can swim...when it's much cooler, more like 106-110 degrees.

On this trip I learned that the Turks were previously living in Mongolia (circa 500-700 AD) and left these two large stone pillars in our aimag.  Supposedly the translations of the text on the stones is the first known instance of the Turks using their own name ("Turks") in reference to themselves.  Interesting...

Up in these rocks is a famous monastery.  This is the only existing photo of this portion of the trip as our camera died immediately following this snapshot.   But you'll have to believe me that there was in fact a large monastery in those hills - if you study the pic you can see man made additions.

 

This pic was just amazing.  It was the first time in Mongolia I can remember being in a location in nature where I felt more enclosed by the trees than the sky.  In many ways it reminded me of paths through trees in Washington.  It was beautiful.

These are my co-workers laying in the brush/grass picking wild strawberries.  You better believe I joined them.  

Check out how small these things were.  We picked for over an hour and I probably ate like 25 of those.

This is a ger camp called Ogii Tour at Ogii Lake.  It's right on the water.  Great location, great staff, great bathrooms.  All things you should consider when planning your future trip to Arkhangai.