Kharkhorin ended up being one of my favourite places in Mongolia. The main attraction, Erdene Zuu Khiid monastery, is gorgeous and deeply photogenic; the surrounding steppe, hills, and river are beautiful; and I was able to stay in a great, low key, home-style ger camp.
Suvd's Ger Camp & Family Guesthouse
The bus drops you off in the middle of a dirt parking lot just past Erdene Zuu Khiid, and as I got off I a woman gave me a photocopied pamphlet and asked if I wanted to stay in her ger camp, which she said was about 10 minute walk away (they appear to have a rudimentary website,
here). I declined, as I'm always a little skeptical of being approached by touts and there was a ger camp recommended by LP near the monastery. I had noticed when we entered town that I hadn't seen the ger camp where LP described it as being, so after a couple minutes of looking around the empty lot and thinking about it I went back to the lady and said I would stay with her. She flagged a taxi and drove us north to her camp. It turns out that she actually was the owner of the camp listed in LP, but that she had moved since it was published. Unlike some of the massive and institutional ger camps down by the river in Kharkhorin, her camp was simply two or three gers in addition to her family ger in a fenced compound at the northern end of the city. Unlike most housing compounds, the fence around hers was slatted and low, giving it a much more open feeling (given the lack of privacy in traditional Mongolian life, I wonder why they usually use high, solid fences for their homes).
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| Suvd's ger camp, at the northern edge of town. Doors on gers always face south. |
There is a shower block that has a hot shower, as well as a rather unusual outhouse that has a normal western toilet that flushes mounted on a platform over a pit: it works like a western toilet, but you can hear the flushed water dropping some distance below. She also has internet that goes through a mobile-phone connection, so it's pretty slow but gets the job done. Both the shower and the toilet are cleaned daily.
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| Unlike Kyrgyz or Kazakh yurts, the central aperture in a ger is supported by two wooden columns. Ropes on the outside let you open or close the aperture. |
Her husband is a tour guide, so he's often away during the tourist season, but she has friendly kids of varying ages, as well as a dog. Dogs in Mongolia are often semi-wild, and not always terribly social. They are used as guard dogs, and they will literally bark for hours on end at night and can be very protective (the customary greeting when you approach a stranger's ger is to shout "hold the dog!"). The barking is really the only way I knew they had a dog, as I never saw him during the day except when I asked her son where it was (it was off sleeping in the shade of the family ger).
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| Beds line the outer walls and a stove is in the middle. Suvd's daughter is at the computer desk, inadvertently being tempted by the Coke I had left there. |
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| Mongolian kids are used to strangers, and are passed around as babies. |
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| She can take pictures of me, too. |
First foray to Erdene Zuu Khiid
After settling in at Suvd's, I headed back into town and towards the monastery, which you drive by on the way into town.
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| Abandoned Soviet-era plant or factory of some kind. |
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| Herd of animals between town and the monastery. |
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| Two goats on the sandy, degraded land. |
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| Horses also wander around, unhobbled and unrestrained. |
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| Corner stupas. There are 108 stupas on the walls around the monastery—108 is a holy number in Buddhism. |
