‘We are all insects on the back of motherland’ intones a Mongolian proverb, and over 5 days I was to learn why the 2.7m people could have believed themselves to be powerless victims at the mercy of the harshness of nature and their vengeful neighbours, but also to find a wonderful energy and emerging self-confidence not seen for 800 years. 
Mongolia became a democracy on June 6th 1993, and at one of the rallies an academic called for Chinggis Khaan to be resurrected as their talisman – a short 786 years after his death. Apparently people sang “Chinggis can you forgive us” at these rallies. Khaan (1162-1227), the ruler who had built an empire stretching from Turkey to Korea sitting in the middle of a field 350km west of Ulaan Batuur, had been expunged by the foreign rulers from every conceivable facet of the culture. 2006 is the 800th anniversary of Mongolian statehood but as one Austrailian observed, “you would think Chinggis was a modern leader like Kennedy or Churchill,” with his name branding everything from the airport to soft drinks. I won’t attempt to to explain the full history of Mongolia. There are many books that do that splendidly, but the use of a historical figure as talisman for the future of this young country means that Mongolia is at once living in the past and the present. Inspired by the direct action in Berlin in 1989, Mongolian students went on hunger strike in Sukhbataar square demanding that the Soviet backed regime resign, and amazingly it did. This was the first time Mongolians were in control of their own destiny since since 1271, (except for a brief period of self-rule in 1911-1919). What continued after this interregnum were purges and psychological warfare by Chinese and then Russians which one can only assume were restitution for the brutality of Khaan seven centuries earlier. 
On the streets of Ulaan Batuur today there is growing evidence of a country finding its feet, buoyed by its own wealth of natural resources and international aid, including US$48.3m from the Asian Development Bank. On the streets, European bistros have opened next to outlets selling Mongolian cashmere, and the large State Department Store competed with a man sitting on the sidewalk selling counterfeit vacuum cleaners. There are no phone boxes but entrepreneurs with plastic desktop phones fitted with a large antennae that customers pay to use, while the attendant feigns deafness but holds firmly onto the appliance. Kids, filthy with grime, know how to ask for money in English, and I was told to watch for the open man hole covers - the kids lift them up so they can sleep in the sewers, which are preferable to the winter chill outside. Perhaps because of the cold, or a tilt to fashion, even the poorest women wore make-up while their fingernails belied the harshness of their labour. The men seem to have a long way to go in the personal grooming department. 
A long way from any concern about appearances is Kharhorin, ancient capital and the source of the Khaan legend, a place upon arrival that made my heart sink, but 18 hours later was tinged with sadness at leaving. I braced myself when I first entered the Ger, a felt tent marred by the acrid aroma of body odour and fermented milk, unable to see where I could sleep and cursing my careless request for a homestay. But the family, poor herdsmen, were as generous as extended family, obviously having gone out to buy new jars of pickle, chocolate spread and bread as their daughter hovered excitedly in anticipation of my satiation. My host passed me a fascinating study of the Halh nomad tribe by Benedikte V. Lindskog of Oslo University. ‘The ger is a microcosm representing salient values of the Halh cosmology,’ she wrote, with the ‘Yos’ being the social codes that the Halh adopt in order to reconcile the temporality of their nomadic existence. All gers abide by the Yos: the door to the south, shrine to north, mans bed to west, woman and children to east, the pot bellied stove in the middle and the small table nestled between the shrines and stove. In the modern cosmology, nestled next to the shrine and shrouded by a silk scarf with the Eifel tower on it, was an always-on 14 inch Sony TV, showing ‘Wheel of Fortune’ with contestants in military uniforms spinning for money prizes of upto 1,500 TG (US15), and answering questions about Chinngis Khaan. I was given the west side of the ger, the mother fed me noodles and we men drank ‘airag’, fermented alcoholic mares’ milk, washed down with Mongolian vodka. For the 18 hours that I was with them the father was always holding his son, or walking his daughter hand in hand, the mother ever present tending the fire or breastfeeding, and I felt the warmth of their kinship and as I went to leave and realised all I could smell was a home. 
We had snow over night, and leaving the ger was difficult, but I visited the white dusted windswept encampment that had housed Khaan and his troops, and then went for a horse ride over hills over which I fancied the great warrior himself had once ridden. I felt slightly sorry for the horse, thinking I should take my feet from the stirrups and help him walk me up the hill he was so small, but there is a hardiness about the horses and the people of Mongolia that has kept their spirit for survival latent but never entirely removed by the forces of nature or man. A kind of homing instinct apparently has nomads forced into collectivisation now heading back to ancestral pastures in search of kinship abiding by the old Yos, and Bhuddist monastaries report a steady stream of new students after years of persecution. On the ride through town I passed a small newly painted shop with the words ‘World Capital,’ and wondered if this was a sign of things to come. ‘If space allows movement, place is a pause.’ (Taum, cited in Tilley 1994)
Mongolia became a democracy on June 6th 1993, and at one of the rallies an academic called for Chinggis Khaan to be resurrected as their talisman – a short 786 years after his death. Apparently people sang “Chinggis can you forgive us” at these rallies. Khaan (1162-1227), the ruler who had built an empire stretching from Turkey to Korea sitting in the middle of a field 350km west of Ulaan Batuur, had been expunged by the foreign rulers from every conceivable facet of the culture. 2006 is the 800th anniversary of Mongolian statehood but as one Austrailian observed, “you would think Chinggis was a modern leader like Kennedy or Churchill,” with his name branding everything from the airport to soft drinks. I won’t attempt to to explain the full history of Mongolia. There are many books that do that splendidly, but the use of a historical figure as talisman for the future of this young country means that Mongolia is at once living in the past and the present. Inspired by the direct action in Berlin in 1989, Mongolian students went on hunger strike in Sukhbataar square demanding that the Soviet backed regime resign, and amazingly it did. This was the first time Mongolians were in control of their own destiny since since 1271, (except for a brief period of self-rule in 1911-1919). What continued after this interregnum were purges and psychological warfare by Chinese and then Russians which one can only assume were restitution for the brutality of Khaan seven centuries earlier. 
On the streets of Ulaan Batuur today there is growing evidence of a country finding its feet, buoyed by its own wealth of natural resources and international aid, including US$48.3m from the Asian Development Bank. On the streets, European bistros have opened next to outlets selling Mongolian cashmere, and the large State Department Store competed with a man sitting on the sidewalk selling counterfeit vacuum cleaners. There are no phone boxes but entrepreneurs with plastic desktop phones fitted with a large antennae that customers pay to use, while the attendant feigns deafness but holds firmly onto the appliance. Kids, filthy with grime, know how to ask for money in English, and I was told to watch for the open man hole covers - the kids lift them up so they can sleep in the sewers, which are preferable to the winter chill outside. Perhaps because of the cold, or a tilt to fashion, even the poorest women wore make-up while their fingernails belied the harshness of their labour. The men seem to have a long way to go in the personal grooming department. 
A long way from any concern about appearances is Kharhorin, ancient capital and the source of the Khaan legend, a place upon arrival that made my heart sink, but 18 hours later was tinged with sadness at leaving. I braced myself when I first entered the Ger, a felt tent marred by the acrid aroma of body odour and fermented milk, unable to see where I could sleep and cursing my careless request for a homestay. But the family, poor herdsmen, were as generous as extended family, obviously having gone out to buy new jars of pickle, chocolate spread and bread as their daughter hovered excitedly in anticipation of my satiation. My host passed me a fascinating study of the Halh nomad tribe by Benedikte V. Lindskog of Oslo University. ‘The ger is a microcosm representing salient values of the Halh cosmology,’ she wrote, with the ‘Yos’ being the social codes that the Halh adopt in order to reconcile the temporality of their nomadic existence. All gers abide by the Yos: the door to the south, shrine to north, mans bed to west, woman and children to east, the pot bellied stove in the middle and the small table nestled between the shrines and stove. In the modern cosmology, nestled next to the shrine and shrouded by a silk scarf with the Eifel tower on it, was an always-on 14 inch Sony TV, showing ‘Wheel of Fortune’ with contestants in military uniforms spinning for money prizes of upto 1,500 TG (US15), and answering questions about Chinngis Khaan. I was given the west side of the ger, the mother fed me noodles and we men drank ‘airag’, fermented alcoholic mares’ milk, washed down with Mongolian vodka. For the 18 hours that I was with them the father was always holding his son, or walking his daughter hand in hand, the mother ever present tending the fire or breastfeeding, and I felt the warmth of their kinship and as I went to leave and realised all I could smell was a home. 
We had snow over night, and leaving the ger was difficult, but I visited the white dusted windswept encampment that had housed Khaan and his troops, and then went for a horse ride over hills over which I fancied the great warrior himself had once ridden. I felt slightly sorry for the horse, thinking I should take my feet from the stirrups and help him walk me up the hill he was so small, but there is a hardiness about the horses and the people of Mongolia that has kept their spirit for survival latent but never entirely removed by the forces of nature or man. A kind of homing instinct apparently has nomads forced into collectivisation now heading back to ancestral pastures in search of kinship abiding by the old Yos, and Bhuddist monastaries report a steady stream of new students after years of persecution. On the ride through town I passed a small newly painted shop with the words ‘World Capital,’ and wondered if this was a sign of things to come. ‘If space allows movement, place is a pause.’ (Taum, cited in Tilley 1994)