Mongolia | Gov-Altai Aimag | Shar Khuls to Ülzii Bilegt

Since we only had 14 mlies to go to Ülziii Bilegt we did not leave our camp at Shar Khuls until ten o’clock. As we rode through the oasis I wondered about the whereabouts of the Gobi bear that is supposed to live at the oasis. Gobi bears are extremely rare. Sükhee says there are perhaps only twenty-five or thirty in the entire south Gobi of Mongolia. One of his jobs as nature preserve ranger is to monitor the Gobi bear population. The Gobi A Nature Preserve also had a program to feed the bears and Sükhee takes part in this, so he knows quite a bit about Gobi bears. The last time I was at Shar Khuls there was a bear here. We encountered its tracks everywhere and saw numerous piles of still steaming dung. The camels were completely spooked and refused to stay in the oasis itself. We had to camp a hundred yards out in the desert. But now there was no sign of the bear. Sükhee says they are extremely elusive and are very seldom seen under normal conditions.

South of Shar Khuls Oasis

We emerged from the southern end of the oasis and continued south through a wide valley. This was the route of famous Amarbuyant Khiid–Anxi caravan route that went past Dambijantsan’s Fortress at Gongpochuan, described to me by Shukee in Shinejinst. At one point we encounter a group of five ovoos. Now ovoos are hardly unusual in Mongolia, but these are the first we have encountered on our trip here in the south Gobi. And they are of strange design. They are no just heaps of rocks like most ovoos but barrel-shaped constructions of fitted rock. The insides of the barrel-like ovoos are filled with sand and gravel. Tsogoo says that local people have never been quite sure who made these ovoos or why, but there has been speculation that they were built by Dambijantsan. Why here at this place remains a mystery.

Ovoos on Amarbuyant Khiid–Anxi caravan route

Trail south

We ride on through a place where the valley narrows. As usual the camel men and the girls and our one pack camel are riding in a bunch out front and I am trailing about one hundred feet behind, fingering my mala as I repeat mantras. As the group passes by a spur of sandstone that protrudes into the valley I notice that everyone suddenly stops. Tsogoo shouts something and jumps off his camel. Mojik shouts at me, “Don, get off your camel!” Mojik, Uyanga, and Sükhee turn their camels to the right and start frantically beating them with the taishirs. Sükhee shouts “Mazaalai,” and then to my utter astonishment I see a huge Gobi bear come loping full speed around the corner of the spur of rock. Tsogoo has his camel by the lead rope and is running off on foot off to the right. My camel has apparently not seen the bear and I jerk its head around to the right and whip it with my taisher. I have to get out the path of the bear. When the bear is no more than seventy or eighty feet from Tsogoo it suddenly stops in its tracks, does a 180º degree turn and runs off over a ridge to the right. I get a good look as it runs away. Gobi bears, known as mazaalai, are not supposed to be big, but this one appeared to be about the same size as a large black bear, lean and rangy, but over four feet high at the shoulders and weighting upward to 300 pounds.

Mazaalai tracks

We regroup near the spur of rock. Tsogoo is so shaken he is hyperventilating. In all their years in the Gobi neither he nor Sükhee had ever had such a close encounter with a bear. “Bad, very bad,“ he keeps muttering. “We could have been killed.” Finally he has to sit down to catch his breath. Mojik keeps saying, “I don't believe this, I don't believe this.” Uyanga has a different take on the encounter: “This is a story to tell my grandchildren.”

Why did Tsogoo jump off his camel, and then tell the others to jump off? I wondered. Mojik explains that he was afraid the camels would see the bear, go completely berserk and throw their riders, maybe right in the path of the bear. He thought we would have a better chance on foot. I for one was going to take my chances on my camel. Oddly, the camels in the group in front never seemed to have seen the bear. I know mine did not. Even more oddly, the wind was blowing straight into our faces. Why had our camels not scented the bear? We spend a half an hour catching our breath, retelling the episode over and over again, and then finally move on.

We regroup after our bear scare

Soon the valley widens into a vast expanse of desert extending off to the southeast. Off to the left is a range of light colored ridges with stark black mountains looming behind. Soon we come to the mouth of a narrow canyon leading into the mountains. Scattered among the gravel outwash from the canyon are trunks and huge roots of tooroi trees, carried here by the torrential flash floods which sometimes occur here in the Gobi. Somewhere up the canyon there has be a stand of tooroi trees. This is the entrance to Dambijantsan’s secret hideout of Ülzii Bilegt. We turn out camels and head into the canyon opening.

Entrance to the canyon leading to Ülzii Bilegt

Mongolia | Gov-Altai Aimag | Bayan Tooroi to Tsagaan Burgasny Bulag

After a memorable night enjoying the delectable delights of the Bayan Tooroi Oasis—a description of which I will omit here, since it lies outside the boundaries of the narrative of our journey to Ülzii Bilegt—we moved on to the ger of a man named Tsogoo from whom we intended to rent camels.

Tsogoo and two of his magnificent camels

Tsogoo’s ger is 18.3 kilometers west of Bayan Tooroi and 23 kilometers east of Eej Khairkhan Uul, in an area known as Zakhuin Gov, much of which covered with ders, a kind of grass which grows in thick clumps reaching heights of over six feet and which is much beloved by camels.

Tsogoo's camels with Eej Khairkhan Uul in the distance

Tsogoo, forty-five years old, is a locally well-known camel herder who we were told by usually reliable sources knew the route from here to Shar Khuls and on to Ülzii Bilegt like his own jugular vein, or the back of his hand, or some other equally familiar body part. With him was a thirty year old man named Sükhee who has also agreed to come with us. He normally works as a ranger in the Gobi Protected Area A, the huge nature preserve which begins just south of Bayan Tooroi and extends south the whole way to the Chinese border. (Gobi Protected Area B is farther west, in Khovd Aimag, in case you’re wondering.) With him along we would not have to worry about unpleasant encounters with rangers in the nature preserve—a reoccurring theme during my previous visits to Gobi Protected Area A—since he himself was the ranger, if you grasp my point. He also claimed to knew the way to Shar Khuls and even claimed to have visited Ülzii Bilegt five or six years earlier while accompanying some people doing research on mazaalai, the extremely rare Gobi bear found only at certain oases in the south Gobi, including Shar Khuls. A mazaalai used to hang around Ülzii Bilegt, Sükhee told us, but he was unable to say if it was still there now.

We spent the morning picking out camels—we would need eight, five and riding and three for baggage and water—and preparing saddles, bridles, lead ropes, and whatnot. I also bought a sheep and a goat which were quickly dispatched and reduced to manageable sized pieces. I was told that it had been quite warm in the Gobi and there was some danger of our meat spoiling during our two-week trip. Hence the goat, the meat of which will keep much longer than sheep meat. We would eat the sheep first and then move on to the goat.

It was soon decided that instead of beginning our camel trip here we would drive by jeep to the Bear Research Station at Tsagaan Burgasny Bulag (bulag = spring) on the north side of Edriin Nuruu (nuruu = mountain range), thirty kilometers south of Tsogoo’s ger. Tsogoo and Sükhee would proceed to here with the camels and the next morning we leave for Shar Khuls.

Tsaidam, or salt flats

From Tsogoo’s ger we drove south across vast salt flats to the northern foothills of Erdriin Nuruu and up a canyon to Tsagaan Burgasny Bulag. Here the administration of the Gobi Protected Area A maintains a tidy little guest house for researchers who come here to study bears and other fauna and flora of the Gobi Desert. Indeed, upon arriving here we encountered a van load of Mongolian and Chinese scientists from Inner Mongolia in China who had stopped by for a quick look around. They quickly departed.

Guest House at Bear Research Station

A young man and woman and their small daughter live year-round here in a ger and serve as caretakers.

Wife and daughter of caretaker at Tsagaan Bugasny Bulag

The man explained that the Gobi Protected Area A Administration hoped to capture a Gobi bear and bring it here so scientists could study it in captivity. They also hoped that paying tourists would come to see the bear and stay in the guest house, thus providing funding for further research. This sounded like a hare-brained scheme to me, but since Gobi bears were outside of my field of interest I did not pursue the matter. The man also confirmed that from here south to Ülzii Bilegt—a distance of exactly 200 kilometers—there was no people whatsoever. We would be completely on our own. Water was available here, but the next water would be at Otgonii Bulag, 38.7 kilometers south of here.

When we were shopping in Altai I had expected camp boss and cook Uyanga to buy noodles, a staple of any trip into the countryside. She had not, explaining that she, like any self-respecting Mongolian housewife, would make her own kherchsen guril—noodles freshly made from flour. After tea (Yunnan Gold) we retired to the cook shed to prepare three kilos of kherchsen guril and four kilos of bortsog, or fried bread, another staple of the countryside. I mentioned to Mojik that I was surprised Uyanga would go to all the trouble to make noodles when we could have easily bought them ready-made in the store. Mojik informed me that both she and Uyanga do not approve of store-bought noodles. They have a tendency, so Mojik claimed, to linger in the intestinal tract for three or four days, often with unpleasant results, while freshly made noodles move right on through with admirable dispatch. I was completely unaware of this. The things you learn on a camel trip!

Mojik making kherchsen guril

The waning gibbous moon rose at 7:23 and the sun set ten minutes later at 7:33. The moon was high in the sky by the time we finished preparing the noodles and bortsog. When we turned in at 10:30 the camel men had still not arrived.