....letter to sent to friends from ulaan baatar, explaining reindeer trip
Hi sweetpea's,I have just returned to the dirty metropolis known as UlaanBaatar. I have been out of touch with any means of modern communication for the last two weeks so apoligise for the lack of communication. ...Back now from a trip with the reindeer people of far north Mongolia up in the Siberian mountains.We were taken there by Mongolia's most famous historian who is also the person in charge of the well being of these reindeer people, who's lives actually revolve around reindeer. They have lived in the area for 4000 years. How do I know that they have been there 4000 yrs? Prof told me and showed us, glifs, with pictures of people riding reindeers... these have been studied and researched by geologists and the like...and they declared them that old..amoung other various facts. apparently this area of the world was the first to tame wild reindeers and use them for milk ect...To get to the reindeer people it took four day's of quite exausting travel, first two hours on a plane an over night stop in a place called Morone..( propabably because it is full of morones) ...very dusty backward hell hole.... the only hotel with a hot water system that gets turned on at 8pm and promptly keeps heating until it has boiled...with no cold water to cool it down..only one pipe you see!!!! so if your not in by 8.15 you get boiled to death!!! Next day we took off in a jeep for seven hours and stayed at a friends gerr ( traditional Mongolian tent) who I met last time..she is a shaman and made us so very welcome, declared herself my Mongolian mother and by the shocked and happy almost ecstatic welcoming on seeing me just turn up ( there are no phone lines near her home, so we could'nt contact her to tell we were coming) I felt like maybe she was.... the next day we took off in the jeep again for seven hours further into the wilderness. Then the next night we stayed the night at another Gerr, where the proffesser new some herders who would rent us twelve horses, some as pack horses a couple for the guides, translator, professor, me and Chris; we were to ride the next day up the treacherous mountain full of slidy mud and big bolders, with the threat of bear and wolf...I had no idea that horses could perform as mountain goats until then. The ride up took 10 hours, but it was a lot of fun.... We arrived at the top of the mountain to the sight of tee pees with smoke gently billowing out the pipe chimneys, which are attached on the inside of the teepee to stoves that look a bit like pot belly stoves....the sight was magical and looked exactly like the red Indians in America. Such a vast expance of wilderness in the valley they had chosen as their summer home... they say summer and it is but the temperature stayed at about 5 degree's celcius during the day and at night below 0...There are only sixty of these reindeer families left in Mongolia and they are of shamanist religion....and have about 800 reindeer.We were warmly greeted by the reindeer people thanks to the professor being their biggest helper in civilization....and were promptly taken into their teepee's and given hot reindeer milk to drink.... then set up our tent... and then the reindeers came home from a day of being herded around the mountains looking for their favourite rare moss...which is their favourite food.... we were hypnotized by these creatures...they are just gorgeous so peaceful, full of personality and seemingly wize... and.. they are so tame...and come straight up to you to lick your hands as they love the salty taste....obviously we had a feild day taking photo's....we stayed ten nights up the mountain and went out herding the reindeers with the herders and one day got caught in a huge thunder storm and the herder's had us hide under little bushes for shelter!!! but it didnt stop us from getting absoltutely soaking wet!!!!the whole experience of meeting these reindeer people was awesome and mind blowing.... they have great sence of humor and are so warm and welcoming that they make you feel part of the tribe family.I spent my birthday up there and the highlights of the day was meeting with one of their Shaman's who did a ceremony at midnight for my birthday after which we rode back to our camp under a full moon sky for 2 hours us on horse back....the professor was on a reindeer, singing a love song to it the whole way back...very sureal....I also had a little ride on reindeer the next day, but it felt too skinny for me to grip, me being the rather large westerner that I am...Anyway there were loads more highlights of the trip and I will no doubt share them with you when I return back to Australia in October... Just before we left on the reindeer people trip I had an exhibition at the 'Mongolian National museum of fine art', with the pictures that I took of shamans, last trip in 2002...I did the exhibition to raise awarness about my ongoing quest to photograph shaman's and the people who follow their religion... and in order to get help to find more of them......the exhibition got loads of press coverage....6 television stations turned up at the opening and they all aired it...also about 5 newspapers were there and ran the story...including Mongolia's national daily, who ran the story on it's front page!!!!The exhibition and the publicity from it, worked well in getting me help to further the project, that's how I met the professor and have also many people that that have popped out of the wood work to help me meet up with many shaman's and the shaman's themselves, many of whom were also at the exhibition, were thrilled because there religion was getting great publicity and creating awareness to Mongolian's and foreigners alike... Mongolia has shunned this 4000 year old religion because they think it makes them too different from people in the west.. However I think they are secretly quite proud and believe in Shamanism, going by the reaction in the press. Anyway, I hope this email finds you all well and I have had the shamon's to bless all of those that I love and if your recieving this email now, know that I love you.Bye for now,Donna
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Its my third day in
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