After having such a fine time last December at the Angkor Wat
Half-Marathon, my more adventurous teammates were determined to find
another interesting destination that included a running event to serve
as something of a focal point. Isobel and Renald quickly identified
the Gobi Desert Half-Marathon, but for months I was reluctant to
commit to an itinerary that sounded so... uncomfortable. But I had
always hoped to be able to tell people that I have been to Mongolia,
and I figured this was one of my few opportunities.
In fact running the Gobi Desert Half-Marathon proved to be a fine
excuse for a surprisingly exotic journey to Mongolia, and a superb way
to experience Mongolia in an relatively authentic manner. Like most
of us I cling to the conceit that I am traveler experiencing something
"real" not a tourist being herded through a traditional packaged tour
of trinket shops and tired native dance performances for the
foreigners. The marathon created a shared goal with a group of local
Mongolians -- a shared sense of mission.
The run was the easy part - the real mission and fun was the journey
to and from the event. Ulaan Batar was far more modern and
comfortable than I expected, but outside the capital the pavement
stops and much of the life seemed to have changed very little since
the days of Ghengis Khan.
The other challenge was carbo-loading: the Mongolian diet is a steady
course of heavy, oily mutton, beef and goat milk - what you would
expect in a land-locked desert country of nomadic herdsman, but the
opposite of the light California/Asian cuisine I survive on.
After a plane ride dow
n to the Gobi Desert we overnighted in a Ger
Camp then the whole field headed out to the middle-of-nowhere for the
start of the race. A local Mongolian in street shoes went out ahead
of me at 4:30 pace for the first few kilometers before I took the
lead. I was enjoying the solitude and vastness of desert when I heard
a support van behind me - the driver pulled up alongside and starting
shouting and gesturing. I smiled and thanked them for their support.
This went on for a little while before it became clear that the driver
wanted me to get in the jeep because I had somehow wandered off course
and was heading into miles of desolate wasteland.
Before being plucked out of remote desert I had ran past a lone
nomadic Mongolian family sitting in front of Ger. The family looked a
bit surprised to see a foreign runner emerging out of the vast
nothingness of the Gobi. They broke into wide Mongolian smiles as
they caught site of me and my Namban singlet and begun to shout and
wave. I could not be clear what they were shouting but I think it was
something like "Go Namban, go fellow barbarian horde, Bob/Genghis,
go, run" -- or something like that.
The course offers a dra
matic finish line - the flaming cliffs - an
amazing red rock formation and even more amazing concentration of
dinosaur fossils. The team from Tokyo was impatient to finish the
half-marathon so we could scramble along the cliffs and dig up
dinosaur fossils and then head out on a little post marathon camel
riding into the sunset.
The return journey to Ulan Batar by jeep was even more of an adventure
--miles of rolling desert punctuated by tiny towns that truly feel
like they are at the ends of the earth. We spent a night in a Tibetan
Monastary recently rebuilt after decades of communist rule. We had
the inevitable jeep breakdown in the most remote possible spot. I
wandered off into the desert thinking I saw a Starbucks on the distant
horizon - it turned out to be a mirage, and my teammates managed to
track me down.
All of the expats and Mongolians with us agreed that the nomadic
lifestyle is starting to vanish, and will be largely gone in a
generation. It seems only a matter of time until the gers and camels
will primarily be trotted out for purposes of adventure tourism. But
don't despair - we are looking at another trip to Mongolia in less
than six months - the Baikal Ice Marathon next March is in Siberia
just north of Mongolia and will allow for yet another Mongolian
mission.
