100 Km Float to Blue Bhudda Rock

It all started out a very peaceful and beautiful float.

The troops rallied to send off a raft full down the river to track radiotagged taimen。 Jon， David，Kataya， Bodihand and Char set off to cover 100K of water by floating downstream and listening for the “beeps”。

We camped along the way， at any spot that looked good （yes， no private property laws to obey）。 Arriving at a sandbank on night #1， Kataya asked，“But what about the wolf？” A very good question considering all the wolf talk on the way down。 We did hear howls in the night， but they paid us no mind。 Fires are key。 Big fires。 Mongolians use fires to keep away the wolves from their livestock。 Wood is plentiful...add a little birch bark and its roaring. Mostly, fire = warmth.

Lunch on the river bank the next day...a nice spot for a picnic.

(turn your head sideways....can't rotate, sorry)

as you can see --science is hard work. Most of the float was quite relaxing with lots of time to take in the scenery, give quick Englilsh lessons, and chat. Of Course ther were moments of action. A beep from the telemetry equipment signaled our searching out the strongest signal, loggingGPS location, tag number and temperature. I think David's estimate is that about 40 fish are radio tagged...that translates into one or two beeps a day. As I said, the sceneray and company were fabulous.

We met some interesting folks along the way. Above is a guy we saw on the bank with his two horses. He had a video recorder in his hand....claimed he was up filming footage of the gold mine just inland. We had also just passed a Mongolian fishing camp....he was very curious to know what we were up to. We were quite a site: 5 people on a little raft, stick up the middle with an antennae on the end, loaded down with science gear and food. But the bigger question is how in the heck did he end up with a video recorder??????

He showed us his footage of us coming downstream, and of a nearby gold-mining operation. Then he jumped on his horse and crossed the river.

It took 2 nights, 3 days to arrive at our final destination where we picked up some jet boats and 2 more volunteers (Tim and Greg) and whizzed back up stream.

Jon went in one boat to do some water flow measurements. I stuck with Bodihand in another boat as we headed to Blue Bhudda Rock to prepare lunch. It was a sunny day and I was happy to help start the fire for the soup. Taking a short break, I was talking to the Mongolian boat driver (Bayar). We were talking languages and alphabets...the sun was in my eyes and I held up my gloves to see Bayar and shade my view. I felt a sharp sting, I had been stung. Right in the center on my forehead, along the hair line. Mongolian bees/wasps had been a constant presence and many people had been stung, I was merely the next unfortunate victim (or so I thought). The sting started to burn. My first instinct was to climb down to the river to put water on my head. My fingers started to really burn, to throb and I began to feel very very hot. My vision was going, I wanted to sit down. My breathing started to get difficult. I told Bayar I had bee stung and I wasn't feeling well....
The next thing I know I am being held by Greg with Bayar looking over my shoulder. I saw lots of white light, and Bodihand in the foreground. Greg was asking me lots of questions: Do you know where you are? What is your name? What happened?
I knew I had been stung. I knew I was having an allergic reaction. I knew that I needed to continue to breathe. I was trying my best to stay conscious, but wasn't able to. I was out again.
I came to. Now Tim was there too, telling me things would be ok. He gave me 2 benadryl. I focused, tried to stay calm and breathe. Baya and Bodihand had gone to the Blue Bhudda rock (a painting by Tibetan monks on a nearby rock) to make an offering in this difficult situation.
*Only the day before on the boat we were talking about how something like a bee sting could mean death for an individual who had an allergic reaction when out in such a remote area.
I tried not to think about our conversation the day before.
(jon will finish...)
When I arrived, about an hour after Char was stung, she was barely conscious. She was periodically being held in a squatting position, as she was incontinent, and they told me she had had 3 seizures. I was scared. Had there been any option for immediate evacuation we would certainly have taken advantage of it, as we were all concerned about how this would play out. After getting her to drink a little water we helped her into one of the jetboats, wrapped her in sleeping bags, and began the 3 hour trip upstream. Char was so out of it, and so bundled, it was hard to tlell what was going on with her. We arrived just after dark, very cold, and got Char into bed. She complained of headache, stomach cramps, and tingling in her limbs. Tim had told us that the effects could last 2 days. By the time we had her back at camp it seemed that the worst was behind. We kept feeding Char benadryl, and the Mongolian women, who were so worried about their dear english teacher, came in and smeared some arol, Mongolian yogurt" on the sting. They said it would help. It made the entire ger smell awful, but Char was too out of it to notice. By the next morning it was clear that Char would be OK, although she was confined to camp and doesed full of antihistamine for another 36 hours. The first of two experiences in Mongolia that reminded us how far from the conveniences of the modern world we really were....

epilogue: I am OK!!! A little weary of any sort of flying creature with a stinger, but ok. We have since purchased lots of anithistamine ( no easy task when you don't speak a lick of the language and enter a drugstore). I don't expect I will have such a reaction to a bee sting again, as the wasps in Mongolia are known to have a very strong venom.

Fishing and Fish Shots (Mongolian Giant Trout)

Well, some of you have probably been wondering when you would get to see some fish photos. Wait no longer. A big part of the ecology work going on related to this project is the mark recapture study. The team estimates that about 10% of the taimen (Hucho taimen) in the roughly 100 miles of river that make up the study area are tagged with a unique numeric visual identifier. In order to learn about the growth and movement of these approximately 500 tagged fish it is necessary to recapture them. Hence the fishing...

Char, the english teacher, found that she too would be called upon to fish.

While fishing for taimen we often caught lenok (Brachymystax lenok), a smaller species of salmonid also found in the study area. Brant is holding a particularly nice lenok in the photo above. Taimen fishing tends to be hit or miss. Sometimes the fish are really biting...

...but it's not always like that. You could spend a whole day fishing and get none, or maybe one small one...

...such as in the photo above.

Jon caught the biggest taimen of the fall research season (above). It was a recapture, and had been captured and radio-tagged 3 years earlier. You can just see the radio antennae sticking out of it's belly in the photo. Although radio-tracking showed that this monster had moved many tens of kilometers, it was recaptured in the exact same place it had been originally captured by Brant 3 years and one week earlier. This fish was about four feet long and weighed about 50 pounds.

Char has a fish story to tell too!

Camp Life I, Mongolia

During our first week at camp we had a lot of time to get to know our surroundings.

We settled into the gers that would be our homes for the next several weeks,

hung out in the field station,

enjoyed the scenery,

and spent some time visiting with the neighbors. Char started teaching daily english lessons in the field station...

...and we began to venture out onto, and into the river. We quickly learned that clothes and gear dried in the sun during the day would not be quite so warm and toasty come morning...

...such as our snorkeling gear which we used to float down the river (in drysuits) and spy on the fishes. We also spent a couple of days floating the upper Eg River and fishing for taimen from our raft (more on the fishing later).

After coming off the river in the dark on the second day we were feeling rather cold. Sogo had brought along some milk vodka which we had yet to try.

It's kind of like 60 proof blue cheese,and as you can tell by Jon's face, it takes some getting used to. Brant had tried it before, and seemed to put it down well. Sogo, well he grew up on the stuff. It does warm a person up though.

First Days in Mongolia

Following some requests, we will try to back up to when we first arrived in Mongolia and tell some of the more interesting stories of the trip, from the beginning. After two plane flights we arrived in Ulanbaataar, the capital of Mongolia...

About one million people live in the city, about the same amount that live in the rest of the country. On a tangent, to put that into perspective, Mongolia is about the size of the US east of the Missippi River. The number of people living there is about equal to the number that commute in and out of Manhattan each day. Half live in the city, half in the country, and the average population density is 1.4 persons per square mile. Back on track - we had a good time checking out this modern city, but were looking forward to traveling through the country side. After a few days in the city we hopped on a small flight on Ezines Airlines (pronounced easiness) from Ulanbaataar to Moron, Mongolia.

Then we hopped in the project team van, a Fargon from Russia, and began the 9 hour drive to the Eg/Uur Rivers, and our camp. The ride seemed to take forever because the road is a bumpy double-track at best, and the van makes frequent stops for repairs...

...and stops to visit with anyone who may happen to be living along the way. These vans are not that great and break down a lot, but the drivers carry a bag of spare parts and can fix them with a screwdriver. They have the clearance you need on these roads (or lack of roads). As well as being a mechanic every driver seems to have a supernatural sense of direction. How else could they navigate out here! Anyway, having a driver is key - foreigners should not try to drive themselves in the Mongolian countryside (more on that later). Eventually, late at night, we did arrive at the field site and our camp. The next day we climbed a hill overlooking our camp to get oriented. The larch trees were still a rich green color, but the birch trees had already begun to turn yellow. Below is an over view of the valley we lived in for most of the month we spent in Mongolia.
The River is the Urr River, just above its confluence with the Eg River. The Eg River drains Lake Hovsgol and flows into Lake Baikal, and was the other river we worked on. About six families lived in the valley shown above, or just outside of it. These nomadic herders were the Mongolians who made up the community we lived in. One of the local women was the camp cook. Our community also included a couple of Mongolian students and researchers, and a couple of Mongolian drivers/general fix anything guys. Then there was Char, Katie, Katya (from Russia) and Jon, the volunteers, and Zeb, Brant, and David, the principal investigators. We also had occasional visits from other scientists, fish enthusiasts, traveling Mongolians, reporters and filmakers. In the photo you may be able to see a few white gers (yerts), which are the "houses" that most of us living in the valley slept in.

Although the trip from the US to Eg/Uur Mongolia (also called Tavakteh, or "where marmots are") was long and difficult, it could have been a lot worse (really shorter, but more dangerous). Some people traveled to the region from the capital in a sketchy Russian helecopter.

This thing was built a while back, and at the beginning of the 1990's when the Russians left Mongolia they took everyone who knew how to maintain the chppers home too. They used to have 5 of these helicopters in Mongolia, but now there are two... I'm glad we weren't on any of them when they were "retired." The pilots keep them dangerously close to the ground when they are flying, but I guess they are hedging their bets. It was mainly the wealthy clients of the Stillwater taimen fishing camp that flew in this helicopter. The camp operated at the far end of our valley for the first two weeks we were there. The fishing operation works in partnership with the taimen conservation team, tagging fish that their clients catch and taking data on any recaptures.

So that is how we got there, and where we ended up. More on the Eg/Uur later...

First Mongolia Photos

Well, after many failed attemps we finally got a couple of photos to upload. One thing you have to see is some of the big fish photos, but those are larger files and will have to wait. Not much time now to chat, but here is a photo of Char and I on a hike near our research camp in Mongolia shortly after arriving there. There was a prayer spot upon this hilltop, and you can see the Uur River, one of the two rivers we worked on, in the background. This photo doesn't do justice to the glory of the birch trees, although you can see a few, which were in full autimn colors when we arrived...



This second photo shows some of the people from the community (and some of us researchers), when they came by our camp while celebrating a wedding. This is on our last day at the research camp, and following a couple of snowfalls and some cold weather the vegetation has lost its color. Not the people though!

Have to run, but hope to update again soon. Kunming China is a great city!

Eg Ur --rivers and countryside of Mongolia

Sain bain uu! I've just had my first capucchino coffee at Best'spresso here in UlanBataar (UB)--we're back in the city! I must admit that waking up this morning in a bed, I missed the feeling of a frozen face the the immediate need for fire. After 3 weeks of living in our ger, running water, sinks, cell phones and hip clothing of the city present us with more contrasts in Mongolian living. City life v. country life. We arrived last night on a MIAT flight after spending 8+ hours driving from the field station to the capital of the province. We arrived in UB 2 days after our driver and cook who spent 30+ hours driving. Bodihand, our cook and my English student, was making her first trip to the capital. I haven't seen her since our arrival but I hear she was silent once they hit paved roads. 28 years, no paved roads. rocks, trees, obstacles are a normal part of travel. as is breaking down and waiting while the Forgon (Russian van) driver disappears over the hills to the ask the nearest family for what is needed, returning 2 hours later with the needed part.
Mongolia is a country on the edge, what edge that is I cannot yet describe. Photos perhaps show the story, until then a story.
Oct 4, 2007
I sat sipping my Peets coffee (brought out by Brant, member of the science team). Sitting on the back porch of the log cabin style station, I watched Shigai kill a sheep. Very peaceful. Cold, I moved into the kitchen to watch Bodihand squeeze the shit (literally) out of the intestines into several bowls. One bowl for water, one for hot water, one for catching the shit being squeezed out....
jon is out fishing, routine for the science team. Who can catch the biggest Taimen?
Bodihand is sitting on a childs chair, squatting over the gut piles. Fingers moving at lightening speed as the meticulously squeezes out the intestines. She finishes the small and moves on to the large. Myaga (2nd cook) assists, bringing more utensils and adding wood to the fire appears to be slightly less practiced. perhaps because she has just spent the last 4 years in the city...she holds the ends for Bodihand. Myaga hands paper to Shigai who has recently washed the blood from his hands.
Visitors pass by. A herding family is moving on to their winter home. Their ger is loaded on to a wooden cart (wooden wheels). Small child perched on top. Man (husband?) is leading the oxen. Following is their flock of sheep followed by a woman dressed in her blue del on horse moving them along. She is assisted by another man on horse who has the baby in a sling tucked in his del. Peacefully asleep, 9 months old. Off their horses, they stop in for warm milk tea and bread biscutis. They move quickly and efficently as a team, don't stop for long--the sheep will have moved on. Such a strong sense of community and support. Bodihand packs up a few more buscuits and candy. Guests will usually leave with something. Nothing is expected from them. Community is survival. They say goodbye and are gone. I ask who they are, nobody knows. "They go winter house". I feel proud that Bodihand is putting into practice some of our lessons.
The sheep ribs are hung on the outside station wall. Head is on the floor. Fur is over the fence. Insides are inside. I say I only buy meat in a box (which takes 10 minutes to do, but after consulting the dictionary, we communicate). They laugh.
(running out of time...milk vodka, sheep, cows, goats, camping, tracking fish, offerings, snow, vehicles, rest, mongolian time, a local dance, ger living, visiting families, running out of gas, music and singing, a wedding, jon's birthday, boats, fish, politics, herding, gifts, food, spectacular valleys, rivers, stars...all to come)
much love
c