Tourism, Mongol Style

This past weekend I had the opportunity to experience two different kinds of tourism in Mongolia. This first was a visit to the gigantic statue of Chinggis Khaan, which handles busloads of tourists at a time. The second type of tourist experience -- a set of camps aiming to represent 13th century Mongolia -- caters to a smaller, more select audience. Both play off of Mongolia's rich history, especially the era of Chinggis Khaan, but do so in different ways.

A tour company built the enormous statue of Chinggis a few years ago. Located only about an hour's drive from Ulaanbaatar, the developers originally envisioned the site including tourist ger camps, a golf course, spa, and hotel radiating out from the central focus of the 131 foot tall statue. The global recession interfered with these plans (I think) and development beyond the statue was put on hold.

A museum displaying artifacts from ancient Mongolia (belt buckles, metal arrowheads, jewelry, etc.) is housed in the statue's base and is included in the entrance fee (roughly $5 for Mongolians and $10 for foreigners). The statue's atrium holds a giant Mongolian boot and oversized replica of Chinggis Khaan's riding whip. Visitors can rent period costumes to pose in front of the boot and/or whip, which is fun both for them and other visitors.

My favorite part of the statue by far, though, was climbing the narrow, winding staircase to the top of the horse's head. Although a bit crowded, the views of the surrounding countryside from the overlook are beautiful. It was also fun to get a closer look at Chinggis's features.

After spending about an hour at Chinggis Khaan we packed up again into our vehicle and headed further out into the countryside to visit the "Thirteenth Century" camp. At Erdene soum center we turned off the paved road, driving up into some beautiful country of green hills dotted with boulders and ridgetop outcrops. After a while our road crossed through an opening in an odd-looking high wooden and stone wall, leading us to a small camp of odd-looking gers. We had arrived at the "Thirteenth Century"!

The camp is sort of like a Mongolian Colonial Williamsburg, in that the buildings are reconstructed versions of the past and staff members dress in period costume. Instead of being clustered together in a town, however, the six sites of the "Thirteenth Century" camp are spread out along a half-hour driving circuit. As with the statue there are different prices for Mongolians and foreigners, but it is significantly more expensive (~$70 for foreigners, including a meal). Not knowing the price beforehand (and, as our language teacher and host kept telling the workers, being students not tourists) we decided to forego seeing the inside of the camps.

Since we were there we decided we might as well still drive around to each of the camps to see how they looked from the outside and enjoy the scenic countryside. This was actually quite fun! We saw lots of beautiful views, pretty flowers and interesting bugs. At the last camp we visited on the circuit (the "Craftsmen Camp") the attendant let us climb down on the wooden walkways within the camp, as long as we didn't go inside the gers themselves. Later we circled back to the first camp site and after waiting until all the other tourists had left the guards let us in for free to look at the inside of the gers. I guess our persistence paid off?

While searching the internet for exact measurements, etc. for this blog post I learned an interesting fact: both of these tourist destinations are part of the same tourism company, the GENCO tour bureau. This actually made a lot of sense. Both are about history (specifically Chinggis Khaan's time) and are located fairly close to one another. Although they are admittedly a bit cheesy in some ways (and take liberties with historical accuracy), on the whole these seem like good sorts of tourism for Mongolia. Each allows different styles of tourists to get out of the city into the countryside (the "real" Mongolia) without having to travel too far. The statue complex was designed to accommodate giant tour buses full of tourists with perhaps more limited budgets, while the ger camp offers a more intimate experience, catering to tourists with more money and time to spend. It was also interesting that the tourists at each of the sites were a mix of about half Mongolians and half foreigners. Perhaps most importantly, both offer employment opportunities in rural areas, which is rather rare in Mongolia beyond herding, and will hopefully make rural life a more sustainable prospect in the future.