I was in Ulaan Baatar for a fast paced three days between my first and second excursion into the "countryside," mostly hanging with the group I had traveled with up north. Aside from showers, sleeping on a bed, and meals, one big highlight was visiting a few monasteries - some inactive from the 1800's and one still active (see photo). Wow, oh wow do I like all of the colors and action that goes with buddhist architecture, art and design in general. I can't claim to remember much of the history of what I saw, but I can say it was very colorful and active. A feast for the eyes - and I'll always been a fan of lots of bright colors in action. I did get footage of lots of that, but no pictures to speak of (was in the video and sound mode, which has it's limitations - I am now practicing remembering to click pictures when I video, which my gadget can do).

Second, we went to a performance of traditional Mongolian music, throat singing, dance, contortionists and mask dancing. More colors and action. Adding to that already positive mix, there is something about the Mongolian language that I find very musical. Very sing-sing. During my entire time in Mongolia, I enjoyed hearing them talk. And laugh, which they do a lot. And sing - a culture where laughing and singing are very common and present - and, for me, very contagious. I found myself smiling when they would laugh, or better yet laughing with them even when I had no idea what they were laughing about. It's just a GREAT laugh - big and bursting. I also found myself humming along to their singing - no clue what the words were, but certainly pleasing to my ears and spirit.

As for the rest of the performance, the traditional instruments were simple and full of sound, at times the music had tinges of bluegrass and western swing. The throat singing is an entirely different beast - don't know enough about octaves etc. to explain what they were doing, but it was deep and captivating - something like buddhist chanting, but with more warble - or something like that. And then the contortionists. That was when I really wished I'd had my shit together enough to have recharged my camera battery in time for the show. But alas, no go - I'll hopefully get some pictures from another fella from the trip who was there. The bottom line is it made me twitch and squeam about in my chair, drop my jaw, make audible sounds of disbelief and amazement, and keep thinking to myself (1) this must take some extraordinary work and practice, and (2) don't try this at home kids! Those two women did things with their bodies I didn't think was physically possible. It makes me shiver just writing about it. A truly amazing art form. Then came the mask dance - full body sized face masks. Again, a picture could tell a thousand tales, so I'll work on getting a photo or two for display.

I spent the last of the three days with Valeria, who is from Uraguay and a lot of fun to be with. Here is a snippet of our time together, as she explained it in an email she sent to the rest of horse riding gang: "We had a great time in UB with Tom too,went to the Whatever-the-name-is Monastery and saw buddhist monks in action, and went to the black market to replace the melted pair of socks from Tom...but of course mongolians are size Small and Tom was bigfoot there, eventually after a couple of hours we could find a suitable pair. Kent also gave us a "shopping list" of buddhist articles to buy, and we had a hilarious time trying to explain ourselves in the small shops next to the monastery. I even had to mimic (with hands and noise)Tom taking a pee to make a woman understand that Tom needed a toilet..."