The sounds and smells of Mongolia

The car horn
In Ulaanbaatar the sound of the car horn is omnipresent. I've heard the honks of New Yorkers and Parisians but this is nothing like it. In Mongolia, the car horn is an expression of the driver's personality. The drivers will rig their car horns to sound like a lullaby, like an oncoming train or like personal outrage. Drivers love their horns and will use them at every opportunity. Night rush hour is a symphony.

The sh-sh-ch
My favourite sound in Mongolia is the sh-sh-ch sound that Mongolians make in conversation. Sometimes a Mongolian's voice will soften and my ears cannot hear beyond the sh-sh-ch-sh. I don't know yet what words they're saying but it's soothing.

The singing army
One night last week, Aaron and I went to bed early. I fell asleep promptly but Aaron was still awake when he heard distant singing outside. The singing got closer and louder until it woke me up and we rushed to the window to see what was going on (Aaron rushed, I stumbled around for a few seconds feeling the shelf for my glasses then finally joined him at the window). About 50 men were marching up our side street in perfect unison both in step and in tune. Their voices were strong, loud, beautiful and were reverberating on the building walls. They marched out of our sight but we could still hear them minutes later. Who were they? A singing army? Singing, marching roadworkers?

The meat and dairy products
Sometimes, Mongolia smells of dairy products. It's the salty milk tea boiling, the yogourt and cheese fermenting. A quick meal for Mongolians consists of a bowl of salty milk tea with meat dumplings.
Sometimes, Mongolia smells of meat. Mutton, beef, horse. If you bite into a dumpling, watch out for the hot, fatty juices that spray out. Get these juices on your jeans and you'll smell Mongolia for days on end.

The wild flowers
In the summer, the countryside smells of wild flowers and fragrant herbs. It's really pleasant to walk around and smell the tangy sage smells and the different flowers.

The coal and wood fires
In the cooler months of the year, homes not connected to the city's centralized heating grid use coal and wood to heat their homes (both felt and wood homes). The ger districts, Mongolia's equivalent of suburbia, go on for kilometres in most directions around the city. These districts have no large buildings, just felt homes, wooden homes, kilometres of wood fencing and hundreds of dogs perpetually barking. Ulaanbaatar lies in a valley and the smoke will often hover over the city. The coal and wood smoke smell is not a bad smell it's just different from the wood fires of Canada. I don't think the coal fumes are the healthiest ones to be inhaling.

mc