Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
On August 1, 2008, the sun rose into an absolutely cloudless sky over Mon-
golia's Altai Mountains. The stark and treeless mountain slopes, and the wide
desiccated valley that lay to their west, soon began to shimmer with heat haze
as the temperature climbed. On the western horizon a line of hills marked
the boundary between western Mongolia and China's Xinjiang province.
My companions and I were extremely happy to see the cloudless sky,
because that afternoon there would be a total solar eclipse. Nothing ruins
the big day for an ardent eclipse watcher more than clouds or haze. Up until
the moment that the eclipse actually begins there is no way to predict with
certainty what the fi ckle atmosphere will do. The weather had been unset-
tled during most of our long journey to this remote part of central Asia, and
it had rained the night before. So we greeted the fl awless dawn with excited
relief, and hoped that the weather would hold.
Soon after sunrise we drove out to the west, away from the Altais and
toward the Chinese border, to hunt for some petroglyphs at the head of a
dry canyon. On the slopes of a mountain range to the north, still blue in the
morning shadow, we glimpsed a small herd of black-tailed gazelles. They fl ed
as soon as they saw our Land Cruiser—not surprisingly, since they are so
intensively hunted.
The steppes of western Mongolia were once home to vast herds of gazelles
and wild horses. The mountains that loomed above the steppes, far greener
in the past than they are today, supported thousands of ibex and giant Altai
Argali sheep. Eight hundred years ago Genghis Khan and his tribesmen took
part in vast hunts that swept across both steppes and uplands, driving the
animals before them for 1,000 kilometers. At the end of the drives the ani-
mals were herded into a huge panicked mass. Then Genghis and the other
leaders, in order of rank, slaughtered them for days on end until they had to
stop from exhaustion. The remaining animals were left to be killed by the
ordinary tribesmen.
It must have seemed to the Great Khan and his followers that this immense
natural resource was inexhaustible. Alas, it was not. Now the central Asian
gazelles, ibex, and other animals are perilously close to extinction. Hunters
pay large fees to kill the few that remain.
