Mongolia showed us two sides of it’s face.
On our last full day in Ulaan-Baatar my camera was stolen by 3 local girls. The cafe in which it happened had three surveillance cameras and so could see the suspects. Also the whole staff was very helpful, especially while coping with the police. We spend the whole day waiting for the police guys, walking to the station and trying to get a report of the theft, finally we got one so my insurance will cover it. But that also means that I didn’t take pictures of the wonderful landscape Mongolia surprised us with. But (better than nothing) I took some pictures with a camera of one of the girls of our riding group while I spend a day off the horseback.
Our companion Soet meanwhile decided to lengthen his stay not only in Ulaan-Bataar, but even in Mongolia. He hid between the sheets while we changed the hotel and was not seen ever since. He is said to be in the guesthouse locked up somewhere. And luckily 2 women of the riding group stay some more days in the Guesthouse and will try to find him and take him with them to Canada and send him back home to Germany. We really really miss him. But if he was found and had a nice trip to Canada, we would be more than happy to welcome him back home.
Now let me come to the other face of Mongolia. The half that facinated us, impressed us and froze us. The beautiful countryside of the aimag Zavkhan.
After having met all other 6 people that would be on the trip with us, we left Ulaan-Baatar in one of the two great Furugons that would be our daytime home for the next three days. And I swear i never had that many anti sickness gums than in these three days. And this was only partly the driver’s fault (his name is Torro), but mostly the unbelievable Mongolian street’s fault. I’ve never seen such bad roads. The paved ones were anything but even, but the sand roads were even worse. Cambodia was kindergarden compared to that. I was in the speed and fun car with two great american girls (Laura and Telery) and a Brit as Brit can be (Susannah). Also John, the owner of the Company shared our car. He soon wished he didn’t, as the talks got girlier and girlier…
We set off for Karakorum the first day. We arrived there still in a nice afternoon light and wandered around the Erdene Zuu Monastery, where we also had a look at the Karakorum Turtle that sits there and guards the old capitals grounds. We stayed in a ger camp – in double gers that have small ovens in their middle, two single beds – one each side of the oven, and are similiar to the real ones that families live in. The next day went by getting a good shake in the cars again while driving to the next ger camp close to a wonderful crater lake. Passing through Tsetserleg the next day to get to Tosontsengel brought us closer to the riding spots. In Tosontsengel some loading of food was done, some last buys and off we went to our first camping spot where we met the horses.
The next day everybody had chosen a horse – I named mine Edgar. He just looked like an Edgar. A fat Edgar. And off we went on horseback. The first 2 days were nice and slow. A lot of walk and trott. Nice camping spots close to a river, a warm fire in the evening, a nice curry and bloody cold nights in tents and sleeping bags. But hey, we didn’t catch a cold, even if we had cold feet some nights. I skipped the third riding day as the inevitable mild montezumas revenge cought me. I had a nice lazy day in the car and watched the others ride fast and brave John spectacularly fall off his horse. Hope his rib is healing well! This evening was also spend slaughtering a sheep we bought from a local family. Bye bye Flossy – you were yummie! After a hot bath in a tub filled by a natural hot spring (God, that felt clean. For 5 minutes.) the evening passed by with a beer and chocolate. John bought a LOT – chocolate! The next day we started packhorsing leaving the cars behind. With a very limited amount of things we could bring we mounted the horses and went to places that cannot be reached by car. As Edgar had started to change character I switched horses with Tom. Now I was on Bernd (as fat as Edgar) and felt better. I walked a lot as downhill riding would not work well with my back. I had completely wet boots and feet by the time we reached the camp spot at the whispering lake. But Bernd was very calm. Even in the hale storm we passed through he was okay. But I decided to get off before he would decide to get me off 🙂 Brave John got a painful kick in the head from his stallion. The evening at the lake was cold and bare feet.
The next day some of the group went for a day ride, some (incl. Tom) went for a ride and hike up a mountain. I had a lazy day at the lake painting the scenery (still no camera), making some firewood, chopping all veggies for dinner and having some Flossy-ribs for lunch with John. The evening went by with a curry and some cold air. We left the lake and returned to the place with the hot springs the next day. We again camped inside one of the wooden huts and so had a nice wind free tent zone. After a wonderful hot bath I realized that my riding time was over and I had not fallen off a horse. Wohoo! While Tom spent the next day on Edgar and galloped a lot, I had a nice photo day in the car (thanks for the camera Telery). We camped again at the nice spot at the river. It rained all night and when we broke down our tent it started to snow… We mounted the cars and after endless streches of snowed “roads” and mountain peaks next to us we made it to a ger camp having a grown up blizzard around us. We shared the ger with the americanos and had a nice evening (and earlier car ride 😀 ) with beer (thanks to the donor) and vodka.
The next day we finally reached the wonderful large Khar nuur (black lake) where we would camp 2 nights. The lake is surrounded by sand dunes which don’t fit into the scenery at all. You sit between birch trees, look around and see water, sand dunes and snowy mountain peaks. As we had a full day to spend at the lake we decided to do a hike together with Telery and Laura the next day. Head wind and dune sand is a bad bad combination. It’s strenous to walk in and once in a while you get a free face peeling on top. We hiked to a kind of pass. I stopped some 20 meters below the actual pass to sit there and draw a quick sketch into my painting book. I had icy cold hands when Tom and I started the descent, but at least the way back was far easier to walk. The rest of the day went by chilling, sleeping and enjoying the sun. In the evening we shared the last bottle of vodka and sat together in the large communal tent.
The next and last day we drove to the airport of Uliastai, saw 29 marmots on the way and tried to soak in the last bits of the countryside. After a nice and smooth 1:45h flight to Ulaan-Baatar the city life and chaos had us back. A quick cold shower was followed by a quick indian meal, a quick goodbye and a not so quick drive back to the airport. After check-in and security we had a beer (thanks Susannah) and a strange flight to Seoul. After take off we received some peanuts (no drinks) and it took a good hour until the dinner was served (it was around 1:30am then). Another hour later the descend started and we arrived in Seoul at 4:40 am.
Bye bye Mongolia and Bayarkhalaa!
Sorry, but this post won’t be available in English, unless we get very bored
We are in Ulaanbaator – finally. Or lets say, finally we are in Mongolia. The border transit from Russia to Mongolia took us 6:30 hours. 4 hours our train was trapped on the russian side of the border. The famous town of Naushki felt like a holiday camp for police and customs officials. We saw crowds of them walking around, hanging around and mostly doing nothing. And finally some of them managed to get the whole train checked. We filled in funny little customs declaration sheets, gave our passports to officials (not feeling too well giving away the passports in this country) and needed to get our whole luggage down the over head rack because some hatches in there needed to be inspected. And no, we did not try to smuggle out children or whatever. Strange, very strange. Ah, the toilets were closed all the time as they are the old fashioned ones spitting everything onto the tracks.
Same procedure, different side of the border. The customs declaration sheet was even funnier. There was not a single english word on it. But a customs lady showed us an english version. 2:30 hours later the train started to move towards the mongolian capital. We had some self brewed dinner (at around 2am), a short read and fell asleep too late. Again.
Travelling on the train doesnt make you feel jetlagged. It makes you trainlagged. With no fixed rhythm to follow, passing 7 time zones in 7 days completely tangles your brain. The only thing we were really looking forward to was breakfast, dinner and the 2 longer stops each day. 10 to 20 minutes time to stretch the bones, walk around the platform and eventually buy some food from ladies selling everything one might need on the train from cucumbers to smoked fish to bread.
But lets start at the beginning (at least now). Entering the nighttrain to Moscow on the evening of Aug19th in Frankfurt felt strange. Some friends waved us goodbye, we had some beer and a bit of food with us. The double compartment felt so small with our backpacks still on us. But it grew bigger and bigger the longer we stayed in it. The first night in the bunk beds started after a beer. Passing through Czechia and a bigger part of Poland during the night we awoke somewhere in the middle of Poland only having to pass some hours to the Belarus border. The entry to Belarus was smooth and doubled as entry to Russia, which came in handy as the russian border transfer would have been somewhere in the middle of the night. That was the easy part. Western Europe and former Russian Federation territory have a different rail gauge. So we needed to change bogies in Brest. We waited for three hours to be the next train in the line, while the bogie changing itself only took about an hour. With us in the train. Again toilets remained closed.
Due to the delay at bogie changing we arrived in Moscow nearly 4 hours late. So what. We grabbed our bags, found an ATM and equipped with rubles we descended into the depth of moscovite metro. Impressing is the only word I have for such beautiful metro stations. We didnt even get lost as we got used to cyrillic quite fast. We collected our tickets for the transsiberian train about one kilometre away from the kremlin, had some nice russian food and started our walk to the kremlin. Moscow is by no means pedestrian friendly. Especially not if you are loaded with a big and a small backpack. But finally we arrived at the kremlin and had a nice walk around it. Impressive, powerful, stunning. And also beautiful – the Saint Basil cathedral looked like made of sugar and taken out of a fairy tale.
After that short glimpse of Moscow we decided to come back one time while heading for the train station where our home for the next 5 days would leave. Yaroslavl Vokzal is a nice building and easily acessible by metro. We shopped some food in a nearby supermarket and boarded train number 6, carriage number 5, seats 5 and 6 at quarter past nine. The compartment was bigger with one bed on each side of the compartment instead of bunk style. There was a small table, lots of plastic-fantastic fake wood panels, some lights and the usual two pillows, one blanket and kind of a matress to soften up the bed. We got the sheets, a dishtowel and a towel and started our ride. We had breakfasts and dinners, passed Yekatarinburg, Novosibirsk, Krasnoyarsk, Irkutsk, had more breakfast and dinner. We even had one dinner in the restaurant car. Its not made for vegetarians – but has beer 🙂 The nicest thing to see on the way was lake Baikal. In the morning at around 7am we saw the first parts of it accompanied by a wonderful sunrise. This lake is so immensly huge that you hardly see the coastline of the opposite side, and that is only the shorter distance. Unluckily no fresh water seals appeared. Most of the time in the train was spend by reading, knitting, watching the landscape go by and playing cards.
Now we are in Ulaanbaator the first day. We had a short nap, a shower (thank God!), nice chinese food and will grab a beer later. The guy from Zavkhan (the company we booked the horse trip with) that picked us up from the train was very friendly, open and had a great english. He will be one of the bunch in the tourism sector that will be making money in the next years.
Up to know the city itself doesnt have a too good impression on us. The people of course are friendly and open and a lot more shy than in Thailand or Malaysia. But the city is an ugly conglomerate of russian heritage: concrete sins, honking cars in traffic jams, a nightmare for pedestrians and somehow feeling like an administrative must in an otherwise nomadic country. And its cold.
More of that after our return from the countryside.
Sorry, but this post won’t be available in English, unless we get very bored
Sorry, but this post won’t be available in English, unless we get very bored