Traffic in Ulaan-Baatar:
The worst I’ve ever seen. The lonely Planet for Amman said that crossing streets in Amman is a perilous adventure. Compared to Ulaan-Baatar Amman is a kindergarden playground. Luckily we survived it, but this is definitely a city in which I did not want to drive a car. Lets see if it gets worse.
People on the trip:
John had the great idea of starting this trips in an untouristy part of Mongolia and seems like he slowly morphes into a Mongol himself. Maybe he simply needs a helping hand on his trips.
Telery and Laura – two of the nicest and coolest american girls I’ve ever met. So non-american to me 🙂
The hippies – a bit hippiesque but nice.
The british brit – don’t need to say much more. Nice and helpful while riding the horses.
Little princess – pfew… yep, exactly what it sounds like. Whenever work appeared on the horizon little princess magically disappeared. She was first on the cooking pots when dinner was ready – of course. She had more vodka than everybody else on the trip. “We should do…” was her preferred sentence – not including herself. This is a kind of a person that totally disrupts the group dynamic. I did less and less for the group as I did not want to do anything for her. And I only waited for the moment that she would ask me to pass something to her. I would love to have refused to. But it never happened.
Food:
Curry, curry, curry. We had a lot different curries while camping. We had indian curries with meat, without meat, a thai curry designed by Tom and me (well, it got best it could et with the spices and ingredients we had), some indian fusion cross kitchen. There was fresh milk, yoghurt and berries from local families. I could avoid the milk quite well as Tom could the meat. The two drivers sometimes cooked their favourite (and only?) dish: mutton soup. A great and very tasty soup made of mutton meat, carrots and potatoes (cooked to near death) and some noodles thrown in. A bit of salt added – ready for serving. I wouldn’t have had it all the time, but a bowl after a curry was always welcome. And it also was a nice change for breakfast from the ever present porridge (John loves sultanas – yuck). We had lots of rice with the curries. And John even baked bread in the wok. Delicious!
Oh – and not to forget the endless supply of chocolate and cookies. Around 2000 cookies and 5 big packs of chocolate (each including about 20 or 25 bars of chocolate). That is about 10kg! We had one pack each of plain milk chocolate, hazelnut and dark chocolate. And 2 packs of nuts and fruits chocolate. Obviously Johns favourite 🙂 Besides that we also had some kilos of peanuts.
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