Mongolian Mayhem

We arrived in Mongolia after a particularly frustrating 6 hour border crossing from Russia to Mongolia (4 hours on the Russian side in our cabin followed by another 2 on the Mongolian side!). This marathon of 5 minutes of form filling followed by hours of waiting was made even more painful as the restaurant car was closed and toilets locked for the entire period! Whilst the toilets were eventually opened, the Russian restaurant car was removed and a Mongolian one attached which was closed until Ulaanbaatar – nightmare!!! This meant a dinner of a biscuit each – agony!

The palaver of the previous evening’s snack-based meal was forgotten temporarily as we were wowed by the stunning scenery that greeted us as we entered Mongolia. Rolling golden hills (turning green in the summer) dotted with cattle and the odd nomadic herdsman’s ger (circular dome-topped padded wooden tent, now commonly spotted in the slightly different environs of festivals like Bestival and Glastonbury!) seemed to roll into the distance. This was a welcome break from the concrete-heavy industrial towns we’d been passing through in Russia and looked especially peaceful at 6 in the morning!

Sunrise over Mongolia’s steppe

A petrol station ger!

Our friendly Chinese conductor – great lad!

We soon saw the huge smoke stacks of the sprawling metropolis of Mongolia’s capital in the distance as we rounded a corner – it looked a bit out of place in such an untouched landscape! The station was pretty basic like many of the others we’d passed through over the 5 days, just even colder! We bid farewell to our carriage-mates (though we’d be seeing some of them again on our next leg) and hopped in our taxi to the guest house where we had a much-needed shower and a well earned sleep!

We spent the day exploring Ulaanbaatar after getting some tucker at the vast State Department Store (in Communist times this was the only place you could purchase luxuries). Ulaanbaatar is a fascinating place – a real melting pot of aspiring young professionals, rich mining moguls and nomadic herders who don’t really know what to make of the place. The standard of driving is absolutely appalling – pedestrian crossings don’t actually seem to mean anything (a green man means feel free to cross but you’re just as likely to get run over) and to change lanes (not that your vehicle is likely to be in a lane in the first place) you simply aim at the next car and honk you horn. However since everyone drives like this we didn’t witness any accidents – a modern day miracle!

 

Soviet-esque State Department Store

Fran and Beardo at the Gandin Monastery – one of only a few to have survived the ‘Cultural Revolution’ in the ‘30’s

More functionalist architecture in Sukhbaatar Square (the fat chap in the centre is Genghis (or Chinghis) Khan)

The following day we were collected from our hostel for a 2-day trip into the Mongolian mountains to visit a nomad family. Our vehicle for this adventure was an awesome old Soviet army jeep driven by Jaga, a friendly Ulaanbaatarian chap with a pretty good command of English (which was vital for translation purposes). We weaved in and out of the traffic (and huge potholes), eventually making it out of the city in one piece, and made for the mountains. As we got further from the city, brick houses turned into Ger’s, roads into tracks and plains into hills. We stopped after about half an hour for Jaga to have a loo / cigarette break and to give our bones a rest from the relentless pummelling they were receiving from the dodgy roads! The 2+ hour journey to the nomad family was amazing in itself - just as we thought the roads/tracks were about as extreme as they could be, they got progressively more extreme the deeper into the mountains we got (see photos below)!

 

Our noble steed

Not quite the M40!

Getting worse…

And again…

We finally arrived at the nomad family’s winter camp (they move their gers down into the valley in summer) and met our hosts. Darima was a tiny, lovely lady in her late 60’s whose 8 (!) children have flown the nest and now tends to her herd of cows, sheep, goats and yak with her 70 year old brother – impressive stuff! None of the family spoke any English so our conversations were conducted with gesturing, smiles and translation by Jaga. After introductions and a great deal of Mongolian tea (milky with a pinch of salt – Mongolians have everything with salt!) it transpired that our first task was to cook dinner for Darima, her brother, Jaga and a couple of others from neighbouring gers! It ended up being a Ready, Steady, Cook type-affair – being forced to use both spaghetti and potatoes plus having no herbs or spices didn’t make the task easy by any means but Rich’s Spaghetti Egg Potato Special (TM) was graciously eaten by everyone, though as I hadn’t decimated the potatoes they weren’t quite up to Mongolian standards!

Our home for the night

Culinary masterpiece in progress…

Our afternoon consisted of about a half hour of horse-riding (which we both survived, though my poor horse was struggling with my massive weight!), a number of hikes around the hills and attempting to understand what our hosts were saying! Dinner was cooked up the Mongolian way and we were ‘fortunate’ enough to be offered a Mongolian delicacy – sheep’s tail. We both took on a chunk - it tasted like pure lard but not quite as awful as the massive lumps of fat the Mongolians like to add to every dish! That said the food was delicious and we all went straight to bed after dinner. The ger started off boiling hot but through the night temperatures fell to –10 which made for a chilly nights’ sleep! We headed off in the late morning after saying farewell to our extremely hospitable hosts, stopping off for lunch at another host family, going for another brief hike through the Terelj National Park and stopping for a massively touristy but strangely fun camel ride!

Trot on!

Danger horsey photo

Not the worst scenery in the world

Iceman

Looking dapper with Darima

Camel capers

We left Ulaanbaatar early yesterday morning and we’re currently about an hour from Beijing where the chaos level is bound to be turned up to 11 with 15 million people going about their daily business around us! All very exciting – we’ve seen lots of amazing stuff so far and look forward to seeing even more! Miss you all and see you / speak soon!!!

 

Great Genghis Khan style hat (thanks Gareth and Marine!)

Thumbs up outside the Thumbs Up pub!

Sprawling Ulaanbaatar

Next stop Gobi Desert!

 

Changing the wheels (bogeys) between Mongolia and China

And so to China…

Trans-Mongolian Epic

We set off on our Trans-Mongolian journey across Siberia a few days ago now and thought we’d fill you in on the experience! We departed from Moscow’s Leningradsky Voksal station at 9:35pm on Tuesday evening, having stocked up on the essentials (noodles, bread and vodka) at the supermarket near the station. We boarded the train and settled into our small-but-perfectly-formed cabin – our home for the next 5 nights! Our cabin is a 4-berth affair, about the same size as our old kitchen (i.e. particularly small!). We were joined about 10 minutes before departure by a nice Dutch chap called Ward. Luckily for us there were only three of us in our cabin – it would be particularly cosy with 4!

Leningradsky Voksal station

Fran with supplies heading for the train (the old one on the right not the new one on the left!)

Fran making herself at home

We had already eaten that evening so we settled in and got chatting to Ward (who was scarily fluent in English). It turns out he was in the finance industry and decided to take 6 months or so to see more of the world. We’d bought plenty of food but decided that a beer would be a good option so I popped to the restaurant car to purchase some Russian ale. This set us back a whopping 130 roubles (about £3.25) so we were really pushing the boat out! As I made my way back to our cabin, a burly Russian chap invited me to join him for a vodka as he was dining alone. As I’d read it was rude to refuse such hospitality I politely agreed to a small vodka. His English was at the other end of the spectrum to Ward’s – literally none! He did however speak a miniscule amount of German (even less than me) so we were having a conversation using gestures and pre-GCSE German which was certainly interesting. Anyway, I managed to ascertain that his name was Anatoly, he was either a fox hunter or a lumberjack and he liked to drink vodka. A lot. I managed to return to the carriage for reinforcements but only after I’d polished off about 4 colossal shots of vodka so I was already a little tipsy to say the least. We were joined by another two travellers from our compartment – Kelly and Tommy from Evesham. The burly Russian bought us in a feast of gherkins, salami and various hams (which probably set him back a bit) which were essential to counteract the ‘orrible taste of vodka! We polished off three bottles (we supplied one we’d bought for approx £2.50), after which the Russian was pretty rowdy and kept challenging me to a hand shake tug of war! We managed to escape eventually but the 7 double/triple vodkas that I’d been forced to knock back made the train spin a little too much for my liking!!!

A stern-looking Anatoly, Ward, Beardo and Fran

Fran polishing off a vodka

Tommy, Kelly and Anatoly (and a bottle of vodka)

Had the hangover of doom the following day but luckily there were plenty of opportunities to sleep it off so by mid afternoon I was feeling about 75%!

Life on board is certainly interesting – most of the time you are confined to your room for what Fran aptly described as ‘forced relaxation’. Stops are infrequent, often 6 hours apart. When there is a stop however there is a hive of activity – food traders selling beer, noodles (for cooking with the boiling water in the coal-fired samovar in each carriage) and sometimes home-cooked fare like meat patties and sliced potatoes, pancakes and veg (if you’re lucky). Some stations only have kiosks which are usually a ‘point and pay’ affair – it always nicer to get it from a trader on the platform though. Touch wood we’ve both been OK on the tummy-front with this food – this evening’s mince patties, coleslaw and noodles might be a test though! The stops are usually only 20 minutes in length, however the guards start frantically beckoning you back on board after about 5 minutes – you end up feeling robbed of you precious time off-board as you wait another 10 minutes before the train departs! When you leave the station it’s back to normality – reading in your cabin, nattering with people form all over the world (our carriage is a mix of Germans, English, Irish, American, Dutch and Mexican – there are about 10 Americans in first class but they’re slightly later on in life!) and generally feeling couped up but free at the same time. It’s a shame that the windows are pretty grubby and most don’t open as it means most of your photos come out a bit foggy!

Our schedule – basic version

Our schedule – in-depth breakdown!

Coal-fired Samovar

Dashing off the train for some frantic shopping/exploration

Platform tucker…

Not sure what was in this pasty but it tasted OK!

Our first few days we made excellent (and on-time) progress through south-western Russia, coming close to the border with Kazakhstan in Perm. The landscape across this region is dominated by trees and boggy meadows, dotted with snow. The majority of the houses are simple wooden affairs in various states of disrepair, interspersed with huge ugly concrete structures which are either sawmills, concrete factories or sometimes something potentially more secret! I purchased the excellent Trans-Siberian Handbook before we left which gives a breakdown of towns you see along the way. A couple of interesting entries included a branch line that leads to a city called Krashnoyarsk-26 – neither the city nor the branch line appeared on any Soviet maps as it turns out it was a nuclear processing plant! Another one a few kms on is a similar story, this time it’s a secret space centre. It’s a bit like travelling through a number of Bond films at the same time, which is awesome! Just have to resist jumping onto the roof of the train to fight Jaws!

  

Barabinsk Station

Happy customers now we have pastries!

 

A bleak-looking factory

Novosibirsk Station at night

Moving into Siberia, we started climbing and the snow covering the ground and icy lakes got thicker and the villages smaller and more uninhabited-looking. The excitement preceding each stop was soon quashed when we realised there were no kiosks or platforms at the tiny stations we were stopping at – 6 hours wait for 10 minutes of milling about on the platform! Early this morning we passed Lake Baikal – a spectacular and incredibly large freshwater lake (a couple of hundred kilometres in length) with steep mountains surrounding it. We’re almost at Ulan Ude which is our next stop, the last stop in Russia before we cross the border into Mongolia – exciting stuff. We’ve pretty much run out of roubles on the train and there’s certainly no ATM so we’re making the most of our instant noodle selection (20p a packet – the taste reflects the price) and bartering with every platform vendor to get the best price for their culinary delights! Our next post will no doubt be after Ulaanbaatar where we will be staying for 4 days (one night of which will be in a Ger on the Mongolian steppe!) before continuing our journey to Beijing.

One of our many trains (they change them at pretty much every other station)

Platform bartering in full flow

Industrial Russia whizzing by

Enjoying some meat / sweet cheese pancakes

Not enjoying noodles again

Chinese beer, sold to us on the sly by the Chinese conductors at 1/3 of the price of the restaurant car! Actually Ward bought us this one as a gift!

Doing our own window cleaning for a better view

Some sort of platform ruckus involving police with machine guns last night – think it was transferring prisoners by train (not ours!)

 

Sunrise over frozen Lake Baikal – small dots in the distance are cars driven onto the ice by fishermen who then dig holes in the ice to fish!

An old old steel bridge!