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…
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