So after almost 5 weeks we have finally managed to complete our first blog entry - yay! First and formost we apologise for the length of this entry, hopefully future editions will be shorter, it is just that a lot of things happen when you are on the road in Mongolia!
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After spending 5 days in Beijing on the "one-eyed chinese" city tour, we boarded (with some reservations) our Mongolian Airlines flight to Ulaan Baatar. Our first impression of the city after flying over it was that it wasn't really UB but some small rural town.... though we were immediately impressed by the large power stations right in the centre of town as they reminded us of man's ability to burn coal and make smoke.... The next thing we noticed is how many more people you can communicate with compared with China! Though the main thing that strikes you about Mongolia is how different it is from the rest of east asia, being so much more of a mix between central asian and eastern european (particularly in the fashion stakes - how many pairs of stiletto boots can one country handle?).
So you don't forget what we look like :)We lined up a trip, which went from being just the two of us and a jeep; to being us, plus two poms and a french couple (plus driver and guide). Once the eight people, camping gear, backpacks, beer and vodka were loaded into the 4WD russian mini-van, aka "the mule", there wasn't much room for luxuries such as legs, but we all managed to fit and were on our way. The first stretch of road outside UB wasn't that bad, but it doesn't take long to deteriorate... after about 20km we were driving in the field next to the road with everyone else. Seems the gentle bouncing over the fields is universally preferable to the rough bouncing on the semi-asphalt road as there are at least 4 separate sets of wheel tracks on each side of any sealed road, it's a bit like a massive choose your own adventure.
Aimes and the "Mule"
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Anyways, the first day involved driving and more driving, on some very marginal roads, a pattern which we came to know and love over the next week and a half.... We spent the afternoon in Hustai National Park looking for the recently re-introduced Takhi wild horses (also known by the name of the Polish dude who "discovered" them). After much driving, use of binocculars and climbing of hills we decided we weren't going to see any, until driving to the park entrance we passed a group of 5 right near the road. Guess you've got to be lucky sometimes?
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How remote do you like your toilet?
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After that it was more driving, and our first Guanz (Mongolian restuarant) experience, which made us wonder what people complain about? Sure the food isn't particularly exciting, but it's not that bad either (though later we would come to understand the problems). Being late and cold we had to find somewhere to stay, which involved driving over the deserted plains and asking various nomads whether they would put us up for the night. Eventually a guy rode up on a horse to say he knew somone who would and we ended up following him across the plains in the van as best we could.
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On arrival at the ger we had our first (of many) experiences with 'airag' (fermented horse milk) and the many forms of rock hard cheese that the nomads live on for much of the year. It was a pretty amazing experience to stay with a random family in the middle of nowhere and to find them so hospitable. Anyways, having arrived on Mongolian time (ie. about 10pm) we decided to give the offer of a 11pm dinner a miss and went to bed beside the slightly warm sheep-dung powered stove.
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Our first night's accomodation
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We woke relatively early to find the gers now surrounded by sheep and goats, they must have been there the night before but we hadn't noticed them (even though there were a couple of hundred of them!). Anyways, this was a good thing as it explained the noises and the bumping of the tent throughout the previous night. After breakfast we got back onto the "road" for some more driving, stopping at a remote monastery, before continuing on to a waterfall which was our destination for the day. The last few hours of driving were fun as they were mainly over volcanic rock with no road at all.
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At the waterfall our driver was particularly anxious to get fishin' so we follwed him down to the river with a few beers and a couple of rods to see what the fuss was about. We began to understand when we saw that one of his lures was an entire stuffed mouse which seemed rather large for freshwater fishing, but the driver assured us that the fish are big in Mongolia. When he ended up catching a "tiny" one that was over 30cm long we understood what he was talking about. Turns out it was a pretty disappointing effort for him, but I would have been pretty happy to have caught anything. Later in the trip we saw the skeleton of a decent sized fish which must have had a 30cm head!
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The (lonely) pride of Mongolia
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The night was again spent in a ger, but a little less random this time as a number of the families near the waterfall have set up extra gers which they let travellers stay in for a couple of dollars. After dinner one of the locals offered to perform some traditional Mongolian throat singing, music on his 'horse head fiddle' and show us his vodka drinking prowess. He was very impressive on both counts despite his phlegm ridden lungs.
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The third day involved some serious cross-country action, driving over a mountain range into the next main valley. Considering the offroading action of the previous days, this didn't seem like too much of a challenge, until we saw how big some of the hills were that is. At the biggest of the hills the van stopped about halfway up and after several attempted hill starts resulting in several slipped gears and leaking hydraulic fluid, we ended up slightly further down the hill than we started. At this point we thought we were experiencing one of the brief breakdowns we had been warned about. A couple of hours and many attempted ascents of the hill later we weren't quite so sure it would be a brief stoppage. However, eventually some string and sticky tape and an alternate cross country route saw us over the mountain and after throwing some money on the Ovoo (shamanic cairn) at the top and circling it three times (as Mongolian tradition prescribes) for good luck, we were on our way again...
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My backyard is bigger than yours!
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After this we managed to get lost, and rocked up to another (very poor) herding family for lunch and directions, again we were invited in and offered airag, though this time I was a bit dubious considering the 100 or so flies which came out of the bucket containing it.... Anyways, Aimes had the pleasure of being molested by an old drunk man who was desperate for some more vodka...(dunno why on earth he thought she would be the keeper of it??)
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After finding our way and a relatively uneventful afternoon's driving we mounted a crest a bit too fast and bounced down the other side resulting in the van stopping again, and for what became the last time for the day. So, again we had to go in search of a ger for the night and were fortunate that there was a family willing to put us up not too far away as we hadn't passed many people all day (maybe a grand total of two vehicles, both motorbikes). To reach the ger we had to be ferried across a river by horse, which was an interesting balancing act - trying to mount in the fading light with 20kg backpacks on our backs!
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Having made it across we were accommodated in what was obviously the 'milk product manufacturing ger' as there were at least 5 or 6 separate milk fermenting or cheese making processes going on. Needless to say it smelt fantastic!
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Mongolian cowboys try their hand at mechanical repairs...... .
After this the van decided to work again and it was a long drive the next day to the furthest extent of our trip being the Lake Terkhiin Tsagaan Nuur. We stayed in a ger camp which was run by a Mongolian with an uncanny resemblance to Manuel from Fawlty Towers, something that was emphasised by the fact that he burst into our ger every 5 minutes to say "OK, sorry" before restocking the fire to ensure that the temperature had not dropped below 40 degrees. This was okay while we were awake, but when the fire went out in the middle of the night and we weren't using our sleeping bags we had other feelings....
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The next two days were horse riding around the lake and up a small volcano nearby. Since neither of us had ridden horses for something like 15 years it was fortunate that the horses were very placid to say the least. Well it seemed like that at first anyways, however after an hour or so of walking and then about 30 minutes of "encouragement" to get them to pick up speed it started to get a little frustrating. Though the horses must have known something we didn't, because it only took our Mongolian guide to ride within 5 metres of our horses and they would finally break into a gallop!
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Being outside all day in the wind made us realise just how warm it was in the 'Mule', as even with down jackets, gortex jackets, thermals, gloves, beanies and scarves we were both freezing. Fortunately we had decided against heading up to another lake further north on the Siberian border which we later found out had already begun to freeze over from a fellow traveller that had spent a month touring the country solo on a motorbike (nutter!).
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Anyways, for the first day and a half of riding we really enjoyed ourselves, managing to get up to a gallop when the horses could be convinced it was a good idea and seeing some spectacular scenery. The only problem being that there was still half a day riding to go, while this was not a problem for all (eg. Aimes), for most it was a very very painful few hours as our bodies decided they had had enough. When we finally made it back to our camp there were at least 4 of us struggling to walk properly.....
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Coming home (Aimes in red)
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Fortunately the offer of our first shower after 5 days of dusty riding and driving was enough to make us almost forget the pain we were in. Aimes, although, was in considerable pain after giving a small tube of Clinique moisture surge eye gel (and demonstrating how to scarcely use it) to one of the young girls only to have her mother slather the whole tube of cream all over her face!
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The next day it was back on the road for another decent 8 hours of driving, which was just the medicine we needed to heal our aching bodies. We were headed for Kharkorin which is the ancient Mongolian capital and home to the country's oldest monastery, Erdene Zuu Khiid. The town itself is not much to speak of, like a shanty town consisting mainly of mainly of gers enclosed in high wooden fences. This is even more surprising considering that there is talk of moving the capital here in 2012 years for the anniversary of Chinggis Khan's rule. However, the monastery (actually a number of monastery buildings within a large compound) was quite impressive and was our first real experience of Tibetan Buddhism, something we hope to see much more of in western china.
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Karakhorin Monastery .
That night was the birthday of one of our pommie companions and we decided to celebrate with a few beers and a few too many bottles of vodka (every supermarket here has at least 10 different brands of vodka, most have more like 30, all for a maximum price of $7, bring on the cosmopolitans!) Fortunately the next day we were informed that day light saving had ended so we had an extra hour sleep in before hitting the road (this was a little mind boggling as all the guide books we had between us say that day light saving was abolished some time ago??).
Restocking with the essentials (beer and vodka, some chocolate)
Our final stop was with another nomadic family (this time a planned stop) where we stayed for 2 nights. During our stay we were able to assist with the preparation of meals (refer pictures below), go hiking and rest up after 8 long days of driving. We had the option of doing more horse riding but passed on that as we didn't feel up for that kind of punishment again (particularly with the wooden Mongolian style saddles). We also received further proof of just how big Mongolia is when a couple of short walks up a mountain and to a river which looked very close, ended up taking a couple of hours.
The nights here seemed particularly cold, perhaps because the dung fire no longer compared with being cooked alive with a massive wood fire? We also had the pleasure of sharing our ger with various sheep parts (including a recently removed and fully intact head) stored on top of cupboards, under beds and hanging from the ceiling.
Preparing lunch, straight from the pasture to the pot
So that was it for the Mongolian outback adventure, on arriving back in Ulaan Baatar we had planned to do a short trip down to the Gobi Desert, however as it would have meant leaving straight away and several more long driving days we decided to give it a miss and hang out in UB for the remainder of our time in Mongolia. Also, after tasting our first non-mutton meal for 10 days we realised what we had been missing and couldn't give up variation and flavour that soon (it took us a full 2 days to brave mutton again and even then the smell was hard to deal with).
It would have been a relatively quiet few days except for the fact that we somehow managed to end up out or drinking in the guesthouse most nights as everyone who stayed there over seemed to be up for something. Anyways, hopefully we will get our act together soon and post some photos of UB separately..... don't hold your breath :)
Are you sure it's only 1.3 billion people?
Add a padlock and throw away the key for a long marraige!
Calligrapher at the Summer Palace
