A quick one (while he's away)

S 31 54.700 E 115 57.100 - Perth - 15 January 2009

Ok, so I get complaints, I write way too much. Ok, maybe I don't write all that often but when I do, the entries tend to be a bit long and have lots of detail. "I have to speed read through your entries", "you should edit more", blah blah blah.

Loads of pictures in albums in this directory. The internet wasn't so great in Cambodia and Thailand so I didn't upload for a long time. And some last albums here, the rest of Thailand and Malaysia and then finally a few in Australia.

Well, ok, for the time impaired readers, let me see if I can speed up the whole thing for you. Perth is hot, Fremantle is less hot and pretty and by the ocean. It is sort of the end of the major travel on this trip, but it looks like it will be a while before I can look for a job and actually settle down here. But I dawdle, trip report then.

August, train from London to take the ferry to Norway. Cool fjords, way expensive, great camping. Sweden, slightly less expensive and a lovely week of camping on an island. Finland, grr, apartment fell through, to Estonia for a week in an apartment to relax, then a quick few days through Finland and the train onto Russia.

September by then, St Petersburg, a few days there seeing the stuff you are supposed to see and struggling with Russian. Just a few days in Moscow and onto the train across Siberia. A very cool 4 days watching the country go by, zipping through time zones and finally getting off at Irkursk and spending a few days on Orkhon Island in Lake Baikal.

October now, we take the train to Mongolia and head off on a 10 day trip around Mongolia, through the Gobi with some people we had met in Siberia. Then we take another shorter 5 day trip nearby Ulan Batar. Winter hits when we are there, deep snow to hike through before we catch the train to China and we head back into autumn.

China is awesome and the planned three weeks turns into every possible day of our 30 day visa. We take sort of a typical route, Beijing to Pingyao to Luoyang to Xi'an and finally down to Chengdu. There we have a nice 5 day bird tour up towards Tibet. Last few days of China through Yuanyang and over the border to Sapa, Vietnam.

November by now, a quite special home stay with a Red Dao hill tribe family and then the train to Hanoi, lots of yellow buildings and gigantic bundles of wire on the power lines. Another train to Hue, the old imperial capital of Vietnam and very close to the old DMZ area. A sleeper bus to Hoi An and a few days on the beach there. Train to Saigon (Ho Chi Minh City) so that we can make a dash up to Cat Tien, a national park with lots of pretty birds. Back to Saigon and then catching a three day boat trip (ok, lots of buses) up the Mekong to Phnom Penh, Cambodia.

Mid December now. A few days looking at Phnom Penh before heading out to Siem Reap. Time is starting to run short now, we have to make it to Kuala Lumpur in Malaysia by 12 January for our flight. We spend a few days overdosing on temples in Ankgor, which is totally cool but overwhelming. We wanted to see the Prek Toal bird sanctuary on Tonle Sap Lake, but it was really expensive to get there (would have been like 300 USD for both of us) and apparently the storks haven't shown up yet and all that was there were some normal wader birds that you can see anywhere. So, we didn't stay over Christmas then and left early to head off to Bangkok.

Christmas eve we arrive in Bangkok. Christmas day wasn't overly festive because we picked a super cheap place to stay and they woke us up at 6 am when they were cleaning the bathrooms and with a loud tv in the lobby, so Christmas was spent finding somewhere else to stay a little nicer and getting myself a haircut. Most of the rest of the few days in Bangkok was spent figuring out where to go next. We didn't go to the south part of Cambodia to the beach there, or didn't go to northern Thailand, so Koh Tao seemed like it would be a nice place to spend a week or so just relaxing and also doing some diving.

We spend 4 days, including New Years Eve, on the east side of Koh Tao in a rather isolated bungalow. The roads are tough to get there and it was just the one group of bungalows, but on a beautiful cove with some fantastic snorkeling. Four days of doing nothing but swimming, snorkeling, eating, sleeping, and chasing away spiders from the bed.

Then we head over to the other side of the island. Koh Tao has mostly become known now as the cheapest place on earth to get your open water diving certification, so yeah, I want to do that, sign me up. It is a huge contrast from the other side of the island, loads of resorts, lots of people, and all the rest of that. I spend 3 days getting my certification, sitting in classrooms and doing 4 training dives. Classroom stuff is boring but the dives are really great. C does some fun dives while I'm in class and then we do a night dive together and one more day dive. I'm hooked. Luckily Australia is diving country.

Now we are basically out of time. Well, stupid Thailand changed their visa policy right before we got there, no more 30 days, it is only 15 days now so we got hit with a fine when we left after 16 days. We then dash across Malaysia to catch our flight. A night in Georgetown on Penang and another night in Kuala Lumpur before flying out. Malaysia seemed interesting, I didn't give it much of a chance being almost an after thought after all the planning what went into the rest of it. But KL is on the way to lots of places, I assume I'll be back there some day.

Then Australia, after five months and one day traveling, here we are. Australia has dawdled on my permanent visa application, should have been done by December but no known date in sight now. We had planned on goofing around in Australia for a month or so before heading to Melbourne and getting serious about where to live, finding jobs, and all that. The job market is a little worrisome considering how the world economy seems to be crumbling. Anybody need a senior level Java J2EE engineer? Drop me a line.

So yeah, another entry with lots of words but it covers five months. More stuff later, probably go back and write about China and other places I didn't say much about yet.

Where the streets have no name

N 47 42.914 E 106 57.242 - 20 October - Zuun Mod

I didn't sleep much this night. If you see somebody pour a pan of coal into a stove in a ger, run. Run fast. The temperature will slowly build to about the surface of the sun and stay that temperature for most of the night. I had the misfortune of being closest to the stove. I melted until about 3 am when the coal finally started burning down. That's even worse too, covered in sweat all night and then it starts getting cold. Still, the stay in this ger was one of my favorites.

We drive to Zuun Mod, an hour or so away and pull up behind some buildings where there are a few horses tied up. Today we were meant to ride horses for a few hours, go hiking for a bit, and then stay with the tour organizer's aunt in her ger. I am a bit annoyed to find out that my horse isn't there, it is somewhere else. While everybody else mounts up and rides off, I get back in the car, we drive around town, unpack the bags into a ger, and drive up towards the mountains, passing the others riding across a field, and then get out and wait at the border of the park. So much for a whole lot of riding. They are still like 30 minutes away and this sucks. Finally they get me on a horse and a kid leads me down to meet them. I also get scolded a few times for holding onto the saddle. But I guess everybody else gets scolded too for doing the same thing. My horse is rather unruly and I'm decidedly grumpy from the whole let's go find you a horse adventure.

Still, I guess the ride out through town and across that big field wasn't so great, but that's not the point. When we get into the park, we have a nice ride through some woods, an hour or so and then stop and the horseman tells we can go off hiking, meet back in few hours. I was trying to zoom through these days so I can get to writing about China, wasn't I? So, another ruined monastery, Manashir Khid destroyed in the 1930s along with most of the rest of them by the Stalinists. So, more ruined mud brick buildings, but in a quite cool setting, the top of a valley up against a large rocky hill. We eat lunch and spend time hiking up the rocks, great views of the valley from the top, a bit of snow in the woods behind.

We hike back and pick up the horses again and make the trek back to town. We get in a bit of fast riding on the flat field outside of town. It wasn't a mammouth horse ride but it was enough for me. The hiking was my favorite part of it today and besides my horse really didn't seem to like me much. The ger is in the middle of town, so it is our first urban ger. In one of the fenced off bits of town. And actually the streets do have names there, but they are usually something more like 8B or 3.

The next morning, we get dropped off again at the same place, outside the park and we hike in and up over some of the hills. We don't hike all that far or very fast, the woods just on the edge of the park are filled with some cool birds, loads of nuthatches, woodpeckers and even a goldcrest.

Ok, I started this entry weeks ago, maybe I'll just quickly summarize it and publish it as is. Gotta get to writing about China already.

We had a good day hiking, not too strenuous, just sort of wandering around up the hills, through some woods, seeing some interesting birds and enjoying walking through patches of snow.

We have one last night in a ger, the last of the trip and it is a short drive back to UB the next day. A few last days in UB, trying to see a few of the sights, trying not to get run down by traffic and shopping at the Black Market (a huge outdoor market filled with lots of cheap stuff). Next up is the long train journey to Beijing and China.

There are 9 million bicycles in Beijing

Well, it has been ages since I've written much. I had more to write about Mongolia, but I better move on now. I've been in China for almost two weeks and there is so much there to write about too. China has been really amazing, maybe my favorite place I've been on this trip. There is just so much to write about, I'm not quite sure where to start.

N 43 39.269 E 111 58.916 - 23 October 2008, somewhere over the Chinese border.

We caught the train early in the morning from Ulan Batar and rode most of the day across Mongolia towards the border. It was beautiful, the entire area was covered with a light snow. I was so used to seeing Mongolia all brown and dusty, the white really suited it. The landscape was slightly hilly and our train wound up and down a bit and gradually left the snowy parts and onto flatter browner areas again.

We had new people in our compartment, an English couple who were traveling until probably April. Our entire carriage was mostly western travelers, we were on the tourist train. Our other friends, who we had traveled through Mongolia and the end of Siberia were a few compartments down. When our compartment-mates produced some ayrag, the fermented mares milk we had been hearing about for a few weeks but never quite saw anywhere, we sampled some and passed it on to everybody else so they could experience that before they left Mongolia. I can't quite decide if it was vile or if it wasn't so bad. We had tried to find it all across Mongolia, but it seems you can only really buy it from kids on the street selling it in old reused plastic bottles. It was a funny last taste to leave in your mouth has Mongolia passed by for the last time.

We spent most of the rest of the journey all practicing Chinese, trying to be ready. Basic things like counting and hello and the rest of that. What a really difficult language. The characters are difficult enough, thousands of them (I believe that 8000 is the common amount the average person uses) which make up compound words but then the sounds are really difficult too. The sound 'ma' can be pronounced 5 different ways, with a rising inflection, downward then rising, high inflection, etc. Each of the inflections is a completely different word. In addition, each of the sounds (which maps to a character) usually has a bunch of different meanings based on the context.

Then the words themselves are generally composed of two characters, put together to create some sort of meaning. Bei-jing means north capital, lunch is composed of noon-rice, China is middle-country, America is beautiful-country, etc. Wow. At least the grammar is totally easy though. Translations into English you see commonly make more sense now, considering how sentences are usually composed in Chinese characters. Although I have been quite amused by them. I might have to compose a list of my favorites, I've taken loads of pictures of various ones.

I have to say, that I have been completely fascinated by Chinese though, I might try to learn it over the next few years. I would love to come back to China some day and it seems like it would be even better with a better command of the language, feel like it would make it more accessable. And you would be able to tell better when people are calling you a foreign devil or some such thing like that. Yeah, I'll still standout totally as a tourist, but even a little bit of Chinese seems to go a long way in conversations.

The border crossing was quite interesting. It wasn't quite as intense in terms of official stuff, searches and passports and stamping things as coming out of Russia. It was night by the time it started and was very late when it all finally finished. The customs man was quite nice and funny, knocking on the doors, please wake up, I have your passports.

The most time consuming part of it was the boogie shed. Mongolia and China have different sized train tracks, so before we cross over, they need to change the wheels on our train. It takes like an hour or so. They move the carriages into a special shed, like 4 parallel tracks with lots of lifting equipment, separate each of the carriages, bash them around back and forth for a while pulling them apart (we were still in the carriages, some people trying to sleep) and then they pick them up and slide different wheels underneath and put us back down again. It was fun to watch the different carriages on other tracks being lifted up and watching the Chinese workers dancing around outside (it was freezing cold that night). Finally by midnight or so, we had new wheels and our passports back and headed into China.

I'm hungry and we need to do some things in Xi'an today, so the rest of this will have to wait until later. But next stop, Beijing.

Start Choppin' or Milk Cow Blues

N 47 39.019 E 107 26.545 - 19 October - Near Terelj

Then probably my favorite place we stayed the entire time we were in Mongolia. We were supposed to stay with a nomad farmer, help them out with tasks, and all that sort of thing. We thought we were leaving at 9 and when 10 rolled around, hmm, maybe something is wrong. Not sure what to do but then near 11, our driver shows up. The same one who picked us up at the bus stop the other night. Sigh, we will have less time at the farm now, but ok, I guess when in Mongolia...

We make a few stops on the way, a cliff formation across from somewhere that has a few sad looking animals, camel, yak, and donkey. Cars stop and people can ride them around in a circle for a few minutes. We look but are totally unimpressed. But he has something better, the rock formation actually has a pretty impressive and deep cave up towards the top. We scramble up and look at that. Seems nice.

The next stop is the big Chinggis statue. Really, it is just really tacky but also slightly impressive too. As we drive up from one angle, he does sort of appear to be riding his horse. So yeah, in the parking lot, mostly actually filled with Mongolians, this thing is crazy, like really huge statue of him riding a horse, all in shiny steel. The ticket office tells us it is 10000 to get in (拢10) which is crazy. That sort of money should buy you food for days, so we give it a pass. A quick look around the parking lot and please take us on.

Our last stop is one of the rune stones, we had seen a copy of it in the natural history museum in UB. Seemed impressive, written in Turkish, super old and all that, sort of Rosetta Stone for the languages on it. It was just in the middle of pasture land. And as a bonus, we could see Chinggis way off in the distance too, shining in the sun.

We stop at a nice valley, a few gers in a camp. He waves at an old woman in the fields, Mama, and we pet the dogs. He says it is his ger and dogs and all that. Hmm, it starts to dawn on us, not just a driver but he is the nomad rancher. He and his mother also run sort of a B&B on the side. It does make sense, there isn't really any money in ranching. He was probably one of the wealthier of them, he had about 600 sheep and 600 cows (1/10 of that would be a nice typical family herd), but they have to barter for everything. There isn't really a source of cash, so tourism helps with that. Most seems like they can do quite well with their flocks, they certainly have survived a long time without tourism.

Mama is a real character. She has a great cackling laugh and is really nice. But she also looks as though she could (probably has on many occasions) wrestle down a cow and butt heads with the sheep. Amazing for like 70 years old. She makes us a really delicious noodle soup and then we help make dumplings out of the fresh mutton he has been slicing off the bone earlier. We make them laugh with our incompetence, but we do get a bit better. We are ok at stuffing them and folding them but never really get the hang of rolling them out. There are hundreds of them and we are then expected to eat them all for dinner later (think I had like 12-14 of them). They are delicious, the best dumplings I had in Mongolia.

We also make them laugh by "helping" with the wood chopping. That is hard work, not splitting wood, which isn't so bad but chopping the long branches in to stove sized pieces. We have some beer with them, try to have conversations with them. They have a stack of photographs and we show them some of our own.

At 9 pm, Mama gets up, have to milk the cows now. It is very dark out, just a slight glow from a full moon. The whole front area of the ger camp has filled up with hundreds of cows. It is funny how they all come in for the night. I guess it must be habit and must be warmer. At other places, you would go out at night and there would be large herds of goats or sheep just outside where you hadn't see them at all during the day. He and mama had a system, grab a calf who was nursing, pull it away and mama would get her stool under there and milk away, 1/4 pail worth, until they got too unruly and they moved onto a new cow. About 8-9 of those and there was enough milk for all the various things we ate that had milk in them, yougart, cheese, etc. We were taking pictures of the milking by torch light, we are quite surprised then when he pulls up the car and shines the headlights so we can take better pictures that way. They seem quite pleased and amused by the results. What a nice pair and a nice place, it will be sad to leave here tomorrow.

Fifteen feet of pure white snow

N 47 54.272 E 107 24.944 - 17 October - Terelj

The morning is beautiful. Everything is covered with about an inch of snow, which really does pretty the normal drab browns up quite a bit. We are in a valley, high hills in most directions. Much of it is covered with trees. The larches do a lovely thing, the fresh snow then has a yellow halo around the base of the trees where the needles have fallen off during the night. We were supposed to be somewhere near Turtle Rock, which from the pictures seems pretty recognizable and dominates the valley it is in. We ask, it is right there. Oh yeah, like 200 meters away, we drove past it last night in the dark and it is there, really huge and really does look a lot like a turtle.

Our plan for the day is a long hike. No driving, no horses or anything organized, just a random hike somewhere nice. Might as well head that way, it seems nice over there and maybe we can go up over the mountain there and see what is on the other side. As we leave, we somehow acquire a dog, a big black dog, seems friendly and content to follow us the entire day. Maybe that is a service here, animals to accompany you like dogs and kittens. We nickname him Mega Dog. He wanders off occasionally during the day and spends some time barking at unknown things but generally seems to be somewhere around.

Anyways, the hike, it is a great day. It is really good hiking over the fresh snow, it is a perfect day, sunny and warming. Terelj Park is really a great place, amazing something like that is just a short drive away from UB. We hike among cows and yaks and see lots of eagles overhead. We make it to the high point, up at the top of the mountain and have a nice lunch sitting on our jackets in the snow eating lunch. Turtle Rock is also very nice looking from a whole lot of different angles and distances. I never do figure out which rock formation is Man Reading A Book though. Oh well. The park is mostly deserted too, we see just a few other people all day.

Back at the ger, we go on a shoe drying rampage. Everybody's are a bit damp and are propped up in different places around the ger. Close enough to dry but not too close where they catch on fire. One of mine is really wet, I accidently stepped into a bit of a stream at the end of the day. Gotta love waterproof socks, my feet were dry it just felt a bit squishy walking.

When the kids had killed the man, I had to break up the band

N 47 54.973 E 106 54.239 - UB - 16 October 2008

So, last time, I think I left you all in UB again. Did I mention the traffic there? It really is manic. At the end of our tour, Dorj, who I imagine is a demon in traffic anyways, I think he was really in a hurry to get home. He hadn't slept much for days, his tooth still hurt and it had been 10 days away from home. It is amazing just how much traffic you can fit down a few lanes.

Our last stretch coming in from the country, a few miles out of town, we got on to paved roads again, but the driving was just as bumpy. I could barely watch the driving, even knowing I was inside and probably quite safe. One mile or so long section, two lane road, just jammed with traffic and lots of intersections to shove your way through (red lights are mostly ignored and the police directing traffic blow their whistles a lot but mostly just seem to hold back traffic until the other side is impatient enough and shoves their way through). A two lane road where everybody is mostly used to driving over anything, at times there were two lanes of traffic on the shoulder of the road racing each other to shove their way back into traffic before they run into a pole or parked car, and a few snuck their way around the back of garages and through parking lots. And Dorj was there with the worst of them.

It is a strange trip, coming back to UB so often. In the three weeks we were there, we were back three different times for a few days. A bit like coming back home again and a strange way to be in a trip where we had just steadily kept traveling east every few days up until then. Two of our group headed off to China then, had to break up the band. It was sad to see them go. 10 days in the desert with them.

The four of us left, mull over options for the rest of our time in Mongolia. We have a little more than a week and really don't want to do lots of driving again, but all the tours that people arrange mostly just drive a day to here, see things, drive another day to here, see that, etc. We pick one that is 4 nights in 3 different places and none of it is more than about 100 km from UB.

Instead of having a driver out of town, we will take the public bus. It is super cheap (something like 拢1) and should take us directly there and somebody will pick us up on the other side. Unfortunately, the buses switched to the winter schedule that day, maybe the day before, and nobody knew. That meant that while we were at the stop, in the cold pouring rain, waiting for the 4 pm bus, the 3 pm bus, the only bus of the day, had left and was well on its way to Terelj. The funny thing is it caught everybody by surprise. We stuck up a conversation with one guy (people who spoke English either wanted to sell you something or were just keen to learn English.) He was in school to learn the tourist business and they were off to a weekend retreat in Terelj and they were caught by surprise by the bus too. They were talking about taking a bus to some other part of town and catching a minibus there. We consider going with them but luckily our tour organizers pull up and pack us in the car to go over to another bus stop, they had heard from the people at the other side who were going to pick us up that the busses had changed.

It all feels like a big adventure. Totally confusing, really messed up but still it seems fine. We will probably get there one way or another. Ahh, except where do we get off? We know the stop name, it is supposed to be the end of the line but the flaw in that is they turn around and come back. Being unfamiliar with anywhere, where have they turned and where are they just going a back way to somewhere. By then too it is dark and snowing pretty heavily (so cool, snow). We ask, this town? We seem to be in the right town but there are a few stops. They seem to loop back around and we get off, hoping for the best.

There is somebody waiting too, that's good. We have about an hour in the car, paved roads most of the way then we head off onto dirt tracks again and at one point get totally stuck. He has a normal car instead of a jeep. We have to get out and help him push a few times and then surprisingly we stop about 50 meters up the road. I guess we were nearly there. It has stopped snowing and the night is pretty beautiful, mostly a full moon. We can't see much but we seem to be right up against a high hill of rocks and a valley out the other way, covered with a glowing snow. This seems to be a good place. The ger is well insulated and they bring us an electric heater too, so will have a constant temperature over the night and not the normal burning hot followed by freezing cold. Things seem good.

El Condor Pasa

N 47 11.795 E 102 51.821 - 12 October - Kharkhorin

On our way out, we stop at an old grave site, sort of vertical standing stones surrounding flat slabs and a few things of deer stone (carvings of mostly deer pictures). The drive is much of the same as yesterday, just in reverse. The drives are a bit shorter and we reach Kharkhorin fairly quickly. Also, there are a few more actual paved roads here, which seems to bore Dorj a bit.

The huge temple complex at Kharkhorin is pretty good. The vast majority of the temples were destroyed by the Stalinists, but a few remain and are nice to see. I finally get more of a handle on Buddhism here too. We have a guide from the temple who goes into great detail about the various parts of the temple. Ahh, so all the various gods, even the blue ones or the ones with lots of arms, used to be people and they have just ended up becoming enlightened. In the complex, we also pass the inevitable line of vendors, stuff laid out on blankets, yelling out, look here as we walk past. I find it interesting what sorts of things they try to highlight in that few seconds, their sales opportunity, will somebody want to see a metal head with 4 faces, or are they a sword kind of person, or a felt camel? I mostly try to ignore them.

Our ger camp is a pretty touristy one. The city is close to UB and a popular destination, so there are loads of camps around. We are there in the off season though. We had arranged a concert, a local musician who does the throat singing comes into our ger and sings and plays various traditional instruments. It is pretty interesting and something I had wanted to see. Although, he is actually a bit rubbish, especially his flute versions of some other traditional world folk tunes. But the horse fiddle is pretty nice though. I do buy one of his cds, although I won't be able to listen to it likely until I get to Australia and have a cd player again.


N 47 47.185 E 105 09.052 - 13 October - Lum

By now, Dorj's toothache is really bad, he has barely slept for 3 days now. we have given him various painkillers but they don't help. He goes to the local town yesterday and gets it pulled out, but that doesn't really even help much, they leave a few pieces in and he has to go back again. Country doctors. It is finally a day or two before he seems more back to normal. But this morning we are quite worried about him and sing songs in the van to keep his spirits up (and try to keep him awake).

We go for a morning walk up to Turtle Rock and Penis Rock. The turtle is pretty cool looking and the penis, well, I guess it looks like one. Apparently put there to remind wayward monks on their way to the brothel to think again.

We have a shorter drive again today and a few short stops. Mongel Els is a sand dune for those who can't make it down to the Gobi. We walk around there for like 30 minutes while Dorj has a nap. We have lunch in another restaurant, along the main road, a tourist sort of place, and then walking around the town, Zola needed to go to the bank to get some more cash, I smash my head probably the worst yet on the really low doorway of the bank. Hate them. Zola laughs at the bank because they give her a stack of notes about an inch thick for 1000 (worth about 1 USD). Country banks I guess.

We arrive in Lum, or nearby. We are nearly out of petrol by then, luckily we just make it. In the confusion and toothache and all, both had forgotten about getting more. Apparently if you pee in a bottle and put that in the tank, it can get keep you going for a while. Dorj and Zola throw a bottle back and forth and joke about who will have to do that.

The nomad family camp in Lum is really scenic and pretty. They mostly have horses and the grass is greener and they seem to have a pretty good setup. The sunset is really amazing and they prepare a Mongolian BBQ for us. A large pan with sheep and vegetables which they put hot rocks into and let it sit and stew for an hour or so. Even though it is more sheep, it is probably the best meal of the trip, a simple meal.

In the morning, we have a short horse ride around the area. These horses are more spirited than in other places so they don't really let us off the lead. We ride over a lovely hillside and then herd a few sheep. Kind of touristy but it is still nice.

Our main destination for today is the Hustai National Park, where they have reintroduced the takhi horses. Most of the time is spent in the visitor center watching the introduction video. Oh well, at least it was a lot of good information. A short drive through the park, there are the horses. Ok, yeah, they are pretty cool looking and it is really nice that they were brought back from near extinction.

We make it back to UB later that day and am annoyed that our promised double room isn't available. So we are stuck in the dorm that night. We also all head to the vegetarian restaurant, Luna Blanca, and are just so happy. Nothing here has even a little bit of sheep in it. We order loads and are so happy. We leave a pretty obscenely large tip, sort of embarrassing in hindsight, but we did have sheep for 10 days. We were in a bit of a state.

Ok, better end this one for now. There is a bit of Mongolia left, and I've been in China for almost a week now and better get to that. Beijing is pretty cool, I'm really loving it here and am obsessing about somewhat about learning Chinese. I need to get to writing about that, especially since we leave Beijing tonight and will be in Pingyao tomorrow. But ok, later then.

Don't go chasing waterfalls

N 46 47.048 E 101 57.964 - 10 October - Orkhon

Ahh, maybe this is the favorite days of the trip, although it does seem to be the day most fraught with sickness and trauma.

Although I am now in Beijing, have been for a few days, am really loving it, so maybe I need to just do summaries of the rest of Mongolia and move on to China.

Quick summaries, I'm not very good at those. Might just do like in my diary, short sentences. Light bulb in the cabin which you turn off and on by pulling the wire out of the switch. Landscape gets hillier and there is a bit of snow out. Lunch in a fancy restaurant with a menu, had the traditional noodles meal. Dorj's toothache comes to light, he looks tired and worn. We have showers in a very strange spa/sanatorium, sulfur water, random naked people covered in mud coming into the showers without warning.

We cross paved road, actual paved road for about 3 seconds before we head onward on the same bumpy stuff, and apparently it gets much worse later on today. We come upon lots of eagles on the road, actually on the road. We nearly run one over. Our book only has European birds. I'm still claiming it was a golden eagle, since they are fairly common in Mongolia, but I've also looked and seen steppe eagles listed there too and they seem to be almost identical. So, I'm not sure, I need to send that out to the bird experts I know. There is a really good picture of one of them in the mass of photos I've uploaded.

Much of the drive is in the dark and from what we can see through the headlights, it looks just really crazy. Vast fields of rocks, thousands of rocks, poking up a foot or two about 10 feet apart. We have to wind and swerve and run over a lot of them. Dorj looks like he is really suffering. We clap when we arrive at the ger. We see the field the next day and it looks just as fearsome. That night, somehow I sleep through a whole lot of turmoil, as everybody else in the camp comes in and out of the ger helping Alex as his sickness reaches its peak, a bitterly cold night out too.

As usually happens, somebody comes in early in the morning and lights the fire. I really like her technique of ripping the wood apart and picking off slivers to use as kindling. Out jam supply just consists then of the one jar of the icky all fruit one (blueberries, grape, pineapple, and about 8 other tastes). We barely touch it for the next few days.

We get ready for horse riding, brief introductions to how horses work, steer them and all that. They are small horses in Mongolia, much smaller than the huge American west sort of horses that intimidated me last so many years ago. These are spirited but it seems to be ok. Slow ramble, maybe not more than a kilometer to the waterfall. They gesture, down there, wow, so close. A steep rocky climb down into the small valley and admire it. The river has also iced over in places and that is almost as pretty as the waterfall.

We walk on, past the camp and over a lot of the plain that we drove over last night. My horse is pretty good and it goes into trot pretty well and occasionally over the edge into a canter. It is a bumpy ride but great fun. The horse man is quite cute, he mostly rides behind us giving the horses a swat and chanting choo-choo. He also sings a bit, nice long song. We go out for another longer ride after lunch and really push hard to get the horses going fast. A pretty nice day out.

Steal Softly Through Snow

N 45 20.039 E 104 00.629 - 9 October - Ongi

It was a cold night and in the ger with the leaky holey felt, it cooled down quickly in the night after the fire died out. I woke up kind of early, like normal, and hoped to get the fire going again. There was some leftover wood from the night before. I fussed with it for a little bit but it just wasn't having it. The stoves that had leaky lids just never really caught all that well. It seemed to go a little bit but it seems that the secret to those is you just have to pack them completely full of wood. Being conservative and just trying to burn a few sticks (to prevent it from getting boiling hot in a few minutes) just doesn't work.

When breakfast arrives, we get fry bread, an exciting change from the normal bread we have been getting before. It is a bit greasy but pretty tasty. It is a one time even though, we never get it again. We pack and say goodbye to the camel guy and head out. We cover the same road we came in on, back through the rocky canyon although this time it looks completely different. It is covered in a layer of fresh snow. It is really pretty and exciting. We see a bustard running around and we go back through those funny looking spherical cactus like plants. And the snow looks nice against the normal brownish dirt and rocks.

We ask if we can stop and see the snow, but that has already been accounted for. We pull off at a stupa (usually placed at high points or other kind of nice areas) and we pile out. There is a bit of wandering around the snow, looking at it, seeing footprints, but it all quickly devolves into a sort of full blown snowball fight. It starts out as everybody one for themselves but ends up as everybody against Dorj which he revels in. He creates a stockpile of snowballs and dares us to attack.

The rest of the drive is a bit dull. It is all the same stuff we covered yesterday and after we got out of the canyon, the snow disappears and it gets dry again. We head back to Bulgan and this time have lunch there. We pull up to a ger in the middle of a wide street (or a large wide dirt area between some buildings with a cow eating out of pile of burning rubbish), Dorj honks and yells and we are told lunch will be ready in 20 minutes, free time then. So free time like this usually means just wander around the town aimlessly until something happens. It is a pretty typical town, dusty, a few Soviet looking buildings and lots of fenced in gers in rows, suburban style. We see Dorj and Zola going into the medical building and wonder why (tooth ache later becomes a major issue, but we don't know anything yet). We also stop at a shop and see what they have. Snacks mostly or types of juice. We are just starting to become addicted to Khan Chips, strange but tasty bits of corn/potato (or so we think) ring things. They are pretty synthetic and the huge puffy bags mostly contain air but they really are the king of chips.

Finally, much longer than 20 minutes, our lunch is ready and we go into the restaurant ger. Walking around town, we had seen them laying out discs of rolled out dough on the top of the ger, drying them in the sun, and those were probably our lunch. There is a gigantic bowl on the stove (removable rings to hold different sizes of pots) filled with a noodle soup. Of course it is a meat soup (meaning sheep) with various starchy vegetables (carrots, potatoes, etc) with the cut up noodles from the roof. It is pretty nice. There are a few picnic tables in the ger but most sit on carpets on the floor.

We head on, drive drive drive, and eventually end up at Ongi to see the destroyed monenesary. There are a lot of them around Mongolia, the Stalinists were busy in the 1930s knocking them down and purging the monks. This one has an amazing setting, the side of a hill looking over a valley where two rivers join. There is also another ruin off down in the valley, part of the whole complex. The ruins look to be made out of mud bricks and there are still bits of broken clay all over. The sun is starting to set and the light on the cliffs gives it all an eerie feel. Large flocks of black birds fly overhead, too far away to be identifiable.

We get back into the van to be taken to wherever we are supposed to be staying that night, about 50 meters on as it turns out. The area is surrounded by tourist camps and they had picked one with small cabins, run by a very savvy looking woman. We are impressed that Zola, so young at 21, is able to handle people like that. As we pull up too, there are two French tourist with their driver sitting in the middle of various engine parts on the ground. I guess they didn't expect to stay there but it appears their jeep had other ideas. And Dorj just can't resist, has to go over and talk engine parts and see if he can poke around too.

The cabin is small, really just big enough to fit 6 small beds into without a stove or any sort of heat. C's bed keeps falling apart, the frame is bowed and some of the boards keep dropping through. I try to push it together the best I can with some crushed plastic water bottles which sort of works. We tell Dorj about it and he is on the case, a minute or two later some guys come in with a bit of flat board to patch it up.

We try to get a shower at the neighboring tourist camp. They said no, then said ok maybe at 9, yeah ok come back at 9. By the time we get back to the cabin, the word has already been passed on that no, can't do it after all. Never mind. Oh well. Zola said she might be able to organize one for tomorrow, so that's ok. Dinner is a nice vegetarian rice dish, Alex is still feeling bad, and it is nice.

Camera Obscura

N 40 47.380 E 102 18.053 - 7 October - Khonger sand dunes

Today is the day to mourn the passing and near passing of some dear items to me. My pen, my favorite one, which wrote just beautifully, a nice helping of ink to show up brightly, halfway through my journal entry for the day it completely dried up. I had been expecting it for a while, the ink level kept sinking, but expecting the passing and dealing with the passing are two different things. And my camera, it suffers a blow and a near death, or at least a debilitating sickness. More of that later though, we have some camels to ride and sand to see.

It is a bright cheery morning. It is windy and cold but still seems nice. The outhouse in this camp is brilliant too. It is amazing how many variations there are of the missing slat over a deep hole there can be. This one has a steel shell and some well designed ventilation system (must be using the wind to good effect) and it really doesn't smell at all.

This is our camel ride day, although not for everybody. Alex is feeling a bit wonky and decides to sit it out for a day. For breakfast, we are quite excited by the addition of apple jam (all the way from Panama no less) to breakfast. We also see a big group of vultures off in the distance as we are scanning the horizon for our camels. I'm pretty sure they are black vultures, although our bird book only covers Europe so we are not completely sure of a lot of the bird identifications since a whole lot of common birds of Mongolia and Asia are not in there. We are still not sure about a lot of the eagles, maybe one of them was a golden eagle, maybe it was a steppe eagle. Not really sure. But the vultures, they were massive and amazingly impressive, devouring whatever it was dead off in the distance and then hop and slowly lumber off into the air.

We go in and out of the ger a lot this morning, looking for our camels. I seriously bang my head on one of these occasions. Stupid doorways, it is one of the few things I really won't miss about Mongolia, doorways about 4 feet tall. Even if you don't hit them 99% of the time, the few times you do just really suck. After one of these whackings, I end up with a huge cut across my forehead, my badge of shame (or of being unable to stoop so much) which stays for most of the tour before it heals. But our camels, a small herd of them are sighted on the horizon, being chased by two guys on motorcycles. Hurray, here we go. We had a taste of camel riding yesterday, but this will be a much longer day on them. I totally love the ears on mine, they just look so chunky and fuzzy and cute. The camel under them isn't quite as cute, they don't have a unwarranted reputation for stubbornness and strong mindedness. Still, they are pretty cool.

We get some basic camel riding instructions and mount up and head out. Camels respond to the same basic 'choo choo' commands that most animals in Mongolia respond to. And by respond to, I mean ignore unless also accompanied by a stick, whip, or kick. Amy's camel later throws her off, or runs too fast and she slips off, or we don't quite know. She is then put on probation and her camel is tied to the camel guy's camel and she doesn't have to steer for the rest of the trip. As it is, they all like getting their head down to get a few bites of bushes as they go past, you have to keep choo-ing them and pulling their head to keep them going. We loose them completely for a while when they spot some water and nothing can stop them from heading over and sucking up a good drink. They make an amazing vacuuming sound as they drink.

We head along the line of the dunes. I keep hoping that we will head up and over them, but we never do. I guess I later realize why we don't considering how much of a struggle that would have been, but I'm still disappointed. Still, it is a cool ride along the edge and then after some time we stop up sort of higher on the dune and get off to walk around for a little bit. The legs are a bit wobbly and crooked after that long on a camel and it takes a few steps to get the muscles back in place. My inner thigh muscles are not that strong and I can especially tell after getting off. Many of the camel people we see have a strange gait, I wonder if that is the effect of years of riding camels.

We head back and although it is a nice ride and fun, I'm kind of glad to be back. We had met somebody who really wanted to do a three day ride across the desert on camels, we didn't go with her because that would have only been three persons and kind of expensive and also we were a bit intimidated by the idea, but I wonder how that would have been. Although it was good to be back and done, there was also something nice and meditative about riding, just watching the scenery go past slowly, sitting up there. It is a nice pace to see things.

We have a late lunch and it is getting on in the day. Alex doesn't seem much better but the rest of us decide we would rather hike up the sand dunes than do the other half of the camel ride. The dunes are there, looking so high and taunting us with what might be on the other side, you can't pass that up. We set out with more time to spare before sunset (and darkness) and head towards the dunes. I would really love to see a lot of the places we saw in a different season now, probably in summer. The travel guide has a picture on the cover of the sand dunes with horses grazing in a lush green pasture, which I assume is just about where we were, except it is brown now. The hike to the dunes is across this land, dry plants with a bit of scattered sand some occasional parts of the river to jump across. There are a few parts of the river that are a bit tricky getting across, jumping from mound to mound but no wet shoes (and no kitten today to have to mind).

When we hit the sand dunes, we head straight up. It doesn't turn out to be so far, but parts of it are a bit hard to get up. A few ridges crumble and slide and we have to crawl up them. Getting to the very top is so worth the climb too, and not just for curiosity sake. There are no dunes beyond that nearly as tall as the ones we are on, but smaller dunes stretch off in the distance for 5-10 km and it looks like looking out over a rough sea from a cliff. Very cool. The wind is blowing hard at the top is blinding at times. I know I shouldn't have but I try to shield my camera and take a few pictures from the top. It seems to be ok. We sit on the top for a while just enjoying the view and trying not to slip down the other side, way down, it would take ages to get back up. The crest also keeps disappearing under where I am sitting as the wind continually reforms the shape of the dune.

We head back down again and have fun jumping and trying to sled down the steeper bits. I find that as you slow down, you can leap up a bit to propel yourself just a little bit further. A hike back to the ger, a fantastic sunset behind us, just setting into the dunes. I am completely dismayed to find that my camera is not very happy anymore. No doubt a bit of sand caught somewhere, the lens pops out fine when you turn it on but the bits of metal covering it don't slide back the entire way anymore. Pictures then have two diagonal black stripes on the edge. Crap crap, I should have known better. I'm sad too because the sunset is really nice. I guess I have meant to get a new camera anyways, probably when we get to China, but that's not for another few weeks. If I zoom in slightly, it is usable but what a pain. It does have a sort of happy ending, eventually a few days later, the grit must have worked its way out and the lens finally opens all the way again, but still I intend to get a new camera in China. My lens already has a bad smudge on it and it has had a good life.

Back at camp, we have dinner and a special surprise, some hot water in a bucket in a spare ger. We head off two by two to wash the best we can. It isn't as great as a shower but is still nice, especially after a dusty day.

Why don't we do it in the road?

N 44 10.796 E 103 41.449 - 7 October - Bayanzag ger - continued

So, the ger problem, at least with a lot of them, they ranged from boiling hot to freezing cold. A lot of that varied according to how the ger was put together and what fuels they were using. Tonight, we had a sort of leaky ger and a wood fire. A lot of these gers in the Gobi, they were the guest gers, so they didn't seem as carefully tended as the family ones, so they could be a bit drafty.

Some of the actual family ones we stayed in were really decked out, pretty fabric covering the wooden scaffolding on the walls and have elaborate systems of sand or dirt around the outer edge to keep out the wind. This one isn't so carefully done, although not as bad as a later one where the kitten could sneak in through the numerous holes. Wood fires took a while to get started but then when they were going, they roared and it would get blistering hot for a little bit, then they would quickly die down. Dung as a fuel seems to light very quickly, burns a little smelly but doesn't seem to burn as hot but goes longer. Probably the most terrifying thing I've seen is the fire being stoked up with a huge pan load of coal in a rather well insulated ger. It took a while for it to start burning and didn't get super hot right away, but it slowly built all night, with absolutely nothing on, I was still dripping with sweat until it finally started cooling down (unfortunately about 3 am, not a good nights sleep).

Most of the morning, it was pouring rain and high winds much of the morning as we were sleeping. It sounded pretty fearful from inside and we waited out a bit of it while we were packing up and then finally made a run for it. Another funny thing about a lot of this tour, a lot of nights we would be just a few steps away from whatever was famous in the area and have no idea. We drive a few minutes, just slightly further from where we rode the camels last night, we come across the Flaming Cliffs. That seems to be a pattern, a ger camp basically a short walk away from something, but no idea it was there because it isn't on the schedule to see until the next day.

This morning, it is still pouring rain and is quite windy and cold. We jump out of the truck and look a bit and take some pictures. The museum isn't open, well, the ger is locked and nobody is in the ger next to it to unlock the museum. The Flaming Cliffs are where a lot of dinosaur eggs and fossils were found and kind of made it a famous place. The valley too is pretty amazing. It is red sandy cliffs, a deep gorge, reminds me a bit of a smaller Monument Valley. There is a small table which is either rocks for sale (nobody there to tend it though) or is a sort of museum exhibit. I don't know much about rocks so I'm not sure what they were displaying.

We brave the wind and rain as long as we can and them move on. We nearly have lunch then in Bulgan but it is 10:30 and a bit too early for lunch so we keep going. More electioneering is going here. In UB, I had been seeing lots of posters of some guy, just had that election sort of feel to them. I had no idea what the words were saying but it really did scream, blah blah, look how trustworthy I am, vote for me. This town is covered with the same ones and sure enough, we are in the run up to an election in a few days. Nothing like the American elections which have been in the run up stage for seeingly years. I have to say that probably one of the best things about traveling for the last few months is that I have been almost completely ignorant of events going on in the world and especially in the presidential election. The silence has been bliss. I don't think I have missed anything either. I've been carrying around my blank ballot now since I left London (no way to get an actual ballot mailed to me since I have no idea where I would be), I'll probably send that off then when I get to Beijing. Nobody I ever think is even halfway decent makes it very far through the primaries, so I'll just have to hold my nose and vote for who ever is left. Don't need any of the debates or all that junk to choose though.

We see a fox (probably a red fox) later that day running through the desert. Dorj gives it a slight chase to give us a better view. Not an epic sighting but is still nice to see. Probably isn't quite the same as the truck load we run across later. Even though Mongolia is a huge country, a lot of the routes are the same and the same companies go over the same basic roads, when a driver sees somebody they know, they play chicken to try and run each other off the road and then stop and chat for a bit. We chat with the group from Australia and NZ who tell us their driver chased and ran down a lynx and then put in the back. They think it might be likely that it will end up in one of their meals soon.

Tonight's destination is the Khonger sand dunes, our first really major taste of the Gobi. It is a range of sand dunes which range in height from 200 meters to 800 meters (depending on what guide book you read) and stretch about 100 km long. Our ger is right on the edge of them, a short walk to them and then straight up. Our view is of the range of them and we spend the next day curious what is on the other side and what that looks like over there.

The kitten in this camp pretty much dominates everything. It keeps sneaking in our ger through the holes in the felt and when these efforts are rebuffed, it starts climbing up the side and onto the top and staring down the smoke hole at us. When we move tot he ger where the food has been prepared and eat there (a late lunch), it also sneaks into there and eventually uncovers the meat supply. By meat supply, I mean a whole leg of mutton, which it digs its claws into and refuses to let go. It takes two of us to pull it off and even then we have to cut off a bit of the meat to get it off.

Then when we go for a walk to the sand dunes near sunset, it insists on following us which is totally surreal. We walk there and back for probably two hours and it is fairly dark by the time we reach the dunes and turn around, but it follows us the entire way, just a white blur in the dark. We do have to stop and lift it over some of the bigger streams. Totally strange.

So, we have touched the sand now, hiked around the area a little bit and get back to camp in time for dinner. We pass a really cold night in the ger (much leakage of warm air) and will be ready for more camels and sand tomorrow. Just a warning, if you are a lover of cameras and cringe at gritty treatment of them, you best turn your head away for a bit tomorrow.

Two weeks in Mexico, you think you've seen it all, gringo

N 44 10.796 E 103 41.449 - 7 October - Bayanzag ger

Ok, should be just about caught up with uploading pictures. The rest of Estonia and Russia here and then into Mongolia here. But we are off for 4 more days in the country today, this time closer to UB and not so much driving, so I might not finish all of them. Our last few days in Mongolia and then we are off to Beijing on the train.

But where was I then? Erdenedalai, I guess, after our first night sleeping on the floor of somebody's house. The morning was pretty cold and it was a icy misty morning out. We hadn't seen the village yet and we still couldn't really see it when we went outside (toilet, brushing teeth, packing the van, etc), just a sort of dusty town covered in a nice mist.

Breakfast on the whole trip was pretty consistent, sliced bread (ok, one morning we had fried bread instead) and jam and some sort of Nutella type thing (usually Gold M but there was another one one day), and tea. C and I had also brought along some oats (precious, expensive from the State Department store, imported from Germany) for porridge. Ok, oats soaked in hot water, vaguely porridge but a really nice addition to the bread. Also, it became even more critically important, as the trip went on and the food was pretty much meat (just called meat but was generally something that was once on a sheep) and starchy or not very green things (potatoes, rice, carrots, cabbage), the fiber was kind of important to, umm, help push things through the system.

We had read there was a monastery in town, built in honor of one of the Dali Lamas coming to visit and that it was somewhat impressive, Zola can we go see that? She didn't know where it was but would ask. I guess that brings up another problem with the trip, or maybe trips of this type, the classic routes. When we discussed the trip originally, the guy said, ok, you will go here and there and blah blah, but if you want to change anything, just discuss it with your guide and she can make it happen. The problem is that they mostly just know that route and it doesn't turn out to be very flexible at all. We would be reading the travel guide and see things that were close that seemed nice, oh, we passed that yesterday, or we actually have to get to this other place so there isn't time. And a lot of it, she just didn't really know since it wasn't the normal route. Sigh. But it was still good. There is no way we could have seen everything in Mongolia, there would always be things we missed, so it was good to enjoy the things we did see.

But yeah, the monastery, it was just a short walk across the village, of course it was closed. Zola asked something of the guard outside, but I guess it was still closed. It was pretty from the outside though. Zola gave us a short rundown on Buddism, what the various symbols and colors mean. It does seem to be a sort of confusing religion to get an immediate grasp on. Maybe that's been Christianity's strength, it has a pretty immediate kind of risks and benefits and the basic structure of gods and various religious things seem pretty barebones. Or maybe that's from coming from a culture that is filled with the religion and icons and the rest of that. It took much of the next week to get a really basic understanding of it all, why the gods are blue or red, or have skulls hanging off them, and things like that. The big thing to learn was that all of them, even the blue ones, used to be human until they reached enlightenment and became gods. I really liked the service we saw when we were in UB, chanting and singing and playing different sorts of percussion instruments. There seems to be a cool chaos, lots of people in the temple all doing their own thing but also kind of mixing it all up with everybody else, much more personal than just sitting there focusing on one central person preaching to you and having the church built so that your eye is directed to sort of a central point. The monasteries have all sorts of things, scattered all over, things to walk around, prayer wheels to spin, it does seem much more personal and self directed in that way.

So, back in the truck, rough roads, brown dry scenery rushing by (just going to cut and paste that into a lot of this diary), and eventually end up in Mandalgovi at lunch time. The restaurant gets frozen dumplings out of the freezer and it will be 20 minutes, you all can go wandering around if you want (free time). It is funny, on so much of our journey so far, I have been aware of being foreign, and sometimes of being a tourist, but until now, I haven't really felt so much on display. In Sweden or Norway or even Russia, I'm sure I stood out a little bit but I still felt like I could kind of blend in a bit, not be so obviously traveling and from so far away. Here, everybody looks at you, kids tap you and say hi or one,two,three,four, or just giggle and stare. It is funny having things switched on you. I can go to some other country, stand back and look and maybe see things as if they were on display for me, but here, we also become something to be stared and gawked at. A group of four young girls (probably 8-10 yrs) spots us and starts laying out a plastic sheet on the ground, putting various trinkets on it and invites us into their impromptu souvenir shop. Gotta give it to them, they are good, a few stuffed wool camels end up getting bought.

Lunch, dumplings with fatty bits of meat in them. Kind of taste good and also really don't taste good at all, especially the fatty bits. We try some of the milk tea too, which I don't mind so much, but everybody else pretty much hates it. We don't really get it again, which is fine, I mostly want tea and this stuff tastes more like porridge without the oats and a bit of tea in it. Not a horrible taste in itself but not tea.

iPods come out and there is a bit of music. I don't understand why the Red Hot Chili Peppers are the first thing anybody thinks of as road music. I have flashbacks to CRRU and Gardenstown and the endless Chili Peppers there too.

Running out of time to write, I better go and see a few things before we leave UB again. Ended up that night in a nice valley, near a lake, in a ger with lots of camels around. We take a 1 hour camel walk at sunset, up a hill, looking over the camp and the valley near Bayanzag. Quite nice and pretty. Camels, I should write more about them later, what a way to get around the desert though. We then roast in the ger with a hot fire and have dinner and then freeze later that night when the stove goes out and it dips down to 0 C. But more of that in the next chapter.

Where eagles dare

N 46 00.719 E 104 56.774 - 5 October - Erdenedalai - continued

Ok, so we were heading out of town last time. We had stopped at a fancy restaurant for lunch. We were going to stop at a ger restaurant (ger - the ubiquitous housing unit in Mongolia, felt tents, quite an ingenious housing construction - apparently run about 500 USD for one, which is about two months salary, but enough digression) but they didn't have food so we had to go to the fancy tourist resort restaurant. Ok, that's the other thing, our tour mostly stayed in family guest gers, the tour company has arrangements with private families and we stayed there instead of the tourist camps which were ger camps just for tourists. The restaurant was part of one of those, huge parking area which was completely empty. Mid October is not real prime tourist season, it is getting quite cold and most things have closed (rural museums, ger camps, etc) until the spring. There were some tourists around but probably not as many as I would imagine would be about during the summer. The restaurant also had a very posh toilet, flush one but also with added controls for massage and other things we didn't quite understand. It would be the last one too we would see for a while, most rural toilets being of the wooden floor with a slat missing, or just the wide open land itself. Not that that is bad in itself. Some of the outhouses were quite well constructed, deep holes, well ventilated and just fine. There were a few though, it would be best not to speak of them. Moving on.

Our first stop was Baga Gazryn Chuluu (so many of these places have slightly different spellings for the names, being transliterated from Mongolian. Generally the doubled vowels, uu for example mean the stress is on that syllable, not that really helped us pronounce any of them.) There was one of those ubiquitous shines in near it, a stupa, generally a pile of rocks with blue fabric tied to it or something fancier. We climbed up the hill, the tallest one in the area and enjoyed a nice view of the area. Horses and cattle and goats and sheep wandered around below. The climb was slightly challenging, very jagged rocks but worth the hike up. The most exciting thing was the eagles circling around. White tail eagles, we saw quite a few of those.

It wasn't the best time of year for wildlife but it wasn't quite as bad as we were led to believe. I really would like to come back to Mongolia and see things when it is teeming with all sorts of things and covered with green things, but this was still pretty special. For the sake of completeness and since I like making lists of things I have seen, we ended up seeing during the 10 days, goats, sheep, camels, horses, takhi horses, yaks, dogs, a puppy, cats, a kitten, white tailed eagles, golden eagles, bustards (different than buzzards), black vultures, desert foxes, desert finches, pigeons (and other various doves), ravens, hooded crows, magpies, spotted eagles (I think, we saw those in Siberia too), stilts (C saw one, I didn't), choughs, sparrows, ruddy shelducks, and then probably loads more that we didn't identify like those small lizard things, and the rodents that looked like chinchillas, and the little mice (those seemed to co-exist in the places we saw the eagles), and more I couldn't categorize.

We hiked a little longer than planned and it was feared that the weather was going to be bad and close in on us so we went another 100 km longer than we had originally planned and ended up driving in the dark and got to Erdenedalai fairly late. We pulled up into the town and stopped at a gate in a fence. Ok, so that's another thing, rural towns. Out in the deep country, it is just scattered gers surrounded by livestock. Mongolia does have the lowest population density of any other country. The gers move around, a few times a year, moving a few hundred kilometers with seasons and to let the grass grow again. And winter homes tend to have structures built, places to keep animals warm during the cold winter. In towns, people have gers in the front yard, sometimes built more permanent houses and have rows, blocks, fences with a usually blue gate in front. Then in the bigger towns, they have more Soviet looking buildings, brick and concrete, for the government buildings and medical centers and the rest of that and then suburbs of wooden fenced houses. In Mongolia, it was only possible to own land three years ago. If nobody else is living somewhere, you can set up your ger and make an application to the government to live there. Much of UB has been snapped up now and some of the surrounding areas, but a lot of the countryside is still very open.

We pull up to the gate here, please wait here, they go in and check with the family, dogs barking, and everything is arranged. This was one of the few non ger nights, we ended up putting our sleeping bags on their living room floor while the family moved into their other rooms on the other side of the house. At the beginning then, we were all prissy about getting changed and all that, took turns in the room. By the end of the trip, everybody just kind of looked away and pretended they weren't changing. I guess 10 days, 24 hours a day with the same six people, well, it is a recipe for cooperation or warfare. Luckily our group seemed to do pretty well together over the time and we still happily got along during the entire time.

Zola made the first of her nice meals (really, all her meals, some of them were pretty simple even, were the best food we had the whole time, much better than most of the restaurants we went to), a good soup, and we went to sleep. A pretty good first day then.

Been to the desert on a horse with no name

(I've finally uploaded a few pictures, I'm still way behind but there are some from Estonia and a bit of Russia here now.)

N 46 00.719 E 104 56.774 - 5 October - Erdenedalai

Actually, it did have a name, although they tend to call them by their colors, light tan, black, etc. So, I guess mine would have been called light tan but I have no idea how to say that in Mongolian. Ok, they said how it was but it is a difficult language and I'm still struggling to say thank you. Stupid phrase books, they have it as bayla-laa or something like that. You say it and you just get blank looks, they say it completely different but I just still can't get it right. Way too much goes on deep in the throat.

But the horse comes later, we just left Ulan Batar and have a while until we get to the horses and the desert. Mongolia is pretty huge. When we were planning the entire trip, we had no idea what to do and how long, so we just thought 3 weeks in Mongolia sounded about right. Seeing what I have, I think 3 weeks isn't much to see Mongolia. Just driving to all the different classic places to see takes ages and the roads are not so great either. Ok, I should say roads and then make those quote marks with my hands as I say it. Roads are not really built in Mongolia, they are more just places that people tend to drive on more often than other bits of land. Ok, Ulan Batar has a whole lot of roads but once hit the city border, you can go days without seeing another road, at least a paved one. In a lot of places, you might see 5-10 different tracks all next to each other, going roughly the same direction, all conveying a vague sense of road-ness.

Our group packs up our Russian jeep and we head out of town. We picked a 10 day trip, a classic route, actually a bit on the beaten path. I guess it is a classic route for a reason and it isn't like I've been to Mongolia before and would think, oh, that old thing, I've seen that too many times. I guess it was slightly lazy to go on a tour, have a driver and a guide and all that, but I guess we were feeling slightly tired after Russia and that just seemed nice to have somebody hold your hand, tell you want is interesting to see and handle all the complicated things (well, reading menus in restaurants, for example). I still think in hindsight it would have been better to not driven so much and to have had more time in fewer places but still I'm quite happy with it all.

Outside of UB, the paved road quickly ends and we don't see another paved road for about a week (and then for about 3 seconds as we cross it and head onto more dirt roads). Ok, I'm struggling a bit as to how best write about 10 days, we covered probably about 1500 km, saw so many things, had so many silly conversations about food, "feeling the benefit" (needs its own sidebar), sang songs, were sick, well, let me start over then.

Our team first then. Dorj our driver, is a bit legendary among Mongolian drivers, featured in the Lonely Planet guide (most traveler's bible) and I think he is now sort of my hero. Some of the roads were absolutely crazy, the distances were long and for the last half of the trip, he drove with an infected tooth, had it pulled out (badly done by a country dentist), and still drove on, not sleeping for at least three days. He laughed and joked the entire time, except for that one morning where we were the most worried about him and sang songs to try and keep his spirts up (and keep him awake). Zola, our guide and cook and general arranger person, quite a lot of responsibility for a 21 year old. She did a beautiful job, made really nice food, and was just really nice to be around for 10 days. C and I met a group of people in Russia and then kept the team together for our tour. Alex ("stomach problem", spent a few days pretty sick on the trip) and Catriona and Robyn and Amy (the medicine women, who had lots of painkillers and cold things).

The first day, we headed off road onto dirt roads, gullies, rocks, bumping along. And we stopped for lunch and had various things based on sheep. Oh wait, those two happened every day. I think I'm a bit over sheep now, basically everywhere out in the country smells of sheep in some form, either meat or milk. The special tea they make, based on sheep milk, salt, butter is interesting (sort of porridge without the oats) but a few times was enough and I was ready for just plain black tea again. The first place we stopped for lunch was pretty fancy though. The middle of nowhere and a nice building, actual flush toilets and nice dining area. We had our first meal there and I go away with a coming familiar feeling of a stomach filled with a fair amount of sheep fat and meat. Not to say that it wasn't always tasty, but once we got back to UB, we went to this vegetarian restaurant and were just drooling over broccoli and other vegetables. No more sheep for a little bit then.

Well, as tends to happen, I've written too much about nothing so and should go eat breakfast now and finish up later. So, I promise, I'll get to writing about Erdenedalai and the rest of it eventually.

Crosstown traffic, I dont need to run over you

N 52 16.727 E 104 17.030 Monday 29 September 2008 - Irkutsk

Ok, here I was writing about Olkhon and now I'm back in Irkutsk again and I still haven't written about Olkhon yet. We haven't really had internet except for a brief bit to do a quick email check last Thursday and before that it was back in the cafe in Moscow, wow, I think that was like 7-8 days ago. I'm not really sure. I suspect that Mongolia might have longer gaps, although I am assuming that there will be loads of internet cafes in Ulaanbaatar. We still don't know what we are doing there yet, we leave tomorrow night and then will have to set up something when we get there. Probably we will try to meet up with some other people, maybe some of the people we met on Olkhon, or maybe some people we meet there, and then set up some sort of group thing, find a guide/driver and see what we can do over the next three weeks.

But I'm really starting to see the value, or maybe desire, to start finding other people to travel with, or hang out with, or even just talking and planning together. Scandinavia wasn't so horribly difficult, things didn't feel so foreign. I guess even St Petersburg and Moscow felt ok but sort of more out in the wild, it feels a bit better to group up a little bit, or feel a little less isolated and peculiar. Mongolia especially seems a bit full on, a large span of time (three weeks) and a really large country (one of the largest in the world), it has been comforting to have talked to others who have been there and who are going there and talk about possibly meeting up and trying to travel together for a bit.

Hostels seem to be pretty good for that sort of thing. The first night we were in Irkutsk we met a few couples and had dinner out with them. They might not be in Mongolia at the same time though, some were heading the other way too. The four we met in Olkhon, they had met because two of them heard somebody speaking English on the train platform and just tagged along. The fact they they also spoke Russian probably helped too. Then we met the four of them on a expedition in Olkhon and possibly our itineraries will match up, I guess we will see.

Anyways, I probably haven't had a very representative view of Siberia yet. From the train, what we went through looks vast and barren and covered with lots of pretty trees, but this is probably a slightly unusual part of it. I'm not so fond of Irkutsk yet. It feels a bit like a dumpy town, all the bad parts of a town, horrendous traffic, run down buildings, pollution, and the rest of that. It does have a gigantic statue of Lenin just outside our window. Although I could probably say that about almost any town in Russia. Lenina is the main street as well as Karl Marx Street. I wonder if they will end up changing the street names eventually. There are still quite a few red stars all over Russia too, I guess they will probably remain too. I can't say that I actually have any impressions of Irkutsk yet, a few interesting wooden buildings and houses like in the rest of Siberia (and basically the same sort we saw in rural areas since we crossed over from Finland) and there was what we saw running around trying to get the computer cable fixed.

The real action has been outside of town, by the lake, in the lake. I'm not sure Olkhon, the large island in the middle of Lake Baikal is very representative either. Maybe it is but I guess I see Siberia as having lots more trees, or at least something a bit different. But let's see, Lake Baikal, it is massive. Blah blah, the guidebook says it holds 20% of the fresh water supply in the world, deepest lake in the world, or something like that. Also, apparently you could fit Ireland into it. The island is pretty big too, 100 km long by 15 wide. It has a few hundred people living on it, I think about 1/3 Russian (in the towns) and 2/3 Buryat (a lot of the ranchers/fishermen who live outside the towns in small groups)

It was a former gulag (1000 Lithuanians who were forced to do hard labor in a fish factory. It is funny thinking the island seems so beautiful (or even Siberia) when life is so harsh here and so many people have been forced to live here over the years when it was basically like sending people away to the Moon. They didn't need a whole lot of guards, even though the water freezes up and can be walked over (driven over) for a few months in the winter. Once you get to the mainland, then where do you go, you are thousands of kilometers away from anything and there are plenty of wolves and bears to make your probably short remaining life exciting.

Our adventure started by trying to get there. The bus station is about a 30 minute walk away from the center of town. We went armed with a note, "two seats to Olkhon" in Russian (DBA MECTO NA ONBXOH, I have no idea how to make the letters the way they really were), and a vague time as to when buses leave, or the minibuses. The big bus leaves earlier, is slower, well mostly it leaves earlier. When we get there, we can't figure out where they go from, which one, and it is a bit of a panic. If you miss something here, generally there isn't another one for another day (or more). After showing the note to a lot of people, one person finally points us across the street to a waiting van. It hasn't left yet, in fact it isn't full yet so it won't leave until all the seats are filled (or more). We did time it right and got on early and had to wait but didn't have the risk of having to find another way there.

It was a rather hair raising ride at times. Russian driving is a bit scary and there were lots of incidents of passing on blind corners, blind hills, passing even though the car coming the other way had to swerve onto the shoulder, well, it all seems pretty normal. And then racing on really slippery gravel roads next to sharp drop-offs, well, that made me a bit nervous at times. We did get pulled over by a police officer. Well, I should say that one was standing by the side of the road and merely pointed his baton towards the side of the road. The driver saw him way before, slowed down a lot, and put on his seat-belt before getting there and got waved over. They talked a bit behind the van and then the officer took a peek inside the van and we were off. I wonder how much he had to pay him. We hear the going rate is something like 1000 rubles.

The scenery was really amazing on the way. Once we got out of town, with its mad traffic, well the traffic is still a bit mad on the main road. We pass through pretty flat plains, grasslands (probably former forest land) and small settlements and a few marshy areas with yellowing larch and birch in the distance. The second half, we turn towards the lake and start climbing over the hills surrounding the lake and pass even more large patches of woodland, also in full autumn mode. Occasionally we come across trees with bits of cloth and other things tied to them.

The bus ride is about 6 hours, so we see a lot of trees. Also the passengers are a bit of a cast of characters. There are a few tourists, a Swiss couple who are jammed in the back with the two drunkards. One of them seems to hold his alcohol pretty well, he is dressed in camoflauge and I think of him as 'the mercenary'. He apologizes a lot for his friend, or at least I think that is what he is doing. Both of them showed up already completely drunk (9 am) when they boarded the bus, and they both have enough supplies with them to maintain that the entire journey. The other one is barely able to walk, stand, sit, or really anything. He is three rows back so we can only sort of smell him but we do hear him quite a bit. The Swiss get the worst of it, being by him the entire journey. He blabs the entire time, keeps drinking and is generally just a bit unpleasant. I am quite happy that he never ends up vomiting or anything like that. Maybe that would have been a tragic waste of alcohol.

There was also a sulky goth looking girl, who gets off halfway there. And a few other Asian looking locals, two of them are sick and cough on us in the row behind for the entire journey. In front is a mother with her two small children. And we can't forget our heroic driver, who just speeds and races on the gravel roads and generally makes me rather nervous about it all. Maybe the padded ceiling on the bus (eerily like the inside of a coffin lid) is needed in some occasions.

The journey is pretty ok though. The scenery is really pretty, changing from flat grassy lands (saw what we through were a few eagles, too big to be buzzards we thought but can't find them in small bird book we have) to the hilly forests and onto the island over the ferry which was barren and rocky and also beautiful in its own way. We arrive at Nikita's, which I guess everybody starts out there. We heard a few negative things about it the night before at the hostel so thought we might just stay one night and decide the next day whether to stay there or try a home stay somewhere or what.

I guess it was just easier there. Maybe it would have been a little less expensive somewhere else, and maybe somehow it was all a little less genuine, whatever that means. It was a bit of a tourist center and all. The meals were all included (lots of omul), much of the housing had been purpose built, they put on music events in the evening, you know, here is a gen-u-wine experience. I'm not sure I had much interaction with many locals and things were mostly in English. It was quite nice though for the other people there, and it was in the middle of this amazing island to explore.

The island seems to be a dog paradise. Packs of them wander around all over. Some look quite mean and those seem to be tied up outside as guard dogs, a lot of others seem to be lying around in the middle of the streets, or wrestling with other dogs, all vaguely attached to some or other humans. The homestead seemed to have about 5-6 who seemed to make it their center.

How to sum up a few days on the island then? C had caught a nasty cold and wasn't at her best for those days (I blame it on those guys coughing on us all the way there, even though that's way too quick for something to manifest) so we took it slowly the first few days with some walks around the cliffs and beaches and short walks into the woods. Disappointingly, the nearby woods seem to mostly be plantation trees, mostly Scot Pine, the really pretty larch seems to be on the far side of the island. We meant to rent bikes and have a ride around the island that way, but we never really got ourselves together in time for that.

Probably the nicest thing we did was the tour up to the north point of the island. I suppose most everybody does that one, but it is pretty nice. 10 of us in a big green van, or whatever you would call it. I was slightly worried when the driver was pumping up a tire with a hand pump, but I guess that's kind of normal. Considering the state of the roads we went over and the way it kept going over all of them without any sort of apparent problem, that thing could probably drive over anything. At one point during the day, we pulled somebody in a car out of some deep sand, which due to a lack of much vegetation on the west side of the island seems to drift quite deeply even fairly far inland.

He was a pretty good guide, lots of interesting details. He only spoke Russian but luckily there a few in the group who could translate. On the way up, we went past the former gulag, where the former fish factory has since been razed to the ground and is slowly being covered in drifting sand. I found myself caught in thinking it was such a beautiful place, an only slightly cold day in late September, waves washing through the former pier and onto a sandy beach, the high hills across the lake filled with yellowing larches and birch with clouds settling down on the higher parts of the hills. How is it to come somewhere like this on a holiday and think it is lovely when so many others had been trapped here against their will, forced to work long hours in horrible conditions, in extreme weather conditions, with no real hope of ever being able to leave and go home.

The north side of the island looks out over the vast expanse of the lake. The west side, the side we were staying on, it is only a few kilometers to the mainland, while the east side is up to 15-20 kilometers to shore and hundreds to the end of the lake to the north. So much of it here reminded me of being on the coast of Wales or Scotland looking out to sea. The rocks are quite special up on this side of the island too, white granite covered with patches of red lichen. The effect is quite striking and is rather famous. We had stopped 4-5 times at different places heading up here, to look at different things and have short walks.

I had been wondering about the poles and trees covered in cloth. He explained some of that to us at one of the stops, it was a Baryat thing. Poles in the ground, they were used as hitching posts for horses and it was a tradition to leave some sort of indication that you were there, tying on a bit of the clothing you were wearing, or leaving something, a cigarette, or whatever. The poles vaguely memorialize families, a pole per family, and as you sat there, you might think about the families, flick a bit of vodka in that direction. I'm still a little unclear who follows this, is it the Baryat or the Russians or has it just become a little more mainstream and a nice custom? I know the buses and cars, at certain ones of these would slow down and people would chuck out kopeks out the window at it. Considering a ruble is worth about £0.02 and a kopek is 1/100th of that, it is probably a rather cheap thing to chuck out the window.

Ok, I got busy and now it is many days later. I started a bit here, maybe I'll leave that and then sum up quickly since I haven't been in Russia for a few days now and am about to leave for 10 days in the Gobi.

Once we got to the north side of the island, we were let out, hike that way to the tip and then come back through the woods to lunch. So blah blah blah, great hikes, along the cliffs. The lake is amazing looking, so huge. The white granite with the red lichen is really pretty. The hike through the larch forest was good, the needles changing colors and some have already dropped. Just the perfect time to hike through a forest like that. Lunch was waiting for us, a really tasty fish stew and bread and cheese and butter and a nice hot pot of tea (Siberian coffee - I like that Russia is pretty tea mad).

The drive back was pretty, somewhat exhausting though. The roads are a bit mad in places and we were shaken all over. In the drive back, we have acquired some new friends and start planning the next parts of our trip, seeing if we will meet and be able to travel together some more.

It was sad to leave the island then the next day. Although it isn't always easy. We had booked on the minibus which seems to have been overbooked, so a few people couldn't ride on it. The normal bus then had been canceled that day, so the ones on that couldn't come either. They ended up finding other rides to the ferry and then had to wait a few hours for the normal bus on the other side. The bus we were on was mostly the people we had met on the island so it was a totally different time than on the ride up, nice conversations and all that.

The next day, our last day in Irkutsk, the weather turns, it gets cold and finally feels a lot like Siberia. We are not terribly ambitious, a bit of internet cafe trying to sort out what will happen once we get to Mongolia. Just a word of warning, don't send 4 emails to guest-houses in Mongolia asking if they have vacancies and then take off on a train and don't have time to get their replies. We are a bit surprised when there are 4 people waiting for us at 6 am in Ulaanbaatar, ready to take us to their guest-houses. Oops.

Sadly the train ride into Mongolia, we really didn't see much. By the time we got on it and out of Irkutsk, it had gotten dark and was dark all the way around the lake and until after we got to Ulan Ude. We have some pretty scenery then after that but then quickly get to the border crossing and it is all over then. That had to be one of the most surreal experiences in terms of train travel for me. So, it is like 20 km from the last town in Russia to the first town in Mongolia, yet it took us about 10 hours to cover it.

We sit in the Russian station for a few hours, they had disconnected the engine and left only the two carriages destined for Ulaanbaatar sitting on the tracks in front of the station. And then let us sit for a few hours, like 3 hours at this point. Then the train fills up with Mongolians. We had lucked out and our room, 4 bunks, we were alone and had it to ourselves. So, it was a little of an adjustment to having two others in there, and two that we had to work hard to communicate with. Like the Russian phrase book, the Mongolian one is pretty pathetic, and this one doesn't even have a small section of Mongolian to English, just scattered phrases and then an English to Mongolian section. Very frustrating. They were quite nice though, I think on their way back from a big shopping trip, they had many bags of clothes and towels and things like that.

And we sit there. After like 4 hours or so, the Russians fill the train, collecting passports, handing out customs forms and then disappear for another hour or so. Their last burst before they finally let our train reassemble itself and acquire an engine again is a proper intense search. They do search our stuff in a fairly cursory manner, but the compartments themselves get a pretty thorough treatment. Twice they clear us out and they climb all over it searching every where. I wonder what they though they might find there that they wouldn't find in our bags (drugs, weapons, people?). Funny having a search like that in leaving a country.

We creep through the next section, the actual border crossing looks like a real border, barbed wire, towers, the whole deal, and then we sit in a fenced in no man's land for a while before then slowly creeping on over the border and into Mongolia. This part is actually really lovely, hills, water, trees, and lots of pretty things to look at. Our Mongolian roommates are quite excited too, looking a lot and urging us to take lots of pictures of things. Then we reach the first station in Mongolia and it starts all over again. A few hours sitting there, waiting for them to take passports, do customs inspections and the rest of that. Eventually they do, which doesn't then take that long and isn't as intense as the Russian one (or as apparently it used to be, tearing apart compartments, searching absolutely everything, etc) and the inspector even smiles and says welcome to Mongolia when he is done. Our new Mongolian friends then disappear and we then wait and wait until the train will move again. By the time it does, it is 10 pm and way past dark, and we don't see anything more of Mongolia since our train gets to Ulaanbaatar at 6 am before it gets light. We got to that last stop in Russia around 1 pm too and feel totally exhausted from sitting around for so long doing absolutely nothing.

Anyways, that was days ago (now 4 October 2008 in UB), I'll have to finish the rest later. We leave UB tomorrow morning for a 10 day trip around the Gobi with the 4 people we had met in Siberia. They are really nice and it should be really good. We have been in UB for three days now and I have just started to get the hang of dealing with crossing the street (a rather lethal and scary thing to do). The town itself doesn't seem to be much to be excited about. A lot of our time here so far has been organizing things for the tour. But I should see about finishing the packing and getting some sleep, it is a long drive tomorrow (as many of the days will be) and I'm excited to get going.