A picture of our hostels courtyard.
Sunday, 20 April 2008
Wednesday, 9 April 2008
Siberian Logging
Interesting to find this article on the BBC news website this morning, we certainly saw a huge amount of wood heading towards China and trains which had a lot more than 30 wagons on them, these trains were running every couple of minutes. We were supprised at the amount of logging taking place and seemed to pass many villages which had cut down all wood for miles around them... W e doubt the Russians will be doing anything about it any time soon!
Siberian Logging
Siberian Logging
Sunday, 6 April 2008
Another sign which made us laugh...
We found this one in the zoo...
It says "for the safety reason please do not leap across the rail"
No car bombs?
Maybe if they put some of these up in Bagdad it may help? We found this sign near the forbidden city.
Thursday, 3 April 2008
Astrophysics and Vodka
Sam and I had had our eye on this trip since first arriving at the hostel: “watch the stars at night” this was trip up to the Mongolian observatory just outside of UB. Mr Kim the guest house owner has made friends with the scientists so for a small fee and a bottle of vodka we were able to visit. Apparently Mongolia is great for observing the sky as it has the one of the highest number of clear nights per year compared to other countries. This is due to it being so land locked. The observatory is a collection of quite grand buildings perched on top of one of UB’s surrounding mountains, built by Russia in the 60’s now was now only used by a couple of people.
Sam and I also managed to get an Auzzie guy and German girl to come with us. Pickup was at 20:15 and we jumped into something similar to an old Toyota Corolla. The trip up there was experience enough! The Mongols drive like crazy people. To add to this already bizarre mindset our driver had a right hand drive car which meant he drove in the middle of the road for most of the way unless he was forced back onto the right hand side by oncoming vehicles, and even this was done reluctantly and at the last second. Overtaking in Mongolia is something which is done by most; Have a look, make sure something is coming the other way, put your foot on the slow reacting accelerator (automatics), beep your horn loudly and flash your lights, decide that you are going then to play chicken for a bit longer while you continue to try and overtake every other car, truck, bus heading your way then swerve in at the last breath, let the car go past and resume middle of the road position until an equally exciting opportunity for this favourite Mongol drivers game presents itself again.
Luckily though we weren’t on the main roads (by this I mean tarmac) too long. Our driver had already stopped of for a bottle of vodka to give to the guy at the observatory who would be showing us around and let us know he doesn’t like driving on the main roads as it is too busy. He then announced with this we would be taking a short cut – to the observatory perched on top of one of the surrounding mountains. So we headed off the road through a yurt/badly built housing estate. Pausing every now and then to decide a left or right through this wooden fenced warren. Eventually we were spat out of the estate into what can only be described as its sewage/rubbish dumping ground. The driver picked his way between the piles of rubbish and squeezed through an extremely narrow tunnel (he got the wing mirror on the way back), through some slurry the other side and then jetted off in his Toyota Corolla up the hillside. Now the type of car we are in is definitely not built for this sort of ground at this sort of speed, but we bumped and rocked our way up there and finally met the ‘main road’ (not tarmac, but less bumpy than the rest of the field) taking us the last bit of our journey up the dark hill.
On arrival at the observatory we were met with a rather large, austere looking building, which we later found out was were where the astrologers lived/did their work. Our guy referred to it at the 7 star hotel (a good double pun as they call the Plough constellation the seven stars of God). We found our star man buried in his tiny work/living quarters, he could speak very good English and gave us a small astrology lesson before we set off to the telescope. We learnt about the distances of our planets, other galaxies and stars from the earth (he was very relieved when we said we understood light years). He was also an avid researcher of meteorite crash sites, this was his ‘thing’ so we got to look at some pictures and hear some stories about them, there are even a few large ones in Europe – Germany, Finland, Spain, Latvia. Outside on the way up to the telescope our enthusiastic and very knowledgeable sky guide pointed out various stars and constellations, which, despite the large number of stars in the sky and vague hand waving we saw! so learnt some new ones, we have learnt Taurus and Pegasus, saw Saturn, Mars and the Polar star. The telescope we were going to be using is now only for visitors, they have a much more hi-tech digital one (which was from America and had been broken for the past 7 months) that they use to see galaxies, comets etc.. Our telescope was in a large circular building which was getting a paint job on the interior, the instructions “don’t touch the walls” seemed an easy enough order to follow until we got inside and had to walk up some stairs barley wide enough for your shoulders. We got to the domed room at the top and turned off the lights. Then, with much creaking and wooden panel sliding noises part of the roof slid open to reveal the night sky. Very exciting stuff! Our galaxy guide then set to work finding the Orion Nebula, which he managed no probs. The telescope itself was something to be reckoned with. Built in Eastern Germany, it is made up of three interconnecting parts (honestly you couldn’t dream this stuff up) which all acted as….arms, which meant the telescope could be swivelled, angles changed, heights adjusted, all the things you would expect a telescope to do, but moving from one part of the sky to another required moving all three parts in certain patterns to get to the right position – watch your heads!
Through the telescope we first saw the Orion nebula – a cluster of stars on Orion’s sword (or as the Auzzies would say, on the handle of the upside down saucepan) surrounded by a huge slivery cloud of star matter – very pretty. We also saw Mars, though at this point he hadn’t told us how we adjust the focus so it was a big red glinting blob. What was good was once we had seen it through the telescope we could then look at the sky and see the red twinkling star and know it was Mars. As Mr Cosmos loved impact craters he was particularly keen to show us the impact craters on the moon. Unfortunately at this point it had moved behind a large clump of trees, after many frantic movements, Mongolian “tchiss” ing and cursing the trees he beckoned me (Sarah) up to the eye piece. Looking past the blurry streak of a tree down one side of my vision I saw, crisp as anything, a crater on the edge of the new moon – amazing, so clear and so detailed. By the time I dragged my eye away the moon had properly settled itself behind a few sickly looking pine trees and no-one else got to see as much as I did (sorry!) but it was worth it and I want a telescope now! The highlight came when we were told we were going to look at Saturn. Peering through the eyepiece and adjusting the focus Saturn and its rings shimmered into existence. Truly a memorable vision.
Crater man had been living up at the observatory for 200 days, and we think it showed. Our driver was nowhere to be found on our arrival back at the work/living quarters so we piled into his tiny office/kitchen/”sex room” (nice) and cracked open the vodka. After a couple of shots we got to learn all about his family, Studies and love of impact craters. His wife is a palentologist and his daughter is 24 and working in Japan. He studied in Moscow (for 15 years!) and went on expeditions to the black sea for six months of every year, he then came back to Mongolia where he works in the observatory and travels Mongolia and other countries studying craters found by satellites. After agreeing that three large shots of vodka is lucky we had a look at loads of pictures on his computer, some of his crater trips, family, the moon, eclipses, Saturns phases and the best of all, the collection of pictures aboard Voyager. Sparing a thought for these pictures and Voyager in general, we have given them our chemistry, anatomy, lifestyles (in the 70’s/80’s), address, basically some darn good intellegience if they ever decide to come and destroy us. After this sobering though we decided another ‘chut-chut’ of vodka was required. By the time the driver reappeared he could hardly drag us away or stop galaxy guy from finding new things to show us! The journey home luckily was much less scary as we had finished off the bottle of vodka…
A weeks jolly to the Gobi
The Gobi, once part of a large inland sea covers one third of Mongolia. Gobi is simply the Mongolian word for desert. Stretching from the southern region of Khovd in the West all way to the Dariganga region in the East and into northern China the area consists of scrub and rocky plains, with dunes only making up 3%. It is a land of extremes, it receives proper rainfall only every two or three years, and has temperatures soaring to +40 (Celsius) in the summer and dropping to a numbing -40 in the winter. Despite these hurdles life goes on and the Gobi is host to a wide range of fauna: Gazelle, Wild Ass, Takhi (Mongolian wild horses), Antelope, Vultures, Ravens, Buzzards, Desert Warblers, the Bactrian two humped camel and the worlds only desert bear, imaginatively named the Gobi bear, to name but a few. Unfortunately many of these animals are having a particularly tough time of it, apparently 28 species of mammals are endangered in Mongolia as a whole, some of which live in the Gobi: Wild Ass, Wild Bactrian Camels, Gobi argali sheep and the Gobi bear, of which there are only 25 left in the wild. The Flora mainly consists of saxaul, a stubby shrub; the wood of this shrub is so dense that it can sink in water.
The route we would be taking would make a triangle, heading south from UB, down towards the largest town in the south and regional capital, Dalanzagad, turning west towards Gurvan Saikham National Park and then heading north east back to UB. The trip was going to be seven days, six nights and we would be staying with families and friends of the driver along the way. The night before our departure Sam and I got prepared for our trip: Torch, penknife, basic first aid kit, thermals, hat gloves, toothbrush…the usual, and we got some supplies which consisted of plenty of noodles, tinned fruit, beer, vodka, jam, bottles of water and lots of cakes as we had two birthdays to celebrate! The French people we were travelling with were a little less prepared, turning up, after a heavy nights drinking with carrier bags full of beer, two bottles of vodka and little else.
Our driver got us, our bags and supplies neatly loaded up and we were ready for the off! Our drivers name was Baatar (which in Mongolian means Hero! and in French means bastard), he could speak a tiny bit of English, was 25 and wrestled when he wasn’t driving, he was a big lad. We had a whole days driving ahead of us so we settled in for a long stretch. The drive out of the city was the usual nerve wrecking experience and soon we were trundling along with UB fading away behind us. All of a sudden along a perfectly straight part of the road Baatar swerves off the tarmac along virgin land and the van springs into life, bouncing and rocking, moving more up and down, left and right than forward. Bataar turned and made what we thought was a joke “haha, road to Gobi”, we thought he was taking some kind of short cut or stopping off somewhere, but no, this was how it was going to be for the rest of the trip. It wasn’t the road to nowhere, it wasn’t even the dirt track to nowhere it was a ‘lets drive along nothing to nowhere’
Mongolia has 49500km of ‘roads’ (really in the loosest possible terms, not even tracks just areas where people may have driven before!) of which 2.9% is apparently mettaled. Of this 2.9% we would guess only about 40% of the tarmac actually remains so as a result the vehicle would have to be one tough cookie. To be honest when we saw our vehicle we thought it was a bit of a joke, it looked like a soviet style camper van and it was errr… Russian. We had seen plenty of them around (in Russia and Ukraine) and really wanted to ride in one, but not really for an expedition to the dessert! Still, we reassured ourselves, if they were good enough to be Ukrainian ambulances then they were good enough for us.. It turned out to be great. The engine was inside the van on the front seat between the driver and passenger, good for keeping and eye on it and minimising potential dust in the engine. It was high up, comfy and could be repaired by nomads with hammers and scrap metal.
We drove for about eight hours on the first day. Our days with regard to driving normally involved aiming to leave at about 9am, driving until lunchtime, a lunch break, continue driving and stopping off at any sights and aiming to arrive at the camp between 4-6pm.
Not long into our bumpy journey we spotted what we think were white tailed deer. Now any normal driver or safari tour would stop and let you observe the wildlife in a peaceful way… instead Bataar hurtled off the track with his foot was firmly on the gas of the soviet beast rocketing us towards the large group of deer. They ran, and ran, veering left then right, but Baatar wasn’t going to give up easily, he chased them across the flat and started up the side of a hill, these things are quick and there was no way we were going to catch them without doing some serious damage to the van and ourselves who were getting thrown about and whooping in the back, so after a few minutes we surrendered and headed back to the track, all feeling quite exhilarated! The scenery was, in a word, barren. We saw a total of five cars all day, the endless stretching scrub plains and rock-strewn hills went rolling by, hour after hour. We would sometimes spot a glimmer of life in the wasteland; a camel, nomad camp or some horses and we would all point and stare at this bit of brain sugar until it passed, swallowed up by the scrub. This may sound boring and I perhaps haven’t painted an alluring picture, but this is the place for your mind to wander, the unrelenting space and scenery invites you to almost dream while awake. It really is something to see and be a part of. If someone was to ask us for a visual representation of infinity (ya know like they always do..) we would have to bring them to Mongolia, it sounds cheesy but we have never seen the horizon so far away, just endless land joining an endless sky a long long way away. Occasionally we followed telegraph poles connecting distant dusty towns, the poles in a dead straight line hundreds of them visible for as far as you could see. The track we were driving on was no more than a few tyre prints in the dust or snow, and every so often Battar would turn off, drive randomly across the desert to then pick up a new trail. How he knew when to turn off and were exactly to go still remains a mystery, Mongols must have some sort of innate honing system/GPS to find their way through this wilderness, his skills as a driver were to become even more apparent as the week progressed.
By late afternoon on the first day we had arrived at what was our first stop, smooth rocky outcrops which we climbed up. It was good to get some invigorating exercise after the long bumpy drive, it was extremely windy, the sort of wind that laughs in the face of clothes and bites right through. After all the cobwebs had been blasted out and we had taken in the rolling, mustard yellows and ochre’s, faded greens and greys, stretching out to the horizon, disappearing round hills and rocky projections we warmed up in the van as we headed towards our first nights accommodation. The camp was located strangely amongst clumps of knee high tough grasses, it was the only vegetation for a long way so must have been some kind of oasis, but don’t get the wrong impression, this was far from lush – just some dry dead grass in amongst the dry barren steppe. We unloaded into our yurt, everything in the car has to be moved into the yurt as the temperatures drop well below freezing during the night. The yurt is a great piece of planning for the nomads; These round felt tents can be erected or dismantled in a couple of hours, they are fairly large and are used as communal living quarters, kitchen, living room, bedroom, everything happens in these round tents. In the centre of all Yurts is a small stove with a chimney extending out of the top of the tent. These stoves are more often than not, kept alive by animal poo, yak, goat, camel, whatever animal is being kept.
Spring in Mongolia is unfortunately the harshest time of year for the nomads, the rain normally falls towards the end of the summer so the spring is dry, dusty, windy and unforgiving. It’s a time when the weaker animals die and lie frozen until the sun defrosts them. Summer is hectic and busy with many chores and looking after livestock, so strangely the nomads actually like the savage winters as it’s a time of relaxation. We were visiting in spring and it was clear death was all around, dead dogs, camels, sheep, even one of the nomads we were due to visit was caught out in freak weather and died. This was a man who must have grown up knowing the dangers and who still fell prey to the savage conditions. The weather in Mongolia is extremely fickle as very quickly the temperature can drop unexpectedly catching you out. On a positive note the Mongolians like to call the sky blue heaven, it really is the polar opposite to the sky in Britain as they have over 260 cloudless days every year, no clouds just a brilliant blue (cold) sky!
The yurt was heated up by the dung stove in the middle of the room worked surprisingly well. This first night was the only night we would get to use yak poo as a fuel which we determined was the best and most efficient out of all the animal waste fuels (we got to try a couple of different types). The yak poo didn’t have a pungent aroma when burnt, it caught alight quickly, burnt for a long time when compared to the others and gave off a lot of heat. In fact the dung fires were so good that quickly the yurt would become uncomfortably hot and you would have to start taking off all your clothes, when it came to going to sleep it was far to hot to sleep in your sleeping bag so we would fall asleep on top, sweating. When the fire died down the temperature would quickly drop waking you up a few hours later in the absolute pitch black damn cold sending you deep into your sleeping bag, the mornings were bitterly cold until the fire was lit again.
The food on this first night would become a staple for the rest of our trip, it was mutton with lumps of mutton fat in rice served up with tea. The mutton and rice was not too bad but became a little boring after a while. The tea here is not what you would imagine tea to look like, it’s a grey milky salty liquid with the smallest amount of tea in, so small that it actually tastes nothing like tea. Mongolians buy the worst lowest quality tea from china, its all the scraps and stalks compressed into big blocks which they use a small amount boiled in whatever milk is available, usually camel or goat. Its actually very nice but its not tea, more just a warm salty milk drink.
The breakfast was not so good. We were given large flat unleavened bread biscuits that were rock solid, old ships biscuits are like soft cookies in comparison. As we were given a flask of hot water and a pan at the same time I was convinced we had to soak them to soften them… after 15 mins they were still rock solid! The woman who had given us the bread laughed when she saw what we were trying to do and showed us that you actually had to break it up and eat it hard and crunchy style. It really hurt your teeth and as it contained no salt or sugar it just tasted like hard old flour, it wasn’t good. Sometime we were also given some kind of hardened yak milk that was truly pungent and absolutely disgusting. I love blue, strong cheese but this was something else, rock hard, flaky and really rank smelling. It always just sat there untouched.
With cloudless skies every sunset was amazing, bright colours splashed all over the place followed by the darkest nights possible. For some reason the sky was without the moon all week (is this the new moon period of the lunar cycle?), we think it rose later in the morning but we are not sure, anyway having no moon meant you could see absolutely nothing except every star visible to the naked eye and a small slither of light maybe from the doorframe of the yurt. Watching the stars was amazing and if you looked long enough then satellites and shooting stars could be seen, the only problem was the cold! The temperature was lower that -20 (but no wind!) some nights so you couldn’t really hang around looking up, if you inhaled through your nose you could feel the snot freezing hard and when my nose ran it would crystallise in my beard (nice!).
The second day was another long day of off road driving, another chance to sit back with some music and let your mind wander, another chance to think to yourself what the hell are these people doing here. The past winters have been particularly hard and the rains have come late so apparently a lot of livestock has died making their lives even more difficult. Being there you can’t help think how its strange and remarkable that these people are trying to survive in a desert, trying to graze their livestock in an environment that is doing everything possible to kick them out.
In the afternoon we stopped and some bright red fiery cliffs famous for the dinosaur expeditions in the 1920s that uncovered huge amounts of bones and fossils in the soft sedimentary rocks. It was a nice place to walk about and clamber up and down the cliffs.
On the second day of driving we saw no one else all day and had a puncture about lunchtime so worryingly we were driving without a spare for the next day and a half.
The second evening our camp was even more remote than before and the temperature dropped to a very low level. We were using camel dung on the fire which did not burn as efficiently as yak dung and smelt not so good. There were four gers at this site, the owners were camel herders with quite a lot of camels.
The next morning because of the low temperatures the car would not start. The driver had to blow torch the bottom of the engine for about half an hour before we could then try and bump start it, whilst he was underneath it was notice that the suspension was looking a little ropy. Whilst we were waiting for them to repair that we played about with the children and helped the family out with some of their jobs. They were busy milking the camels and getting the camels out to the various different areas to graze or drink. We were able to try camels milk for the first time here which was nice.
This third day was Sarah’s birthday, luckily after the late start we did not have much driving to do, after about 4 hours we were in Dalanzadgad, the regional capital of the southern aimegs
Dalanzadgad was something out of a Wild West film. Wide dusty, dirt streets, wooden fencing everywhere, the town seemed very still, some tumble weed blowing between the streets wouldn’t have gone amiss. The differences however were enough to make you remember you are in Mongolia; the round Gers, now in fenced off compounds, camels tied up in the yard peering over the fence, some people still wearing traditional dress, and the screams of children as they came springing past on top of camels seemingly out of control. The town was a maze of these dust streets and Ger compounds, but Baatar got us to our third nights stop. It was quite early, about 3-4pm. We unloaded all our stuff and the very friendly lady brought us tea and a big pile of sweet scones and biscuits. We were in this town, easily a couple of kilometres through the maze of streets from the tiny town centre, we would need a guide to help us find our way! Just then Baatar announced there was a camel festival going on a couple of kilometres out of town, so we hastily grabbed the cameras and jumped back in the van. The camel festival was actually a big camel polo tournament, we saw at least 10-12 teams. Camel polo is a great game, these large cumbersome looking animals hurriedly loping around the pitch, being dragged this way and that by their nose, the riders on top leaning off them at crazy angles and hitting the polo ball towards the goal, which by then has a large camel standing side on in it with the goalie in the unfortunate position of trying to stop the goal being scored. It is a great game and one is at serious risk of being trampled if the ball comes near the sideline. The other highlight was the penalty shoot out. The crowds and other teams stream onto the pitch and create an alleyway of spectators and camels, the team members then have goes at penalty shooting, which involves the camel and rider running down the alleyway of people and scoring a goal. The audience gets very involved with lots of shouting and cheering. We stayed there for an hour or two before heading back to town. Baatar dropped us off near some showers and a shop. We knew there was a bar around here somewhere so managed to get Baatar to come back in two hours. The town centre mainly involved a couple of small squares, with very little in them, however past the outdoor pool tables we found ‘The Gobi Bear’ bar, also attached to a shop, so two birds with one stone! We sat down to a couple of beers and ordered some food, which involved us pointing at an incomprehensible line on the menu. All the meals were variations on mutton, rice and mutton fat. Sam had bite size deep fried mutton bones which were 90% fat and some rice. Mine was a bit better as it didn’t have so much fat.
The following day we spent trying to cross over a mountain range to make it to an area of large sand dunes which apparently sing in the wind, the only problem was it had snowed heavily the previous night making all previous tracks invisible. Because of the lack of tracks we spent most of the morning trying to find the way around large gullies cutting off our route over the mountains. After a few hours of not much luck, being stuck in deep snow and crashing into a ditch hidden by snow our driver said that it wasn’t going to be possible so we headed to a different area.
This camp was situated in a field of sand dunes with some small shrub like trees doted about. The family we stayed with were camel herders who were scratching a living in a really inhospitable area of the country, trying to keep their camels alive in the harsh desert. We spent two days here exploring the area, climbing sand dunes and taking some of the camels out for a ride, something which I did not enjoy initially but once I was handed by reigns and whip it was great fun trying to make my slow camel run instead of eat! The food here was very bad, just very sandy rice with flecks of fat, the sand would have not been so bad if we had not seen the amount of poo all over the place. Basically if the sand was from outside the ger then it would have been touching poo.
The last evening was spent in a hilly area with some slight vegetation further north and probably just outside of the Gobi zone. Really we were just killing time before we could head back to UB as by this time we were all desperate for a decent meal and some kind of wash (no washing so far so everyone was feeling a little skanky). Sarah and I walked up a near by hill with a can of beer and our books to chill out on top to watch the sunset and talk about the trip so far.
The last day of driving was an epic 8 hours off-road past some pretty uneventful scenery. Stopped off at a relatively nice restaurant where we had a nice long lunch. I should have been suspicious when my food came out 15 minutes before everyone else’s but it tasted good at the time. Arrived back in UB just in time for rush hour so from the outskirts of the city it took us at least an hour to get back to the hostel. Because the water supply to the hostel was down we headed straight out for food, a nice big pepperoni pizza. Unfortunately two hours later it all came back up after my dodgy lunch, such a waste of good pizza. Sarah then had to spend a night with me running out of the room often to empty various bodily chambers.
All in all the trip was amazing and a great chance to see some of Mongolia’s wildest landscapes. The people were incredible, the scenery was epic and the journey was more of an expedition than anything else.
We were not sure what to expect from the people we met, perhaps we thought they lived like this because they had no other choice or because they knew no different, maybe it would be awkward to stay with them but this could not have been further from the truth. It seemed that the nomads in Mongolia positively enjoyed the countryside and chose this lifestyle, they knew from the satellite TV what life was like elsewhere but chose to stay away from the big city, too busy, too many people and no place for your animals. Even though they see every sunrise every day one nomad still walked up to me and said (I think) how beautiful the sunrise was then stood and enjoyed it with me for five minutes before mounting his camel to head of with his heard. In these tiny communities there is no privacy as everyone shares one or two gers, everything is done together and family bonds are so strong. The locals thought it was very strange that we knocked on the door before we entered and just expected us to walk on in and sit down, when we did just walk in and sit down in front of the tv they would not bat an eyelid, it would hardly register with them, you just sit there and a few minutes later some tea would appear, but everyone else is either mesmerised by the tv or getting on with their jobs.
We were told the main factor for nomads moving to towns or the city were the need for modern services such as healthcare or education for children or if they have a sick/old family member who needs looking after.
When you first turn up to a ger camp people shout a greeting which would mean in English ‘can I come in’ but what it actually translates to is ‘Hold the dog!’ we found this quite funny.
Oh we also visited a frozen river in a rock canyon with a large frozen waterfall.. forgot to mention!
The route we would be taking would make a triangle, heading south from UB, down towards the largest town in the south and regional capital, Dalanzagad, turning west towards Gurvan Saikham National Park and then heading north east back to UB. The trip was going to be seven days, six nights and we would be staying with families and friends of the driver along the way. The night before our departure Sam and I got prepared for our trip: Torch, penknife, basic first aid kit, thermals, hat gloves, toothbrush…the usual, and we got some supplies which consisted of plenty of noodles, tinned fruit, beer, vodka, jam, bottles of water and lots of cakes as we had two birthdays to celebrate! The French people we were travelling with were a little less prepared, turning up, after a heavy nights drinking with carrier bags full of beer, two bottles of vodka and little else.
Our driver got us, our bags and supplies neatly loaded up and we were ready for the off! Our drivers name was Baatar (which in Mongolian means Hero! and in French means bastard), he could speak a tiny bit of English, was 25 and wrestled when he wasn’t driving, he was a big lad. We had a whole days driving ahead of us so we settled in for a long stretch. The drive out of the city was the usual nerve wrecking experience and soon we were trundling along with UB fading away behind us. All of a sudden along a perfectly straight part of the road Baatar swerves off the tarmac along virgin land and the van springs into life, bouncing and rocking, moving more up and down, left and right than forward. Bataar turned and made what we thought was a joke “haha, road to Gobi”, we thought he was taking some kind of short cut or stopping off somewhere, but no, this was how it was going to be for the rest of the trip. It wasn’t the road to nowhere, it wasn’t even the dirt track to nowhere it was a ‘lets drive along nothing to nowhere’
Mongolia has 49500km of ‘roads’ (really in the loosest possible terms, not even tracks just areas where people may have driven before!) of which 2.9% is apparently mettaled. Of this 2.9% we would guess only about 40% of the tarmac actually remains so as a result the vehicle would have to be one tough cookie. To be honest when we saw our vehicle we thought it was a bit of a joke, it looked like a soviet style camper van and it was errr… Russian. We had seen plenty of them around (in Russia and Ukraine) and really wanted to ride in one, but not really for an expedition to the dessert! Still, we reassured ourselves, if they were good enough to be Ukrainian ambulances then they were good enough for us.. It turned out to be great. The engine was inside the van on the front seat between the driver and passenger, good for keeping and eye on it and minimising potential dust in the engine. It was high up, comfy and could be repaired by nomads with hammers and scrap metal.
We drove for about eight hours on the first day. Our days with regard to driving normally involved aiming to leave at about 9am, driving until lunchtime, a lunch break, continue driving and stopping off at any sights and aiming to arrive at the camp between 4-6pm.
Not long into our bumpy journey we spotted what we think were white tailed deer. Now any normal driver or safari tour would stop and let you observe the wildlife in a peaceful way… instead Bataar hurtled off the track with his foot was firmly on the gas of the soviet beast rocketing us towards the large group of deer. They ran, and ran, veering left then right, but Baatar wasn’t going to give up easily, he chased them across the flat and started up the side of a hill, these things are quick and there was no way we were going to catch them without doing some serious damage to the van and ourselves who were getting thrown about and whooping in the back, so after a few minutes we surrendered and headed back to the track, all feeling quite exhilarated! The scenery was, in a word, barren. We saw a total of five cars all day, the endless stretching scrub plains and rock-strewn hills went rolling by, hour after hour. We would sometimes spot a glimmer of life in the wasteland; a camel, nomad camp or some horses and we would all point and stare at this bit of brain sugar until it passed, swallowed up by the scrub. This may sound boring and I perhaps haven’t painted an alluring picture, but this is the place for your mind to wander, the unrelenting space and scenery invites you to almost dream while awake. It really is something to see and be a part of. If someone was to ask us for a visual representation of infinity (ya know like they always do..) we would have to bring them to Mongolia, it sounds cheesy but we have never seen the horizon so far away, just endless land joining an endless sky a long long way away. Occasionally we followed telegraph poles connecting distant dusty towns, the poles in a dead straight line hundreds of them visible for as far as you could see. The track we were driving on was no more than a few tyre prints in the dust or snow, and every so often Battar would turn off, drive randomly across the desert to then pick up a new trail. How he knew when to turn off and were exactly to go still remains a mystery, Mongols must have some sort of innate honing system/GPS to find their way through this wilderness, his skills as a driver were to become even more apparent as the week progressed.
By late afternoon on the first day we had arrived at what was our first stop, smooth rocky outcrops which we climbed up. It was good to get some invigorating exercise after the long bumpy drive, it was extremely windy, the sort of wind that laughs in the face of clothes and bites right through. After all the cobwebs had been blasted out and we had taken in the rolling, mustard yellows and ochre’s, faded greens and greys, stretching out to the horizon, disappearing round hills and rocky projections we warmed up in the van as we headed towards our first nights accommodation. The camp was located strangely amongst clumps of knee high tough grasses, it was the only vegetation for a long way so must have been some kind of oasis, but don’t get the wrong impression, this was far from lush – just some dry dead grass in amongst the dry barren steppe. We unloaded into our yurt, everything in the car has to be moved into the yurt as the temperatures drop well below freezing during the night. The yurt is a great piece of planning for the nomads; These round felt tents can be erected or dismantled in a couple of hours, they are fairly large and are used as communal living quarters, kitchen, living room, bedroom, everything happens in these round tents. In the centre of all Yurts is a small stove with a chimney extending out of the top of the tent. These stoves are more often than not, kept alive by animal poo, yak, goat, camel, whatever animal is being kept.
Spring in Mongolia is unfortunately the harshest time of year for the nomads, the rain normally falls towards the end of the summer so the spring is dry, dusty, windy and unforgiving. It’s a time when the weaker animals die and lie frozen until the sun defrosts them. Summer is hectic and busy with many chores and looking after livestock, so strangely the nomads actually like the savage winters as it’s a time of relaxation. We were visiting in spring and it was clear death was all around, dead dogs, camels, sheep, even one of the nomads we were due to visit was caught out in freak weather and died. This was a man who must have grown up knowing the dangers and who still fell prey to the savage conditions. The weather in Mongolia is extremely fickle as very quickly the temperature can drop unexpectedly catching you out. On a positive note the Mongolians like to call the sky blue heaven, it really is the polar opposite to the sky in Britain as they have over 260 cloudless days every year, no clouds just a brilliant blue (cold) sky!
The yurt was heated up by the dung stove in the middle of the room worked surprisingly well. This first night was the only night we would get to use yak poo as a fuel which we determined was the best and most efficient out of all the animal waste fuels (we got to try a couple of different types). The yak poo didn’t have a pungent aroma when burnt, it caught alight quickly, burnt for a long time when compared to the others and gave off a lot of heat. In fact the dung fires were so good that quickly the yurt would become uncomfortably hot and you would have to start taking off all your clothes, when it came to going to sleep it was far to hot to sleep in your sleeping bag so we would fall asleep on top, sweating. When the fire died down the temperature would quickly drop waking you up a few hours later in the absolute pitch black damn cold sending you deep into your sleeping bag, the mornings were bitterly cold until the fire was lit again.
The food on this first night would become a staple for the rest of our trip, it was mutton with lumps of mutton fat in rice served up with tea. The mutton and rice was not too bad but became a little boring after a while. The tea here is not what you would imagine tea to look like, it’s a grey milky salty liquid with the smallest amount of tea in, so small that it actually tastes nothing like tea. Mongolians buy the worst lowest quality tea from china, its all the scraps and stalks compressed into big blocks which they use a small amount boiled in whatever milk is available, usually camel or goat. Its actually very nice but its not tea, more just a warm salty milk drink.
The breakfast was not so good. We were given large flat unleavened bread biscuits that were rock solid, old ships biscuits are like soft cookies in comparison. As we were given a flask of hot water and a pan at the same time I was convinced we had to soak them to soften them… after 15 mins they were still rock solid! The woman who had given us the bread laughed when she saw what we were trying to do and showed us that you actually had to break it up and eat it hard and crunchy style. It really hurt your teeth and as it contained no salt or sugar it just tasted like hard old flour, it wasn’t good. Sometime we were also given some kind of hardened yak milk that was truly pungent and absolutely disgusting. I love blue, strong cheese but this was something else, rock hard, flaky and really rank smelling. It always just sat there untouched.
With cloudless skies every sunset was amazing, bright colours splashed all over the place followed by the darkest nights possible. For some reason the sky was without the moon all week (is this the new moon period of the lunar cycle?), we think it rose later in the morning but we are not sure, anyway having no moon meant you could see absolutely nothing except every star visible to the naked eye and a small slither of light maybe from the doorframe of the yurt. Watching the stars was amazing and if you looked long enough then satellites and shooting stars could be seen, the only problem was the cold! The temperature was lower that -20 (but no wind!) some nights so you couldn’t really hang around looking up, if you inhaled through your nose you could feel the snot freezing hard and when my nose ran it would crystallise in my beard (nice!).
The second day was another long day of off road driving, another chance to sit back with some music and let your mind wander, another chance to think to yourself what the hell are these people doing here. The past winters have been particularly hard and the rains have come late so apparently a lot of livestock has died making their lives even more difficult. Being there you can’t help think how its strange and remarkable that these people are trying to survive in a desert, trying to graze their livestock in an environment that is doing everything possible to kick them out.
In the afternoon we stopped and some bright red fiery cliffs famous for the dinosaur expeditions in the 1920s that uncovered huge amounts of bones and fossils in the soft sedimentary rocks. It was a nice place to walk about and clamber up and down the cliffs.
On the second day of driving we saw no one else all day and had a puncture about lunchtime so worryingly we were driving without a spare for the next day and a half.
The second evening our camp was even more remote than before and the temperature dropped to a very low level. We were using camel dung on the fire which did not burn as efficiently as yak dung and smelt not so good. There were four gers at this site, the owners were camel herders with quite a lot of camels.
The next morning because of the low temperatures the car would not start. The driver had to blow torch the bottom of the engine for about half an hour before we could then try and bump start it, whilst he was underneath it was notice that the suspension was looking a little ropy. Whilst we were waiting for them to repair that we played about with the children and helped the family out with some of their jobs. They were busy milking the camels and getting the camels out to the various different areas to graze or drink. We were able to try camels milk for the first time here which was nice.
This third day was Sarah’s birthday, luckily after the late start we did not have much driving to do, after about 4 hours we were in Dalanzadgad, the regional capital of the southern aimegs
Dalanzadgad was something out of a Wild West film. Wide dusty, dirt streets, wooden fencing everywhere, the town seemed very still, some tumble weed blowing between the streets wouldn’t have gone amiss. The differences however were enough to make you remember you are in Mongolia; the round Gers, now in fenced off compounds, camels tied up in the yard peering over the fence, some people still wearing traditional dress, and the screams of children as they came springing past on top of camels seemingly out of control. The town was a maze of these dust streets and Ger compounds, but Baatar got us to our third nights stop. It was quite early, about 3-4pm. We unloaded all our stuff and the very friendly lady brought us tea and a big pile of sweet scones and biscuits. We were in this town, easily a couple of kilometres through the maze of streets from the tiny town centre, we would need a guide to help us find our way! Just then Baatar announced there was a camel festival going on a couple of kilometres out of town, so we hastily grabbed the cameras and jumped back in the van. The camel festival was actually a big camel polo tournament, we saw at least 10-12 teams. Camel polo is a great game, these large cumbersome looking animals hurriedly loping around the pitch, being dragged this way and that by their nose, the riders on top leaning off them at crazy angles and hitting the polo ball towards the goal, which by then has a large camel standing side on in it with the goalie in the unfortunate position of trying to stop the goal being scored. It is a great game and one is at serious risk of being trampled if the ball comes near the sideline. The other highlight was the penalty shoot out. The crowds and other teams stream onto the pitch and create an alleyway of spectators and camels, the team members then have goes at penalty shooting, which involves the camel and rider running down the alleyway of people and scoring a goal. The audience gets very involved with lots of shouting and cheering. We stayed there for an hour or two before heading back to town. Baatar dropped us off near some showers and a shop. We knew there was a bar around here somewhere so managed to get Baatar to come back in two hours. The town centre mainly involved a couple of small squares, with very little in them, however past the outdoor pool tables we found ‘The Gobi Bear’ bar, also attached to a shop, so two birds with one stone! We sat down to a couple of beers and ordered some food, which involved us pointing at an incomprehensible line on the menu. All the meals were variations on mutton, rice and mutton fat. Sam had bite size deep fried mutton bones which were 90% fat and some rice. Mine was a bit better as it didn’t have so much fat.
The following day we spent trying to cross over a mountain range to make it to an area of large sand dunes which apparently sing in the wind, the only problem was it had snowed heavily the previous night making all previous tracks invisible. Because of the lack of tracks we spent most of the morning trying to find the way around large gullies cutting off our route over the mountains. After a few hours of not much luck, being stuck in deep snow and crashing into a ditch hidden by snow our driver said that it wasn’t going to be possible so we headed to a different area.
This camp was situated in a field of sand dunes with some small shrub like trees doted about. The family we stayed with were camel herders who were scratching a living in a really inhospitable area of the country, trying to keep their camels alive in the harsh desert. We spent two days here exploring the area, climbing sand dunes and taking some of the camels out for a ride, something which I did not enjoy initially but once I was handed by reigns and whip it was great fun trying to make my slow camel run instead of eat! The food here was very bad, just very sandy rice with flecks of fat, the sand would have not been so bad if we had not seen the amount of poo all over the place. Basically if the sand was from outside the ger then it would have been touching poo.
The last evening was spent in a hilly area with some slight vegetation further north and probably just outside of the Gobi zone. Really we were just killing time before we could head back to UB as by this time we were all desperate for a decent meal and some kind of wash (no washing so far so everyone was feeling a little skanky). Sarah and I walked up a near by hill with a can of beer and our books to chill out on top to watch the sunset and talk about the trip so far.
The last day of driving was an epic 8 hours off-road past some pretty uneventful scenery. Stopped off at a relatively nice restaurant where we had a nice long lunch. I should have been suspicious when my food came out 15 minutes before everyone else’s but it tasted good at the time. Arrived back in UB just in time for rush hour so from the outskirts of the city it took us at least an hour to get back to the hostel. Because the water supply to the hostel was down we headed straight out for food, a nice big pepperoni pizza. Unfortunately two hours later it all came back up after my dodgy lunch, such a waste of good pizza. Sarah then had to spend a night with me running out of the room often to empty various bodily chambers.
All in all the trip was amazing and a great chance to see some of Mongolia’s wildest landscapes. The people were incredible, the scenery was epic and the journey was more of an expedition than anything else.
We were not sure what to expect from the people we met, perhaps we thought they lived like this because they had no other choice or because they knew no different, maybe it would be awkward to stay with them but this could not have been further from the truth. It seemed that the nomads in Mongolia positively enjoyed the countryside and chose this lifestyle, they knew from the satellite TV what life was like elsewhere but chose to stay away from the big city, too busy, too many people and no place for your animals. Even though they see every sunrise every day one nomad still walked up to me and said (I think) how beautiful the sunrise was then stood and enjoyed it with me for five minutes before mounting his camel to head of with his heard. In these tiny communities there is no privacy as everyone shares one or two gers, everything is done together and family bonds are so strong. The locals thought it was very strange that we knocked on the door before we entered and just expected us to walk on in and sit down, when we did just walk in and sit down in front of the tv they would not bat an eyelid, it would hardly register with them, you just sit there and a few minutes later some tea would appear, but everyone else is either mesmerised by the tv or getting on with their jobs.
We were told the main factor for nomads moving to towns or the city were the need for modern services such as healthcare or education for children or if they have a sick/old family member who needs looking after.
When you first turn up to a ger camp people shout a greeting which would mean in English ‘can I come in’ but what it actually translates to is ‘Hold the dog!’ we found this quite funny.
Oh we also visited a frozen river in a rock canyon with a large frozen waterfall.. forgot to mention!
Tran Siberian journey
This is something we wrote in Russia but didn't finish.. just trying to catch up with what we are up to so we have decided not to finish this!
Ok, boring post! We just thought we would write something about what its like to travel by train in Russia… no stories of naked khazaks screaming or wild nights of strippers and champagne.. no this is an attempt to be sensible… Russia for trainspotters if you like or just some information if you are interested…
The typical journey for us along a segment of the trans Siberian starts of course at the station, usually at night. We have passed through a real variety of stations, some as you would imagine are great big Soviet concrete blocks but others have really surprised us and have been quite impressive. The station would normally contain a ticket kassa, open 24 hours with the obligatory rude grumpy female worker, somewhere to sit and wait (usually containing at least 25-50% drunk people), a 24 hour shop or café (containing both the rude grumpy worker and a certain quantity of drunk people), a group of railway soldiers patrolling, someone with the never ending task of mopping the floor (everyones snow melts into black puddles) who coincidently is also always grumpy and then possible a few old people sleeping and hiding from the cold until the railway soldiers throws them out. The station usually has a toilet somewhere on the grounds for which you have to pay an extortionate amount for (20 rubles which is 50p… what happened to spend a penny? Its not even that much in Waterloo..), the payment if you need a number 2 is more… its quite funny trying to explain in sign language you only need a number one.. of course the comedy of this situation does nothing to thaw the ice lady you have to pay who will just try to ignore you or sigh loudly for making her work. As far as we can gather the soldiers task is to make sure that no one is using the station as a home and that everyone is waiting for a train, and then to keep trouble away. Of course in any other country the transport police or soldiers also keep drunks away, but seeing as the preferred method of killing time here is also to kill your liver, the stations are filled with people in different stages of getting hammered – no matter what time of day it is.
Stepping out of the station building towards the platforms the immediate observations would be – lack of platforms, snow everywhere, many freight trains, smell of burning coal, a huge jumble of electicity wires and pylons and trains arriving no matter what time of day. The majority of stations have a bridge to access other platforms which are useful for exercise at longer stops and to check out the lay of the land. Russians of course rarely use the bridges in all but the largest stations, they just prefer to walk across the tracks and very close to oncoming trains – one granny in Tymen was a particular daredevil!
Travelling by train in Russia really gives you a sense of how important and how much of a lifeline the railway is to people living across the country. Almost all major settlements heading east are on the trans-Siberian route and most of their goods have to be transported by rail as there is no road network. A huge amount of freight rumbles past whenever you are waiting at a station, in Kungur the trains were as little as 7 minutes apart, each train pulling between 66 and 80 trucks (sarah thinks I’m a geek for counting!). We must have seen hundreds of thousands of barrels of oil heading west and endless supplies of wood heading east, miles of coal trucks heading in all directions, we have seen trains loaded with mining trucks, helicopter bodies, diggers, cars, cranes and so many metal cargo containers. Every station has at least 5 huge freight trains waiting, some have many more, on a few occations whilst waiting for trains we have stood on the bridge and watched them coming and going. Because of the lack of long distance roads the trains are also vital to anyone who wants or needs to visit other parts of the country, the trains are often filled with workers, traders or military personel, heading to work or home. Overall a real variety of people use the trains as it’s the only other option except flying which at the moment is still cash money.
The air around the train stations is thick with coal and diesel fumes. Each passenger carriage is heating using a coal boiler and each station tends to have some kind of mini coal power station/water heating building which gives the station a very Victorian feel. Each station also has an array of loud crackling megaphones with a woman blaring demands or information no matter what the time. This really gives the station a spy thriller/cold war feel, especially at night time crackling loud Russian… its hard to explain but these sounds and smells really make the stations feel alive and vibrant places.. it all feels exactly as you would expect Russia to feel!
The thirty odd minutes before the train arrives are usually quite tense… which platform? Which carriage, what will our room mates be like? Are we going to make it onto our train ok? Our ticket states the wagon number and berth we are booked into, but we have no idea at which point along the train that will be, and some stops are as short as two minutes. Two minutes at home seems like a long time when the train pulls up, but here in the dark, in the snow with our bags it goes very quickly. Kungur was particularly bad as there was nothing on the station telling us the platform number the train was leaving from and we were the only people catching this train. Our plan was to wait on the first platform and walk towards the train if it arrived on one further from the station building. Unfortunately at the time our train was due (02.30) we could see a train coming in from both directions, one on platform one, the other on platform three… what to do? If platform 1 was a different train it could potentially cut us off from our train and at this station there was no bridge. We decided to wait where we were and hope that platform 1 was our man.. we were wrong, it was a huge 70 wagon freight train which cut us off from ours which we knew was only stopping for five minutes. We had to run in the direction the freight train was coming from, wait an eternity for the huge oil train to pass, cross the lines eventually then run back to our train which we only just made! All in all every time we caught a train things were tense.
The trains themselves are huge. As there are no raised platforms at the stations the trains tower above us and each one has a minimum of 15 passenger cars. When everything stops moving a Provodnik from each carriage will lower one set of stairs and stand alongside the train ready to give the third degree to anyone who should want to board their train. Once you have passed the mini interrigation and inspection of ‘Dokument’ you are free to climb on up.
The Provodniks (m) or Provodnitsa (f) are workers assigned to your carriage to keep everything working exactly how the rail company wants it. They are the conductors, the cleaners, the security guard and all over general busy bodies, and aside from your cabin buddies the provodnik will be the greatest influence of how your journey pans out. Each carriage carries two who seem to work in 12 hour shifts. They are always typically stern faced and, well moody, but sometimes warm to us. They may warm to us but no matter how nice we are they are never friendly. Having a bad or lazy Provodnik would mean things like dirty toilets, people in you carriage who shouldn’t be and dirty linen, not massive problems but not things you really want on a three day journey. They also sell a varaity of foods for the journey such as pot noodles, instant mashed potato, chocolate, soft drinks, tea etc and we are not sure why, but the prices never seemed to be consistent.
When you board the train there is a time table in the vestibule area giving you a list of all the station stops and how long the train will stop at each. The stations tend to be about 2-3 hours apart sometimes we could go up to five hours without stopping, especially the further east we travelled. As mentioned before the stops varied in length, some were only two minutes long but others were up to 40 minutes, you would have at least a 20 minute stop approx every 7 hours. At the longer stops a whole army of people would set to work preparing the train for its next stint - people would refill via a hose and standpipe the water in each carriage, more coal would be loaded for the water heaters and people would walk up and down tapping the wheels and breaking off all the ice. We are not entirely sure what the wheel tapping was about but people with hammers would walk up and down the train banging the middle of the wheel and listening to the sound it made, presumably to find a fault of some kind. With the driving snow and arctic conditions huge amounts of ice would build up on the underside of the train and between carriages so people spent the twenty minutes bashing is all off, we were shocked one day to see our Provodnitsa using a huge two handed axe to do this job.. she was not a woman to be messed with.
During these longer stops you could get off the train and walk about by checking the timetable you would know what time the train was due to leave, we would often walk up onto the bridge or up and down the platform to stretch our legs.
At the longer stops, no matter what time of day there were also large groups of women selling a variety of goods for your journey. Usually these were similar to what the Provodnick was selling, but at some stops we saw some outrageous things such as fish a meter long and huge dolls. I’m sure in the summer it would be possible to buy a large variety of fresh produce which would have made the journey slightly more healthy as in the winter we were living off pot noodles and instant mash.
The toilets in the trains were fine, we were expecting them to be horrible and filthy, but as there is a cleaner on board they were cleaned regularly. The flush was a foot pedal which just opened a flap sending your bits onto the tracks, this also allowed freezing air into the toilet creating a small cloud of fog which was quite good fun. The train from the Ukraine was different though… they had fitted their toilet with an absorbing plywood seat which meant the toilet didn’t need cleaning, everything was soaked up…
Restaurant car was a disapointment. The food was overpriced and crap so we only went once.
The other worry injected into us by other people was that as soon as we turned our backs all out goods would be stolen which could not have been further from the truth. In both the Kupe and Platz carriages our main bags we put into lockers underneath the bottom bunk, the only way to get to them was to lift up the bottom bed so if someone wanted to steal our bags they would have had to lift the bottom bunk and whoever was sleeping on it. Our cabin could also be locked from the inside so it could not be opened at all from the outside, and if we wanted to leave our cabin unattended we could ask the Provodnik to lock our door.
The scenery.
The scenery was amazing but all in all very similar. The best part of the journey was by lake Baikal when there were some hills and good views of the lake, otherwise we mainly passed by flat snowy forested land for hours and hours. Because the train line is the life line for the country you are constantly passing signs of human activity, towns, villages, decaying factories and other industrial sights containing all kinds of huge machinery, the sort that would have Fred Dibnah wet his pants.
Tuesday, 1 April 2008
I like Chinese.....
Hello everybody! We have sort of arrived in China. Crossed the border and we are now stuck for the night in the border town due to bad weather (it looks fine here). We are aiming to be in the big old Beijing on Thursday. This place is good though and we have managed to find an English speaking news channel and cheap beer! all good!
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