Meaty mongolian madness

Pick of the day: Mongolia – Anywhere

Ok, so all seems to have escalated rather rapidly on the toilet front. Two posts ago it was the best smelling loo ever, last was a long drop and now…. Well its anywhere, provided you aren’t near a stream. As it is still -10oC, running water isn’t a problem though.

Style: Rural

Atmosphere: Agoraphobic

Extras: Curious livestock, frost nipped bum hole.

11/03/13 to 28/03/13 – Mongolia; Ulaanbaatar, Kharkhorin, Khustain Mountain National Park and Khogno Khan Uul

Well we have been in Mongolia for roughly 2.5 weeks and it has been a fantastic experience. We have shelled out a little more than we would have liked in order to get out of Ulaanbaatar (UB) and into the countryside, but then it has most definitely been worth it and who knows if we will be here again anytime soon.

Our stay here entailed 3 days in UB, followed by a 3 day trip to Kharkhorin and Khustain Mountain National Park, then a day in UB, followed by 6 days with nomadic families around the mountain/steppe of Khogno Khan Uul, and a final 4 days in UB.

Ulaanbaatar or “UB” to those with the lingo, is an odd city. Dominated by soviet era apartment blocks and half-finished skyscrapers, it has a little of that Shangri-La type atmosphere that you get in cities like Kathmandu. There is an overwhelming expat community here, from western to chinese and Korean, with most restaurants and cafes names and menus in English. We have had some good food here from a very cheap vegetarian café to American and Italian. Mongolian food is… challenging, but more on that later.

During our first UB stay we saw a few of the sights with an English couple, Mark and Ruth, who are doing a similar trip but with the end point of working in New Zealand. Sights are rather thin on the ground in the concrete sprawl of UB, with much of the city’s main attractions off the main drag of Peace Avenue which runs east-west passing the main square, Sükhbaatar square. This has a number of Genghis (Chingghis here)Khan statues and the Imperial styled parliament building  but notable would be our morning visit to the Gandantegchinlen monastery, where we got involved with some Buddhist worship. We hadn’t a clue what was going on, but somehow ended up in some sort of procession.  

The Beatles monument. Not sure why they have it. The Mongolians aren't too sure either.

Why would you enter?!

Big feet. Important to Buddhism. Perhaps.

It looks warm and dusty, but its just dry and bloody cold.

Our first trip into the countryside was organised by our hostel and we had a driver and a guide all to ourselves. First of all we drove a few hours out of the city to visit the Khustain Mountain National Park where we got to have a close up view of the herd of wild (also known as Przewalski’s horses) which was pretty cool. They had died out in the wild in the 1960’s but had been re-introduced to Mongolia from zoo stock and now number around 350 animals.

A Przewalski horse, about to poo. Kinda jealous now.

We then carried on driving down some pretty horrendous roads (occasionally bypassing the road entirely and just driving cross country) with a lunch time pit stop of boiled mutton, potatoes and kimchee to make it to Kharkhorin in the evening which is the ancient Mongolian capital from Chinggis Khan’s time. There we stayed in a guest ger in a tourist ger camp which meant that we only had to share with our guide rather than an entire nomadic family. Dinner was fried mutton dumplings which were pretty good but we should have realised then just how much mutton was going to feature in our diets. That evening we were treated to a mini-concert by a local musician who played the traditional Mongolian musical instruments of the horse hair fiddle and some sort of harp as well as doing Mongolian ‘throat singing’ (pretty damn weird). All in all pretty exciting!

Skulls. More common than you think on the steppe

Soaking up the warmth

The next day we visited the still functioning monastery in the town which had been all but razed to the ground by the soviets when they came through but a few temples still remain. We also got to see ‘turtle rock’ which is a massive rock carved into the shape of a turtle dating from Chinggis Khan’s time. Both were pretty interesting, particularly the temples as they were beautifully carved and we got to learn quite a lot about Buddhism.  We also visited the fertility rock which is carved in the shape of a massive penis which apparently women who wish to get pregnant have to sit astride to pray. Ben and I stayed well clear.

Shrine to the willy god

We then carried on to a family ger camp which was in a lovely warm spot near some rocks. It was the family’s spring camp and they were quite a well off family with 2 gers, a big herd of sheep and goats and a few horses and camels.  That afternoon we went for a camel ride which turned out to be pretty eventful. Ben and I had a Bactrian (2 humped) camel each which are actually super comfy, like giant teddy bears. We were led by one of the sons of the family on a bull camel. Not far from the ger camp the bull camel suddenly lost the plot, tried to bite ben, successfully bit my camel on the neck, my camel screamed and tried to run away and we all had to go back to camp. We went back out on our trek with the lead man on a horse this time. Sadly it really wasn’t my camel’s day and although we made it out for the full trip this time the horse also took a dislike to my camel and bit its face. We spent the rest of the day playing with the kid goats and lambs which were kept in a pen as it was too cold for them to go out with their mums. We also learnt to play a game involving sheep’s ankle bones which is a little hard to get the hang of but fun when you know how.

That evening was pretty surreal as after dinner the family sat watching TV (powered by solar panels) in one corner of the ger while two calves were tethered to the other side and a few kid goats wandered around to keep warm against the -15 chill outside.

Good to have a little scramble

Prayer flags adorn the more accessible trees

We had one day of rest and recuperation in UB before heading out on our second trip to the countryside, this time a 6 day expedition organised by a company called ger to ger.

We had to get the bus for 3 hours out to the countryside before being picked up and taken to the first family. The bus was a bit of an experience as it had I giant TV at the front playing videos of monglian pop ballads at full volume. Almost every one featured horses. Horses running, dancing, being ridden etc etc. I like horses, but not that much. Ben likened it to the Americans using rock music to break Islamic extremists.

Family one. The little boy was a terror.

The first family we stayed with for two days were a young family (our sort of age) with two kids aged 5 and 3. It soon became apparent that our jobs were basically to keep the children entertained and out of trouble and help with the livestock. The sheep and goats were out on the hill all day long but with the temperatures outside any kids or lambs wouldn’t last more than a couple of hours outside so we checked the flock regularly and brought any new ones back to be warmed up inside the family ger and then put in their own little ger to protect them from the elements. The flock were brought back a couple of times a day so the kids and lambs could get fed and we had to match up baby with mum which mostly involved making it cry and seeing which sheep/goat came running. Lastly the flock were all penned up last thing at night so that the dogs could keep an eye on them and fight off the wolves. Any little ones who had the misfortune of being born in the middle of the night generally froze to death.

Getting our farm hands on

We were pretty convinced that we were gonna get ill early on as we watched the mum of the family put dried turds on the stove (only source of fuel on the step), handle baby goats covered in placenta, wipe her kids runny bums and then make dinner, all without washing her hands once. By some miracle, we didn’t. The family managed to get through less water in a day than we use just flushing the toilet out of necessity as all the water they use has to either be collected from a well miles away or made from melting snow. We stayed in one single bed together and the full family of 4 shared the other single bed in the ger, the kids (goats) and lambs got the floor.

Vi loves goats. Its a bit weird truth be told.

We went for a little ride out on horse and camel back the next day to a viewing point and checking on the herd where we both experienced the joy of Mongolian wooden saddles which I’m sure are actually a form of torture.

The following day we rode our horses and camel (switching places as the bruises from the wooden saddle became too much to handle) to the next family we stayed with. This family thankfully had invested in western style saddles (although Ben’s still had a massive metal ring on the back which caused a fair bit of discomfort) and the two of us and the head of the family rode out to visit some local sand dunes and ‘swan lake’. The main man at first didn’t trust ben and I to handle our own horses and had us both on lead rope beside his horse. Unfortunately the Mongolian way of riding is to whip the horse more than using your heels and since the man was not terribly accurate with his whip I think I got hit as much as the horse did. Thankfully I managed to get control of my own horse pretty early on. Mongolians also prefer to ride at a speed which I would describe as a very fast trot. Fast enough in fact that since I was on a slightly smaller horse I comfortably cantered along behind. Ben, however, had to go from having ridden a horse about twice in his life to having to handle the most uncomfortable horse riding speed I can possibly think of in no time at all. He managed impressively well, never falling off or complaining. His bum got the raw end of the deal. The swan lake and sand dunes were beautiful- a little oasis in the middle of the steppe.

The dunes (Erg) and Swan lake beyond

The geographical centre of mongolia and two punters on horse back

A monastery which had been destroyed in the 17th century. 

We spent the next couple of days either helping out with the livestock or riding around on our horses visiting local sites such as the local monastery up in the hills which was pretty cool. By this point we had realised that the Mongolian diet comprises of 3 dishes: boiled mutton and rice, boiled mutton and noodles, mutton steamed dumplings. They occasionally have a weird mixture of rice and goat curds and drink a hell of a lot of salty goats milk tea. They never, ever eat any form of fruit or vegetable. The result was that Ben and I didn’t go to the toilet for a very long time and neither of us wants to see boiled mutton again for as long as we live.

Ger building

Silver birch gets everywhere. Deforestation is a serious problem in Mongolia leading it some intense desertification

No light pollution out this way

By day 6 and staying with the third family we smelt pretty bad, having not washed since we left UB. We were also not feeling terribly healthy from the diet and from the lack of sleep as neither of us got used to sharing a tiny bed and sharing a bedroom with a whole family and several livestock.  All in all although we had an amazing time sharing the lives of nomadic herders for a week and learning how to manhandle sheep, goats, cows and horses (calves that won’t move and have to be carried are heavy little f**kers) as well as invent many a game to entertain small children with no toys, we were glad to head back to civilisation.

(Note- Mongolian children are little monsters- they generally never get told no and we actually saw a 5 year old girl slap her grandfather hard across the face for changing the TV channel).

Hatchbacks, for the modern nomad. Can't fit a Ger in though.

On our return to UB we gorged on crisps, beer and pasta and were promptly very ill for several days. Added on to the mutton induced constipation, we are currently wolfing down dried fruit and coffee in an effort to get things moving.

On our final UB stint we ticked off the infamous ‘Black’ market and the natural history museum. The former isn’t quite the AK-47/tank selling place you would expect, but instead a huge sprawling open and closed market where you can buy everything from a wooden saddle and ger to fake north face and apple branded boots (wtf?). The Natural history museum contained the standard assortment of stuffed animals and due to the Gobi deserts rich dinosaur fossil beds, a rather impressive and geekily exciting fossil collection.

We still aren’t feeling tip top after our mutton enforced binge and subsequent bout of vomiting/constipation. Dried fruit is the order of the day and hopefully china will bring fresh bowel movements along with the anticipated new landscapes/cultures!

Bye bye mongolia!

Sunset in Russia

Pick of the day: Taltsy Museum of Wooden Architecture, Nr Irkutsk

Back to nature in the Irkutsk region. This long drop featured a creaky wooden base which gave the impression it could give way at any moment, sending you plummeting into the clearly visible mound waiting underneath.

Style: Long drop

Atmosphere: Wooden

Extras: Only a minor divide and no doors means easy chats with your neighbour. Forced inventiveness required for wiping.

03/03/13 to 11/03/13: Krasnoyarsk, Irkutsk and the train to Mongolia

We are currently in Ulaanbaatar (Mongolia) which is proving the perfect place for a little R&R following Russia.

Krasnoyarsk marked the start of arriving in towns in the dark of morning, and following a little jiggery pokery with our hostel sending us to another (nicer) hostel we were set up ready to go by 10am. The town’s main draw for us was the Stolby nature reserve just south of the centre and famous for granite ‘Stolby’s’ which are in similar to Torrs at home, though a subtly different lithology. Backing onto this reserve was a ski resort we were itching to see if we could have a bash at.

The view out across the Stolby nature reserve

Once settled in we hopped on the local bus to the ski resort to take advantage of the chair lift to allow us access to the nearest stolby. Public transport in Russia is actually pretty good and relatively dirt cheap. For a flat rate 12Rubles (20pence) we got a half hour ride to the reserve. Despite being told it was “too dangerous” to access the stobly we thought we would go up anyway for a look. Other than having to walk down the ski slope for a short distance braving the variable ability of Russian skiers the route to the stolby was fine with a little scrambling. It was fantastic to be out of the city and look out across the forested hills of the Stolby nature reserve and we both felt almost reenergised. Too much soviet architecture can get you down it seems.

Talmack Stolby, psyched to be out of the cities!

That evening we dined at a restaurant full of the contradictions you see across Russia. It was American diner in style but with a Former Soviet Union theme, with dishes from Afghanistan to Siberia. Thank god for the picture menu though!

The next morning had us back to the ski hill and hiring kit. Unfortunately for some reason (being a Monday perhaps) only one of the lifts was open giving us a wide but quick blast back down. Still it was great to get a little skiing in this year, especially as it was in Siberia!

Playing with a GoPro during some Siberian skiing

Chilling with the local statue. Russians LOVE statues

Our hostel amazingly did a voucher for a free dinner for our stay which we put to good use and then scoped out a bakery type place we had seen called ‘Cinnabon’. This turned out to be an American chain that was krispy kreme in style but did warm cinnamon buns. Ben had some sort of spiritual/religious experience. He described the bun as ‘life changing’.

Vi unaware of the spiritual experience about to commence

Oven warm. Mouth watering all over again

The following day had us train bound from midday until Irkutsk the following morning.

Chilling in 2nd class, top tip... in winter you can often get these to yourselves at half the price of 1st class

We arrived in the early morning, hopped on the tram and found the hostel relatively easily for once and got a bit of a nap in our dorm before heading out for an explore. Our hostel actually had British and German people staying there who were the first non-Russian people we had spoken to since Moscow. Sounds terrible but it was such a relief to be able to have a normal chat and not have to worry about offending someone by saying what we thought of Russia (ie. Your country is bloody weird).

We spent our first day in Irkusk generally having a wander and getting our bearings, checking out the local market (puppies and kittens for sale alongside socks and sunflower seeds) and going to a museum which was set inside the old house of a member of the Decemberists uprising. This involved Russian army officers leading around 3000 soldiers in revolt against Tsar Nicholas I’s assumption of the throne after his brother stepped down. The uprising was crushed and the leaders sent to exile and labour in Siberia where a fair few of their wives followed and made new lives for themselves in towns such as Irkutsk. The museum was pretty interesting in that it showed us what life was like in Siberia at the time for those who did and did not have money (this particular family lived in a rather plush Siberian mansion!).

Irkutsk lies about 75km north of Lake Baikal, the world deepest lake, and our target. Fortunately our hostel also had a branch at the lake side town of Listvyanka so the following day we hopped on a bus down there for 2 nights before our train from Irkutsk to Mongolia. Once again it was great to get out to a more rural version of Russia. Our hostel was billed as an Eco-hostel, think solar power, and solar showers, it comprised a complex of three great little wood cabins in the woods behind the town.

The Bailker Eco-hostel. Home for 2 nights, much relaxing.

We had a great couple of days down by the lake which is fully frozen leading the locals to drive all over it, often drunk it seems. The lake fills a 25 million year old rift system (land masses splitting apart)and so drops to 1000m within 100m of the shoreline. When you walk across the ice you get a distinct sense of vertigo as you look down into the lakes depths below.

On our first day we went dog sledding, expecting huskies and being sat in a sledge for 10km. Being Russia, our expectations were wrong, and the dogs seemed to be a random assortment of breeds who all seemed to clamour for the honour of pulling us round. It also turned out we would be driving our own sleds. Fortunately for us the dogs knew where they were going and we just had to steer the sled leaning left and right as we bounced along between the trees. It was great fun although surprisingly tiring (also, watching a dog try to simultaneously poo and run is massively entertaining).

Impossible to film and dog sled at the same time!

The following day we hired a couple of mountain bikes with studded tyres and made for the lake. It seemed relatively straight forward in principal and although the studs gave grip on the ice most of the time, when they slipped you were buggered as you instinctively put your foot down only to have it fly from under you on the icy surface. 

Vi, barely able to stand. Pushing off was hilarious

Frozen lake Baikal

After cycling down the lake for some time the weather closed in and we both started to get seriously cold and made a return to the market for a bowl of plov. This is a fried rice, carrot and beef dish which was just was the doctor ordered when our faces were so cold we couldn’t chew properly. The market proved a good place for a spot of souvenir shopping, with coming away with some sort of shamanic idol which in retrospect may actually be a fertility idol and a local delicacy of a smoked fish called Omul.

Omul. So smokey, great with beer

We returned to Irkutsk via the Taltsy museum of wooden architecture the next morning. This open air museum has collected various examples of wooden buildings from those produced by aboriginal Siberian peoples through to 19^th century farmsteads, including a Cossack fort. It is impressive to see the complexity and beauty which can be achieved with only timber as your raw material.

Wooden lace. Siberian classic

The fort. Seems a little prone to fire arrows

We spent a good few hours getting our lives in order at the Irkutsk hostel before heading for our 10pm train to Ulaanbaatar.

Our train only seemed to have a single carriage, the view at the Russian border town 

The following day was spent mostly at border controls, 8 hours in total, with us leaving Russia 5 hours prior to our visa expiring. Unfortunately the long wait at the border had allowed us to discover the penalty of 2 years prison time for overstaying the visa! As we chugged through no-man’s land the Mongolian steppe opened up and we spotted herdsmen on horseback and Gers for the first time. Up to this point we have travelled over 10,500km from home, not including side trips, and it certainly feels a long way from home, and already a stark contrast to the birch forest dominated landscape of Siberia.

The sunsets poetically on the Russian stage of the adventure

Spring(?) in Siberia

Pick of the day: Café Berlin, Omsk

Though nothing exceptional to look at, this loo smelt like a meadow of strawberries. The added bonus of fantastic aromas and a positively clean environment made this a great loo to sit and ponder life’s great questions. Could be improved with some light music perhaps.

Style: Western Sit

Atmosphere: Welcoming

Extras: An odd urinal with a snappy lid thing and great aromas

26/02/13 to 02/03/13: Omsk to Tomsk

It has been some time since the last update and in that time has, thankfully, seen a much more positive twist to our Russian experience.

On the train from Perm to Omsk we finally passed into geographic Asia over the Urals.

We had only really ended up staying at Omsk as we needed to change trains to get to the town of Tomsk, famous for its wooden architecture, so it was odd that we had 2 nights in Omsk and 1 in Tomsk. But hey, that’s Russia.

As Omsk is very much a business city the accommodation was expensive and we only managed to find a hostel thanks to the hostel staff in Perm. As our Omsk hostel was not in a ‘convenient’ location we had arranged for the guy at the hostel to meet us at the station. After an hours wait at the station we decided it would be best to make our own way to the hostel. Not a great start. Having walked over an hour with the bags (bloody heavy bags), I was sure of two things. Firstly the hostel was truly inconvenient and secondly we had brought too much stuff. We arrived to find the hostel locked with only a telephone number in the window for guidance. Not much use considering we had told the guy we had no phone. It seemed to make sense to sit tight and wait for his return, if he hadn’t met us at the station surely he would return to the hostel to see if we had made it alone…

An hour and a half later and the -9°^C combined with a brutal Siberian wind was taking its toll despite a homemade bag fort and wearing all the layers we had. Near hypothermic Vi sought sanctuary in some sort of local government office from where we had the bright idea to use the governmental phone to ring the number from the hostel window.

Vi huddling from the cold

The guy turned up 20mins later with us trying our best not to be pissed off. The ‘hostel’ was essentially a one bed apartment with two bunk beds in the bedroom. It was occupied by the young guy who ran it and his middle aged cleaning lady/girlfriend. The guy in charge seemed pretty weird in most of the ways that it is possible to be weird. We definitely felt like we had come to spend a couple of nights in his flat and he did nothing to dispel this. He gave us a key to lock our room since our bags were in there but gave us a telling off for having locked our room when we went out. There were lots of questions about our jobs which ended in a pretty awkward conversation about what antidepressant I would recommend for depression. We told him our train out was at 7pm but he just said that check out was at 12pm and that we had better be gone by then.

Omsk, full of statues

This guy was working in the sewers but froze on his way out. Tragic really.

Walking down by the river in Omsk

Basically in Omsk we had a mooch around a few interesting statues, found a nice café that did decent food and spent as much time as possible there whilst trying not to look like we were actually homeless.

Omsk can be seen in about 6hrs, the rest of our time was spent in this awesome cafe. Great coffee and russian food!

We had an uneventful overnight train journey to Tomsk where the hostel was thankfully actually very hostelly with lots of Russian PhD students staying there. Finding the hostel was a little difficult again though. We had an address that was 55/56 Lenin St. We found Lenin St but the buildings went from 54 to 60 with no intervening numbers- it was also pretty confusing that a building could have both an odd and even number since they are generally on opposite sides of the street. We trudged down a back street and found a group of apartment buildings, one of which was labelled 56. No sign of 55, no hostel sign and no idea where the hostel was. All the apartment buildings were accessed by a key door code and we didn’t know any codes. Eventually ben hit upon the genius idea of tapping ‘55’ into the door code of the second access door for building 56. ‘Da, Hostel 8?’ was the answer. 8 floors of carrying 30 kilos of stuff each and we were finally safe from the cold!

Miss a days snow clearing and its bye bye car for winter

Photos can't show you the wind. Strong!

Tomsk is a beautiful town with loads of traditional ‘lacy’ wooden architecture. Essentially in Siberia until the middle of the 20^th Century (yes, I do mean way after 1900) buildings were gable roofed block buildings made of interwoven massive logs. These were embellished by adding beautiful wooden carvings all around the windows, gutters and gable ends- some of which are truly spectacular. We had a lovely day wandering around and then went back home for a chill out. We were sharing a 4 bed dorm with a Russian brother and sister who were both students at the Tomsk University. Turns out the brother found out that day that he had passed his viva for his PhD in Siberian Aboriginal history and was in the mood to celebrate. There were no shot glasses to be had so we were all given half a teacupful of cognac for starters which rapidly progressed to vodka. Many toasts to PhDs, international friendship, Russian vodka and other things that we didn’t know what we were toasting but toasted anyway were had. Ben and I tried to eat between toasts. We tried to drink water between toasts. All to no avail. Drinking half teacupfuls of vodka at 15 minute intervals was only ever going to have one outcome. We woke up some time later feeling a little fragile.

Pretty wooden church on the hill in centre of Tomsk

Peacock house, Tomsk. Great example of Siberian wooden Lace architecture.

Wooden buildings seem prone to fire and collapse if Tomsk is anything to go by.

Luckily for us that night we were getting an overnight 3^rd class train to Krasnoyarsk. This was unfortunately possibly the worst train ride yet and purely because of one passenger in particular. We thought we were in luck when we got on and found that we were sharing our compartment with an elderly lady, her relative (?daughter) and some other random woman. We thought that she would just settle down, go to sleep and we would have a peaceful night. Turns out that particular babushka can talk for Russia. We were treated to a monologue which started at 11pm and lasted a full 45 minutes with no interruptions during which her relative fell asleep sat upright and the other passenger stared fixedly out of the window. She then tied a plastic bag around each foot and wrapped a tea towel around her head, bandanna style (no idea why) and settled for the night. Or so we thought. Roughly every 30 minutes she would sit up, hawk up a gob of phlegm loudly enough to wake you up despite earplugs and spit it into a tissue on the table next to our water and breakfast. We didn’t really sleep, or want breakfast. Arrived in Krasnoyarsk in a decidedly bad mood- which was a shame since we had had such a lovely time in Tomsk.

Prime example of russian racism. Get it??