Blogs from Ulaanbaatar, Mongolia, Asia
April 21st 2012
An early train from Irkutsk and we were soon full steam ahead towards Mongolia. The train route took us alongside Lake Baikal for several hours before the terrain turned slowly more brown & yellow and we caught first sight of small herds of animals in the distance. The border crossing, whilst smooth enough, took an age – over 7 hours. With that we said our goodbyes to Russia and after a night on the train awoke arriving at the Mongolia capital Ulaanbaatar(UB).The weather was sunny and peaked at 22 degrees on our first day, but soon dropped to minus temperatures and snow overnight – changeable was the theme of the weather during our stay! Mongolia is an enormous place, but aside from UB it’s pretty sparsely populated. 1.5 mil... read more
April 14th 2012
I am writing to you now in an absolute fury seen as I just wrote 2500 words and for some rage-inducing reason, it decided not to save what i had wrote, so if the tone of the blog is rather angry, don't take it as a reflection on Mongolia. It will probably be a lot shorter as well cos I cant be arsed now. Left Irkutsk Monday night, got the train to Ulan-Ude at about 10.30pm, arriving at 0630 the next day. Took a hike from the train station to the bus station, about half an hour, saw a ridiculously sized statue of Lenin's napper in the middle of the town. Was awaited at the bus stop by a young Mongolian woman who had our tickets ready for us, who said travelling is difficult? The bus ... read more
November 9th 2011
We arrived in UB quite early in the morning and we went straight to the Khongor Guest-house we picked out of the LP before (5$/night/person dorm). Something was not all right with the map as it happened to be much further than we initially thought it would be, but we made it. We had couple of hours of sleep and we went out with Lukasz – Polish guy we met in the lounge of the guest-house. We went to see the Sukhbaatar Square (main spot of the city) and then we headed to the hill just next to the Gandan Khiid Monastery. Lukasz told us there is a view of the whole city from that point so we were really up for it. There happened to be some shamanistic pile of rocks, that you are supposed ... read more
October 13th 2011
From Beijing to Ulaanbaatar, our thirty hour train journey saw us conquer a dry Gobi desert, two highly regimented customs inspections, and an adjustment of wheels. Train travel is surprisingly comfortable, mind you, we’re in second class…I saw what they were up against in steerage. Our male attendants are assholes, having piled themselves into our carriage to chain smoke and gamble their night away. There is one inch of urine on the bathroom floors, and the hot water ran out long ago. Nonetheless, The Australians wake up in the middle of the night like kids on Christmas morn as the train approaches the indoor yards to prepare for the switch up of bogies from Chinese to Mongolian gauge. Who knew train tracks came in different sizes? Our carriage is lifted up carnival-ride high, with all of ... read more
October 3rd 2011
Hi ladies and gentleman!! We are not dead, we just had such a great time, that we were actually too busy and lazy to write. So Mongolia in 27 days. Amazing country and difficult to desribe with words. We started with our Russian Minibus 4x4 (we called it Mr. Beans big brother) and Solomon our excellent driver to the south first. Gobi desert with sanddunes, canyons, gorges, colourful landscape with incredible shaped sandstone mountains on the way. In between driving through endless seeming landscape with no sound and a lot starfilled skies in the nights. Of course not to forget the friendly nomads on their horses and motorbikes with their basic living depending on camels,goat and sheep in that area. And they drink like hell, tons of pure wodka, cowmilk wodka (brrrrrrrrgh) and airag, fermented mares ... read more
October 1st 2011
Hi Everybody! FYI: Jim, our fellow traveler, finished high school and college with Walt. They took ROTC at JSU and both retired as Army Lt. Colonels. Jim thought he loved trains until he had 5 cabin mates between Moscow and Irkutsk. This trip has been full of surprises –some good and some not so good. The train ride from Irkutsk to Ulan Bator was on a small train with just 5 cars and no dining car. The train cabins so far have had no bathroom facilities – not even a sink. Each car has 2 toilets but no showers. The cars do have plenty of hot water in the samovar. The attendants add charcoal or coal in the burner to keep the water boiling. After a couple of days, you really miss the comforts of home. ... read more
September 27th 2011
Seguimos con el diario. No es fácil pararse a escribir el diario cuando uno está de viaje. Por lo menos a mí me pasa eso. Suelo hacerlo al final del día, pero suele coincidir con que uno está reventado de patear y de deambular todo el día y quedan pocas ganas para escribir. Pero allá voy. Como os contaba en la entrada anterior, ahora tenía por delante 4 días de tour por Mongolia. A mí me habría gustado disfrutar de más días pero dispongo de tiempo limitado, así que eso es lo que hay, “bros”… A las 8:00h, de la mañana salimos los siete “afortunados” en una furgo cutre-espartana-soviética al “country mongol”. Y en total nos pegamos 8 horas dentro de ese amasijo de chatarra. Sí que es verdad que íbamos parando a menudo, pero al ... read more
September 26th 2011
Hola, hola, buena gente! Cómo lo lleváis? Os voy a seguir contando un poco más de mi viajecillo, para que os entretengáis un poco. La anterior entrada la dejé en la estación de Irkutsk, cargados como mulas con las dos mochilas los tres españoles, dispuestos a pasar 35 horitas de “placer” en el tren. Esta vez elegí “kupé”, o lo que es lo mismo, segunda clase. Bueno, realmente no lo elegí, ya que los trenes que van desde Rusia a Mongolia únicamente tienen vagones de segunda clase. Y lo cierto es que aunque mi vagón fuese de segunda, era más viejo que el de tercera, pero bueno… En mi compartimento estábamos una chica escocesa, una pareja de Múnich y servidor. Y ahí estuvimos charlando un poco de nuestras vidas, y yo, además cené un poco de ... read more
