Blogs from Mongolia, Asia
April 26th 2012
On tour for three days with Red (Singapore), Erica and Sharon (Sweden) our first destination was Kharkorum. This involved a seven hour journey in a delapidated mini bus on one of the few roads that exist in Mongolia. The scenery was superb with a variety of colours, it often looked as if someone had painted the backdrop. The countryside was covered with herds of goats, cows, horses and sheep. On the first day we had a close encounter with a group of camels who were very obliging when it came to taking photos. Thinking that the camels looked a bit shabby Red assured us that's what they always look like. We continued along empty but incredibly bumpy roads arriving at our accomodation - a ger - early evening. A ger is traditional accommodation - a round ... read more
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
January 23rd 2012
Early morning in Beijing, still dark but a smart hop to the train station slithering a little on the icy pavements. The impressive station lit up like a Christmas tree emerging from the night mist. Slowly leaving the suburbs with a red yuan sun glowing over the wintry landscape. Bare trees, frost dusted, icy rivers and snow laying on neglected bare ground. Smog, mist and fog over all. The Chinese seem to have exchanged early morning Tai Chi for patiently sitting in traffic jams on expressways. In the obscene chase for luxury goods the old culture is swallowed up by the ever increasing demand of production at all costs. As part of the world's largest seasonal migration we left Beijing. Over the Spring Festival period the rail will handle 235 million trips averaging about 5.88 million ... read more
January 23rd 2012
The smoky brown haze of Ulan Bator disappeared behind us, trapped in its basin, as we headed southwards to Terelj National Park. The smooth rolling hills gave rise to fantasies of multiple blue runs on the wide treeless slopes. The snowed road unfurled before us and corralled camps of tourist gers (yurts) punctuated the clear white landscape. Eagle eyes spotted two black shapes, wolves we were reliably informed, racing along a hill's ridge, disappearing over the crest in pursuit of unseen quarry. Clumps of firs, possibly spruce, increased with the strange rock formations still visible under their snow caps. The van bucked and bounced over the rutted track as we veered off the road. A black dog wandered out of the trees, curious to see the source of disturbance in this otherwise silent landscape. The crunch ... read more
What is it about the Trans-Siberian/Trans-Mongolian Railway that somehow everybody wants to try it???
Published: December 3rd 2011Asia » Mongolia
November 18th 2011
As we already finished our journey on the Trans-Mongolian railway I thought we could give it a go and summarize our feelings and experiences of it. We read a lot of blogs, articles, websites etc about the journey but I guess everybody is different and the perception of this particular train ride remains somehow very subjective. Kupe (2nd class) vs Platzkart (3rd class): We have never had an opportunity to try the 1st class but I guess it would not impress us anymore than 2nd class. After what we read about the Platzkart our intention was to go with 2nd class all the way. Only after we tried Ukrainian 3rd class we got really curious if the Russian one looked the same. We actually felt that the 3rd class conditions exceeded our expectations and it was ... read more
November 15th 2011
Today would see our tour end and we would return back to Ulaanbaatar. A relatively straight forward affair you would have thought, however not when your driver gets pulled over by the police and it turns out that he doesn't even have a driver's license. So our driver Jackie was escorted via police car to some town 30 minutes away. Whilst we all sat in the minivan by the roadside and waited it out, completely clueless as to how long this palaver was going to take. But you’re pretty much guaranteed if it's on Asian times then it's not going to be a quick five. A good one hour into the big wait and I was so bored that I couldn't even be bothered to read anymore, to bored to read. Jess was also reading, Karin ... read more
