Blogs from Mongolia, Asia - page 13

Mongolian spirituality (in the countryside at least) is strongly connected to the idea of living in harmony with nature and protecting the environment - anything that might harm an animal or corrupt a water supply, for example, is taboo. On the other hand, Mongolia is still a developing country with significant poverty but valuable natural resources which foreign countries are naturally keen to invest in, and as we drive around the country there is regularly evidence of new mining and quarrying (and quite a lot of litter everywhere). Our guide told me that Mongolians believe that when mining development disturbs the environment, nature becomes angry and the result will be drought, floods or other natural disasters. Of course these tensions between development and environmentalism exist in all countries, but in Mongolia they are starkly observable. Today ... read more

Travelling in Mongolia is not easy. Many hours a day in a van, driving on difficult roads, only a short amount of time our in the open air, and not always a good night's sleep in a tent or ger. I am mostly philosophical about all of this and generally enjoying the adventure, but today was marked by a spectacular falling out between one of our party (the Italian) and our tour guide. The actual row was over (what seems to me) a petty matter and has been brewing over the past couple of days; I think the real reason is the stress of this kind of travel. It was strange and ridiculous, to be watching this heated argument in the middle of nowhere, where neither party has anywhere else to go or hope of escape ... read more

I had hoped to treat myself to a final blow-out meal to celebrate my last day in Russia, but sadly but the time I got back from Taltsy I felt pretty unwell and just went straight to bed. I also had to be up at 4am to catch my train. Getting up was painful but I had moved specially to a hostel near the train station so my walk was only 15 minutes, and fortunately finding the train and my berth was very straightforward. I still didn't feel well, so it was not a very fun journey unfortunately - I mostly just read in my bed. I was sharing my cabin with a man who could not understand a word of what I said in Russian no matter how clearly I tried to speak. Obviously I ... read more

Thankfully feeling much better today, though still a bit weakened, so another quiet day. In fact I spent most of the afternoon joining a tour to the Gobi desert, which was much more complicated than I had anticipated. Most travellers in Mongolia join tours to see the country, as the infrastructure is limited - there are public buses, but the system is complicated unless you are a native (for example, there is usually one bus a day or every other day to most places, but the departure times are unreliable - buses leave somewhere within a 2-hour timeframe - and the don't leave from a particular point, you flag them down by the side of the road, but they don't have numbers or anything that tells you their destination, so you just have to "know" which ... read more

After nearly 8 weeks in Russia, it was exciting to arrive in not just another country, but another continent! Ulaanbaatar is very geared to tourists and whichever guest house you have booked with will meet you at the station or airport, so I was speedily picked up and driven to the hostel, which was a relief as the train arrived at 6am and the area around the station is, to be honest, pretty horrible. Ulaanbaatar is the only city in Mongolia, half the population lives here, and the economy is the fastest-growing in the world relative to the size of the country (or so I was told). The result of this is that Ulaanbaatar is currently a building site, especially on the outskirts, as development accelerates. It is interesting but not pretty to look at and ... read more