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Published: February 18th 2009
well done! you made it past part one and onto part two, which in my opinion is much more interesting.
The trans-mongolian train from beijing to ulaanbaatar was scheduled to take 30 hours, and our coach was decorated in a very train-y way as alice put it - all orangey carpets and wood panelling. we had 2 carriage attendants who didn't seem overly impressed with us, a coal powered water heater which smelt really nice, and that was pretty much it. the scenery for this part of the journey was stunning - northern chinese mountains and frozen lakes - so we spent most of the first few hours staring out of the window and taking pictures. the carriage was really overheated, we were sweating in our t-shirts and tracky bums and so kept going to stand in the gaps between the carriages where the outside air (which was closer to 0 degrees) could cool us down. we also discovered that we could play boggle with the scrabble pieces, so we did that for hours. for dinner we went to the dining car, to spend the last of our yuan on some fresh vegetables, rice and pork which was very welcome.
there we met 2 guys called Rich and Anton, and chatted to them a bit about where they'd been and where they were going. it was getting steadily colder as we went further north and as night fell, so that it was definitely below zero as we walked back to our room.
At 8.40 we pulled into the chinese border station and stopped. we'd been given customs forms to fill out but they were in chinese, so james and alice went off to find someone to translate for us. during that time the passport lady arrived to take our passports and then moved down the train, trapping james and alice for a while for some reason we don't understand. then the carriage attendants started asking me and mim for money, but didnt want our hk dollars or pounds and couldnt explain to us why they wanted the money so that confused us too. in the end they took some hk dollars and tutted lots at us. james and alice returned, and as we saw that we would be stopping in the station for 3 hours alice and i went to find a toilet to use in the station building.
when we tried to go back to the train, an official had chained the doors shut and we werent allowed back on it as they needed to change the guage of the wheels, with mim and james still on the train! Anton and Rich and what looked like most of the rest of the passengers were with us in the station, so we settled down to a 2.5 hour wait with scrabble and uno. it was still getting colder, probably to -20 at that point. at midnight we were allowed back on the train to find a very relieved james and mim who'd stayed in the carriage and seen the changing of the wheels. we then travelled for another 20mins before stopping at the mongolian border station to go through it all over again with passports and customs forms, before finally being allowed to fall asleep at 1.30am.
we woke up at 9 the next morning to discover that Mongolia is really flat and empty haha. we pulled in at a station in the morning where there were people trying to sell hot drinks, and one mongolian boy kept looking at alice and waving at her. our initial impression
of mongolian people was that they were very friendly, and that's an impression which has stayed with us throughout our visit here. the rest of the train journey we played more boggle and looked out of the window, until it was time to put all our warm weather gear to good use, and piled on the thermals, fleeces and jackets before leaving the train at ulaanbaatar station. we were met on the platform by our tour guide Ginny, who was to stay with us for most of our trip. she lead us to the car, and we were driven to a hotel with japanese style bathrooms (read communal nudity - YAY!) where we could take a shower and freshen up before transferring to Elstei Ger Camp, an hours drive away. we stopped at a supermarket to buy some gifts to take to a local nomad family we would be visiting the next day, and then drove out of the city and into the rural countryside where our ger camp was situated. part of the journey we had to drive off road, and our minivan got stuck in the snow. we all got out to find ourselves completely alone, surrounded by
stunning mountains and white everywhere, James' first experience of snow. him and mim had a snow fight with the ice, and james was quite suprised when mim hit him over the head with a solid block of ice, and we watched the driver dig the van out of the snow before realising how bloody cold it was and getting back in the van to warm up. the rest of the car journey was fine, and we pulled up to our ger camp before long.
a ger camp is a group of mongolian yurts, which are circular tents made out of camel felt. there were about 10 tents in all, but when we arrived we were the only foreigners there. we were introduced to a woman called Sara, who was our saving grace whilst we stayed there as she came in throughout the day and night to stoke the fire in our tent, add coal and bring in hot water to make tea with. our tent had 4 beds, the hearth in the middle, a wash stand (a basin with water suspended above a sink), 2 poles that we strung the washing line from and a dresser. the fire provides
a lot of heat so that even though it was -30 outside at night, we were warm and snug in our yurt.
as soon as we arrived we put on all the clothes we had and went for a walk up the nearest hill to look around. it was so cold that our eyelashes and noses froze over, and the camera stopped working after a couple of pictures, and we being unused to the cold only managed about 10 mins outside before running back to the yurt. on the way back we made friends with a huge black shaggy dog that belonged to the camp, he was very friendly 😊 we drank several cups of tea, and then it was dinner, in 2 yurts joined together to form a dining room and kitchen. the food was scrummy 😊 salad and fried mutton with rice, followed by apple for desert. it was a delicious meal after so many days of pot noodles! Ginny then showed us how to play ankle bone games. when mongolians buy a big cut of meat, they often get an ankle bone thrown in free, which they eat the meat off and clean to make a
set of token sort of things that they can play games with. we had a set of 30 and a mat, and played for quite a long time very happily. after that we put all our clothes back on again to go and sit on a bridge over a frozen river, look at the stars and drink mim's birthday champagne which froze to our lips. we then returned to the yurt for an excellent night's sleep.
the next day we got up for another delicious meal of pastries, hot blueberry juice, sausage and salad, all homemade by the cook. we had arranged the previous night for alice mim and james to go horse riding with a nomad horse guide (i couldnt go because of my back) and he arrived about half an hour after breakfast. the other 3 kitted up and climbed onto their small but strong ponies and set of for an hour's ride over the plains. whilst they were gone i went for a walk too, and we met back at the camp. the others were completely frozen! twas amusing. then we ate lunch, which was yummy again, and went outside to try our hand at archery,
one of mongolia's 3 national sports (the others being horse racing and wrestling). it was much harder than it looked, and the arrows skidded along the ground for ages afterwards which made retrieving them a tricky task! whilst we were shooting an english couple arrived from Moscow who were travelling with the same agency as us so we chatted to them for a while about what we had in store - sounds very good!
we then got ready for the 20min walk to the local nomad's yurts. we arrived and were invited into their yurt where we asked them lots of questions about their culture and lifestyle through Ginny who was translating. it was a very interesting and eye opening visit, and we learnt way too much to put everything up here. one of the most surprising things for us was that the nomads, along with a lot of mongolian people, actually preferred life under the communist USSR to their current democratic state, as apparently people were more friendly and looked out for each other, and were happy with what they had rather than being greedy and always trying to get more money. we stayed there a couple of
hours, drinking mongolian milk tea (which has salt in it) which we didnt hugely like, and eating pastries which we later found out were made with bone marrow! Alice didnt mind hugely though, as it seems that livestock in mongolia have a much better quality of life than in the west, as they're allowed to roam completely free over the plains, and when they are slaughtered the nomads use every part of their body, including the intestines to store dairy products for the winter, the dung to burn on their fires, and the bone marrow to make flour. it was a really enlightening visit and we all came away very thoughtful.
we were getting much more used to the cold at this point, and walked back to the camp with only thermals and a jumper on despite it being -15, so we were quite pleased with that. then it was time for dinner, some more chat with the english couple and their tour guide showed us a trick - he threw a cup of hot water into the air outside, and it froze before it hit the ground! it looked like a firework. we tried to recreate it ourselves
but failed quite miserably. we then played a very close fought game of pictionary during which we all dissolved into giggles whilst trying to portray profit 😊 and then fell into bed again for another good night's sleep.
the next morning we woke up, ate breakfast and then packed all our stuff again to drive back to ulaanbaatar for the city part of our stay. Sara, the cook, the dog and everyone else turned out to see us off, and we felt quite emotional as we said goodbye and drove away. we all felt like we were really going to miss the camp, the long drop loo and the smell of coal, but mostly the people and the serenity. it was an amazing experience. i love mongolia 😊
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Paul
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animals
Hi you four. As far as I can tell, which is not from looking at the picture as they are much too far away but from accessing the www, the deer you saw from the train were possibly Mongolian gazelle that are the largest ungulate population in central asia. The bactrian camel is the only wild camel, there are no wild arabian camels only those that have gone feral of which there are quite a number in Australia, believe it or not! The bactrian camel is very rare in the wild so do not expect to see any, I guess the one Alice saw, like the one the rest of you saw, was a domesticated one. Things on the bear front in China are not very pleasant. Bear bile is a much sort after and wholely inaffective Chinese medicine. The bears have a tube surgically inserted in their bile duct and are kept in small cages so the bile can be harvested on a regular basis, very nasty. Mongolia is one of those many countries I have not visited that I would very much like to, I am very jealous! Love Paul (not Mr Vodden, please!!)