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Published: October 9th 2007
That's good bye and hello if you didn't realise.
So, we took a daytime train from Irkutsk to Ulan Ude as the line hugs the coast of Lake Baikal so gives lovely views. Sadly it was a very wet, grey day so the lake was leaden rather than the shining blue when we'd seen from the island. Still, it was worth seeing and gave a good idea of how huge it is.
This time we shared the compartment with Sergei who was deaf. You might think that this would make communication even harder but in fact he was more used to communicating by sign language and writing than most so we got to know a bit about him, though he was quite shy. He was returning to Chita, in the Buryat region of Russia, from a holiday on the Black Sea. We were also joined by another guy at Slyudyanka, an industrial town right on the lake, but he just got up onto the top bunk and went to sleep. Sergei said he'd been driving a long way.
Ulan Ude is a relatively small town to the east of Lake Baikal where a substantial part of the population
are Buryats who are the largest indigenous group in Russia. They are of Asian rather than European decent and look like Mongolians. We only had one day there with the highlight being the largest Lenin head in the world!
Which reminds me that I forgot to mention Friday as being Wedding day earlier in the blog. We first encountered this at the Asia/Europe border just outside Yekaterinburg which is just a monument by the side of a main road (although there is some geographical basis to the location). We were there on a Friday and brides were queueing up to have their photos taken in front of it. The same happened again at the Lenin head so clearly it just has to be the biggest local monument.
Other moments of note were:
1. A man and wife arrived at breakfast in the hotel and appeared to have a row with one of the staff because beer was not included in the buffet. In the end they gave in and bought some!
2. We had dinner in a hotel restaurant where there was a table of around 25 people, mostly women, who appeared to be celebrating something
but we couldn't work out what. After speeches and much drinking, one lady got up and played the piano and the whole table sang along.
Then a very early morning train to leave Russia. All sorts of problems finding the right train at the station, largely because it did not seem to be displayed anywhere. After a while on board it became apparent that this was the tourist carriage, probably not surprising as not too many Russians will travel to Mongolia. After a couple of hours more sleep the first part of the journey was rather beautiful with very different, much more open, scenery from what we've been used to. We were following a river for much of it, surrounded by hills, and also a rather beautiful lake. The sun was shining and the autumn trees looked stunning.
However, on arriving at the border town of Nauski things went downhill. The whole process was painfully slow and many hours were spent with nothing happening but nobody would tell us anything. It was nearly 4 hours before customs officials got on the carriage, which by this stage was standing alone at the platform with no engine or other carriages.
There had been lots of coming and going of people who we were unsure actually had places on the train and lots of movement of boxes of fruit and other baggage around the carriage. One guy tried to get into our compartment, it seemed he wanted us to pretend he had a seat in there. It was one of those situations where you know something is going on but will never find out what!
Passport control people were next and they disappeared with our passports and immigration cards but were not interested in the visa registration slips we had been religiously collecting along the way.
Finally we were attached to an engine, moved on to no mans land and crossed the border watched by guards from both sides. Amusingly the Mongolian border guards waved as we passed through, the Russians had not done this!
Then another few hours at Sukhbaatar in Mongolia while the process was repeated and lots more people got on and off. The provodnitsa announced, as soon as we passed the border, that we had to pay for hot water in Mongolia (there's a samovar at the end of every carriage). The Swiss couple
in our carriage paid up but we knew that this was not required and most other people refused. However, she was not happy and locked it up (and then the toilet!) for a while but luckily I had sneaked in and filled our pot noodles first....
Not only did we not know how long we were staying at the border but we also got very confused about arrival time. I think I forgot to mention that all trains in Russia run on Moscow time and once you enter the station then all clocks show Moscow time. This means that you can be leaving one city that is Moscow + 2 and arriving somewhere that is Moscow + 3 so you could have 3 possible times while you're travelling. God only knows how we managed to make all our trains!
Anyway, Mongolia was supposed to be on the same local time as Ulan Ude but after crossing the border, the provodnitsa changed the time on the clock back by an hour. We think this is because Mongolia is not on summer time any more. This meant we did not know if arrival time was in summer time or winter
time. As it was 7.05am the following day it would have been useful to know in order to get up but she was not going to tell us! In the end, arrival turned out to be somewhere between the two so still no idea what it was supposed to be....
Pulling into Ulaan Baator it was just getting light and we realised that the ground had about 2 inches of snow - we had not been expecting this! It was bitter when we got off the train but we managed to find a taxi after a bit of hassle.
After shower etc we headed out for breakfast, early on a Sunday morning and everything was quiet, but we began to realise that a lot more was written in English than had been in Russia. We warmed up over a rather good breakfast in one of a number of cafes which we could have chosen - certainly a big change from Russia. In general as we made our way around it became apparent that UB (as it's known) is much more tourist friendly than almost everywhere we went in Russia which in some ways is a relief. Finding anything
in Russia is hard as everything is behind heavy, closed doors, down long corridors or up many flights of stairs - you have to go into many wrong doors before you find the right one. It seems that Mongolia might be a bit easier for that.
We spent the morning at the Gandan Khiid Monastery which has a number of temples. In some of these monks were chanting from prayer books in Tibetan which was very soothing. The monasteries were mostly destroyed during the communist era in Mongolia, very like Orthodox churches in Russia, but this one survived and has been in existence for many years. Most of the ones here have been built in the last 15 years or so.
Then a brief visit to the Natural History museum as lots of dinosaurs have been found in the Gobi Desert before lunch in a buddhist cafe. Unfortunately I was feeling rather under the weather so the rest of the day was cancelled and spent in the hotel. We did attempt to find the local theatre showing a folk music and dance show but when we eventually found it it was shut though not clear if this was
because it was Sunday or out of season...maybe Mongolia is not going to be so easy after all! So, instead dinner was a curry - whoopee - and really good too - they don't go for spicy food in Russia.
Yesterday we took a trip out of UB to the Terelj National Park - only 70km from the city but a very different place. We were staying the night in a ger, a traditional nomad circular tent in a tourist camp. The setting was beautiful, surrounded by huge rocks above rolling plains. Sadly our guide was pretty useless and spent most of his time talking to the driver. We had meals with them too which were awkwardly quiet as he was monosyllabic in his answers to questions.
Hugh and I trekked around the area quite and bit and were also taken out to visit a meditation monastery built about 12 years ago. I can see why monks would find it a peaceful place but they usually only use it in the summer. I can understand why as it was bitterly cold. Despite the cold, the wood burning stove kept the ger piping hot, until it ran out of
wood in the middle of the night and this morning it was icy. Luckily for me, Hugh was brave enough to get out of bed first and relight it!
This morning we went to visit a nomadic family in the park. These were clearly nomadic as they had moved and the driver had to ask around to find them. We were given a range of traditional dairy products to try - great for Hugh though I did trick him into trying the fermented mare's milk! This is the local hooch and is about the strength of beer but tastes like yoghurt gone off - I can't imagine how awful the hangover must be....
Obviously they move with the times and the ger had washing machine, fridge freezer etc (they had a generator) and they had at least 2 others for the family. During the winter there is only the couple who look after the animals out there as their family live in the city for the grandchildren to go to school. Still, it's not an easy life and they have around 140 animals - sheep, cows and horses to look after.
And now we're back in UB
and in a homestay for 2 nights. We're just thinking that this might have been a mistake as it is a long way from the city centre and the girl there was unable to ring for a taxi for us and had to take us onto the street to get an unofficial taxi. This is fine except that we need a taxi for an early train the day after tomorrow and don't want there to be any problems. The place is pretty basic too and not quite what we hoped but sometimes that's the way things go.
While I've been madly typing this (sorry, it's got a bit long - do tell me if I'm getting boring) Hugh has been busily putting photos onto previous blog entries if any of you are interested to look back. (And weirdly, I've just heard Frank's mobile phone going off somewhere behind me.....he's not followed me has he?)
And finally, I've been criticised for my competitions being too easy so a couple of new questions:
1. Why do tomatoes and cucumbers appear in nearly every Russian meal but it would appear to be too cold to grow them?
2. Why
do Mongolia use the Cyrillic alphabet even though the language is nothing like Russian (in fact they seem to use a sound similar to the LL sound in Welsh amongst other much harsher spitting-like sounds!)?
Time to go and find some dinner. Hope all well. Go on, drop us a line, tell us what's going on out there....
S + H xx
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Ross
non-member comment
Mongolian
Mongolian has only used the Cyrillic alphabet since 1937, and its traditional alphabet was abolished by the Soviet government in 1941. I'll let someone else research Russian cuisine.