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I decided to have one last stop in Russia before I left, 24 hours in Ulan Ude, the capital of the Buryat republic and the home to the biggest Lenin head in the world. It was a rather weird visit. I arrived at 6 in the morning to a city which, If I didn't know better, I would say had never been visited by another westerner in the history of the world. I got quite familiar with the train station. I spent the first few hours waiting for the ticket office to open so I could book my onward journey and I also ended up staying in the train station dormitories- a totally bizarre experience with people drifting in and out all night. In between arriving and leaving I had time to get totally lost in the town, see the Lenin head, check my emails in a weird underground room full of slot machines, eat lunch in a Mongolian restaurant, visit the market and look around the buryat history museum. This last stop was perhaps the most fun. The Buryats are decended from the Hun. They are round faced smiley Asian looking people with a culture based nomadic living and Buddhism.
The Museum had only one room open, with beautiful Buddhist paintings (Thangkas) and statues. There were no other visitors but there seemed to be about 30 members of staff, who made me feel very welcome even if a little out numbered!
After a picnic supper on my bed- as there was nowhere else to eat in the dorms I had an early night and in the darkness just before dawn got on a train to Mongolia. I traveled in the luxury of a second class compartment as this is all that you can take over the border. Four beds in a closed compartment, which for most of the journey I had all to myself. What extravagance! There were a few tourist on the train too, traveling from Irkutsk, including a french couple who'd been in my hostel in Moscow. Its crazy what a small world backpacking is. I guess that makes me predictable, but never mind!
Border crossings on the train are a big deal. In Naushki and Subhaatar, the towns on each side of the Russian-Mongolian border very stern looking officials come aboard. Forms are filled in, passports are checked and compartments are searched. There was also
a very large police lady with a comically small sniffer dog. At each of the border towns we stopped for about 4 hours and hoards of locals crammed onto our now one carriage train to get through customs. Three Russian Buryat women joined me in my compartment, a wrapped up warm beaming grandmother, her friendly middle aged daughter and a pretty giggly 17 year old granddaughter. The grandmother spoke mainly Buryat but also a bit of Russian and she was very chatty. She was lovely and talked and smiled at me pretty consonantly for the 10 hours she was in the train. She also fed me home made bread and salad and a boiled egg. The middle lady spoke a couple of words of English and quite good German so she occasionally interpreted the old ladies babble and encouraged me to give English lessons to the daughter who was supposed to be learning but was too shy to speak. Like most of the Russians, the three of them were just hoping on the train to cross the border. They were traders and were going to Mongolia to buy clothes to sell back at home. I got the impression that grandma
came along to increase their customs allowance and possibly to feed the customs officials if they got difficult. We crossed the border, marked by a fence, and were welcomed into Mongolia by possibly the most friendly police display ever. The train pulled up by a small hut with a sign saying 'Mongolia'. Inside Mongolian men in military uniform were peeping out of the window and giggling, obviously waiting for the right moment to emerge. When we stopped, about 5 men tumbled out and formed a little line by the train. On command they all saluted, trying to keep straight faces but utterly failing and with them grinning our train pulled away.
Both myself and my compartment companions cleared customs and after leaving subataar the train was back down to tourists and I had the place to myself. I ate some supper with a couple of European students then settled down to a novel nights sleep in a room all to myself.
We arrived into UB at sunrise, its a run down soviet style place, but friendly. I was greeted by smiling people from my guesthouse who had come to pick me up and drive me there. I got
a bed, had a shower, ate some of the provided breakfast and went out to explore. A lot of people speak a bit of English and most of them smile a lot. I spent the day wandering the cities museums. The natural history museum was great, a lot of information about Mongolian plants and animals, demonstrated by rather bad taxidermy, as well as great displays on local geology. There were also some great dinosaurs, all found locally. I had a look around Sukhbattar square, which is the centre of the city and then went in search of the choijin lama temple. Getting slightly lost on the way, i stumbled on the 'memorial museum for victims of political persecution'. That was interesting, it was in a ramshackle wooden house, dwarfed by skyscrapers and was run by two old men who jumped up and ran around turning lights on when I arrived. The displays themselves were harrowing, it was all about the arrests, trials and executions in soviet Mongolia. It is interesting how Russia hushes up a lot of the bad soviet history but in Mongolia its very openly criticized and factually recorded. I did manage to find the temple complex too,
just before it closed. I had a quick glimpse inside some of the buildings, typical pretty Buddhist temples, cool and colourful, crammed with statues and rather scary masks. With the industrial Russian city the temples are one of the only things that reminds you you are in Asia. The Gandan monastery to the west of the centre is a stunningly relaxing place- a fully functional temple complex where you can watch the monks in their morning prayer, breath in the incense and watch locals feed birds and spin prayer wheels. The city is on odd mix of modern buildings and nomadic gers (yurts or tents) which are set up pretty much anywhere. The oddest place I have seen one so far was on the second floor of a ruined multi-story carpark.
UB has a bit of a reputation for being not a very nice place but from what I have seen this is unfair. The people are nice, the city, although not really pretty, has some interesting features. Also the food has generally been great- as a city with a large expat community the restaurants are extremely varied. One night I ate in a fancy Indian restaurant where you
sit cross legged in a faux silk tent and enjoy amazing fresh curries, another in an unmarked Mongolian cafeteria where you have a choice of 2 meals, soup and meat dumplings with coke or soup and meat dumplings with tea. UB has a bad reputation for crime but I haven't been robbed yet and there is virtually no hassle- I obviously look quite different form the mongolians but the only people that seem to acknowledge this is occasional school children who laugh and say 'hi'. I went to an electronics market the other day and far from being in your face, its almost like you have to persuade people to sell you things. An interesting twist on the shop-customer relationship which makes for a nice and relaxed atmosphere.
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The Papa
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border crossings
The friendly Mongolian border police remind me of arriving in Amritsar in the Punjab on a flight from Kabul to be met by a troop of Sikh soldiers who marched us across the tarmac into a hut and fed us ladhu (indian sweets) while sorting out our passports. US immigration should learn some lessons. Meanwhile here asparagus are rising from the allotment while Brown blunders, Cameron clings and Clegg charges toward the election.