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Published: December 28th 2007
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Train view
On our way to Ulaan Baatar The remoteness of Mongolia is evident from the moment you enter the country. To go from China to the least densely populated country in the world is quite something. We said our farewells to the Colonel and his wife after a very pleasant train journey. They spoke a little English which was a god send as 24 hours in a sleeper cabin without any communication can be frustrating. The Colonel's last words were "here is my phone number, you have any trouble in Mongolia, you call me. I have much power". Brilliant!
Mongolia had the coldest temperatures on our trip. Being 1500m above sea level and light years from any ocean, its climate is extreme to say the least. We got off at Ulaan Baatar to a biting daytime temp of -15. The first thing we noticed was a strange feeling in our noses. That was our nose hairs freezing. Later on, I remember stepping outside with wet hair after a shower and less than a minute later I touched my hair. I thought someone had played the old Police Academy 'swap the shampoo for super glue' gag on me for a second. My hair had frozen into a solid
Train cabin beauty parlour
The colonels wife was a beautician block! Ulaan Baatar is an ugly City if I am honest. Industrial, grid-locked and generally dirty and has approx 1/4 (possibly more) of the population of Mongolia living there. We both agreed when were leaving Mongolia that if you were to visit the country and only see Ulaan Baatar then your opinion of the country would be quite negative. The fact is however, that once we got out of the City we saw that Mongolia is a vast land of serene beauty.
There are very few tarmac roads so together with 2 Brits that we had met, we embarked on a 6 day trip in a Russian 4x4 Jeep. We had every nights sleep planned out for us by UB guesthouse. Each night was to be spent in a ger, which is effectively a round tent with sheeps wool lined walls and a fire/stove in the middle. They are apparently easy to dismantle and move which suits the nomads just fine. In fact, even in the cities and towns, gers are used as a home. I think it must be the law to have one! Our experience of living in a ger was a novelty to begin with although
Underground Heating
Homeless children live down these vents in order to survive the harsh winters. the extremeties gradually wore us down. It did remain quite amusing to the end as I think the 4 of us went a little crazy. The nomadic people do not appear to have a shortage of fire wood which is a bit of luck because they certainly go through quite a bit. They have a policy of loading the fire up and heating the ger up to about +35! The 5 layers you have on gradually come off one by one. As the wood burns down the ger succumbs to the extreme conditions outside and the temperature inside drops rapidly unless more wood is added. This is a problem of course, at night when no-one was attending to the fire (as we found out the first night) the temperature dropped to well below freezing. Our food and drink were frozen, as well as our faces. We were all awake very early, unable to move a muscle in case a tiny bit of cold air crept into bed. We just lay there like frozen turds waiting for one of our hosts to come in and light the fire! By breakfast, this had been done and we were soon sweating in tropical
Battery problems
Our jeep had battery problems the whole trip ending in us having to get a new one. temperatures again. Thoughts of 'this can not be good for us' were going through our heads. We soon realised that to stay alive we must keep the fire burning all night! Lynny was particularly enjoying this task and soon became chief fire warden. Other hurdles we faced included no running water (at least we all stank together) and the toilet facilities, or lack of them. As you would expect, the toilet was just a hole dug in the ground which is not so bad once you get used to it. The real issue again involved the temperature. The hole was usually about 100m away from the ger! Between day and night the temperature ranged from -15 down to -30 so there was never a good time to get any part of your body out! At night, finding it could be difficult too ..... the toilet that is! We stayed with a different family every night who would kindly bring us dinner at the end of the day. Without fail, this dinner would be mutton (plus lots of fat) and rice ...... nothing else. They have a very simple diet. Before long, we noticed that everything smelt of mutton. The nomads
we stayed with (being farmers and eating it every day), our jeep, our gers, our bags and us! We all stank of mutton. It is not a smell we will ever forget.
With all that said, this trip was one of the best things that Lynny and I have done. Every day brought new incredible scenery and immense feelings of isolation. The people we encountered were intriguing and so peaceful, living off the land as they move on from place to place. There are no fences in the Mongolian Steppes. Animals are everywhere! Yaks, Cows, Camels, Sheep, god knows who's they are, if anyones. Wild horses are all around too and one special moment was spent watching a group tentatively cross a frozen river. Large birds of prey were in abundance as well and seeing the huge vultures and a wolf in the wild was excellent. I remember one moment when the jeep was parked up for a photo session, a horseman suddenly appeared over a crest. He then approached us almost nervously, said a few words to our driver before spinning his horse around (front legs in the air style) and galloping off at incredible pace. Driving along
Ger
They are suprisingly a lot bigger from the inside one day, some local people flagged us down. A small minibus that seemed to have about 100 Mongolians in it had run out of petrol in the middle of no-where and they wanted some of ours. Our driver left it up to us so we oblidged. They were extremely grateful and paid our driver some money for it. Gifts of sweets, snuff and random keyrings were exchanged. A surreal moment, particularly when we looked around at where we were. How they were getting around in that minibus heavens only knows. The tracks or lack there of were extremely bumpy and hazardous. On our trip, we found the Mongolian people to be warm and friendly. They have a kind of shy, unintrusive way about them that reminded us of our experiences with Bolivians. Not so much in the City though, and certainly not on our train out of Ulaan Baatar to Russia which I will explain next blog. Sorry to go on for so long again but we really liked it in Mongolia. We would love to go back and see it in the summer too one day!
G+L
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teresa
non-member comment
white christmas
Brrrrr its cold in here! Must be something in the atmosphere! Sounds utterly delightful! love it! glad you had so much fun! a lovely white christmas! missing you still! xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx