The Hike of DOOOOM

Asia » Mongolia » Ulaanbaatar
August 1st 2011

Published: August 1st 2011

Wow I haven't blogged in a really long time!

So for those not on facebook, I did indeed get my Russian visa in the end, much celebration ensued. The rest of my time in Hong Kong was good fun, I went to Noah's Ark (which was as hilarious as I expected, but also a lot more interesting than I expected since it had lots of information about various attempts to find the remains of it on Mount Arrarat, and information about modern projects inspired by the story, such as Frozen Ark, which is a collection of DNA samples of every animal of the world to try and combat extinction), and I also went to several temples, including the 10,000 Buddahs temple, which as the name suggests, has over 10,000 gold buddah statues in it and on the path up to it, which was very impressive.

I then went back to Beijing for about a week, and Matt and Alex came and joined us. It was so lovely to see them again. Although Matt's first words to me after a year apart were, "what's going on with your hair?" I would be insulted if it weren't for the fact that he really does have a point. My hair is all kinds of crazy colours right now! The black is fading to red (I know, right, wtf?), the blue has faded to greeny-yellow, and I have about an inch of blonde roots to top it all off. Yikes.

Anyway, so we hung out, went to bars and restaurants, went to see the old Summer Palace which is just this huge sprawling park with "ruins" of the old palace in it. I say "ruins" because they looked so utterly fake and placed to me... But then I could be wrong. It wouldn't surprise me though, China does have a tendency to fake historical things. A lot. It was so humid that day it was a truly horrible experience.

Finally Ralph flew off to Hong Kong to get his Russian visa and to meet his parents, and Matt, Alex and I went and got the train to Ulaanbaatar. The journey was about 30 hours long and was for the most part very comfortable, the only bad bit was the border crossings, because at the Chinese border station of Erlian the train's guages needed to be changed as they use different size tracks, this took like 5 hours, and meant that we arrived at the Mongolian border station at like 1am, where of course we had to go through passports and customs again. But otherwise it was fine. The scenery out of the window was incredible and made the whole thing worthwhile.

After arriving in UB (totally quicker than typing its full name, so from now on it's UB not Ulaanbaatar) we spent a few days relaxing and wandering around. We went to to the Choijin Lama Temple museum, which was very interesting, so different to temples in China. There they're all freshly painted and here it was crumbly and old. It just felt more real here. We also went to Sukhbaatar square, and saw the government building with it's massive statue of Gengis Khaan. They love him here, every bottle of vodka has him on it. We also went to the Natural History museum which was a bit pants really, although the dinosaur collection was pretty good. It was so nice to arrive in UB and to be able to see the sky, and breathe clean air. Beijing is so utterly polluted that most of the time you can't see too far in front of you, let alone see the sky, and it's very hot and humid. UB in comparison is much cleaner, with brilliant blue skies and a nice dry heat with cool winds. For the first couple of days I was actually cold because it was quite cloudy, but the last couple of days the clouds have cleared and it's been lovely and warm but not humid at all.

We finally decided to head into the countryside, which lets face it is why you come to Mongolia, and we found in the Lonely Planet book a hike that looked pretty do-able, 15km from UB to Mandshir Khiid. The book said it would take about 7 hours and there were yellow markers on the path to show you the way. Great. So we walked out of the city to the Zaisan Memorial (which is so hilariously soviet) and then up the first mountain. All well and good. We'd taken a good supply of food and water, and I was surprised at how easy I was finding it to hike up a mountain. I'd always though of myself as very unfit, I guess a years worth of cycling to and from work and climbing for a few months has really made a difference! We got to the top of the first peak and then managed to take a wrong turn, but after back tracking a bit and going the right way we found the start of the yellow trail markers. Excellent. Then there was a pleasent hike through the forrest where we saw woodpeckers and all sorts of mushrooms and I couldn't help but admit that whenever I'm surrounded by nature there is a fantasy movie playing in my head... Matt pointed out a probably poisonous mushroom, I replied that it would merely make you shrink. Matt mentioned a boulder field, I replied that when crossing it you mustn't look back or you'll turn to stone... And so on and so forth.

Aaaanyway, we then came out into a meadow where we lost the yellow markers for a bit. The meadow had plants up to our waists and was FULL of bugs, especially these massive scary looking spiders. We eventually got out of the meadow and found a road, and even managed to find the yellow markers again after a while. Then after another meadow we lost the markers again. This is when it all started to go horribly wrong.

Ralph had lent me his GPS so we put the coordinates in and followed the pink line. We went up a mountain, expecting to crest it, only to find it went up higher when we were expecting to have reached the peak. We went up and up, following the pink line on the GPS, expecting to see it on the other side of the mountain. Only we never made it to the top. By 7pm (bearing in mind we had set out at 7am that morning) we decided we would either need to camp in the forrest (we hadn't brought any tents with us, or even waterproof jackets) or abandon hope of reaching our intended destination. By this point I was slightly hysterical. There was a thunderstorm just to the side of us, we were WAY up a mountain, were running low on water, and had zero survival skills. However after convincing myself that God wouldn't let me die up a mountain, despite it being my own fault, I was able to appreciate the stunning view. I mean, beyond words stunning, and suddenly it was all fun again, scrambling over boulders and running through the forrest and so on.

From the high point we had reached we could see a town way off in the distance which we correctly assumed was Zuunmod. We made a decision then to abandon hope of reaching Mandshir Khiid and head for Zuunmod instead, because we thought we'd be able to make it there before dark.

On the way back down the mountain we came across a tiny camp in the forrest where two guys were collecting pine cones, and then finally came to a house at the valley at the bottom. The kind people there then drove us the last 5km to Zuunmod (although they dropped us off just outside the city since theye were drunk and didn't want to go into the town and get caught!). We then found literally the only hotel in the town checked in and fell asleep, despite the fact that the beds were hard as rocks, and the toilet didn't have a seat, we didn't care, it wasn't the forrest and we were alive. Hooray!

All in all we must have walked about 40km over 13 hours (look up the places on Google Earth or Maps to truly appreciate what we did!), which is utterly rediculous, and we decided then that for all future excursions we're going to get a guide or go on an organised tour. Lesson learned.

The next day we got a taxi to Mandshir Khiid (don't judge us, we were so sore and achy!) which is a monastary in the hills. It was very pretty. We secured ourselves a yurt to sleep in for the night, slept for most of the day, explored the monastary a bit, then slept the rest of the day and night! The toilets at the ger camp were literally just a hole in the ground, it was certainly an experience!

Today we then took a taxi back to Zuunmod and then a minibus back to UB, taking in total about 2 hours, which is a lot more civilised compared to how long it took us to get there! Now we're back at the hostel, and are probably just going to sleep more! I'm not as achy as I was expecting given how far we walked, but I do have some epic bruises which I assume came from clambering over boulders.

All in all a very fun experience, if a little scary for a few hours. Mongolia is just like this massive outdoor adventure playground, it's brilliant. We've seen so many massive birds of prey up close, horses wandering around, and more bugs than I would want to see in a lifetime. We've climbed boulders and mountains, hiked through forrests and meadows, and we've barely even scratched the surface of this amazing country!

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