Dear All,

second leg of my trip, Mongolia! As luck would have it the train I wanted to take from Beijing to Ulaanbaatar was full, so I got to spend an extra three days in Beijing. I bummed around more, saw a few more temples etc., but the more interesting place perhaps was this huge underground bunker. It was built in the 70's when the Chinese and Russians were on the brink of war. It can allegedly hold up to 5 million (yes 5,000,000!) people, had schools, hospitals, a power station and huge food supplies. There isn't much to see, just many long damp tunnels that supposedly stretch out all the under the city and up to the Great Wall some 50 km away! Interestingly at the entrance to the bunker (the one I used there are many of course) there were portraits of big communists, including... Stalin, Marx, Lenin and Engels. Considering it was built to keep out precisely the Russians, that's quite odd. Even more bizarrely, on my way back from there someone greeted me in English, I responded likewise and the bloke then shouted after me, "long live Chairman Mao". Hm. I decided not to shatter his illusions.
The train trip to Ulaanbaatar was long (33 hours) but comfortable. I shared a 4-berth compartment with a Chinese bloke, Iggy the German and Trinette the Aussie. Good company and we had a good time. Upon boarding the train we were all given some sheets, a blanket and a small bag with toiletries (tooth brush, small towel etc.). Good service. At the end of each car was a continuous supply of hot water, good for tea and pot noodles, the staple diet as the dining car was a bit pricey. The views along the way were amazing, especially going through Inner Mongolia (part of China) and then Mongolia proper: the Gobi Desert. Although not pure sand, there are some grasses, it is in places amazingly flat, with no sign at all of any human presence. Very amazing and odd - it's impossible to judge distances!
The border crossing was painful, as expected. At the Chinese side I left the train, hoping to be able to see how they change the wheels (called bogeys; the Mongolians and Russians have different gauge rails!). I couldn't, and ended up standing outside, in the cold, dark and rain, waiting for a train! It reminded me of... well, home really! The Mongolian border later was also painful. We were hassled by someone who apparently looked a bit like Catherine Zeta-Jones. Well if someone had mentioned Catherine Zeta-Jones, a guard's uniform and 1:30 in the morning, I would have thought of something entirely different!
Still we made it through the random forms in random languages and after another 15 or so hours, finally arrived at our destination, Ulaanbaatar. Iggy, Trinette and I decided to stay at Nassan's guesthouse, highly recommended in the Lonely Planet. And indeed it wasn't too bad. We shared a room with a mystery Fin, an uber-camp Swede and an Englishteacher in Japan.

Ulaanbaatar, most foreigners agree, is a dump. Granted, it is very nice to stay somewhere where I can read the signs and shop windows again (they use the cyrillic alphabet here) even if I don't understand much of them. But the place is ugly, really ugly (lots of concrete and salmon-pink soviet-style buildings), doesn't feel like a city, and very dusty! Probably because most of the pavements are being redone so they look more like a beach. The closest you'll ever come to a beach in this country too. There are several buddhist temples and palaces and they are good, though. Similar to the Chinese ones but I like them better here, probably because they aren't as perfect (there is peeling paint) and because they are obviously in use! Also, with 500 times less people in this country there's 500 times less hassle about buying stuff off the locals. Nice.

The people here are nice, they don't continuously stare at me and (no offence!) I find them prettier than the Chinese. Dress sense is odd: the older generation will dress up in a sort of jacket that'd be great coming from the shower, wearing mad hats with something that looks like the Eiffel Tower sticking out of them. The younger generation is all jeans and trendy. Food isn't great but isn't bad either - the problem is a lack of variety. There are no crops in this country, so it's mostly rice/noodles and mutton. Lots of mutton and then some more. Vegetables and fruit can be bought at markets but it's all imported and expensive. In general lots of food and other products here are imported, mostly from China, Russia and Germany. Odd. It does explain why at the Chinese border lots of people bought boxes full of fruit and veg.
Weather - fine thank you. So far it's been great in the mornings, full sun but a bit windy so not too hot. In the afternoons it tends to cloud over and then rain later. Apparently that's quite unusual for this time of year. Considering I'll be on a horse the next 6 days, I hope that changes a bit.
I quickly (after about 10 seconds) realised that Ulaanbaatar is not the place where you'd want to spend 6 days so I needed a trip, and I wanted to go to Karakorum, some 350 km west of Ulaanbaatar. This was the capital under Genghis Khan, so around the 13th century. It so happened that Alex, the Swede, and Nichole, the English teacher, were going on a trip and started it off by going there. So I joined them for a few days. They'd sorted out a jeep and driver, we all chipped in for some basic food etc. and off we went. Day one was an 8-hour drive to Karakorum, through more amazing countryside. We made frequent stops to admire the empty fields and hills (mountains? can't tell) on the horizon. Every so often there'd be a seemingly empty valley with at the far end a white dot that was a ger, those round felt tents people live in. Pee-breaks were interesting too: my first reaction was to find a tree but there are none! Nothing here that grows is higher than ankle-height. So you just walk away from the van a bit and stand there. Or squat, as the case may be.

The jeep, by the way, turned out to be a Russian van. Not uncomfortable but not exactly great either. The roads here are horrendous, whether tarmacced or not. Most people drive in the middle or off the road as that's much better than on the road. The other problem is the dust, you can feel it on your skin, it gets into your bag, you taste it and gets up your nose. Handkerchiefs don't stay pretty for long here.
Karakorum, as Ulaanbaatar, is a hole - there is nothing left of the old city. I get the feeling Mongolians just don't do streets and houses and housenumbers. They prefer their tents and indeed that's what you see, even in the cities. Near Karakorum, however, is a big buddhist monastery, the first in Mongolia, that's really worthwhile seeing. After seeing that, the remains of an ancient (8th century) citadel and a few other sites we stopped at a ger and our driver, who speaks Mongolian only, asked if we could stay. Yes a random place, imagine someone doing that at yours! They agreed, 4 dollars per person for dinner, a place to sleep and breakfast.

So we entered the ger, which was quite spacious. There's a central stove/cooking thing, and around it some furniture, an altar and some cupboards/racks. We were offered snuff tobacco which, as custom dictates, you had to at least smell. I tried some, which weren't that bad or great. It was a bit nerve-wracking to sit there, the whole family in the tent staring at us. Children were told to just sit there and stare. Quite bizarre, especially as we couldn't communicate easily. I regret not speaking any Mongolian or having a translator, I'd have loved to talk to the family and see what life is like out in the middle of nowhere. There are apparently lots of do's and don'ts and we didn't want to upset someone, so we just sat there. We were fed yoghurt, freshly made from cow and sheep's milk, and then noodle soup with mutton. After that we just sat there talking amongst ourselves and in the end wanted to go to bed. We explained this to our driver (sleep! sleep! zzzzz! sleep!) and then the family cleared off except for an old man, presumably the head of the family, who stayed. Two sofas turned into beds, one for Nichole and one for myself and Alex (just my luck ;) ). Pretty comfortable, actually. During the night I obviously had to get up and after a long debate decided to actually get up too. Climbed over Alex, got dressed and then walked out the ger to do my business. The darkness (not a single light to be seen), the absolute silence, the many stars and the easily visible milky way were gobsmackingly amazing. I just couldn't believe it, this is something I had been looking for a long time and here it was. Probably the most enjoyable pee ever... :)

The next morning we woke up as the old man was clonking about the ger. We got up and go some food. First some milk that had been boiled down the night before. Overnight a skin had formed on the top, with cream under it. Very very nice, but you could feel your arteries clog up! After that some rice and ... mutton. And then we were on our way.

We drove on for a few hours, had a blowout tyre (exciting) on the bad roads (6-inch gash in the tyre!) which we managed to swap just before we got hit by a major thunderstorm. Eventually we got to Tsetserleg, an even bigger, or smaller, hole! Ugly paint-peeling buildings and again an incoherent feeling to it, as though most people would quite happily pack up and leave the next day. Invariably it was surrounded by a ger-district, lots of gers (round tents) around the place. We decided to stay for the night; I'd go back to Ulaanbaatar the next day and Alex and Nichole would continue their trip west and south. As the next day would be my birthday we went to the most expensive restaurant in town (all of 3.5 dollars for a meal) and for desert, Alex and Nichole treated me to a box of chocolates, stuck a candle on and made all those present (a few Swedes, a Canadian, American and a Frenchman) sing happy birthday. So nice! We then went back to our Soviet-style hotel (with the coldest showers ever!) and kipped. Next day we parted ways, I took a jeep back to Ulaanbaatar. After waiting for 3 hours for it to fill up (they don't go empty, it's not public transport) we headed off around midday. The driver drove as fast on tarmac as on dirtroad - so at one point I hit my head so hard I could feel my back crack too! After a gruelling 10 hours we got to Ulaanbaatar, where I went back to Nassan's. Sheesh. But great way to celebrate a birthday, in a bizarre sort of way: who can say they celebrated theirs in Tsetserleg? And, yes, who'd want to anyway?

Right, I've been babbling I'll wrap this up. I'm a bit thin on detail here and there but I have to make sure I've something to talk about when I get back! Today, Saturday 15/06, I am meeting the people I am going horseriding with for 6 days. We leave tomorrow. Before then I want to see a few more things in Ulaanbaatar, do some shopping for my train trip afterwards and start packing. Speaking of which: people are mighty impressed I travel with a small pack only, most carry oodles of stuff.
After the horseriding, the 21st, I take the train into Russia, Ulan-Ude, where I should arrive 22/06. That's where I'll splash out on a good hotel, to get my Russian visa registered but also to just relax, after camping and horseriding for 6 days, and a 24 hour train trip that'll probably be a good idea.
Off to practice my cowboy tunes now. I'm a poor lonesome cowboy, and a long long way from home...

Take care,

Lucky Luke

P.S. Many thanks to those who e-mailed! Great to hear some news from home.

|\/|<

 Read further

Mark Krebs, England, 2002