Mongolia from a different perspective

Wow. I just read Oni's blog entry about the trip we just made together and realized how much I forgot to mention. I think the easiest way is to post her entire entry so you can see her view of the whole trip - there are some fascinating details in there that I really loved with the trip.

And oh, by the way - I've uploaded all the pictures from our trip now, which is a lot of pictures considering there were five people taking photos. Will try to upload some videos as well, but for now I'll just sort them, write some comments and delete duplicates. Probably they won't be in a proper order though - my pictures go first, then Will's pictures and then Ferry's. You'll have to figure out the "real order" by yourselves! :)

Anyway, this is what Oni wrote:

Mission: West, semi Gobi, to the White lake

Duration: 7 days

Crew: well, me and 5 men

Transportation: a retro van, Bill our driver- a legend, can navigate by the winds, sun and moon.

Bonus: not tourist season

I honestly do not know where to start. I just had the trip of a life time!!!! Mongolia is a truly stunning country and I am blessed to have been able to have experienced what I did. Soo gracefully and with so much patience the Nomadic Mongolians showed us their way of life. For the last seven days we have been driving through the desert, along some of the roughest roads I have ever seen. There is a 'proper' road for the first day, however, it is soooo bad that Bill preferred the off road style. So for seven days I spent most of my time air borne, feel like I have inhaled enough dust for a life time, and often after a long day felt like some of my organs may have switched place from so much bouncing around.

The landscape is crazy! Steppes with tussock grass, rolling hills and so so dry (it gets green in summer we are told.) So imagine Bill our hard core driver, a mad Dutch man, a German, a Swede, Will and I hooning through what looked like the most remotest place on earth. Camels, wild horses, yaks and huge birds dot the landscape, whilst the 'villages' are often only a few ger tents large. Mongolians are yellow sect Buddhists, following Tibetan Buddhism, so all along the way we stopped at ovoos (stone piles with blue prayer flags) and walk around three times clock wise for good luck.

Being the off season, we had the amazing experience of staying with nomadic people, and not in tourist gers. It was soo out of this world, a real anthropological experience. In Mongolia, you can almost stay in any ones ger, no matter what time of the night you may turn up. Our fist night we stayed with the most amazing old couple. There was no language in common so we sat there looking at each other for hours, and then there it was, the biggest beaming smile I have ever seen. As soon as we had taken a seat on the floor the old woman set about making us tea ( a welcome gesture). Mongolian tea is black tea, with water, salt, and cow or yak milk, which is ceremoniously handed around and drunk in a very slurping manner. Then the old man continued with the welcoming procedures, handing around his snuff bottle, pipe (that lived in his boot, when not in use) and the trusty Russian influence, vodka, all of which have elaborate ritualistic consumption actions. For example, when you receive the vodka, you don't hold the rim of the cup, you dunk you ring finger in the vodka and flick two times towards the sky and one time towards the earth before consuming the harsh vodka, with a huge happy grin beaming at you from the old man over your bowl as you drink. A bowl of horse meat, the best I am told, was also presented, which our driver Bill ate with gusto. When I asked the old man where to go to the toilet, bless him, there I was in the middle of the desert in Mongolia, with this 65 year old man, with a wrinkled face from the elements and his traditional dress on, leading me by the arm, smoking his pipe....when he stops in the middle of the desert and says 'here toilet.'

Along the trip we slept in a restaurant, and then for two nights with another nomadic family. They at first were alittle hostile, and there was one woman who just stared at me the who 48 hours, with a sneaky look. This family was huge, however we shared a ger with a couple who were 8 months pregnant. Its so crazy, you just walk into their lives and live in their house. The men work outside with the livestock whilst the woman's job is to look after the men and do all the cooking, in fact most Mongolian men cant cook at all. Being the only woman guest, it felt like I got a closer view of how the women live. It is undermining to ask to help a woman in her ger, as she is boss, but the communication that you have without language is so great. Many of the women are younger than me, with a few children, and want to look and touch your hair and look at their face in the mirror and then yours. So we slept on the floor with the newly wed pregnant couple and five goats. Early in the morning, still dazed we were greeted by a goat meters away being a super loud alarm clock, and then various other goats getting dragged in to feed the younger ones. Outside through the open door you can see men racing around on horses organising the animals. Horses are vital and play such a big part in Mongolian life.

The last night was abit different we stayed at a friend of Bills ger, it was flash, had a TV, and fridge. The couple both worked in the national park, where the wild horses are, so could speak some English. Was a lovely night playing cards, listening to the men sing and once again finding a common ground with the women of the ger. Even tho our worlds are so different, there is that bottom line connection, that is so real.

We also stoped at beautiful monasteries along the way, watched monks chant, ate in little towns, played soccer with the village boys with an old botle, and walked up an amazing volcano to see a stunning frozen White lake. I have so so many impressions from the last week, and can only give you a snap shot of what it was like. We will put some photos up when we have time. Was lovely to have my first shower in seven days, and wash off the thick layer of dust I had accumulated. My finger is getting sore typing, we had a near accident coming back into Ulaan Baatar (mad drivers), in which I sprained my finger. Tonight we are going to a Mongolian cafe to hear some more throat singing, I love the way Mongolians sing where ever they are, most of the time.

Tomorrow morning our train leaves for Beijing, apparently the best train trip of the trans Mongolian we saved till last. It goes through the Gobi and along the Great Wall. I feel a bit sad to be leaving Mongolia, and deciding to stay here longer was one of best followed travel instincts yet. Mongolian people are truly beautiful, and I leave with only fantastic memories. Sniff!!!!

Mongolian tour

Wow! What an experience! By fa the strongest and most genuine experience of a country so far. The people, the landscape and ... yeah, just everything! But I'll take it from the beginning I guess.

After being in the Russian embassy for half an hour, applying for my transit visa, I rushed back to the guesthouse of the others in the group. The group consists of five people - it was me, a New Zealand couple that were just wonderful (Will and Oni), a Dutch guy (Ferry) and a German guy (Markus). As soon as I came back to the guesthouse we quickly loaded the last luggage into the jeep and left. The jeep is a big Russian jeep/minivan which turned out to be really comfortable and able to take us through any kind of terrain. It also had more than enough space foe everyone, so we had some room for extra bags, the boxes of food we brought and so on.

When we left Ulaan-Baatar there was a light snowfall and a cool wind from the north, but after only one hour on the road we were in the middle of the Gobi or at least the semi-Gobi with sand, rocks and a blazing sun that quickly heated the van.

Traveling through the Gobi or the semi-Gobi (we're going west from UB, not south where the real Gobi is) is an interesting and different experience. The "main road" is just a joke with any Western or even South-East Asia standards - it's rarely a sealed road and the parts where it's actually sealed the driver usually drives beside the road anyway - the desert or the grassy plains is far less bumpy than the actual road. Most of the time though we are just going on small paths or just straight through the fields and the desert where no visible roads or tracks are to be seen. It's fascinating to see how the driver handles these kinds of "roads" and especially to see how he navigates - he uses the landscape and the horizon to navigate and to know exactly which dirt track to take the next turn on he counts the bumps! He is an awesome driver - the best I've ever seen or traveled with by far!

The landscape is just amazing - immense stretches of desert, sometimes just sand, but most of the time dry grass or a mix of stones, sand and grass. At times the terrain is extremely flat and at times we're surrounded by rolling hills or in the middle of a big canyon. It's easy to understand how the Mongolians can have 39 different words for desert - there are just so many different kinds of deserts here! We've also seen small patches of forest, now dried out and ghostly pale and grey, but in summertime surely a beautiful addition to the green fields. Apart from desert, we've also seen an interesting volcano, the lava fields surrounding it, a great frozen lake, some biggers forests and even more hilly landscapes.

On of the nights of the trip we were staying in a tourist ger inside the old capital, which is like a small camping with gers and we had our own where we could eat, sleep and so on. Another night we slept in a cafe in a small town (20+ houses) together with the family owning the cafe. All the other nights we've been sleeping in gers with local nomadic families that our driver knows or at least knows about. The setup is usually that we pay a small sum of money for the accomodation and an ever smaller sum of money for the food and then we stay together with the family. Usually we pay like US$3 for the accomodation and around $1 for each meal.

The first night we were staying with an old couple in their spare ger - usually used by the young ones in the family. We came there late in the night, around 9 pm, through the desert which was very dark and bouncy and without a single road or dirt track to follow. After a late dinner, and loads of their very special tea (salted and with added milk during the cooking - really good) we went to sleep. Waking up in the morning was an experience and first then I really realized we were in the Mongolian countryside. I was the first one up and stepping outside in the early morning sun into a vast desert, scattered with beautiful rocky hills was a real surprise - we didn't see any of the landscape when we arrived to the ger. Since I was up so early I got to see the family separating the old sheeps going for grassy fields far away from the young ones staying in the safety of the ger and their "farm buildings". It was really interesting to see, perhaps not per se - I've seen sheeps being herded before, but because landscape and the surroundings were astounding and they all had their traditional Mongolians clothes on it was a wonderful sight. In the morning we also had some time to play with the three small girls of the family and also with some of the cutest small lambs and goats I've ever seen. Just wonderful! The breakfast consisted of the tea with milk and salt and rice-porridge mixed with sheep-yoghurt - it was surprisingly good. At first it was kind of sour, but the more you ate the sweeter it became - yummie!

When we arrived to the lake on the third day (second night was in the cafe in the small town), it turned out that the ger camp that we had planned to stay in was still closed - not enough tourists. Instead the driver took us to a family he knew who lived nearby. So for two nights we were staying with this family and that experience was even stronger than staying with the first family, mainly because we were sleeping in their main ger together with the rest of the family. So I found myself playing chess on the floor of a beautifully decorated ger together with one of the locals and after this going to bed on the floor with just a few blankets covering me. The five of us slept on the floor, while the couple (the woman being pregnant - probably sixth month or so) slept in the only bed in the ger. In one corner they had some goats in the ger as well - they were to young to stay outside in the cold. Every now and then the family would bring in three fully grown goats to feed the small ones - a wonderful and somewhat surprising view!

The biggest cultural experience of the tour and probably the whole trip was falling asleep on the floor of this ger, with the sounds of the crackling fire in the stove, Ferry and Markus playing cards with the two brothers of the family and the couple making love in the bed just two meters away from us. I guess you're not very shy about those things when you've been sharing a ger with your family and relatives your whole life. Waking up to the sounds of hungry small goats hearing their mom outside of the ger was equally interesting - I never thought those small creatures could produce noise that loud!

The last days of the trip was spent seeing the surroundings around the lake, we had a full day of just hiking around by foot to the volcano close by and not doing any jeep traveling. That was also awesome, it was interesting to see the lava landscape surrounding the volcano. I kind of felt like Frodo and Sam walking closer to Mount Doom to destroy the Ring - I even got a great Frodo-picture of Will with his unruly hair and big confused eyes! :D

The last day of the tour we stopped in a national park where they had a large number of wild horses. We got to see a introductory video, a museum and of course - the wild horses! This place has supposedly the largest number of wild horses in the world and we got to see some of them at least. We couldn't go really close, but it was an awesome view to see the wild horses running around and just eating grass in the wonderful and vast landscape!

Now I'll go to dinner at a local restaurant or something like that - perhaps we can catch some locals singing their special throat-singing? Tonight or tomorrow I'll try to upload all the pictures from the trip - until then you'll have to do with my descriptions of the wonderful landscape!

Change of plans

As it turns out the Russian embassy were not the most friendly place I've been in. The visa rules are so hard and so strict - to get a Russian tourist visa I would have to pay almost $500 in total for the visa, an invitation from a travel agency and the train tickets to Moscow from here. That amount of money is simply not possible for me, so I decided on the less expensive transit visa. This however means that I'm not allowed to make any stops in Russia, just take the train to Moscow and then I have to leave within 24 hours. So now I've booked all my tickets and the plane home from Moscow. I leave Ulaan-Baatar on Friday, April 13, and arrive in Moscow on the 17th. I fly home on the 18th, landing in Stockholm in the afternoon around three.

This leaves me a lot of time in Mongolia though, so today I'm leaving on a tour of western Mongolia and the Gobi for seven days. I'll be back on Wednesday, so until then - don't expect to hear anything from me. There is bound to be no internet in the places we go, probably no mobile network and probably not even showers. Toilets is not a problem though - the desert is big enough for all of us they say! :)

Uploading the pictures from Mongolia now, check them out! More pictures and comments to the pictures will come when I'm back from the tour on Wednesday!

Start of Trans-Mongolian

The beginning of my trip along the trans-Mongolian railway couldn't be better - it's an adventure waiting at every corner and I love being back on the road. Traveling in China was great, but started feeling predictable, easy-going and sometimes it felt like going between places you already knew - partly because I visited friends along the way. Not in a bad way though, but unpredictable things happen now and I love it.

The hostel in Beijing gave me the name of a long-distance bus station where there would be a bus leaving for the border town Erenhot. They told me to go there early to be sure to get a ticket. The fact that the border town has like four different names, at least, doesn't make it easier though (I've seen Erenhot, Erlian, Erlianhot, Ereen and perhaps something more?). Well at the bus station it turns out that I can't buy the ticket in the ticket office, but have to buy it from the bus driver. They don't know which bus it is or when the driver will be there, so I walk around and ask people (I'm really happy for the note I got from the hostel in Chinese at this time). When I found the bus and one hour later the driver as well, he tells me the bus is full, but he sells me a ticket for another bus that will leave at the same time from the same place. He don't know when it will be on the bus station though, but probably in the afternoon sometime. That means I have to either carry my backpack for the full day (it's around noon when I get the ticket) or wait until the bus gets there, dump my backpack and then go for some food. I chose the last one, deciding to sleep in the warm and nice spring sun for a couple of hours and do some reading about Mongolia. As it turns out the bus is not there until five minutes before departure, leaving me to wait at the bus station for five-six hours. Didn't seem that long though - the spring sun was just lovely!

On the bus I got a upper-middle bunk in the back of the bus which meant that if I turned around in the bed I had a great panoramic view through the rear window. The bus takes about 12 hours, arriving in the border town at 4:30 am. It takes me through vast landscapes of grassy planes, stretching away far in the distance. After passing some mountains and the Great Wall in the sunset, the only features of the landscape might be a building far off on the horizon and the other cars, buses and trucks on the road. Other from that it's just flat, grassy and a perfectly blue and huge sky. After the beautiful sunset, the landscape is still lit by a strong full moon and lots of stars, leaving the world in dusk-like state. When the grassy fields start being frosty or snow-covered, the whole landscape gains an eerie, ghostly look - everything has a pale white color and glows in the dark. It is just beautiful and makes your thoughts wander freely around subjects rarely touched and memories long forgotten.

At half four the bus suddenly stops and we are appearently at our final destination. Now things get hectic and before I understand what's happening (or before I even know whether I'm at the right town) I'm stuffed in a minivan together with two Chinese drivers who just nod when I say Mongolia, Uud-Zadum (which is the border town on the Mongolian side) and they don't seem to understand a single word of English. They end up dropping me at a hotel and tell me to sleep a couple of hours before taking the train to Mongolia at eight or so. The train supposedly leaves from the building just across the street, a building that certainly looks like a train station. I pay 20 yuan for the cab and the hotel and end up sleeping in a waiting room of some sort - luxurious sofas, a huge TV and a bar and by putting to sofas together I get a real nice bed for some hours.

When I wake up in the morning at 7am I first go to the "train station" which turns out to be a big market - no trains or tickets, but loads of shoes and bags. Surprised, confused and a bit lost (still don't know if I'm in the right town) I walk out onto the pavement again. From there things happen too quickly again, I get picked up by a minivan who says he can take me across the border, he drives for one minute, drops me off to another van and I find myself in a minivan with five Mongolians in my age and an older Russian man. The Mongolians turn out to be students returning home from Beijing. Together we all cross the border without any big hassles and two of the Mongolians help me a sleeper ticket for the train to Ulaan-Baatar even though it's "sold out" - the brother of the girl works in this town and has some contacts obviously.

Another 7 hours to kill is ahead before the train leaves, so we end up playing ping-pong, snooker, 8-ball at a snooker table, juggle, play cards, eat and just talk a lot. Talking is the most fun and interesting part of course - especially because we have some troubles communicating. Only two of the Mongolians are confident enough about their English to actually talk to me in English, while the other ones do understand parts of what I say, but won't answer me directly. The Mongolians that speak English have very basic English. The Russian guy speaks Russian and Mongolian, but also German. So he end up interpreting some of their Mongolian to German for me, which I don't speak but understand enough to make sense of what they are saying. The Mongolians all study Italian also, so we do a fair bit of talking in Italian/Spanish which we all understand and speak a very little bit of. Since they study in China they also now some Chinese, so we do some of the conversation in Chinese. The conversations thus end up being a lovely mix of English, Mongolian, Russian, German, Italian, Spanish, Chinese and some Swedish which they seem eager to learn some words in. The interesting thing is that it really worked out well!

The Mongolian border town is really a desert town - all flat and sand everywhere (outside town, on the road, in between all the buildings, inside the buildings, in the wind when it blows, inside my cloths and so on..). After boarding the train it takes me straight through the sandy parts of the Gobi (which is actually only about 3% of the desert, the rest is stones, dry grass and steppes and the like). Of course I take photos through the window, but they are not even close to capturing the vastness of the sand dunes that just disappear far behind the horizon.

After traveling through the Gobi for 16 hours, most of the part being just sand, rocks and sometimes dry grass, I get a good feeling for how huge the desert is. We've now come into areas where there are some hills and the ground is occasionally partially snow-covered or frosty. The only signs of life I see throughout the whole trip through the Gobi is the occasional train station (every third hour or so and these are a sight in themselves - a train station in the middle of nothing and not a single person or building as far as the eye can see in all directions, and still people get off here...) and some hoards of wild horses, some groups of domesticated horses with their shepherd and some yaks.

Now I've found my guesthouse in Ulaan-Baatar - a ger (which is the type of tents the nomads use in the desert) set on the top of a building in the outskirts of UB and overlooking the market and the town. I've seen some sights in UB and met a Mongolian girl in a temple who had a day off from work and showed me the town. Now I'm heading out for dinner and perhaps some pool later. Tomorrow I'm looking at a full day at fighting for getting a Russian visa - they are really messy about this. Travel plans, all tickets, visa for next country, health insurance details and payment in US$ just to get a transit-visa. Wish me good luck!