Within half
an hour of leaving Erlian the Mongolian authorities infested our train to start
really thorough border/customs check. Our passports are taken away for stamping
and we are not allowed to leave train for almost three hours. All doors and
windows are locked, guards on the platform look very mean and we sweat at
boiling 36C inside, and the restrooms are opened only when train is moving ...
not happy! Around 8pm a sharp looking female officer returns with passports and
we can finally walk out of our temporary prison. Train heading for Ulaanbaatar is going to
leave in a few hours so we visit nearby restaurant testing our first Mongolian
dish and local beer in company of Chinese girl journalist JD. Besides Cantonese
she speaks Mongolian and English and that is very handy. We share 4-berth coupe
with two Mongolian sisters returning home from study in Beijing and after good
sleep and breaky they both get interested in our favored card game
"Joker" which we often play to kill some time. Other Mongolian passengers
get soon involved as well and by mid morning our coupe is full of Joker
enthusiasts. We have a lot of fun and it is almost sad to see Ulaanbaatar station so soon saying good bye
to everyone. Very friendly staff from Golden Gobi hostel is awaiting us at the
station as promised, and soon after we check in a clean and spacious double
room. This hostel is somewhat unusual in a way of its position and style –
local Mongolian family transformed a couple of flats in a typical two storey
block of units into one space with nice and cozy feeling. Later afternoon we
are invited to join a 6-day 4-WD trip through central Mongolia. That sounds exciting, we
are going to meet many nomad families and learn about their traditions and
culture. We are in! Our group of six backpackers, driver and tour guide Pasca
(she will cook as well) will leave tomorrow morning in a Russian jeep. Wow! Can
not wait till morning, despite warnings of “no shower”, no toilets and lots of
bumpy ride. We leave just after breakfast – Pasca needs to stock up cooking
supplies while we take the opportunity to buy more vodka and munchies. First
100km in spacious jeep with hard Russian suspension is surprisingly not so bad
but everyone welcomes first stop at Hustai
National Park resort
where we hear first time about almost extinct Przewalski horse. Soon we are on
the road again. Suddenly someone spots a herd of horses coming towards us from
a distance. Driver stops, we get out very slowly and in amazement we watch
about a dozen of wild Przewalski horses galloping across the road some 20 meters
in front of us. “Guys, you are extremely lucky!” Pasca smiles and we feel
privileged to be here. It looks like horses decided to perform for us the best
of their skills, we take many pictures while they play and drink from nearby
creek. Back to jeep, lunch on the way and off we go – we still have 200km more
to the first overnight stay with nomad “Bur” family. Rolling hills and valleys
are occasionally spotted with groups of 2 or 3 round tents – gers, but
mostly the land is bare and unpopulated. There are no sealed or sign posted
roads here, our driver is skilled negotiating sometimes steep river crossings,
all that without GPS or maps – he just knows which way to go. I am thinking
myself “How would I survive here if I ever get lost? Hmm, that would be
unpleasant”. We arrive to Bur’s family just before sunset; the weather has
deteriorated with strong cold westerly winds picking up. While Pasca prepares our dinner,
we all settle in one “guest ger”. There are six single beds inside lined up
alongside the round wall and a smaller stove in the middle. Bur’s wife started
fire and in minutes we feel warm again – this is a good time to unpack and get
beds ready for night before dinner is ready. We’ll all eat, play and sleep in
this unusual type of accommodation for next few days. After delicious dinner Pasca goes on explaining local
customs; for example we need to follow clockwise direction when visiting
family’s ger, she talks about harmony which exists between nomads, their
livestock and the nature. We learn how families pack up their gers and move
from place to place up to four times a year to follow seasonal changes of
pastures. When I ask 79 year old Bur what makes him the happiest, he thinks for
a while and then replies “When my animals are healthy” - Pasca translates with
a light smile and adds this family owns over 1000 sheep and angora goats. He
pulls out a small container from inside his heavy thick coat and offers
sniffing tobacco as a gesture of friendship to all of us. Remarkable evening,
perhaps few minds tonight will be thinking about values and priorities in life
before falling asleep. Morning is freezing, literary. An overnight blizzard has
covered this vast land with thin layer of powdery snow and temperatures dropped
below zero. Brr… we supposed to ride camels today and it is still snowing by
9am! Hmm, but how often can we ride a camel in Mongolian outback? This is the only
chance, so put on those heavy long sleeved coats and hop on! Bur prepares three
camels (yes, we'll ride on seats) so split in two groups of three
riders, each group having about half an hour of camel fun. Clouds have receded
a little and wind dropped off slightly which makes the ride more enjoyable. Earlier this
year Bur's female camel had her first baby and now three months old youngster
does everything what small kids do - it madly jumps around but never too fat from her mum. On
the way we encounter a group of mischievous billy goats who decided to explore
the world outside their home boundaries, Bur knows how to handle such situation. The presence of livestock is
overwhelming. With smile we watch hundreds of somewhat clumsy baby sheep and
goats jumping on steep rocks never really loosing their balance. Few even come
for a cuddle, perhaps we start to smell like their mothers. Lunch at noon and
we need to move on soon, at 2pm we wave to Bur’s family from windows of our
jeep heading further 200km west. Snow sprinkled landscape becomes more dramatic
with steeper valleys and rockier hills. We also see first yaks, from now on we’ll
see them everywhere and often they are domesticated as an alternative to
here-non-existent common cow. A quick stop-over at Semi-Gobi desert gives us some
impression of what Gobi might look like and by 7:30pm we arrive to a young
nomad family of five – Mocho (husband), Turne (wife) and three daughters 2, 7
and 10. We’ll stay with this family for two nights and as before a single
visitor’s ger is ready for us. We are invited to the family ger and our taste
buds are put to the test when offered Mongolian tea. What is Mongolian tea? A
green tea with salt and fresh creamy yak’s milk – close your eyes, imagine a soup
and you have no problem. Imagine a tea and no one can drink it! An interesting
play of mind. I passed the test on the first attempt; Iva needs one more day to
convince herself. Few vodka shots after dinner will help good night sleep. It has been
snowing all night and brief toilet visits to mother nature pose few challenges. Saturday
morning is still very cold, skies are covered with thick grey cloud, wind
sprinkles snow everywhere and horse riding looks even more uncertain. All of us
seem to be sucked into this amazingly peaceful lifestyle and we take every
opportunity to be part of it – we watch Turne milking yaks, we carry baby goats
and sheep to an overnight shelter or we walk livestock to/from pastures. The
weather little improves by late morning giving green light to horse riding. Mocho
and his friend saddle eight horses and we are on the way to waterfalls. Well,
maybe in wet season but now completely dry. Never mind, the sensation of horse
riding with nomads in snow covered Mongolian outback is priceless. Back for lunch
just in time, we are all very hungry – metabolic combustion is quite rapid at
low temperatures. Pasca has proven herself as an excellent cook and also today
we do not expect any less. She has not disappointed us and her Mongolian based
meals taste great. Afternoon is filled with few activities – we three boys opt
for another horse ride, Iva relaxed with a cup of coffee catching up with her
notes and later this afternoon we all engage in game of badminton under blue
sunny sky. Sunday starts with home made yak’s yogurt on pancakes, then Turne
comes forward to our request to see angora goat shearing to produce Kashmir
wool. Finally we sadly say good bye to this lovely family and move on to acomplish busy day ahead, including visit to a monastery hidden deep in forest
hills. After four hours driving the Russian jeep struggles to finish last few
kilometers on steep and muddy road, in one place it even slides sideways
dangerously close to a cliff. We jump out of the car refusing to get back in
again. “Not until you get off that edge” we insist on driver. He did and we continue up
hill for few more kilometers however conditions get worse quickly as snow cover
increases with higher altitude. Jeep dances on snow and mud like a yo-yo; too
many times I hit the roof with my head. Finally the car comes to a stop – too
much snow and mud for these tires, we need to walk from here. Pasca reckons we
have 6km each way and it is 3pm already. My sneakers are completely soaked wet, snow gets
deeper in shady forest and our enthusiasm runs thinner by every minute. Last
drop and we call it off – me, Iva and Femke decide to bail out and we leave the
group about the half way up to monastery returning to the jeep. Hopefully we’ll
find the way through the forest.... All went ok; we found the car and quickly
made a fire to dry our footwear. The rest of the group returned at 6:30pm, now
we need to move really fast to reach our next overnight stay at hot springs, still at leats
100km away. It does not look good – did we say no sealed roads or sign posts
here? The sun moves closer to horizon and something looks sus – our driver asks
locals for direction and we seem to be going in circles around very large
swampy flat lands. Suddenly we see where we do not want to be … jeep gets
bogged in deep mud in middle of swampy terrain. It is now completely dark, no
flashlights or shovels are at hand and no one can help but us. I am little
angry with the driver because this could have been prevented if he did not
drive like a fool. With the help of few members of our group the car is pushed
out of the mud and we move again. Not for long though. A couple of hundred
meters later he gets bogged again, this time the car sits on its belly and there is
no way to get it on wheels again. “How could he not see the water in front of the
car?” I ask myself when I saw reflection of headlights on paddles ahead of us
just before it happened. Truly foolish, indeed. Furthermore, neither driver nor
Pasca are really sure where exactly we are. It is 11pm, very cold and with moon shining over dead-quiet land we start to walk with our backpacks in hope to find some place to
stay overnight. Pssshh! Someone can hear dogs barking in distance. The sound becomes
more intense so we must be getting closer. Where dogs are, there are people. Or,
are they? We do not know for sure, none of us is familiar with Mongolian
outback at night. Keep walking, and then we see a silhouette of ger in about
200m distance. Pack of loudly barking dogs is maybe within 20-30 meters and we can see them, very nerving situation. David remembers how he was once chased by a pack of wild dogs. Whole group tucks down to prevent further dog’s aggravation. While we
are quietly waiting for next action, our driver somehow passed guard dogs and
knocked on ger’s door, asking family for a help. Few minutes later dogs go quiet and we are all
invited inside; to our amazement this very young family with small baby
offers us their ger as a shelter for tonight. We could not believe this -
Wife made up fire in already cold stove, cooked Mongolian tea, rolled noodles
from the scratch and cooked them with lamb meat while her small baby was happily
sleeping in her bed. By 1am they dragged in few spare mattresses with blankets
and tired all we fall asleep on the floor very quickly. Morning is fresh but at
least it is sunny. At 6am wife milks yaks, we assist grandma to remove baby
goats from their mums to a shelter while grownups go to pastures. In meantime our driver organized some local guy with a tractor to pull his jeep out of mud
plains. Two hours later the rescued jeep arrives to load our backpacks and we are on the
move to hot springs
where we supposed to be yesterday. This is our first shower in five days and we
all are looking forward hot water bath in a swimming pool fed with natural
thermal spring. While Pasca is working hard on our breaky we indulge in hot
swimming pool, wondering how we feel when we get called for the breakfast – air
sits at chili 10C. Quick nap, then lunch and we are in jeep once more for the
last destination of this trip - ancient capitol Kharkhorin. Soon after we leave
hot springs we
stop once more at our rescuer’s ger for fresh yak’s yogurt produced within few
hours of milking. Five hours later we arrive to a touristy ger camp in town of Kharkhorin. Tonight a
local musician will perform traditional music in our ger and few other tourists
are welcome to join us. Last sleep in ger means the trip is almost over – not
quite yet, we are going to see local monastery, then many, many hours on a mix
of dirt and sealed roads to Ulaanbaatar, in total 360km. Apart from seeing herd
of over thousand horses galloping by, the ride is tiring. Everyone just looks through windows and I know what is going through minds here in jeep - We all are
sad that this wonderful encounter with nomads and their livestock has come to
the end. Driving through streets of Ulaanbaatar makes us to think about
real values of modern city life.
Tonight we
all go out for last dinner and tomorrow I and Iva are going to board train for Russia.
Our last day in Mongolia
starts with a visit to local markets and the rest of afternoon we just cruise
around town centre. With help from hostel staff we catch a taxi for train
station but to our horror at half way Iva noticed she left her handbag at the
hostel. Unfortunately taxi driver did not understand a word in English so when
we say “Golden Gobi hostel” he takes us to wrong “Gobi Hotel” which happens to be located in
a completely different part of Ulaanbaatar.
Sweating and frustrated we stop another taxi - luckily this driver could
understand few words so soon we squeeze through busy evening traffic heading back to Golden Gobi hostel (Murphy’s
Law works here – Madona has a concert here tonight so traffic is unusually
dense). Iva flies for her bag and shortly we
are racing to train station again - some 40 minutes later. Well, we just made it
in time and train starts to move while we organize our pack in the coupe. Hush!
What a relief. We deserve a drink. Or two….
Mongolia is
beautiful example of how people, livestock and nature can co-exist together in
balanced harmony. This trip exceeded all our expectations. If there is such a thing as return
to the nature then Mongolia
is the place.
