Andy and Sarah's Journal

Arrived 19^th October at 7.30am. A short night’s sleep after the border crossing. The train crew woke us at 6.30am to make sure we were ready and to give themselves a chance of replacing the sheets in the cabin for those getting on the train. Other passengers were promptly driven away by cars from the hotels they had pre booked. We soon regretted our decision to go it alone when our taxi took us to a different guest house to the one he agreed to take us to. This left us at the mercy of a tout for the guest house we had arrived at who tried to persuade us we owed the driver 30,000 Tugrik rather than the 2000 we had agreed on back at the station. (We had changed our last few roubles to Tugrik with some dodgy money changers who had come round the train at the border. Needless to say their rate was about 50% of the true value). Tired, cold and lost with just a simple map we ended up in a business hotel in a much swankier room than we had planned. The $65 rate came down to $45 and in the end we stayed there for the duration….not yet quite ready to lower our standards to those demanded by our budget.

After a few hours sleep we set off to explore Ulan Bator. The immediate impression was quite bleak. The roads were full of posh cars and 4x4’s but there were a lot of clearly very poor people walking around too, including street kids. The pavements are rough and uneven and there are frequently big holes and missing man hole covers to catch out the unwary. The car is very much king with no quarter given to pedestrians, even on marked crossings. Crossing the busy roads needs the confidence to walk into the traffic and force cars to stop. We soon learnt to do this with a group of others whenever possible. The impression we had that was later confirmed by those we met, was that the free market economy along with foreign aid was enabling a minority to become very rich. The majority of the population face life somewhere around the recognised poverty line of $100 per month. Although we later learnt that much of the construction work going on throughout UB is done by Chinese labourers who are willing to work for lower wages than the Mongolians. The construction work went on from very early in the morning to early hours of the next day. We saw big trucks pouring concrete at 1 or 2 in the morning in temperatures as low as -10. It did make us question how solid some of the taller concrete buildings are and whether the concrete just froze instead of setting.

The first few days passed quickly as we visited various tour companies and caught up with people we met on the train over some late nights drinking. We found the tour companies quite hard work. The concept of a customer wanting some information about what they want to buy from you seemed alien and we often left offices slightly bemused by the friendly and polite person we encountered who would tell us as little as possible about what they were offering, but clearly thought we should sign up straight away.

Expecting the worst for Sarah in a country famous for it’s meet eating we actually stumbled upon an excellent vegetarian restaurant on our first day and in the end we signed up for a fully catered tour with them. It is possible to catch local buses in Mongolia. These travel between the major towns but no further. To travel to the more beautiful areas and to reach some of the Nomadic people is only possible in 4 wheel drive vehicles. This and the challenge of quite a complex language and few English speakers outside of UB means that an organised tour is the only realistic way to see the more remote parts of Mongolia. We set off with our guide and cook Altai and our driver Ho So in his Russian Jeep. A bit like a camper van on steroids, it seemed very old fashioned to us but was only 6 years old. However it proved itself to be very capable as did Ho So who we soon learnt was a former Mongolian rally driving champion, we were only overtaken once on our 7 day trip and that was by a modern Landcruiser going up hill.

We called in at Ho So’s house before leaving UB. This immediately introduced us to another side of Mongolia that we hadn’t seen during our limited excursions around the centre. Ho So’s house was in the Ger district a vast area of fairly basic wooden houses and Ger’s surrounding the city and spread outwards and upwards onto the sides of the surrounding mountains. Each house or Ger has a small plot of land fenced off, there is a pit latrine in the corner furthest from the house and water is collected from communal taps usually at the end of each of the unpaved roads. Heating is from a stove that is also used for cooking. In UB coal is the fuel of choice for stoves. Along with the 2 coal burning power stations in the city the thousands of stoves pump out pollution.

The city traffic was congested and chaotic and required quite a bit of skill. However we soon found ourselves on a good tarmac road with almost no other traffic and an expanse of grassy snow covered plains and mountains in every direction. The tarmac lasted for about an hour and then the road became a dirt track. From what we could see only about 10% of the roads are paved. Many of the roads are under construction but there was very little activity and it looks like it will be some years yet before even the major towns are joined by decent roads. At times on our trip it seemed we were just driving randomly over mountains through the snow as any markings outlining the road were hidden under the white blanket.

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Our first destination was known as the sacred mountain and was about 4hours drive. We turned up unannounced to find the tourist Ger’s were closed for winter. A short conversation between our guide and a local family saw them leave their Ger so that we could stay there (they stayed with their neighbours, happily we were assured). When we asked it was confirmed that the toilet was “anywhere”. As with every Ger we entered we were immediately offered milk. This was served hot with added salt – but wasn’t too bad, good thing as it’s rude to refuse. We shared a single bed, which seems fairly standard for couples in Mongolia. The family’s guard dog kept us awake much of the night with his barking. Each home seems to have a dog. Despite never being allowed inside they seem happy enough, although the minus 15 Celsius we experienced is nothing compared to the minus 40 they will experience once winter really gets a hold. The Ger was nice and warm all night thanks to the hot stove fuelled by the dried dung stacked up outside for the winter.

The reason for all the barking in the night became apparent in the morning when our host family returned and informed us that a lamb had been taken in the night by wolves. This was a little sobering after we had joked about the possibility of wolves during our late evening stroll just a few hours earlier. The family didn’t seem too worried about and it seems that losing a few animals to wolves is quite normal. The man of the family told us of an unlucky family he knows who lost 180 animals to a pack of Wolves in one night. This seemed a little astonishing to us but we weren’t in any position to question it.

On day 2 we drove to “Flower city” a small town with a few brick buildings in the centre, a market and a large Ger district. We stayed with our guide’s cousins in the Ger district. The modest wooden house with one room and a kitchen was described to us as “city life”. The pit latrine in the corner of the plot was a bit frightening with a 6 foot drop into the pit and just 2 loose planks to balance on, only for the experienced once it went dark. The plan was for us to share the single living room with the family and our guide, but when the man of the house fell asleep watching TV and started snoring we insisted that we slept on the kitchen floor much to everyone’s amusement. Our lack of familiarity with living in such close proximity was further confirmed in the morning when our hosts came into the kitchen to prepare breakfast before the man of the house went off to his job at the bread factory. Although we filled all of the floor space they seemed quite happy to step over us and carry on as usual, of course we immediately got up and packed all our bedding away before awaiting our slot for the morning encounter with the long drop.

The plan to visit a remote monastery that had been restored after the Russians destroyed it (along with many others) had been abandoned the day before. Ho So had been chatting to local friends and the road was deemed to icy and dangerous even for his skills.

On day 3 we made the long drive to the white lake, the furthest point on our tour and a beautiful and remote area. All along the various routes we took in Mongolia were shrines consisting of piles of stones with a vertical pole on the top. Each would have numerous blue flags or strips of silk strewn all over it. They appear to be a hangover from previously well established shamanistic rituals. Shamanism and Buddhism appear to have co existed quite comfortably for 100’s of years. For good luck and safe passage you are supposed to walk around the shrine 3 times in a clockwise direction and then throw something onto the pile. However if you’re in a hurry you can just beep your horn three times as you pass. This was Ho So’ preferred technique and seemed generally more popular. On our way to the white Lake however we passed a particularly significant shrine built around an old tree, here we were left to walk round three times and make three wishes.

The superstitious theme continued when a Wolf ran across the road about 100m in front of the jeep. Because the Wolf’s direction was from our right to our left, this was described as running “into the pocket” (of a jacket or coat for instance) and is taken as a sign of very good fortune. Altai and Ho So explained that such occurrences are quite rare and they seemed genuinely excited by the incident, as were we, but perhaps for slightly different reasons. A couple of days later a fox crossed our path in the same way and whilst not as significant as a wolf it did further add to everyone’s excitement.

The White Lake is in a volcanic area and we clambered up one of 9 extinct volcanoes for a glimpse of the crater and surrounding panoramas before driving over the last pass and descending down to the lake. The tourist Gers had been taken down for the winter, but a number of nomadic families had moved to the area for the winter and the first family Altai approached readily gave up their Ger for the next 2 nights. In addition to Yak’s milk our welcome included continual offers from a huge bowl of dried curd. None too pleasant we politely chewed on small bites until opportunity arose to slip the rest into our pockets to be disposed of later.

Every where we stayed outside of UB, the night time sky was amazing. But at the White lake in particular the Milky Way was a valuable distraction from the frost bitten bottom that resulted during any night time answer to the call of nature. Slightly unnerving at such times was the sound of large Yaks moving around you in the darkness. Switching your head torch on would illuminate countless sets of eyes staring back at you. Sarah found this audience had an unhelpful affect on the completion of her performance.

We had the next day to explore the area as we wished. I picked out the largest of the nearby peaks and having made a detailed assessment of it’s scale, assured Sarah we could be at the top in about an hour. Of course the pebbles and small rocks on the route I chose turned into huge boulders when we finally got to them and the light dusting of snow near the top was a foot deep. 2 and a half hours to the top was worth it though as the views in every direction were fantastic.

Late in the afternoon we went horse riding for 2 hours. Mongolians take great pride in their horses and once we mastered the call of Chmoo Chmoo it was really enjoyable to ride such impressive animals. As the light faded we stayed warm by helping to chop wood for the fire and to milk the Yaks. We were definitely more skilled in chopping wood than milking, although I did get a steady flow on my second attempt. The warm slimy milk soon gets all over your hands and feels very strange! Milking is done every morning and evening, often going on after dark in plunging temperatures. The whole family is crucial to getting the job done. They really are very tough people. Their diet is largely milk and milk products that they make and meat. They don’t appear to grow any vegetables.

The kids of the family who’s Ger we were in played cards with Altei, Ho So and us until 10pm. Being able to communicate through Altei was great and they learnt our card games really fast, much faster than we picked up their games!

The next day was Monday and as the pick up truck arranged to take the kids to school the day before, hadn’t turned up, we set off with 6 extra passengers in our jeep. The kids go to school for a week at a time in the nearest “town”. Some stay with relatives, but the brother (8) and sister (12) that we had played cards with would be looking after themselves in the family’s small wooden dwelling in the towns Ger district. All the children had their food for the week, this included bags of raw meet, yogurt and curd. The tiny boy holding onto a big pot of yoghurt was under strict instructions from Ho So not to spill any as we bounced around on the obstacle course of a road.

We spent the night at some hot springs, one day before the last of the tourist Ger’s were taken down for winter. The so called summer Ger was much thinner than the real thing and we were freezing in the morning when the fire had gone out. The springs were a welcome chance to warm up and get clean (ish). Although after washing our hair we popped out to get water for Altai and within 10 minutes our hair had frozen. Sarah had hung her Bikini on the outside of the Ger to dry. Within 20 minutes it became a rigid pole!

Day 6 we headed to the former capital of Kaikorum to visit a semi restored Buddhist temple. Many of the relics were hidden in the mountains when the Russians started to destroy the temples. Most are now back in place and make an impressive collection, although security seems to rely on a few local women with big bunches of keys. This town is also the site where Chenggis Khan had his walled city at the height of his Empire. After a trip to the market where they sold jut about anything at unbelievably low prices (Nivea face wipes 35p a pack – Sarah pays £3.50 at home and this place is in the middle of no where with no decent road connecting it to any thing).

We then started the long drive back UB. We kept going after darkness fell and experienced the Mongolian technique of saving your full beam until someone is coming the over way, just to make sure they know you’re there. Once they’ve passed you return to dipped beam, there are no cats eyes and it’s very dark. Had we known this in advance we might have made a different wish at the special tree. We spent the night at a sort of truckers hotel. It was open despite not yet being finished. Our room was clean enough, but there were no curtains and all the rooms shared one sink at the bottom of the stairs just by the main entrance. There were five toilets, on the far side of the car park, but even the truckers seemed to favour the edges of the car park. The drunken owner seemed very excited about us staying and wandered into our room unannounced. We smiled and laughed at what seemed the right places and eventually he left again.

The next morning we took a diversion from the road to UB in order to visit the Hustain Nuruu nature reserve. The main goal of this reserve is the re introduction of the wild horse. The horse’s name in the west is Przewalski’s horse and in Mongolia the “takhi”. The takhi became extinct in the wild by 1969 due to hunting, desertification and cross breeding. The only surviving 160 or so horses were in Western Zoo’s.  A breeding and reintroduction plan established by a Dutch organisation has enabled the tahki to be slowly brought back to Monglia. Survival rates were initially low as the horses were no longer accustomed to the harsh conditions in Mongolia. But things seem to be going well, the project is well funded and there seems to be a big team of well equipped wardens patrolling the reserve and making sure the horses are not hunted or stolen. Once we found a herd of takhi we were allowed to walk freely, our local guide stayed in the jeep. We walked up a hill side and got as close as we thought was appropriate and then stayed for about 45 minutes watching through binoculars and taking pictures. The chief Stallion of this herd eventually decided we had stayed long enough and snorted and stamped whilst staring at us. We took our cue to leave, but both agreed we could easily spend a week in the reserve, perhaps in spring or autumn. The scenery was lovely and the scope to wander freely and see all kinds of wild life was great.

We were very grateful to return the comforts of our hotel in UB. We had even greater appreciation of the luxuries of a modern bathroom, a world away from carrying water from lakes or taps several times each day.

We spent the nest few days exploring UB. The natural history museum had some impressive Dinasoar skeletons and a massive assortment of stuffed animals. The national museum was full of ancient Tankas and other Buddhist relics. The main square always had something interesting going on, usually some sort of trumpeting or celebrating by the government. We visited the rather run down palace of the last emperor of Mongolia and walked out to the view point marked with a monument celebrating Russian/Mongolian collaboration.

We met a couple of locals when we were playing chess in a bar, they were keen to play us and having beaten us both spent the rest of the evening chatting with us before paying for all the drinks. We met again a couple of days later for my birthday meal. Buya and Agy were involved in the construction industry, they owned a couple of diggers and trailers to transport them around. They dug foundations under contract to various other companies. They both spoke Russian, and Agy spoke excellent English whilst Buya spoke Japanese fluently. Just like our guide (and restaurant owner) Altei they seemed to have been through the Mongolian rite of passage in that they had plived abroad for a number of years. Returning home multilingual and with foreign contacts they were able to find ways to gain investors willing to be involved in launching a business.

We learnt about the riots that had followed the election results in July this year. The party’s headquarters were burnt down and 5 people were killed. The violence was sparked by widespread belief that the election results were rigged. No one seems to know any one that voted for the ruling party yet they stayed in power following the elections. Despite the protests no re election is planned and the mostly young students that were arrested at the time are currently being given long prison sentences. Agy assured us that prison in Mongolia is not somewhere you would want to experience.

We saw a number of street children in UB and we were keen to learn more about their situation if we could. We had read that people in the countryside still have very large families it is common for them to abandon children into the city in the hope that they  will find some king of future. Others have escaped violent parents or relatives. UB has a Russian style central heating system that pipes communal hot water into many of the buildings. Survival for those on the streets appears to involves pulling off the man hole covers around the city and getting down into the underground pipe system in order to avoid freezing to death (winter nights range from minus 30 to minus 40C). Altei agreed that many NGO’s in UB are corrupt but recommended Lotus Children to us. Lotus Children was started by an Australian woman several years ago and Altei felt sure that she was a genuine person. We headed to a café in UB where Altei said funds were raised and more information would be available. In what we were finding to be typical Mongolian fashion there was no information on display at the café, however after clumsily repeating the words Lotus Children, the waitress did eventually dig out some leaflets. The project sounded interesting and the leaflet gave an address and some directions. We headed off on the local bus – heeding all the warnings about pick pockets in the crush of bodies. It was a bit difficult to differentiate between a different approach to personal space and feeling like you were being robbed, but we squeezed our way off at our destination with wallets intact.

A short walk through the Ger district and we were at the Lotus Children compound. We didn’t see anyone until we walked into one of the classrooms. We were ten greeted by a crowd of kids that we reckoned were about 4 or 5 years old. They quickly instructed us to take our shoes and coats off before climbing all other us, platting my hair, taking it in turns (sort of) to take pictures with our camera and generally running riot. The friendly and smiley teacher didn’t speak any English but didn’t seem at all concerned that we had literally just walked in off the street. Neither the teacher or the kids had seen the leaflet about the project before when we showed it to try to explain why we were there. But seeing the pictures of the building and some of their friends appeared to be very exciting. After 45 minutes of exhausting fun we were saved by the lunch bell. After saying our goodbyes we tried to make a donation, but the teacher flatly refused our several attempts to give her money. She pointed up the stairs ands aid “office”. But the office was locked and there was no one around. We were pleased to have visited but left a little sad at the apparent lack of organisation. In other countries we have visited similar projects that have set them selves up to be much more accessible to foreigners and have benefited from their time and money as a result. It seems that in Mongolia this more business like way of thinking is as yet limited to the construction industry. (Although even there the massive step from the Ger district to one of the 1000;s of new apartment blocks won’t be made by many and we just couldn’t work out who would be moving into all the new homes and office blocks that are being built).

We met the trans Mongolian train that stopped at Ulan Bator on the 6^th November at 7.30am and began the 30 hour journey to Beijing. This leg of the journey took us through some of the Gobi Desert, the area was dry and barren with some isolated towns dotted along the way that seemed to have built up around mines of one kind or another. We were happy to be leaving the freezing temperatures behind, but both agreed that we would be very keen to see more of Mongolia in the future. Probably in Spring or Autumn.