In which Chris thwarts the dastardly deeds of a criminal mastermind greater even than Moriarty, finds four intrepid travelling companions with whom to set off into the wilderness.
Ulaanbaatar has a reputation for being rough, but I never felt unease there. It's not seedy, just half-built and lacking in traffic rules. Or at least that's how I felt at first... After three days in the Ger district, I decided to head into town and stay in a hostel, having realised that that was the best way to find travelling companions. Leaving behind Begz and his family, with promises to return when I could, I hit one of the lowest points of my trip. I hadn't yet booked a plane home and everything seemed uncertain and up in the air. Underlying it all were concerns about my money situation, which combined with a sense of dislocation and unsettling uncertainty over the possibility of simply being stuck in Ulaanbaatar, unable to afford to go to China (or, more likely, unable to get a visa) and unable to find any way of seeing anything of Mongolia.
Ulaanbaatar is not a city that is immediately attracts you, it somehow feels too half-built, the main square - Sukhbaatar - bakes under the doubly oppressive twins of the surrounding communist blocks and, almost paradoxically, their very distance apart. I don't know the motivation for this, but one thing that communist architecture seemingly never got the hang of was shade. All avenues are tremendously wide, all public spaces tremendously openand Sukhbaatar is no exception. Under the heat of the Mongolian sun and the threat of Mongolian traffic, Ulaanbaatar doesn't welcome you with cool shady streets, it wears you down with long dusty roads. It's spread out and there seems little in the way of anything to see or do. Or that's how it seemed to me at first. In fact, I was drawn slowly into Ulaanbaatar and after a day or two more there, I had dug out the little corners worth seeing, found the various museums hidden away and began to be charmed by it's rough edges and apparent emptiness. I can imagine being slowly sucked in and eventually being unable to escape as though the very difficulty in getting to know its charms eventually draws you in deeper than a city more immediately charming.
With the complex mixture of oppressive feelings I had, coupled perhaps with a little anxiety, a fear of the unknown and unknowable, I found myself extremely pessimistic. I settled into a hostel (one known for being a good place to find free spaces on tours) and listlessly wandered the main streets, trying to decide what to do and yet unable to make firm plans with so much unknown and up in the air.
Wandering once more down Peace Avenue, I was suddenly jostled from behind by two men, just as I stepped down from the curb, crossing a side street. At the very next instant a small man slammed into my left shoulder, and I was caught stumbling first one way - down and left - and then back again to the right. In retrospect I don't know what made me react as I did, but as I felt the two behind me push forward, some instinct, perhaps honed a little by four months of travelling, made me grab my pockets. Perhaps it wasn't instinct, it could have been pure luck: I can no longer visualise the events as a sequence, too fast and blurred as they are. Certainly I don't remember any thought process, I just remember being pushed and reacting as instanteously as if it were simultaneous. Whatever, I grabbed my pockets, clamping my hands over the bulge of my wallet and passport (kept in the same pocket for this very reason), and I immediately felt the man to my left attempt to push his hand into my pocket. I remember distinctly the feel of his fingers, the pressure of his trying push in and down under my hand, before, in almost the same instant, he (presumably realising the situation) gave up and passed by. As I stumbled right, I trod firmly on the foot of one of the men behind me (actually an insult so grievous that the guidebook suggests shaking the hand of the person you step on straight away), causing him to shout out. I, of course, shouted out at the surprise of the whole thing and, recovering my balance, turned to see the three of them walking away, muttering darkly and staring balefully in my direction: as if I had wronged them! I gave them as dark a look as I could muster and carried on.
In a strange way, far from being the straw that broke the camel's back of my mood (to mix metaphors), this failed pickpocket attempt proved the turning point. Rather than being disturbed, I felt triumphant and newly confident. I'd never been the victim of any kind of crime before and though this attempt was rather low down on the scale of things, to come out of it not only unscathed (however luckily) but having insulted the perpetrators (however accidentally) as well felt good. Walking back to the hostel I sat down on my bed and, flushed with the post adrenaline rush of success, I started talking to two Americans who'd also settled into my dorm. Within minutes I'd got myself a possible invite onto an organised tour to the Gobi. It wasn't exactly what I would have immediately chosen, but it was a start and more than that, it was sign that finding travelling companions might just work out fine.
Buoyed by this I went out to look around and check my emails. Greeted with the news that I had enough money and confirmation of exactly when I needed to be home, things began to fall into place. I'd put a notice up that morning in one of the expat cafes (yet another reason for my pessism was the fact that there wasn't a single relevant or even recent notice up on the noticeboard, recommended by the guidebook as the single best way to find travel companions) and a reply was already there - four Israelis were looking for an extra person to join them on a three and a half week independent expedition (they'd hired a van and driver but no tourguide or translator).
I now found myself in a dilemma. Faced with nothing this morning, I'd eagerly agreed to go with the organised, week long, tour to the Gobi, figuring I could go somewhere else afterwards, perhaps even couchsurf again. Suddenly an offer appeared of a trip that perfectly fitted my ideas of how I wanted to travel - independently, for three weeks or more - but with people I'd never met. I was drawn to the three week trip, but felt particularly bad for then backing out on the other two. Voicing my concerns to them they assured me they weren't bothered and I hoped they weren't simply being polite and decided to go with the Israelis without even having met them. Not, in retrospect, that I would have changed my mind, but still, it added to the adventure...
