We arrived in Ulaanbataar,
Mongolia on a Tuesday in the midst of a duststorm. We were so happy
to be out of China, and so excited to be in Mongolia, that nothing
could stem our enthusiasm.
Our hostel didn't meet us
at the airport as arranged, which was a minor frustration. In
compensation we made a new friend from Northern Ireland, taking a
vacation before accepting his commision with the Royal Navy. It
worked out well, as he didn't have a place to stay arranged yet, so
we all just hopped a “taxi” to the UB Guesthouse where Susan had
reserved a double room for us. A taxi in Mongolia is any car that
will pick you up, which is pretty much any car. Vast distances on
the steppe have fostered a culture of hitchhiking and ridesharing
that carries over into the city. If you need to get somewhere you
stick out your hand, and anyone with extra time will stop. Negotiate
your fee and you're on your way.
We checked into a tiny
little room with two twin beds pushed together. It was stifling, as
hot as outside only without the cooling of the sandblast-breeze. The
room was right off the common room, which any frequenter of hostels
will tell you means that you'll be using the most valuable item in
your luggage from a weight to usefulness ratio: the earplugs.
Still, we were unfazed having slept in smaller rooms and noisier
places and worse air (in Japan, and Shanghai, and all of China
respectively) and being really excited to see Mongolia. Besides what
do you want for $16? (OK, a mattress would be nice, but these seem
absent in Mongolia in general. Bedding typically consists of planks
on a bedframe covered in between one and several blankets depending
on... well it seems to be arbitrary actually). Anyway, we checked in
with Kim, the guy who runs the place and got settled in our room.
Then we met with Bobby,
the woman who also runs the place, and arranges the tours. This is
the real reason to stay here. It is THE place to be in UB, and so it
gets lots of traffic, and so has lots of people who will share trips
with you. Bobby gave us a warm welcome, and had a very impressive
method of helping design an itinerary that would let us see much of
the country and still get some time to stay in one place longer and
soak it all in. It's an unusual itinerary, and at 13 days eliminates
some folks who only have a week, and misses other groups with a month
to spare and want to go longer.
The train from Beijing
gets in on Wednesday, we were told, and the way to fill a trip is to
let Bobby “sell” our plan to the new arrivals. After the crap
food in Beijing, we decided to balance our $16 hotel room with a
dinner at the nicest restaurant in UB (The Silk Road Bar and Grill).
We had salad and fresh veggies and recognizable meat. It was really
good. It cost us $16. I love Mongolia.
We used our dead day to
see Terelj National Park.
It was a great time (as documented in the
other Mongolia post). When we got back, Bobby had bad news, she
hadn't yet found folks for our trip. But she said, there were still
a few people to meet. Get some dinner and hold out hope. Now we
were taking all this in stride. It would be great to have people to
do the trip with us. Not because 13 days in the desert with just the
two of us and a driver is a relationship test we fear, but because a
driver, four-by-four rental, and petrol are fixed costs. More
people, less money each. We could have left the day we came, but the
prospect of saving five or six hundred dollars seemed a good one.
Now, not as certain, we eschewed the ultra luxe dinner and balanced
the prospect of a less-cheap time in Mongolia with a good but much
more normally priced dinner of salad, a huge pizza, and milkshakes.
It cost us about $6. I love Mongolia.
Great news! At the last
minute Bobby sold our trip to four others. A couple from Slovakia
and two Dutch guys. We would have a full van, and that meant the
total cost of our Mongolia adventure (including payment to the
families for accomodation, dinner and breakfast) would be $23 a day.
Have mentioned I love Mongolia?
The only catch was that we
couldn't leave the next morning, but would leave on Friday so the
Slovaks could go to the Russian embassy and beg for a visa. This is
a common theme here. As a popular jump off point for the
Trans-Siberia (which Susan and I briefly considered when we were
planning this whole adventure) Ulaanbataar gets more than its share
of Russia visa applications. Thing is, this process is SO corrupt
that most people get stuck for days or weeks as they try to
coordinate both travel papers and train schedules that coincide. One
guy had a story of being told to come back with both USD60 for the
visa (official price USD50) and a bottle of vodka. Office hours are
2-3:30 for visa applications, 12:20-12:45 for visa pickup. Kinda
makes you nostalgic for the DMV.
The extra day turned out
to be a blessing. We had a lot to do before disappering for two
weeks. First of all, buying groceries for snacks and lunches.
Also,
we were told that the food from the families would be mostly meat,
with some rice or noodles, but no veggies, so to bring any fresh
veggies with us. We stocked up on everything that might keep. We
also had to compress everything into one bag, as the full van meant
there wouldn't be room for everybody's stuff. Between shopping and
photo posting, and laundry and repacking... I don't know what we
would have done without the spare day.
That night we got to meet
our travel companions. The Slovaks were husband and wife
pseudo-students on their way home from a year of “studying” in
Australia (their visa required them to take classes and work no more
than 20 hours a week). Andre turned 26 somewhere along the way in
the Gobi, and Natalya was not much younger.
They have the air of
neo-hippies, with a sort of cute naivete. The two Dutch guys were
bikers in their mid to late 40s, Bud...
and Rink.
They actually didn't
have bikes anymore, but had “trikes”, one with a Ford Mustang
engine. Imagine a V8 pulling a body stripped of most of its weight.
Horsepower fiends. But looks decieve, and skull T-shirts, biker
jewelry and illegible tattoos belied two really nice gentle guys.
Always helpful and quick with a smile or a joke, these two were fast
friends with just about every Mongolian local we met along the way.
And Bikers or not, they were Dutchmen still, and we never passed a
pretty flower they didn't point out and photo.
Day 1 – Drive UB to
“Rock Formation”
I was pleased to notice
that everyone was ready by 8:50 for our scheduled 9:00 departure.
A
harbinger of the courtesies and mutual consideration that made the
whole trip very pleasant. As we packed up the car we met our driver.
His name was Akmnggrrqqkppthst or something. His last tour group
took to calling him “The Doctor” because he was always fixing
everyone's vehicles. The name stuck, and “Doc” he was to us for
the whole two weeks. By the second week “Doc” was “Doc” to
Doc, and he would actually turn his head when we said “Hey Doc”.
I tried “Eehhh... What's up Doc” a couple of times, but nobody
got the joke... Tough crowd. Who knew Warner Brother's was so
culturally specific?
Our conveyance is a
Russian made 4x4 van. These are ubquitous here because they are
cheap and because the simple mechanisms are easier to fix when you
are out in the middle of nowhere. Ours was modified for desert
travel with a tank on the left, a tank on the right, a tank on the
back, and four jerry cans. We pumped 250 liters into that puppy –
fuel for four days of desert driving without a service station.
About 10 kilometers from
our point of departure the road ended. We wouldn't see asphalt again
for 8 days.
We drove for 6 hours or
so, stopping near the end of our day at some funky rock formations.
Along the way we had a few chances to stop for photos and a pee. The
landscape was very open, very beautiful. The nicest bathroom breaks
on the planet, I reckon.
Our home for the night was
one of two extra gers at a family in the middle of nowhere.
Hoping
to beat the heat, Susan and I had worn our flip flops for the long
drive. This proved a mistake as we got out of the van at our hosts
and stepped into three inch deep sheep and goat poo.
I'm not sure
which it is, but basically the whole area around the gers and the
lean-to was covered in this thick layer of little brown pellets. It
took me a second to realize this wasn't the soil (at least, not yet).
It's dry thank heaven, but I was still in city mode and all I could
think was “my feet are covered in poo dust”. I would be sleeping
in the same sleeping bag for 12 nights... getting in feet first...
and pulling the covers up around my face on the really cold nights...
Rink and Bud started a
theme for the trip early and helped the local nomads fix their
motorcycle.
One of the cylinders wasn't firing, and they helped
diagnose the problem and clean the sparkplugs.
Dinner was noodles with
some kind of rehydrated dried yogurt. No meat. No veggies. We
supplemented from our grocery stocks and I took a multivitamin. Bud
and Rink supplemented with Vodka.
The ostensible
“destination” was a funky rock formation in the middle of the
desert. It was cool, but there is that cliché about the
journey, yada yada. Applies here for sure. Though we did (briefly)
see a desert antelope or deer or something run away from us.
