Friday we ate a quick lunch, but of course not without the usual debarcle of the restaurant not having the food we ordered, or being able to use Visa, MasterCard or American Express to pay. Got to love the Mongolians. Finally at 2pm we boarded our train destined for Moscow, Russia. Back into a carriage with a 4 bed berth and little room to move, to be called home for 4 days and 4 nights, 101 hours to be exact.
Luckily we were invited on board by much nicer train attendants who we laughed and joked with for the entire trip - Socka and Anna - who couldn't speak a word of English apart from 'thank you' which they giggled about each time they used it. They spent much of the trip looking in our travel guides for translations on things they wanted to tell us. They didn't expect us to pay for hot water this time, nor cake on their make up or wear long knee high black boots. They did however, expect us to help smuggle jeans across the border for them. This soon became common amongst the other Mongolian travellers, and we ended up being dumped with jeans, blankets and large dried sausages being stowed in our carriage or hanging from the roof. As soon as we crossed the border on Friday night into Russia, the woman who had helped herself to hanging dried meat from the roof of our berth, helped herself to standing on our food table while we were asleep to remove it and take it back to her cabin. The next day the blankets were removed, and the jeans were turned in the right way and returned to their plastic packaging. All the others on the tour were expected to hide the same things as us, and we realised a few days later that there was much other merchandise stowed in compartments in the floor of the train, which wasn't to be declared at the border crossing. For the next 3 days we witnessed Mongolians jumping off at each train stop to sell jeans, shoes, blankets, bags, food, shirts...the list went on. And the Russians were waiting at each stop to buy the products on offer. It was crazy.
We were expecting a 12 hour border crossing into Russia, without use of toilets, but it only ended up being a 6 hour stop where again we had to fill out numerous offical documents, hand over our passport to be returned hours later. The Russian official that collected and checked our visa's asked me to stand up and pull up the bottom beds to show him what was in the compartments underneath. Being 2am I was rather sleepy and as I got out of bed I bumped my head quite hard on the top bunk and fell back. The Russian, who definitely smelled of booze, was trying his hardest not to laugh, took one look at the compartment then moved on to the next carriage before he burst out laughing. He wasn't as kind to our fellow travel mates - he made them remove the contents of their packs and compartments which took ages. I'll have to remember the bumping of the head trick. There was a large woman official who walked past the cabin a few times who worried us as she was wearing leather gloves and carrying a rather large metal probe! No idea what she was using that for!
The next day we woke up to heavy snow outside the window. The mountains were covered in snow, the cattle were covered and the sheets were being laid thick and fast. It was an amazing sight and the 5 Aussies were glued to the window in utter awe. Our travelling companions didn't have our excitement, being from Holland, Denmark, Scotland and England. After 20 minutes of this, it stopped and we were back to blue skies and sun. What an experience!
The following morning we were well and truely in Russia (although had been since early hours of Saturday morning) when the train attendant came into our berth to pull up our blind to show us a beautiful view of a massive lake. It turned out we were looking at Lake Baikal which is the deepest lake in the world. After much time we passed the lake to a landscape of tall dense forest, much different to the vast plains with distant mountains we were used to.
Monday 14 May was my birthday. One peice of bread and jam for breakfast as I couldn't possibly stomach any more bread or dehydrated food. Yuk! The girls surprised me with a bottle of French wine (which we drank out of our thermos cups) and a lunch in the train dining cart. That was an experience in itself with a cart filled with smoking, smelly Mongolians (the cart had 2 No Smoking signs clearly visible)and a Russian waiter that couldn't handle taking more than 2 orders at the one time. Again we had to order about 4 times before we found something that was actually available on the menu, and ended up with crepes and meat that tasted like homemade sausage rolls and were fairly palatable and fried potatoes that were more like an oil/potato soup. That was my birthday lunch.
On returning to our carriage, I opened the door to our berth, to be suprised by our 10 tour companions crammed on the bunk beds. They had decorated the berth with streamers and link chains made from plastic shopping bags, balloons (condoms) and Happy Birthday signs made from various bits of paper. The little table was filled with chocolates, lollies and a birthday cake which was actually a large jam tart. I was blown away it was so thoughtful. They had apparently been glad of a birthday and spent the previous day busying themselves with making the decorations. Everyone sang Happy Birthday while I blew out the two lit matchsticks that were candles. I received presents of: a small pot of Tiger Balm, a She-pee (don't ask), a travel toothbrush from one of the guys and he'd realised he was almost at the end of the trip and hadn't had any luck on the girl front so chucked in his last two condoms, a packet of 2 minute noodles, a box of chocolates and a homemade card. The two train attendants had also made me a card with a cutout motif of a man and woman embracing face to face, on the front. They wrote a message in Mongolian (which I think meant Happy Birthday) on the back. There was plenty of Vodka to go around but seeing we'd all had a big night the previous night, no one was really interested. Another birthday comes and goes, but i'll never forget the one on a train travelling through Russia.
Tuesday 2.30pm, after 101 hours on the train, we finally reach Moscow and jump for joy when we depart. Showers, real beds and the end of dehydrated food. Yippee!
Saturday, May 19, 2007
Thursday, May 10, 2007
Mongolia - Friday 11 May
Woke up today to a boiling hot shower! Yippee! This morning we are just ringing home, updating emails, picking up our laundry and food shopping before our epic train journey to Moscow.
This afternoon at 2pm we board the train for Moscow, which will be home for 4 days and 4 nights! This will be interesting. We will make sure we're stocked up with plenty of food, plenty of entertainment and plenty of vodka for my birthday on Monday.
Signing off until next Tuesday/Wednesay.
See ya!
This afternoon at 2pm we board the train for Moscow, which will be home for 4 days and 4 nights! This will be interesting. We will make sure we're stocked up with plenty of food, plenty of entertainment and plenty of vodka for my birthday on Monday.
Signing off until next Tuesday/Wednesay.
See ya!
Mongolia - Thursday 10 May
We left the Ger camp at 6.00am this morning to start the long journey back to Ulaanbaatar. We made sure we didn't get the back seat this time. We arrived back to the city around 12.30 and checked back into the hotel. Everyone jumped straight into their showers after not seeing one in 3 days. It was great to have the use of a 'real' toilet again as well. The drop style hole in the ground ones we'd used in the desert were revolting and got worse as the days went on. So most of us ended up having a cold shower because the hot had run out, but it was a great feeling to be clean all the same. The weather in Mongolia has been pretty cold although indoors is always heated.
Later in the afternoon we went off to have a $12 one hour long massage (cheaper than the $17 I thought it was going to be). I had a tiny little Mongolian woman as my massuese, and I almost asked our tour guide to ask her to give me a hard massage as she looked as though she didn't have the strength to do so. How wrong could I have been!! She almost killed me! For an hour she pinched, punched and pumelled my body, jumped on my back with her whole body, jabbed her knees into my butt and almost made me throw up as she attempted to rip my arms off. I was so sore by the end of it, and so grateful I hadn't asked for a hard massage. But it was a good massage all the same.
We had caught a taxi to the massage parlour, and our tour guide hailed one down to take us home. There are real taxi's in Mongolia, although every car is potentially a taxi (so you are basically hitch hiking). We jumped into the car and were almost back to the hotel when another car rear ended us. It was a pretty harsh collision but we were all ok, and just jumped out, paid the driver 80c (that was including a .30c tip) and walked the rest of the way to the hotel.
Dinner was at a western restaurant called Mongolian Bar B Q and Grill, which was an all you can eat for about $8. You chose your own meat and veges etc then took it all to the cooks that chucked your food on a huge cylindrical hot plate where they cooked it for you. They were show offs and threw all the food in the air, making it land on the plate. Yum Yum!!
Later in the afternoon we went off to have a $12 one hour long massage (cheaper than the $17 I thought it was going to be). I had a tiny little Mongolian woman as my massuese, and I almost asked our tour guide to ask her to give me a hard massage as she looked as though she didn't have the strength to do so. How wrong could I have been!! She almost killed me! For an hour she pinched, punched and pumelled my body, jumped on my back with her whole body, jabbed her knees into my butt and almost made me throw up as she attempted to rip my arms off. I was so sore by the end of it, and so grateful I hadn't asked for a hard massage. But it was a good massage all the same.
We had caught a taxi to the massage parlour, and our tour guide hailed one down to take us home. There are real taxi's in Mongolia, although every car is potentially a taxi (so you are basically hitch hiking). We jumped into the car and were almost back to the hotel when another car rear ended us. It was a pretty harsh collision but we were all ok, and just jumped out, paid the driver 80c (that was including a .30c tip) and walked the rest of the way to the hotel.
Dinner was at a western restaurant called Mongolian Bar B Q and Grill, which was an all you can eat for about $8. You chose your own meat and veges etc then took it all to the cooks that chucked your food on a huge cylindrical hot plate where they cooked it for you. They were show offs and threw all the food in the air, making it land on the plate. Yum Yum!!
Mongolia Gobi Desert - Wednesday 09 May
It was breakfast at 9 which was delicious bread with the most delicious homemade blackberry jam ever! We bought some for the long train journey to Russia. After breakfast we were loaded on the bus again, and drove back to the first Ger camp, stopping at some sand dunes on the way. Today we experience a desert storm which ended up in every orifice possible.
When we returned to the Ger camp, we walked for about 10 minutes to a nomad's ger where we all piled in and drank fermented mares milk from small bowls. Not my cup of tea, but some people enjoyed it. Our hosts also passed around a bowl of fried bread but I declined. This wasn't the right thing to do, so as everyone was munching on their parculiar bread, the nomad husband told the wife to offer me the bread again. I took a tiny peice which she thought was hillarious. Next came a bowl of fermented hard yoghurt peices and this time I thought I had better take a big bit to keep the hosts happy. It was digusting and I ended up dropping it into the bottom of the mare's milk to get rid of it. Then the fried bread dish came around again, I wasn't coping, so took a large chunk and again the wife laughed at me. I managed to put it into my pocket to get rid of later. Unfortunately later on, I was reaching into my pocket for a tissue and out pops the bread - the husband and wife both saw it pop out and I tried to explain with sign language that I was full now but saving it to eat later. They didn't look like they believed me.
We all had to sing a song to our hosts to show our appreciation of their hospitality. The three guys sang Jingle Bells, although only one of them seemed to know the words. Odd! Us girls sang 'Lean on Me' which they really enjoyed. They then sang some songs to us, one of which brought a tear to a couple of eyes it was so beautiful. These people looked around 60 but were probably much younger, the harsh desert weather ages them to the extreme. They had been nomads most of their lives and had 8 children all of which lived in the city, some attending boarding school. The nomads move their location 4 times a year, each season, and hardly ever return to the same location. They took us on a camel ride then we went on a one hour horse ride, all the while being whipped by the sand from the storm.
There are many nomads in the desert, who live their lives as gypsies, living off the land and selling their sheep or cattle for the small amount of money they need to survive. Most families in Mongolia have 8 children, and in 1921 the population was a mere 500,000. The population today is 2.8 million. Lots of tv's on the blink in the last 70 years!!
When we returned to the Ger camp, we walked for about 10 minutes to a nomad's ger where we all piled in and drank fermented mares milk from small bowls. Not my cup of tea, but some people enjoyed it. Our hosts also passed around a bowl of fried bread but I declined. This wasn't the right thing to do, so as everyone was munching on their parculiar bread, the nomad husband told the wife to offer me the bread again. I took a tiny peice which she thought was hillarious. Next came a bowl of fermented hard yoghurt peices and this time I thought I had better take a big bit to keep the hosts happy. It was digusting and I ended up dropping it into the bottom of the mare's milk to get rid of it. Then the fried bread dish came around again, I wasn't coping, so took a large chunk and again the wife laughed at me. I managed to put it into my pocket to get rid of later. Unfortunately later on, I was reaching into my pocket for a tissue and out pops the bread - the husband and wife both saw it pop out and I tried to explain with sign language that I was full now but saving it to eat later. They didn't look like they believed me.
We all had to sing a song to our hosts to show our appreciation of their hospitality. The three guys sang Jingle Bells, although only one of them seemed to know the words. Odd! Us girls sang 'Lean on Me' which they really enjoyed. They then sang some songs to us, one of which brought a tear to a couple of eyes it was so beautiful. These people looked around 60 but were probably much younger, the harsh desert weather ages them to the extreme. They had been nomads most of their lives and had 8 children all of which lived in the city, some attending boarding school. The nomads move their location 4 times a year, each season, and hardly ever return to the same location. They took us on a camel ride then we went on a one hour horse ride, all the while being whipped by the sand from the storm.
There are many nomads in the desert, who live their lives as gypsies, living off the land and selling their sheep or cattle for the small amount of money they need to survive. Most families in Mongolia have 8 children, and in 1921 the population was a mere 500,000. The population today is 2.8 million. Lots of tv's on the blink in the last 70 years!!
Mongolia Gobi Desert - Tuesday 08 May
Breakfast at 9am, bags packed and we were off on the bus for a 100km drive to stay in a different Ger camp for the night. On the way we stopped at a 2m high rock mound which was actually a shrine, and tradition meant if you threw a rock on and walked around the mound once, you would have good luck. There were also gifts left on the shrine for Buddha which included traditional scarves, empty bottles of vodka and a steering wheel??
We then went in search for the Phallic Rock which was a small rock in the exact form of a penis. You can imagine the photos we took! The rock was barred off to the Monks many decades ago as they would go to the rock which would make them amorous and then hit on the local girls. Behind the rock was a huge mountain called the vaginal slope. We actually thought that many of the mountains in the desert looked like vaginal slopes. There were many Mongolians selling their wares, and we all picked up some beautiful jewellery and old things such as spear heads, bowls etc which are apparently from the bronze age. I bought a pendant type peice in the shape of a bull, which is (apparently) from the bronze age and was used as a passport to cross the border.
Next stop was a Buddhist monk monastery which we did a tour of but unfortunately missed the praying and chanting time. It was quite interesting but by this time many of us were so hungry that we lost interest. Finally we left and found our next Ger camp and ate some much needed lunch. The food was aweful but we were so hungry, no-one was complaining. Later in the day we helped build a ger with the Mongolian men who found our help rather amusing. It was hard to tell whether we were a help or a hinderance, but they let us keep helping so we couldn't have been doing that bad a job. We also saw our first Yak!
We then went in search for the Phallic Rock which was a small rock in the exact form of a penis. You can imagine the photos we took! The rock was barred off to the Monks many decades ago as they would go to the rock which would make them amorous and then hit on the local girls. Behind the rock was a huge mountain called the vaginal slope. We actually thought that many of the mountains in the desert looked like vaginal slopes. There were many Mongolians selling their wares, and we all picked up some beautiful jewellery and old things such as spear heads, bowls etc which are apparently from the bronze age. I bought a pendant type peice in the shape of a bull, which is (apparently) from the bronze age and was used as a passport to cross the border.
Next stop was a Buddhist monk monastery which we did a tour of but unfortunately missed the praying and chanting time. It was quite interesting but by this time many of us were so hungry that we lost interest. Finally we left and found our next Ger camp and ate some much needed lunch. The food was aweful but we were so hungry, no-one was complaining. Later in the day we helped build a ger with the Mongolian men who found our help rather amusing. It was hard to tell whether we were a help or a hinderance, but they let us keep helping so we couldn't have been doing that bad a job. We also saw our first Yak!
Mongolia Gobi Desert - Monday 07 May
Today we packed our bags again and left for the Gobi Desert, stopping on the way for breakfast and food shopping. It was 280kms to the desert, although took us around 6.5 hours to get there due to extremely bumpy and windy roads. There was one toilet stop on the way and...you guessed it...another drop toilet. Aaarrrgghh! The girls and I took the back seat of the mini bus, which was the worst decision ever. The seats were situated over the wheels and we felt every bump and pot hole in the road, and ended up with extremely bruised behinds by the end of the trip. We were constantly almost thrown over to the next seat, but it made for some good laughs by all. We never took the back seat again.
We reached our Ger camp, which is a cluster of Mongolian style tents. A ger is a cylindrical house made out of a wooden base structure that is covered with a thick padding made of yaks hair, then covered with a material type cover and another one. They are big enough to stand up inside and walk around, and include a pot belly stove which is stoked throughout the night by a Mongolian, 4 large day beds, a sink (without running water) and dressing table with mirror and a small table with 4 stools. They are extremely sturdy and they are home to many Mongolian nomads.
That night we ate a delicious Mongolian meal with many different delights. Later it was drinking time, and everyone pulled out their stashes of vodka and met in one of the ger's for hours of drinking games. One of the games meant all 14 of us were running around the perimeter of the ger 3 times in the pitch dark, and then we were piggy backing each other around another time. Good times!!
We reached our Ger camp, which is a cluster of Mongolian style tents. A ger is a cylindrical house made out of a wooden base structure that is covered with a thick padding made of yaks hair, then covered with a material type cover and another one. They are big enough to stand up inside and walk around, and include a pot belly stove which is stoked throughout the night by a Mongolian, 4 large day beds, a sink (without running water) and dressing table with mirror and a small table with 4 stools. They are extremely sturdy and they are home to many Mongolian nomads.
That night we ate a delicious Mongolian meal with many different delights. Later it was drinking time, and everyone pulled out their stashes of vodka and met in one of the ger's for hours of drinking games. One of the games meant all 14 of us were running around the perimeter of the ger 3 times in the pitch dark, and then we were piggy backing each other around another time. Good times!!
Mongolia - 10 May
This afternoon we returned to civilisation (well as civilised as Ulaanbaatar can be) after three days in the Gobi Desert, with no showers, hole in the ground drop style toilets and a Desert storm. Despite the inadequacies, we had an absolute ball and being in the desert was truely an amazing experience. We're off for a spa and sauna and a $17, one hour massage now, so i'm hoping to update the last few days adventures before leaving for Russia tomorrow early afternoon.
Hope everyone is well, and thanks for all your well wishes. Thanks Elsie for the thought that I didn't actually eat Yak's digestive system!!
Hope everyone is well, and thanks for all your well wishes. Thanks Elsie for the thought that I didn't actually eat Yak's digestive system!!
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