Mongolia: sand, snow and horses

I was met at the Beijing train station by the owner of my Mongolian Guesthouse. Standing by my carriage Kim, the owner, asked "are you Charles Freeman?" as I walked by. I was impressed by his accuracy, but later found out that he had asked every other White guy he saw the same question. Kim is a South Korean guy who married a Mongolia woman he met in London. He happened to be in Beijing meeting with other
hostel and guesthouse owners trying to set up cross promotions.




The train ride through Mongolia was a lot of fun. I shared a compartment with a British couple named Micheal and Lauralee. We chatted a lot about their time in the Solomon Islands as consultants to the islands' waste disposal programme and about our travels in Asia/Oceania. I was fortunate to be able to trade books with Michael;
my Grisham for "The Plot Against America" by Phillip Roth. I've since read the book, which is a historical novel based on the author's speculation of what would happen if Charles Lindbergh-- the first man to fly across the Atlantic non-stop and prominent American isolationist during the second world war-- were American president
instead of FDR when WWII broke out. I like speculative fiction, but I especially enjoyed this one because it was based on historical figures.

The scenery we passed was epic to say the least. It took an hour or so to make it out of Beijing, but we knew we had finally escaped its borders once we saw the great wall stretching outward on the hilltops and we plunged into the darkness of a 2 km tunnel underneath it. The northern part of china was dominated by industry. We made our way through the some of the most industrial and polluted parts of China.
This included the city of Da Tong which produces more coal than any other city in the country.

At the Chinese border our compartment was visited by three different agents. One to checked and stamp our passport. One to take out departure card. and then one to take our customs declaration form. We were mystified as to what was happening or how long it would take, but in the end we were confronted with no hassles.

Because Mongolia uses wider Soviet tracks, all of the sets of wheels and suspension (called bogies) were removed and replaced. Many travelers got off to hang out in the station, but Lauralee, Michael and I chose to stay on and see the world standard bogies exchanged for Soviet ones.

The train was backed into a huge workshop in sections where hydraulic jacks lifted the carriages up off the Chinese bogies. The workers then pushed all of these bogies out from under the carriages. For a few minutes we were suspended wheel-less high in the air. You could see the how the double set of tracks underneath could support either guage. Eventually the wider Soviet bogies were wheeled into place and
we were set down on our new undercarriages. The process took about an hour and made putting trains together look like building with Lego.





After picking up the passengers who got off, the train travelled a few more kilometres to the Mongolian side. One agent stamped our passports, but the next agent couldn't collect out customs forms because the train attendant had given us none. He motioned to wait a minute. We were exhausted from being on the train for 16 hours and fell asleep. The for whatever reason, customs agent didn't come back.
and we woke up the next morning rolling through Mongolia.

The ride to Ulaan Baatar, the Capital located in northern Mongolia, took us through the edge of the Gobi dessert. There was nothing save sand, dust and the road running parallel to the tracks. We stopped in an outpost town halfway from he border to the Capital. It was dominated by soviet era apartments and little used streets of dust.



The rest of train ride was marked by similar scenery, although more grass appeared was we headed north, and we saw occasional horses and sheep grazing. Some highlights of the ride were a game of scrabble and the Mongolian dining car we picked up at the border. The car was full of carved wood and the food was much better than in the plain Chinese dining car.



Ulaan Baatar, like the outpost town in the Gobi, was dominated by soviet era apartments. The main difference was the abundances of gers in he suburbs. A ger is a round tent used by traditionally nomadic Mongolians. I think it's insulted with first and blankets. I wouldn't be surprised if the modern ones are mostly synthetic. As an aside, Mongolians don't really have much (or any?) agriculture. They raise
sheep, cattle and horses and mainly live off things harvested without tilling the land. Traditionally, it is bad luck to eat anything from under the ground.

Once in Ulaan Baatar (UB to expats), Kim and his team whisked myself and a few other travellers away to his guesthouse. I didn't have a chance to say bye to Micheal and Lauralee but I chanced meeting them later in central UB, when I got to say farewell.

I spent most of my time with a British pair of travellers, Jeremy and Micheal, and a French traveller names Paul. The Mongolian food we had consisted of steamed mutton dumplings and some Kind of mutton chopsuey (hard to describe). The beer ("Chingis" after Chingis Khan) was apparently quite strong although I didn't drink any.

The next day, Paul, Jeremy, Michael and I rented a jeep and headed to Terelji National Park some 60 km away. Although we had arrived to spring weather conditions, a low pressure system had brought cold and snow so that it seemed like a different place.

The park was marked with hills topped with neat granite outcropping surrounding a series of snowy plains. We got to visit a touristy ger that at which the owner provided a lunch of goulash. We walked around a bit and I took a lot of pictures of the beautiful landscapes. Paul had brought along a deck of cards, so as we warmed up in the ger we played a round of cheat and then some rounds of asshole. Paul knew a
set of rules different to mine so we came up with a hybrid set of rules that was a lot of fun.



After cards, the site owner got he horses ready and we want for a gentle two hour ride through the hills. I was wearing sneakers sot hat my toes almost froze off, but the owner lent me a Russian fur hat that apart from looking cool kept my ears perfectly warm. The ride gave us a chance to see more of the local landscape and didn't leave any of us all that sore. I found out that the horses knew the route well, when my horse stopped dead in its tracks when I tried to continue on a road
past where we were supposed to turn.



Today and back in UB, I've been preparing for the next leg of my journey. I will be on the train for 2 nights to Irkutsk in Siberia where I will stay for 3 days. After Irkutsk it's 3 more days on the train to Moscow. Unless there is Internet in Irkutsk (doubtful) my next post will not be until March 17 or 18.