Mongolia

The Mongolians are friendly folks. After stepping off the train in Ulan Bataar our guide met us and helped us into the waiting van. Once we set off she turned round and said, "Why you all look so sad, you in Mongolia now!" At this point we relaxed.

It was 0730 in the morning and we had been up since about 0600 getting packed. The scenery through the far east of Russia and the far West of Mongolia had been incredible, with the trees opening up into a mass expanse of rolling hills and endless skies. The border crossing was unneccessarily awkward, long and pointless, mainly the fault of the Russians who appear incapable of doing anything efficiently or with any manners. Firstly they kept us waiting on the train or platform (as you wished) for four hours before anyone turned up. Then they came on the train, took your passport off to the office and the relevant customs and departure forms had to be filled in and collected. After a further two hours of them walking around smoking fags they let you go. To add insulty to injury whilst waiting for the border police Ruth and I had got off the train to soak up some sun and have a few beers. When we got back on for the checks our carriage attendant had sat two Mongolians in our cabin, with a big grin on her face. We weren't quite sure what was going on but a minute later one of them tried to offer me money. I soon realised that they were trying to smuggle them over the border and went to complain, however just as I did so the border police got on the train. There was nothing for it. I sat down in the cabin and hoped for the best with two random Mongolians. Luckily the police soon cottoned on and the guy who seemed to be in charge spent three minutes shouting at them for tickets before throwing them off. The Mongolian border was better only taking about two hours in total and the officials were generally friendlier, even calling you by your first name when you got your passport back.

We checked into our hotel as we had a night in the capital before heading off into the wilds. The Bayangol Hotel was a positive palace with our own balcony, the premiership on the telly, huge beds, power shower. No problems. Our guide met us about an hour after checking in. She took us for some breakfast at Chez Bernard which is a European place - they had English breakfast, at which I was amazed. It's the least visted country on Earth and you can get bacon, eggs, toast and a cup of tea.

Our guide was very keen for us to eat up and get away so that we could go and see morning prayer at a temple in the city so we darted off about 0945 to Gandan. We were in for a suprise as when we arrived we were told that the Dalai Lama was taking morning prayer. We listened to his chanting and then watched as he came out into the crowd. At the front of the square all the children had gathered and the Dalai Lama proceeded to talk to them about the importance of being kind and honest and working hard, our guide translated for us. It was clearly a very spiritual experience for many people there and you could see on their faces that it meant a great deal to them to be in the presence of the man. Soon he was whisked off in his black limo, which incidentally had alloy wheels, is that where our temple donations are going or is that a bit cynical?? We looked round the rest of the temple which was very interesting and span some prayer wheels. At the wishing stick which was by one of the outer walls I wished for a safe and happy trip which is maybe a bit wet but you would have done the same.

The temple trip was over and our guide gave us a map of the city before saying, "Oh well, nice to meet you, you know the way back........." and swiftly buggering off. The map was crap but we found our way to the Mongolian Museum of National History. This is a great museum. If you are ever in Ulan Bataar go there. It has a comprehensive history with new looking exhibits and English narrative. The highlight of the museum was the hall of traditional dress that showed all the fantastic costumes that each Mongolian tribe wore. There are over 100 traditional hatrs that Mongolians wear and it unlucky to give your hat to anyone else. I bet they have some great hat parties.

We were all museumed out after a couple of hours so went for a walk in Sukhbataar square. Sukhbataar was a Mongolian hero from the early 1900's - he was head of the Mongolian army at one stage. Originally his name was just Sukh but we was given the title bataar (which means hero - if you're interested Ulan Bataar means 'Red Hero')and the square was named in his honour. It has a big statue of him on a horse in the middle of the square with stone Lions guarding it. There was a basketball tournament going on in the square and lots of people were milling around - with not many westerners around we got some pretty funny looks from people and just about managed to get away without buying any pictures that were 'apparently' by the people selling them, but they weren't. After some lunch we went back to the hotel and chilled out, in fact I totally fell asleep. Dinner that evening was good in the hotel but we decided to have an early one as we had an early start the next day to catch a van into the desert.............

0900 a new guide, Ho, picked us up. She was with our driver Aggii who was a joker. We started to drive. It took seven hours with a 30 minute stop for lunch to get to the camp. At first through the outskirts of Ulan Bataar the roads seemed to be fairly resonable with the odd rough patch. After about two hours it had pretty much decayed into huge holes and rocky sections that we had to constantly swerve around. Another two hours and we had to use dirt tracks on the side of the road as the road itself was unpassable. The track we eventually took to the camp snaked for about 10 miles away from the nearest road. It was a truly great journey as arduous as it may sound, Michael Palin eat your heart out!

We arrived at the camp of the nomad family we were staying with about 5pm and were shown into our Ger (they live in round tents with a pointed roof - Ruth and I had one to oursleves), where they proceeded to dish out airag, or fermented mare's milk. Don't be mistaken, that is milk, from a horse, that's alcoholic, and tastes like spew. It's the single most disgusting drink I have ever had, and I've had a few. I don't think I'll have a worse one either. This is not a drink to be underestimated in it's horribleness, I think I've made my point. The only consolation was that there were some biscuits which didn't taste too bad so if you stuffed your mouth with them and took a small sip you couldn't taste it so much. Not drinking it, of course, would have been extremely rude and they didn't leave the room so unfortunately I didn't get a chance to pour it back into the huge vat they had dished it out from - which is what I was secretly planning. The Mongolians were lapping it up - one guy must have had about three pints of it in the half hour we were sat there and I felt rather inadequate at this point as I couldn't drink it without heaving.

We walked twenty minutes to some sand dunes and the view was magnificent, it was also so quiet. If you stopped and listened there was just nothing, it's a strange phenomenon coming from a city and not being able to hear anything, I don't really have any words for it apart from to say that it's not what you would call quiet anywhere else. We had dinner about seven o'clock and talked outside among the sheep and goats, horses and cows that were laying around the camp until the sun went down, the stove was lit and we went to sleep.

Some of you reading this may be aware that I do not like moths. I hate moths. It was, therefore not a pleasant surprise when I realised, shortly after turning out my torch, that one was in my bed. I threw off my covers and had what one could only describe as some sort of small fit. I then of course proceeded to have moth paranoia for the next two hours of tossing and turning with no sleep. Thought you may like to know that.

The following day was great. We were up early to the cow alarm - need I say more. We breakfasted and then went to a place called Kharkoram. This was the original capital of the Mongolian empire when Chinngis Khan ruled most of the world and it is said that he lived there. We visted a temple there which had 400 year old buildings and artwork. A lot of it had been destroyed in communist purges of Mongolia in the 1930's however it is still a working monastery today and we saw about 30 monks chanting in one of the temples. We had a pretty comprehensive guide to the temples with detailed explanation of all the gods, but to be honest I couldn't tell you what any of them were now. Heading back to camp took about an hour. Ruth and I went for a walk on the sand dunes, after about 30 minutes the van came speeding towards us. The nomads were in the back. We were off to see a horse race. The driver was a maniac. He teared off across the plain about 60MPH dodging streams and holes and bushes, after a while we saw some horses in the distance, they were ridden by kids. The race had apparently been 25km but we just saw the end of it so we stayed around to watch them warm down and after a while went back to camp.

We played cards for a few hours whilst we took it in turns to ride on a camel, this was a great experience and one I had not been expecting. It was quite comfortable and the camel seemed to enjoy the walk as it stopped every 10 paces to munch on the nearest bush. Quite embarrasingly, when we reached the point where we were to turn around and head back, the lady of the family who was leading the camel for me met a friend who was with another tourist, as they chatted briefly the camel decided to take a piss that must have lasted a full five minutes and I was stuck on this thing with the other three laughing. A camel's gotta do what a camel's gotta do I guess. The game of cards seemed to bring us closer as a group as before this I don't think we had really connected with the family. It is strange how playing a game with someone can give you an idea of the person's personality even if you can't really speak to one another.

That night after dinner we sat round with the family in the Ger. We gave them presents of a bottle of Vodka (which we drank), some postcards from Newcastle with the Tyne bridge and the Angel of the North and some sweets for the children. We talked about where we were from and asked them questions. They said that their biggest problem was when there was no water as they couldn't feed the animals. When we asked them about holidays they said that every day was a holiday for them and the celebrated their holidays in their tents every night. It struck me that the more stressful your life becomes the more you feel you have to get away from it. Their attitude was much simpler - if you have a simple rural life and you sustain yourself then why would you want to go anywhere else. However you do have to live with a load of goats for company and crap in a hole in the ground!

The next day I got up at 0600 and watched the sun rise, it was worth it. We departed for Elstei which is a tourist camp nearer to Ulan Bataar. We had some photos with the family before we left and bought a leather camel from them as a souvenir. It took about 8 hours back over the dusty road to get to our new camp but when we got there it was worth the drive. In the missle of a huge plain surrounded by mountains the camp was about 30 Gers of which Ruth and I had our own. There was a stove lit for you every night and hot water brought three times a day for tea. They also had a shower block and proper toilets which was the first stop upon arrival. The food was great with lots of Mongolian favourites, however after eating mutton for every meal for six days you kind of get sick of it. The highlight of our stay at the camp was seeing a complete rainbow in a field in front of me which I swear was only 15 feet away and horseriding which suprisingly I am not too bad at - maybe my new nickname should be 'the lone yamma'. Unfortunately I discovered that yamma actually means goat in Mongolian so 'the loan goat' may be more appropriate. There weren't masny people staying at the camp as it was the end of ther season and as a rersult the bar was pretty quiet so rather than booze it up we pretty much took it easy, did some reading and realaxed.

After three nbights at Elstei we went back to Ulan Bataar for one night. Ruth and I visited ther Natural History Museum which was pretty lame with lots of stuffed birds, bears and other animals that looked as though they had been there for a hundred years. They did have one dinosaur skeleton that was fairly impressive but it wasn't enough to keep you entertained for long. We laughed rather than marvelled at the exhibits. That night we went to see a show called The Moonstone Ensemble. It was basically a traditional Mongolian orchestra with dance acts and throat singing. The horse head fiddle was most impressive, it sounds a bit like a violin on speed and the guy who did a solo made it rip. After that we had a dinner of Pizza, sweet pizza and went to bed.

The next day was spent sending email, buying food for the train and in the Museum of Fine Art, another must for any visitors, it had some fantastic work. We caught the train about eight o'clock and said goodbye to our stay in Mongolia. Generally our experience in Mongolia was amazing, the people are very friendly and hospitable, the scenery is fantastic and the beer is not too bad either (I tried four differnt ones, Chinngis being the best, Khan Brau the worst).