Riyad and Sarah's Travels

The Trans-Siberian railroad linking Moscow to the Pacific Ocean was completed a century ago and remains the longest railway in the world.  This journey traversing Russia was an attraction for us on its own right – and also had the benefit of getting us from Asia to Europe.

Our train pulled away from Ulaanbaator on Tuesday and was scheduled to arrive in Moscow the following Saturday.

Four days was a bit too long to share a 4-berth second class cabin, so Sarah and I paid a slight premium for a private first class one.  Our money was well spent – the compartment had a lockable door that turned it into a very small hotel room.  The cabin was stately, with two couches covered by green felt facing each other, a small table fixed underneath the large window, and mirrored paneling on three walls. Bedding and pillows converted the couches to beds at night.  Electrical outlets lined the hallway and the end of the carriage had a samovar filled with hot drinking water.  During the peak season the train can be fully booked weeks in advance, but because we were traveling in October, we had the first class carriage (and more importantly, the bathroom) to ourselves.

Our carriage was staffed by two middle aged female attendants, called provodnitsas,  who vacuumed the halls, cleaned the windows and scrubbed the bathroom daily.   Neither spoke a word of English yet managed to communicate by pantomiming.  They were very helpful, locking our compartment when we wondered off, and letting us know when the bathrooms were being locked.  At each station stop they would don their official looking jackets and stand outside the carriage smoking cigarettes.

The train chugged along for several hours at a time, stopping occassionally for two minutes to three hours.  Arrival and departure times of station stops posted on the wall (albeit in the Cyrillic alphabet) were adhered to throughout out trip.  During the longer stops we were permitted off to stretch our legs, buy food and drink, and take a few pictures while the locomotive was being swapped out and safety personnel tapped the wheels with a metal pole.

Around midnight on our first night the train crossed the Mongolia-Russia border.  Mongolian officials conducted immigration on board, examining our passports, looking us up and down several times, peering under our seats and in the top compartment over our beds (why would someone stow-away into Russia?) before bringing a small dog through the aisles to sniff for who knows what.  Outside on the tracks were a few guards perched with guns.  After our passports were returned to us, the train moved across the border and the process was repeated by Russian officials with a larger dog.

After the border crossing our ride proceeded smoothly.  Train travel is very relaxing – time passed by quickly watching the scenery gradually change and the kilometer posts indicating the distance from Moscow decrease.  Siberia wasn’t the barren tundra I was expecting, looking not much different than New England in the fall.

Had we been able to obtain a longer visa we would have broken our journey at Lake Baikal; everyone who had been there said it was their favorite place in Russia.  The train did run along its banks for several hours before stopping at a station 500 meters away. (The prodvanista denied my request to run down to the shore.) 

The stop was short but we were met by young girls selling smoked Baikal fish.

We had heard mixed reviews about food served on the train and station stops, so we boarded with four days worth of coffee, tea, instant noodles, bread, cookies and crackers and other junk we quickly grew tired of eating.  Fortunately a few stops did have food; hot cabbage and potato pierogis were far better than another cup of noodles.

We had one amazing, but expensive, Russian meal in the restaurant car of beet soup and salmon blinis.

When we weren’t enjoying the view, we read, played cards and chess or hung out with the five other Western tourists on the train – one American woman who left at Lake Baikal, and four Americans and Australians sharing a second class cabin. 

After crossing the Ural mountains and the Europe-Asia border – Sarah saw the white obelisk marking the continental crossing but I missed it - cities grew larger, appeared more frequently, and were accompanied by electric billboards and traffic jams. 

Eventually we were on the same tracks as suburban commuters on their daily train to Russia’s capital.  Shortly thereafter we arrived in Moscow, covering a distance of four thousand miles three minutes ahead of schedule.

 

We were only a few miles outside of Ulaanbaator when our Russian 4×4 van pulled over.  Our guide, Urna, stepped out and pointed towards a wooden stick about ten feet high surrounded by blue fabric, large rocks, empty vodka bottles, and small denominations of the Mongolian currency, the togrog.

“This is an ovoo, an offering to the Shaman spirit,” she said.  “Before a trip, we walk around it clockwise three times, add a few stones to the collection, and make a wish.”

Of course we all followed her lead, as we had a major trip ahead of us, leaving the comforts of the city for nine days touring the Gobi desert and Mongolia’s mountainous terrain.  We would be visiting parts of the world’s least densely populated country where locals were living as they had for the past several hundred years, sustaining themselves from livestock and wells, without electricity, running water, or even roads. 

Urna was a perky college student who earned extra money as a guide, cook, and interpreter for tours of the country.  She was mature and responsible, but showed her youth by breaking into song, sticking out her tongue when we took her picture and displaying a tattoo on her arm of a full moon and several flying bats.  “I designed it myself,” she told us proudly. 

Our driver “Jackie” was around forty and never stopped smiling while driving up to eight hours a day.  We weren’t quite sure whether he understood English; he never spoke but always seemed to know what we asked of him.

Sarah and I were joined on our tour by Amish and Natisha, professional photographers from Canada who came with a bag full of lenses, tripods and a steady camera mount.

Shortly after leaving the ovoo, we left the last of paved roads behind and bounced along first on a dirt road, then through vast empty fields. 

Sleeping or reading was nearly impossible – every few minutes we hit a rough patch that sent the four of us airborne.  Jackie had no problems navigating, always finding the right path with what Urna described as his “mental GPS”.  He would drive for hours in one direction before making a sharp turn in the middle of nowhere to take us to our destination.  He relished driving faster when flocks of sheep and goats were in our path, accelerating and honking as they scattered out of the way, although he was less cavalier with roaming camels and cattle and the occasional yak.  Each time we stopped for meals or for the night, he would methodically inspect the van, rotating tires, adding coolant, and jacking it up to peer underneath – fortunately we had no car problems. 

Mongolians living outside of cities reside in gers: short round tents insulated with felt. 

All but one night, we stayed in guest gers owned by nomadic families who rented beds to passing travelers and provided Urna with meat and cooking facilities.  The gers were clean but very simple – with four beds, a candle for light, and a stove with a chimney.  Fresh water was limited to one barrel outside the main ger, while toilet facilities were, well…non existent.  

The first half of our trip took us to the sites of Gobi Desert.  The Bayanzag, aka Flaming Cliffs, gained recognition in 1922 after a large number of dinosaur bones and eggs were found there.  I was expecting to see teams of archeologists still unearthing full skeletons, but there was not much but rock and red sands.  Many of the fossils found here are displayed much closer to home at the Natural History Museum in Manhattan.

Yolyn Am, eagle valley, was set up for Mongolia’s wild birds, but we failed to see any.  We did hike through the canyons and over sheets of ice.  Amish and Urna had a snowball fight while the rest of us were too busy trying to stay upright while crossing the icy river.

Khongoryn Els are the largest sand dunes in Mongolia, rising over 300 yards high and 60 miles long.  Here we had the opportunity to ride Bactrian camels – camels with two humps that are only found in the Gobi Desert.  These weren’t the cleanest or most comfortable animals to ride and were constantly sneezing and, shall we say, relieving themselves while we plodded along.  We met a few people who were doing 3-day camel tours but we thankfully were off after a half hour. 

The camels dropped us off at the base of the dunes and we made an attempt to climb to the top.  It was very frustrating to walk, as every step forward we would slide about 90% of a step back.   Amish and Natisha made it, but Sarah got a little freaked out so turned around half way.  The run down made the efforts worthwhile.

The family at Khongoryn Els’ ger was so happy to have us that their son came out to play volleyball with us while the burly father insisted on wrestling Amish and me.  Of course neither of us stood a chance – the guy was solid muscle – but I fared better than Amish, who was bloodied after being lifted and thrown about.

After five days in the Gobi we turned north to Mongolia’s mountainous region, and the temperature instantly dropped from brisk to freezing.  It was still September, but snow covered the ground and all of our layers failed to keep us warm. 

We were fortunate to make it to Orkhon Khurkhree, Mongolia’s tallest waterfall, before it froze for the year.

We continued north to Kharkaroum, Mongolia’s capital under Chenngis Khan’s son in the 13th century.  The country’s first Buddhist monastery, the Erdene Zuu Khiid was destroyed in the 30s but is now in use and being reconstructed. 

We spent our last night with a family with several horses but only two that were tame enough for novices to ride. 

We were instructed to always approach from the right, say “chuu” to go (there is no command for stop) and to stand slightly over the saddle so we weren’t bouncing about.  Sarah and I rode with Urna and the father, helping to herd sheep and goat and cattle.

That evening the family killed a goat from their herd and skinned it inside their ger.

They prepared khorkhog, a meat dish made by placing hot stones in a covered pot of food. We all gathered in the ger with the family and after everyone had a chance to juggle the hot stones, we were served large cuts of meat.  We ate without utensils, tearing apart large pieces of meat with our bare hands, and needless to say, went to bed well fed.

On the way back to Ulaanbaator we stopped at Hustai National park to catch a glimpse of Mongolia’s wild horses, the thaki.  The park was set up to repopulate the thaki into the wild as their numbers dwindled.  We trekked through snow to find them afar; each time we approached they maintained their distance.

With that, we headed back to Ulaanbaator and bid adieu to Jackie and Urna.  Although we had only one shower in 9 days, I was quite tired of hearing Jackie’s dance mix, and my stubble was getting scratchy, we had enjoyed the simplicities of the countryside and weren’t in a hurry to return to civilization.

Amish and Natisha posted a few awesome pictures to their photoblog here.

Ulaanbaator, Mongolia

Our journey from Beijing to Ulaanbaator (UB), the capitals’ of neighboring China and Mongolia, took us two days. 

There were faster ways of traveling, but the two hour direct flight cost a ridiculous $500 each and we just missed the weekly international train.  After some research, we found a way to complete the trip for one-tenth the cost provided we took a bus to the China-Mongolia border, crossed it on our own, and continued to UB via train.

Our bus took off as it was getting dark, and we fell asleep in a city of 15 million to wake up in the middle of nowhere, alone on a highway in the Chinese region of Inner Mongolia.

We pulled into the border town of Erlian, and after some negotiation found a taxi driver to take us to the border.  We weren’t permitted to cross it on foot so we paid a merchant to squeeze us into the back of his car.  

He disappeared after we were stamped out of China and into Mongolia, but after hanging around for an hour again in the middle of nowhere we were given a ride by a passing motorist to the train station at Zamyn-Uud.

The train to UB wouldn’t leave until evening, but we passed the time chatting with a friendly Mongolian businessman returning home and having our first experience eating buuz, Mongolian’s fatty and delicious mutton dumplings. 

We eventually boarded the train – the only backpackers among Mongolians returning from China with cartfuls of merchandise – and it pulled away, traveling north through the barren Gobi desert. 

The train wasn’t as smooth or modern as the one we had taken from Hong Kong to Beijing, it was still relaxing and we were offered food and drink by the Mongolians in our compartment.  We read for a bit, the attendant came by with tea, and we watched the sun set over the unchanging scenery. 

The following morning, the sprawling city of Ulaabaator, home to nearly half of Mongolia’s population, emerged out of the desert.  We stepped off the train onto the platform to find that fall had arrived – after months of wearing t-shirts and sandals we had to dig deep into our bags for our jackets in the chilly weather. 

Ulaanbaator was a very modern and happening city, with restaurants and pubs and karaoke bars lining its streets and impeccably dressed locals out and about.  We were warned about rampant street crime and pickpockets, but left our valuables at our guesthouse and had no problems.

Sukhbaatar Square in the center of town was the location for Mongolia’s declaration of independence from the Chinese in 1921 and protests leading to the end of communism in 1990.  At the north end of the square sits Mongolia’s most famous citizen ever, Chinggis Khan, who’s image appears everywhere – from vodka and beer bottles to the city’s main airport.

The Zaisan memorial was constructed on a hill outside of downtown, but more impressive than the site was the panoramic view of the city.

On the walk up, I had a chance to hold an eagle, not traditionally trained for hunting, but a domesticated one on a leash that was resigned to his fate posing for pictures with tourists.  While he didn’t sink his talons too deep into my arm, I was told to shake my arm (it was quite a bit of effort given his weight) to get his wings to flutter.

The main draw to Mongolia is not Ulaanbaator, but the countryside, where nomads live as they have for the past thousand years.  Sarah and I decided on a 9 day, 8 night tour of the Gobi Desert and Central Mongolia with a Canadian couple we met.  After a day of running around town gathering the last of our supplies we met our tour guide and driver, lumbered into a Russian 4×4 van and were on our way.