From Mongolia Countryside to Beijing

We’re already a month in China. Now we’re in Kanding, Sichuan, and we've been for a looong time without internet connection. But for now, I’ll just tell about the last days in Mongolia and how we got to Beijing.

From Hot Springs to White Lake – and a heart attack?

So we quickly flew from the scene of the crime (see the previous post) and we headed to the Hot Springs, where we had a small dose of civilization and we even took a shower (after 8 days!). We only stopped to see the completely dry falls of Orkhon, to push the van when it got stuck in the mud (twice), to wait for petrol provided by the other group’s van and to wait the driver called his wife (several times).

So we arrived at the Hot Springs, we had a relaxed time with beers and hot thermal water and we got drunk playing cards till late.

On the morning we left the ger guesthouse complex and we had some more hours of the only Mongolian tape we had (and of course many stops to call the driver’s wife). Around midday we entered into a small town to buy food -a chance to find another tape!

So we entered to a closed market with no electricity where our guide chose in the almost complete darkness not so rotten vegetables.

And then on the open market that was in the back, she helped us to pick some two new tapes!

We continued our journey by van and when we played the tape, we discovered that the new tapes sounded almost the same as the previous one!

On the afternoon we arrived to the White Lake National Park, which wasn’t nearly as beautiful as the previous places. The national park title only provided a guard at the entrance of the valley, electricity, more rubbish, a couple of restaurants and a sense of fakeness which we didn’t in the previous places we were.

We slept there and next day on the morning we see our cheerful driver with the face contorted with pain. Our guide translates to us that he has pains in the chest but that his friends are coming with some “medicine”.

Teresa, a nurse, assumed that our overweighted heavy drinker driver is having a heart attack. She explained to our guide that he should take a small dose of aspirin and if it helps it means that he’s having a heart attack and he must run to the hospital. But by the time we asked around and managed to find aspirins, the driver’s friends already gave him the “medicine” and he felt better.

Teresa assumed that he was feeling better because he relaxed and moved less. So after explaining again to our guide what to do if he feels bad again, we went for a walk. When we returned, we heard from our guide that he was really thankful for our help and that he took “our medicine” and he OK now

Teresa tried to explain her again that he must go to the hospital, while our guide explained to her that Mongolian people are tough and they don’t need to go to the hospital. Anyway he was back to normality and to drinking for the rest of the trip.

A couple of raining days later, we left the place stopping in an unimpressive crater of a volcano.

Karakorum and Semi Gobi – the way back to the city

After the white lake we started our way back to UB (Ulan Bator), spending one night near Karakorum and the last one in a family ger in the Semi Gobi desert.

We politely refused to sleep near a very artificial ger guesthouse that surrounded a Big Rock (that I forgot the name, but there you should throw stones over it to get rich or something like that). And we passed through very nice small valleys where we tried to persuade the driver to stop. He made up some excuses and we drove until he had reception for the phone. Even though it was near the city, the place was very nice and clean and we found a nice spot between two hills. There were no trees around and we lit a fire the Mongolian way, with shit! While some of us set the tents up, others pick dried yak dung until we had a huge pile of shit. It really worked and we made a huge fire that inspired entrepreneur ideas to some of the guys, namely, start selling shit!

On the morning we entered to Karakorum, the old capital of Mongolia founded by Genghis Khan himself. However, it’s dirty and ugly as most Mongolian cities and the only things remaining from ancient times are some stone turtles at the corners of the city. Besides that, the only sight around is a penis statue and a temple complex.

So after visiting the sights we headed to the north part of the Gobi desert, called the Semi Gobi. The Semi Gobi is the area in Mongolia where steppes and desert are mixed; and grass gives place to sand dunes.

The view was astounding but since it was midday and around 40^o C, I decided to take a nap and by the time I woke up, there was a storm!

We rode camels on the evening when the sky was clear again and the twilight sun faced the moon for a couple of hours. We rode the camels until we got to wet sand dunes that popped in the middle of the grass and then we came back to the gers.

Taken by Duncan

Next morning we took “the group picture” and we headed back to UB, exhausted, dirty and extremely happy.

Crossing the border China– a stupid way

After spending a night in UB, we took a 12 hour night train to Zamyin Uud, a town in the Mongolian side of the Chinese-Mongolian border. I guess there are two ways to cross the border: the wise way and the stupid way. The advantage of the stupid way is that it gave material to write.

There are international trains that go straight from UB to Beijing three times a week and they are all either 2^nd class, 2^nd class plus, or 1^st class. With these trains, you arrive to border in 12 hours, you wait in your comfortable cabin for like 5 hours and then 12 hours later (or so) you get to Beijing, China.

So we did it the stupid way, which supposed to be cheaper and faster. This way, instead taking an international train - which is more expensive only because it crosses the border - you can take a 3^rd class train that brings you to the Mongolian side of the border. Then you cross the border by jeep and take either a bus or another train in the Chinese side.

So we took our train to Zamyin Uud, which was fine at all, and we arrived on the morning to a dusty train station in an area of desert, which resembled to the stations in American westerns (but without the romanticism). We got outside by walking between the rails and passing through a broken part of the fence where we looked for a taxi, that is a jeep.

The actual border is really close, but the entrance is only allowed to vehicles. After bargaining the relatively high price, which remained pretty high for one kilometer, we jumped in.

He drove us near the border and started to call by phone and drive around and back and forward and stops and calls until one hour later we finally returned to the place where we started and he left the jeep again. The doors didn’t open and we went out of the car from the front seat, and started to look for another jeep. We walked around for 15 minutes not knowing what to do. The same driver saw us and point to another jeep that had already other two passengers, two Mongolian women. This time we headed straight to the end of the queue.

It took hours to move a meter! Then we got the first control where we stand for half and hour and then again to the jeep, to a jam as terrible as the previous one and then the second control. It took around 7 hours under the heat of the desert.

When we finally crossed to Erlian in China, we found out that we would have to wait until 1am to take a train in the direction of Beijing. We checked in the bus station and we found an overpriced “sleeper bus” to Beijing. A sleeper bus, is like regular bus, just that the seats are removed and replaced by two-berth beds.

The bus left us somewhere in Beijing at 4am. Beijing is a very lively city, and shops and cafes open early and close late, but in the middle of the week at 4am, at least on that area, everything was closed. Luckily, a 24 hours McDonalds received us, and we drank bad coffee until the amazing city of Beijing woke up.

More of Mongolia -Vegetarians beware, "hot pot"

We were kind of stuck in Pingyao for a couple of days, waiting for the train than goes to the exotic Yinchuan, once the capital of the Western Xia Empire. The guy of the hostel was stunned that we want to go where there are people that don't eat pork. (There is a lot Hui population there which is Muslim). Then we were stuck in Zhongwei for other day (and that's a very interesting story that will be told some days (or maybe weeks) later and we finally got to Xining in Qinghai province to realize that most of the inland ways out of the province are closed because of Tibetan unrest. Anyway, more of this later, the point is that I had time to continue the Mongolian story.

Eight Lakes Valley - the yak's way

The Yak!

So we hit the road (or the mud) again: 400 km (see footnote), 12 hours, several stops when the driver had signal and only one Mongolian tape played in loop. Almost a month later we still hum the songs.

Taken by Teresa

We were supposed to start a 2 day walking, 2 day horse riding trek, but the evening we arrived it was raining so heavily that we started to doubt the plan. But when we woke up, it was sunny. But (again) when we were ready to go, it started to rain. We decided to start anyway.

One hour later, it was raining so heavily that we were completely wet and we had to stop in some ger on the way. We were received, as usual, in the Mongolian way, salty milk tea and some more diary products, and we had the chance to dry ourselves.

Wet!

We asked our guide for the forecast, and for what will happen with the weather and our trek. However, in a country where weather changes every other hour, it was useless. One hour later, the rain stopped and we had a sunny day again.

“It’s better for you to go on”, I’m pretty sure the guide said.

We went on for another hour until the storm forced us to stop in another ger. It wasn’t the place we were supposed to spend the night, I mean, the guide knows the families that are glad to receive foreigners for some tugriks, and we usually stopped at those families. However, this family was also happy to host us and this place happened to be highlight of our countryside trip.

We got dry there, and ironically it stopped raining for the rest of the day. The little boy of the family was glad to show us the sights of the place. Everything was bright green because of the rain and the yaks moving slowly into the twilight added a surrealistic flavor to the view. There was a small frozen body of water and also pieces of ice that broke the earth from underground (I think it’s called permafrost). And maybe one kilometer after that, a big transparent lake under the mountains.

The permafrost

The new little guide - taken by Duncan

We walked around until it was getting dark. When we came back, we saw the poor family cat tied to the front of the ger. Our guide was so afraid of it  that she wanted to have it tied outside!

Next day was sunny, but we were worried that we would have to make up for what we didn’t walk the previous day.

The distances and the times she told us didn’t make any sense and they seemed to change depending who asked…

The thing is that asking for information to English speaking Mongolians is a very hard task.

I’ll give my linguistic explanation, for something completely different. Mongolian is an SOV language: first, the subject, then the object and then the verb.

“The boy ate the goat” is said by a Mongolian speaker as:

“The boy the goat ate”, change of course every word and use a completely different phonologic system.

Then something more complex as “The boy thinks that the girl ate the goat”, should be something like “The boy that the girl the goat ate thinks”.

So think about the effort for Mongolians to understand complex sentences such as:

“What do you think we should do if the rain doesn’t stop?” or “Do we have to walk today for all the distance we didn’t walk yesterday?”

So we ended up making simple yes/no questions or multiple options questions. The problem is that most of the time we got a “yes” as an answer (as it happens in many Asiatic cultures), and the yes, we found out, has many meanings:

1.      “The answer is yes”

2.      “One of the multiple options you gave me is correct”

3.      “I don’t have the faintest idea what are you talking about”, or “You talking to me?” or, simply, “I don’t understand”

So the rule was to only take “no” as a valid answer.

Anyway, it take around 5 hours walking with many stops and very minor rains through an astonishing landscape of mountains and lakes and we got there – handmade dumplings waiting.

Lunch!

What’s more, after 5 days far from a shower, we had the chance of a bath in the cold lake.

We slept there one night and we spent the next two days riding horses through more of that beautiful landscape and many yaks everywhere. The riding was amazing; the horses didn’t hesitate in running and galloping with a small kick and some “choo choo” at their ears. But those two days killed us, and we could barely move afterwards!

Evening after our first day riding

After horses

Next morning, we met our driver and van again and a big pot of stew. We started a short drive again and we had new promises of “hot pot”.

Orkhon Valley – where we ate the famous hotpot and the driver gets into a fight.

After half an hour driving, we stopped near a herd of goats. Our guide left the van and we see her talking with the herder. 5 minutes of discussion, she  points to a goat and pulls some tugriks from her pocket. Then she and the herder start to chase the goat until she almost throw herself over it and grabs it from its horns. The driver runs out to open the door, and the guide drags the goat –next day lunch- to the front seat.

They were thrilled and happy and talked loudly, and our vegetarian girl was completely in shock!

It seems that doing a hot pot is an especial occasion and kind of a celebration. I think it’s pretty clear but picking a goat is not so different than going to the supermarket and picking some meat, only that in the Mongolian way, you don’t need a fridge.

So we drove with the goat screaming once in a while and the girl silently crying in shock until we arrived to our next destination on the side of the Orkhon river.

The father of the family that received us there seemed very glad with the goat and the prospect of doing a hot pot and they killed it while we were exploring around... By the time we came back the goat was clean, the little girls of the family were playing with it, and our guide was again preparing inside meat sausages (not our meal this time).

Next day, after a beautiful sunny morning and 2 seconds under the freezing water of the river, we had the famous hot pot.

They put a rather big pan with some water over the stove in the ger, then some layers of meat and hot stones, onions, carrots, potatoes, and again meat, stones, veggies, etc… The meat was assorted pieces of the goat, which was cut in chunks of different sizes with bones and skin. This was an activity that involved all the women around cutting veggies, and all the men trying to catch the incandescent stones from the stove and putting them in the pan...

Our driver putting goat pieces in the pan

The hot pot is ready!

The result was, well er.., pieces of boiled goat. By Mongolian food standards, it was, well er…, kind of ok.

The same day started sunny became a stormy day with hail that caught me, and two of the girls, Teresa and Jen, several kilometers away. And again I had to unfreeze myself in front of the stove. The gers were packed with people this time. It seems that it was a popular spot and another group was also there, and we slept in tents despite the rain.

The night in the tents was ok, except for the yells and what I correctly guessed were the sound of punches. It was raining heavily and none of us left the tents, but on the morning our guide told us that our cheerful driver got in a fight with the father of the family when he refused to provide him with cigarettes and vodka. It seems that the fight also included our driver waving a knife, but everything ended there.

On the morning, the driver did his best to hurry us out of the place.

The footnote: Distance are provided as perceived the Mongolian sense of distance and I’m not sure regarding the relationship with reality. But it was a relatively short distance done in a very long time. 

Mongolia - No country for vegan men

When I'll post this, we'll be already in China*. But now, we're crossing the everlasting countryside of Mongolia by train, while drinking powder salty Mongolian tea and chatting with a super cultured beautiful Mongolian woman who lived 10 years in Europe.

We’re still moved from our 2 weeks in the countryside and I think we had a greasy food OD. I’ll say that Mongolia is definitely no place for vegans; since Mongolian are nomads they only have their livestock to move from place to place and they eat almost exclusively from their animals products (adding maybe salt, sugar, tea, flour). They eat absolutely every part of every animals: goats, sheep, cows, yaks, horse, camels and their milk in every possible state; all this without a fridge! I should add that Mongolia is no country for foodies either. Our guide did wonders with what she had, but Mongolian food can be  at  most called interesting but definitely not tasty. They don't use spices, everything is first boiled, meat cuts are really  greasy, most veggies come from abroad and they get to Mongolia in very bad conditions (as we'd probably throw them away),

We came back from 2 amazing weeks of infinite fractal landscape which mutated from flatness to mountains to lakes and rivers to deserts. We were 6 travelers, a guide and a driver. Our guide was a short chubby smiling 28 years old girl from the Mongolian wild far west who may probably be able to fight a furious bear and prepare it for lunch while humming (but was terribly afraid of domestic cats). Our driver was a middle age tattooed guy with many scars and heavy drinking habits, who was mainly cheerful except when we thought he was having a heart attack. We traveled together with two Belgian girls who we waited in U.B.; Teresa, the Spanish girl with whom we waited  and wandered in the meanwhile; and  Duncan, a Master student from US who joined us at the last minute.

And we enjoyed together sunshine, rains, hails and sand storms (sometimes in the same day), and also tons of milk (from either yak, goat or sheep) and much more greasy food than what our body could handle. At least my stomach (and my adventurous partner's stomach) passed through every possible condition (to not enter into details). (However, the two Belgian girls were OK the whole time. For one of them the explanation might be that she was vegetarian, but it seemed that the mix of beer and chocolate from their country make them able to digest even  fried broken glass bottles, who knows...)

Now we have 17 hours on the Trans Mongolian railway till we arrive to Zamyin Uud (last Mongolian town before China), and it seems like the right moment to recapitulate how come we stunk so strongly when we arrived back at the hostel in U.B!

Khairhan sacred mountain

We reached our first destination after 6 hours riding on a semi-destroyed road that run on a semi arid landscape set between mountains repeated as far as we could see.

 So we got there and we entered to the family ger, which was pretty much the same ger we would enter a half dozen times more in different settings: a very hot circular space with a dong fueled stove and a chimney in the center, a couple of beds, Buddhist icons at the opposite side of the door, and a strong smell of goat, meat, milk and sweat. Outside the ger, there were the family's animals: lots of goats and sheep and some cows; and steppe and mountains and more steppe and more mountains.

Iohi holding a goat at the front of the family ger 

Our guide cooking inside the ger

We stayed two nights there, one in tents and the other one in the small family's ger (but without the family since they traveled somewhere else). We had the chance to see the father and one of the kids cleaning a goat by removing the inside and burning the outside. Mongolians don't kill their animals too often, but when they do it they use every inch of the animal. The outside part of the goat (everything without the guts) was taken with the family when they traveled, it was some sort of family holiday and they were going to celebrate it by doing a "hotpot" somewhere near there. A "hotpot" is a particular way to cook the meat of any animal and our guide claimed it was too strong for the tourist stomach. However,  we got promises of a future hotpot for us until 10 days later...

So for the second day, the 8 of us stayed with the ger, the animals, and the inside meat of the goat, a.k.a. our lunch...

Our guide happily cleaned the parts and made some   sausages filled with everything and  those sausages were boiled over the stove inside the ger… It’s hard to describe that smell, and I’ll leave it to your imagination. Anyway, we actually ate some of it, and we got a promise of no meat for the dinner.

Boiled inside meat sausages with rice

So we tried to digest the food by walking and climbing those mountains that repeated unrealistically everywhere. It's really weird to see a landscape and think it looks as computer generated! But I guess we only see so much landscape on a screen.

We came back by dinner time. We found our dinner done inside the empty ger (all the family was away) but the guide/cook and the driver weren't around. So we waited, it was 8:15 and she said dinner will be ready by 8:00… And we waited more, it was 9:00 and we decided to heat the food… And I think around ten, she appeared all out of breath, saying she was sorry, the baby cows were lost and it took a lot of time, and she must milk now the goats and sheep before the milk inside them spoils.

So we went outside to help her, and the idea was to herd ALL the goats and sheep inside a tiny fenced space and then to milk the females. So she started to milk them inside a big sea of cloudy animals, and it was very hard for her to move inside that tiny space filled with goats and sheep. She asked us to kick the males out of the tiny space and then Duncan and I did that by grabbing the goats by the horns and lifting the sheep outside the fence!

Afterwards we all had to kick all the grown up animals out and put the babies in, and then to look for some of the baby cows, and it was completely dark and it took hours! We went to sleep very late and extenuated...

On the next day before we hit the road again, the whole family came back, and we saw more or less the same process being done in 10 minutes by two people instead of 7 and in 3 hours…

*We've been in China already for 10 days now, but I had some technical problems, thanks Cheng for solving them!