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.