Ulaanbaatar

We returned to Ulaanbaatar by lunchtime the next day, stopping on the way at the Chinggis Khan statue and museum.  The Mongolian have recently built a 40m statute of Chinghis Khan apparently in the middle of nowhere, but we were told this valley was the site where he found his golden whip which apparently where it all kicked off for Chinghis.  The highlight of this was being able to go up in the elevator to stand on the top of the horse’s head – spectacular views and meant that we were able to take a close up of Chinggis.  Fortunately, given our recently failures, we’d given up on trying to take photos of us with famous statues at this point.

Bolod - our amazing Mongolian guide

When we got to Ulaanbaatar first thing on our list was coffee before Fern’s caffeine addiction caused some casualties!  We also succumbed to eating some Western food to counterbalance the greasy meatness which is Mongolian cuisine.  Suitably refreshed we headed to Chaojin Temple Museum for some culture.

We then headed to the main square, scene of the 1990 protests that ended communism in Mongolia, to check out the Parliament building, with the requisite statue of Chinngis Khan, before heading off to the State Department store (commonly known as the big shop) to do a bit of shopping.

It was with a slight heavy heart that we woke up the next morning to catch our final train across the Gobi desert to our end destination.

Bring on Beijing!!!

I think we’re turning Mongolese, I really think so!

We arrived at Magbal's yurt in time for lunch and sat down as an array of home- made bread, biscuits and tea as well as bowls of tea with milk was presented to us.  Luckily Fern had explained the concept of tea with milk containing salt in advance of our arrival in Mongolia so we were slightly prepared for the conundrum of our eyes and stomach expecting one thing and our mouth tasting something incredibly different.  Otherwise it could have been quite a messy experience as it's definitely a taste that takes some getting used to!!  After chowing down on this we were asked if we’d like beef and noodle for our second dinner which we thought sounded delicious for an evening meal.  Watching Magbal make noodles and cook dinner on a wood burning stove in the yurt was pretty impressive.

After the food preparation had finished we wandered outside to have a look at the surrounding area.  The family yurt encampment was the only encampment in the valley, the nearest yurt was in the neighbouring valley.  This was their spring encampment and it had taken the sons two weeks to build the fences before they moved the animals in.  The animals (they had goats, sheep, cows plus a horse with a foal) were let out to roam the plains during the day, but penned up again at night to protect them from the wolves. 

We had arrived just at the end of the lambing season so there were lots of lambs and kids gambolling around.  It was now we discovered Fern’s Heidi tendencies, she was literally a kid magnet.  So she has a back up career in case the Civil Service doesn’t work out as she clearly can’t rely on photography because she spectacularly failed to get a photo of Goats on Stuff for the (sadly not our idea) Goats on Stuff blog!

Walking back into the yurt, we were presented with what can only be described as a mountain of beef and noodles.  We literally had three times the size of portion of everyone else.  Given that this was about an hour after our last round of food, we looked at each other in horror. Fortunately it was delicious but we did have to give up about half way through, however the left overs were presented to us as breakfast which was a challenge even for "curry-for-breakfast" Alice.  Apparently it is traditional to rewarm left over food by putting it in a bowl of salty, milk tea, definitely an experience too far for both of us at that time of the morning!

Slowly working our way through the food allowed us the time to appreciate the inside of the yurt.  It was beautifully decorated, with all the struts being hand painted.  Around the edges of the yurt were three beds which doubled up as sofas and tables during the day.  One of these beds was folded out as a double bed for us to sleep on later.

After lunch, Magbal took out some traditional Mongolian and Kazakhstani coats to show us and then proceeded to dress us up in our own fashion show.  As you can see these were incredibly rich in detail and we were amazed to understand that these are typical coats which are worn when on trips to the village, and horse riding.  In fact when we were in Ulaanbaatar the next day we saw several women wearing coats such as these.

Fierce Mongol Face Pose

Mongolia's Next Top Model

In Natural Habitat

With Designer

This seemed an appropriate time to hand over the gifts that we had brought – some chocolate, postcards and some Brighton rock.  The rock appeared to cause much fascination as all of the family tried it, however Magbal did resort to cutting it with a hatchet to break it into individual pieces.  Can now see a gap in the Brighton Souvenir market!

Despite the fact that it was amazingly cold outside we were determined to follow in Chinggis Khan’s footsteps and ride across the plains – check out the Mongol warriors J The being dressed up theme continued as can be seen by Magbel's use of our existing scarfs/hats - Tots, while the Dr Who scarf was a vital piece of equipment on this trip, not entirely sure it coordinates well with the Mongolian delt!

When we got back the neighbours (yes, nomads can have neighbours as apparently they don’t move their yurts too far – having spring, summer and winter homes all in the same area) had popped round for a cup of tea and they seemed fascinated by our guidebooks.  It was proper cosy sitting round, sipping cups of salty tea chatting away - Luckily we also had our excellent guide Bolod acting as a translator for us.

It was a cosy night in the yurt as traditionally all the family sleep in that one open space so there were six of us which kept it nice and cosy as we drifted off to sleep . . .

Mongolian Steppes

Ah, Mongolia – land of fabulous adventures and what can only be called unique experiences . . . Mongolia kicked off with a much more reasonable start time wise as we arrived in Ulaanbaatar at 6:30 and were met off the train by our amazing tour guide, Bolod. 

Bolod was concerned that we should start off with breakfast and took us to a local canteen type establishment for breakfast.  Fern was sensible enough to order black tea, which turned out to a wise move as we discovered later in the day.  However, due to the early start, apparently they only had dumplings ready.  No problem we said, having lived off dumplings in Russia.  A little odd for breakfast, but delicious all the same . . . let it be said that Mongolian dumplings are rather different from Russian dumplings!  Some rather greasy, mutton dumplings appeared.  Let’s just say that picking the gristle out of your food is not the most enticing prospect when it’s the first meal of the day . . . We then headed out of the city for a tour of Terelj National Park before heading to our end destination of staying with a nomad family in a yurt.

First stop was a supermarket to pick up some water and some chocolate for our host family.  Also, Alice managed to pick up a new spread which made her very happy – score!

We then stopped off at a monastery in a mining town outside of Ulaanbaatar.  It was fascinating to get an opportunity to see a working monastery outside of a tourist area to get a sense of how they operate for local people.  We also got to see some baby monks in training! Properly exciting.

Bolod then started talking to a woman waiting outside the inner chamber and translated her responses to us.  She was waiting for the chanting to finish so that she could get the Lama to say a prayer for her.  Apparently this is how the monasteries operate, people pay for prayers to be said.  Further conversation revealed that she wanted a prayer for her dead husband who had recently died of a heart condition at the age of 24, leaving her and her  month old baby.  It was definitely a situation where it felt that our limited words and gestures were not enough and obviously touched both of us.

We drove into Terelj National Park and saw the amazing Mongolian Steppes . . .  It reminded us of a cross between what we imagined prehistoric landscape looked like and also the wild, wild west – but that last view may have be tainted by us seeing a man ride up to a cantina, tie his horse up outside and walk inside!  The eagle hunters were also pretty impressive.

Some goats, who were being herded by goat herders in sunglasses . . . Some yaks (who feature quite heavily in Fern's top ten of animals) . . .

Plus some camels – check out the pushmi-pullyu!

And the most unique pony transportation we’ve ever seen! 

Irkutsk - Snow!!!

Snow, snow everywhere!!! We woke up in Listvyanka to a winter wonderland.  Whilst this was a sight to behold it put paid to our plans to go on the hydrofoil because it was tricky enough to see the lake, let along see across it.  So we decided to head into Irkutsk a little earlier than planned.

This involved hiking our stuff down a steep, snowy, slippery slope to wait for a minibus which would hopefully take us into Irkutsk and we stood in the snow and waited . . and waited . . and waited . . and politely declined a lift from three Russian teenage men in a Lada . . . and eventually the minibus turned up and took us on what can only be described as a hair raising journey into Irkutsk.

It’s fair to say that spirits were a little low as we navigated from the bus station to the train station via different trams in the snow.  We were cold, not entirely sure where we were and the views of the city from the tram was not awe inspiring at all.  However once we had dropped off our bags at the station and defrosted our toes slightly we set off to discover the Paris of Siberia.

In light of our flagging spirits lunch was definitely in order and yet again we fell back on the guide book which took us to a lovely café in the centre of the town.  Whilst we were slightly perturbed by the lengthy Russian menu, our Rusglish got us through once more.  One of the things which has impressed us throughout this trip is just how helpful the Russian people can be, although this is often still with Scary Soviet Face!

We were now in the previously unseen centre of the town and were finally starting to get an appreciation of Irkutsk.  It’s got a really European feeling which apparently is a result of the European Russian royalty who were exiled here in the 1820s (the Decemberists).  There are many old wooden buildings which have beautiful wooden lace architrave and we saw several of these on our way to the Volkonsky House Museum – Volkonsky was a Decemberist.

As is key in cold climates, we developed the tack of not leaving a warm place before planning where we were going next and where the next warm stop would be . . . so we stopped for coffee in Lenin Street Coffee purely because of the irony of the blatant Starbucks rip off!

It also fitted in nicely with our next attempt at photographing ourselves with Lenin.  Please note that the snow, which had been falling all day, had decided to increase it’s speed and size of flakes at this point – didn’t give us a huge amount of trial and error time!

OK, so I know we didn't actually manage to get Lenin in this one but it was either this photo or a photo with Fern's forehead, Alice's eye and a Lenin smudge - did we mention that it was snowing heavily at this point?!!

After a quick walk to look at the theatre, we grabbed some canteen style dinner before heading back to the station to hopefully get some space in one of the resting rooms so that we could get some sleep before getting back on the train at 4:50. 

The resting rooms were apparently full. We gestured to the pay by the hour waiting room with large comfortable sofas. This was also apparently not possible, despite being empty. We attempted to ask why in our limited Russian. Another lady was asked to join in, our original one clearly having thrown her hands up in despair at these idiot tourists who can’t speak the language.  A small sofa was shown to us – better than nothing we thought and nodded. We were taken back downstairs.

A-ha we thought, this is where we have to pay (Russia not being short on unnecessary process), we promptly did so but we did not go back upstairs as expected, we were walked across the station, a random door was opened to a room that was striking in its greenness. Green walls, green carpet and green sofas (with integrated tables in the arms). In fact we had managed to negotiate our own private resting room, in another part of the station. We’ll never know how, but it meant we could get a few hours sleep before heading out into the snow once more to get our next train.   

Listvyanka

All of our stops appear to be crazy o’clock and pulling into Irkutsk is no exception.  We debark off the train at 4:25am, luckily being picked up straight away by the people we are staying with in Listvyanka which turns out to be a 45 min drive away to the 80s sounds of Sade . . .

Listvyanka is a small village on the edge of Lake Baikal which is the world’s largest freshwater lake, holding 20% of the world’s freshwater – a couple of free fact-ettes there!  We’d booked accommodation in these really cute little individual log cabins.  After taking a moment to luxuriate in the privacy, the fact that we had the space to open our suitcases and that we had a toilet that we didn’t  have to share and didn’t smell of wee, we promptly crashed out for a few hours.

Suitably freshed we obviously head out to look at the lake and walk along the lakeside to the centre of the village.  The ice is beginning to defrost on the lake, is apparently because it has been incredibly warm in Listvyanka.  Though by the time we get to Listvyanka it has most certainly reverted to cold, sunny but with a chilly wind which made it suitably refreshing to look at the intricate patterns the breaking ice made as well as listen to the unique twinkly, chinking sound of the shards of ice moving against one another.

Although at some point Alice got slightly bored of all the photograph taking . . .

We came across a market which sold an odd mixture of smoked (local fish) and souvenirs.  There must have been about 15 stalls all selling smoked fish to a handful of tourists.  We were slightly at a loss as to how this made sense, especially when we later saw several more people also selling smoked fish from outside their houses as we explored the village.

We were on our way to find something called Retro Park, but got a little lost on the way and ended up on the wrong side of the stream which was problematic as you can see from this photo . . . it eventually involved some daring walking across ice and crossing on a plank of wood . . .

We finally made it to Retro Park which had several models which were made solely out of old Communist car parts.  Twas pretty ingenious.