Let’s see Russia.
-What part of it?
All of it!
Ok, there’s a little poetic exaggeration, you can’t really see all of Russia in one lifetime, let alone one month, but we did see a lot of it. And some extra treats.
There was murder and gulags and mountains and rivers and radiation and robbers and monuments and mishaps and excitement and fear and a bridge.
We took a train to Kiey, felw to Latvia, then flew to St. Petersburg, took the train all the way to Vladivostok and then flew to Mongolia. And back home again but that’s sort of a given. 🙂 This was back in 2011 but I only recently started writing about my travels, you won’t mind that’s it’s not brand new, will you?
Ukraine
We took a train from Rijeka to Zagreb, from Zagreb to Budapest. Not much going on yet. Ok, lake Balaton is nice but I enjoyed it much more when we went there by car this year, I’ll get to that story some day as well. The most memorable thing from that part of the journey for me was running into someone whose footwear was more ridiculous than mine! I managed to take a photo without the person noticing. Aren’t those something? And remember, this is 2011, before the whole Crocks thing got totally out of hand!
We only had a short wait in Budapest so we didn’t see any sites except the train station.
36 hours to Kiev. At the Ukrainian border the width of the track changes. Until then I thought tracks were tracks, same everywhere, you put a train on them and it runs. Apparently, not so. To deal with this, they lift each car in the air and change all the wheels (passengers all still in the car). The process takes about three hours but I slept through most of it.
So, Kiev. There’s something about the place that brings back memories of growing up in Yugoslavia but I can’t really put my finger on it. I guess it’s stuff like the police driving a 90’s Lada (which is hardly any different from a 70’s or 80’s Lada) or this very useful fire alarm (says out of order where the button should be).
The city had some beautiful buildings and we enjoyed looking around. But we were disappointed. Not by the city, there was nothing wrong with it. By the fact there were no tours to Chernobyl available. That was why we had come in the first place! We did go to the Chernobyl museum in Kiev, though. The place messes with your head, it took me a couple of hours to snap out of it. I knew the story before but the exhibits and the atmosphere of the museum really brought the suffering of the people to life and it was hard to handle. Eventually I managed to shake the feeling off.
Now, I should mention famous sites like the St.Sophia cathedral and the huge portrait inside made entirely out of Easter eggs. I should give you pictures of those and other, meaningful and learned, stuff, but I won’t. Instead, I’ll give you a lamp and the Smurfs (note the Cyrillic script in the poster)! 🙂
But google the Easter eggs portrait of virgin Mary, it’s quite something. Although, even the best photograph doesn’t do it justice.
A building here, a monument there, some boršč, some vodka and we were done with Kiev.
We flew to Latvia. We had just enough time to take a walk in Riga. It was not what I had expected, mostly because I had no expectations in the first place. But I was pleasantly surprised. It was night already when we got there and the lights made it look like Peter Pan was going to burst out of a window at any moment.
St. Petersburg
The flight was at an ungodly hour so we hardly got any sleep and by the time we got to St. Petersburg we were barely keeping our eyes open. We took a taxi into town and went to get some coffee before we go looking for a place to stay. There are three cups of coffee that etched themselves into my memory to this day (although none of them was technically in a cup) and this is one of them (second one was in Istanbul, third in Sarajevo). The yellow stuff at the bottom is lemon juice (pure, no water or anything).
The thing gave me x-ray vision!
With my new found zeal I went to the toilette where it seemed like I had gotten literal x-ray vision but it was, of course, just a fake mirror. I could see out but nobody could see in.
So we found a hostel, got some rest and went exploring. For the next few days we were in a constant state of amazement! There is so much to see, where ever you go there’s a monumental piece of history waiting to be seen. If I had to pick just one city to call the most beautiful I’ve ever seen, I think St. Petersburg might be it.
That being said, time for the odd stuff.
You probably know the Church of the Savior on Spilled Blood (it’s the candy church, sister of the St. Basil’s Cathedral in Moscow) but what you may not know is that they actually put an ATM right inside it! Now, I’m not big on religion myself but shouldn’t the people who are find that offensive? It just seems kinda wrong to me. Anyway, moving on.
The gem on the right might seem like ordinary public transportation. Well, the public part is right. However, it’s not transportation, it’s toilet. Yes, I’m serious. Speaking of toilette’s, there’s a thing that takes quite some getting used to:you don’t throw used toilette paper into the toilette bowl.
There’s a bin next to the bowl for that. And it’s like that in most of Russia. When I get to talking about some parts east of Moscow it get’s even worse. I’ll warn you before I talk about that so you can skip past that part if you’re squeamish.
On to a nicer subject. In fact, one of my favorite subjects: cars (and similar vehicles).
This is an UAZ and the country is littered with them! They’re also very popular in Mongolia and the Ukraine and I’ve seen some in Georgia and Azerbaijan too. The reason they’re so popular is that they are supposed to be unstoppable, any weather, any road. The down side is they’re almost as hard to feed as they are to stop (this is second hand information, don’t hold me to it but I was told it took 30-40 liters to go 100 km). Unfortunately, I never got a chance to ride in one of them. So far.
Nobody actually drove around in a V2, that was just an exhibit. That would have been too much, even for Russia. 🙂
At this point I’ll stop myself before I go overboard with pictures of home “tuned” Ladas, various Volgas or stretch limos. They love stretch limos and will stretch anything. For example, I saw a pink stretched Hummer.
Ok, just one more picture of a car, because wtf. There was a wedding, this was the groom’s car. I’m sure there’s a story behind it, probably a tradition full on meaning and stuff but it looks just wrong. Doesn’t it?
Enough about cars, let me tell you abut bridges and dead bodies. You didn’t see that coming, did you? 🙂 So, as you may know, they have bridges that open for ships to pass under them. It happens late at night, everything is beautifully lit and the bridges themselves are quite large so it’s a site to behold. We were there at 1 AM enjoying the show. No dead bodies yet. It was around 2 AM, when we headed back to the hostel, that we stumbled upon a crime scene. The police were already there and the bodies had been covered with sheets (not completely, I could see the legs of one of them) but it still made us feel quite uncomfortable and eager to get back to the hostel quickly.
I mention this because it popped back into mind when we got lost outside Vladivostok and it played a part in me being perhaps more scared than I have ever been, before or since (including the time I had to come home and tell my father I crashed his car when I was 15).
Apart from that, great times. The city is not all about history, there’s other stuff too. Like a chocolate museum. Or a pub with Freddie chillin’ in front of it.
We took all the tours. The hop on hop off bus, the canal boat ride, the cruise around the city. The days flew by and it was time to move on.
Some 700 km to Moscow but in a beast of a train so the ride took under four hours.
Moscow
You know how when you first smell somebodies perfume it’s really intense but after a while it get’s less and less so? The perfume is still as fragrant but your senses get numb. A similar thing happens with awe, after a while it loses it’s edge. So, by the time I got to Moscow my reaction went from “woooow, can you believe that? Wow!” to “yep, that’s monumental too”. There’s just too much stuff to be amazed at.
But even my numbed senses were still stimulated. Standing at the base of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs Building (one of the seven sisters), walking on the Red Square… you can’t not be moved. Fun fact about Red Square, there’s a church at the edge of it (Kazan Cathedral) which was destroyed by Stalin in ’36 because (allegedly) he wanted to make room for a parade (it was rebuilt in the 90’s).
Everything is huge in Moscow, it’s as if it was designed to make you feel small. And it’s not just buildings. Peter the Great’s Statue is almost 100 meters tall, for instance. Why would you need a statue to be 100 meters tall? 🙂 Another example of excess are the metro stations. Google Moscow metro stations, you won’t be disappointed. They are regular palaces!
There are a couple of “mainstream” tourist sites I have to mention.
One is the Lubyanka. I had read “Child 44” shortly before the trip (for those who haven’t gotten around to reading the book yet, it paints a grim picture of oppression with the dreaded Lubyanka in it’s center) and it was still very fresh in my mind so standing there was a very special feeling, real images kept overlapping with images from the book creating a unique sensation. And ringing in my mind was the thought “not that long ago…”. Even though the times of the KGB reign of terror are in the past, if the police see you taking pictures of the Lubyanka they will stop you and make you erase them! It actually happened to one of my friends so we had to come back the next day so she can take them again. 🙂 She had walked over to take a photo from a different angle and was stopped so while she was busy talking to the police and deleting photos, the other girl and I simply walked away and went down to the subway station, our photos intact. She joined us quickly, no taking away and torturing. 🙂 We also went to a gulag museum, while we’re on the subject. I was surprised to learn how many of them there actually were (gulags, not museums).
The other site is the Kremlin. That was a big disappointment. I mean, it’s not bad, it just does nothing to the numbed sense. Compared to everything else there is to see, it’s kinda a waste of time. There is a tree there that was planted when Gagarin went to space, though, that was cool.
Remember “Wind of change” by Scorpions? Remember the first line? Follow the Moskva down to Gorky park?. We did that! The thing is huge. Especially after you’d been walking all day. I don’t think I’ve ever walked as much as I did in Moscow. Worth it, though, so I won’t complain too much.
Among other things, they have a genuine space shuttle there!
There’s another side of Moscow I found particularly amusing. It’s the west coming in and mixing with all the history, the buildings, the monuments. Like that huge Mercedes sign I saw sitting on top of a Soviet building. This McDonald’s ad might be one of my favorite photos from Moscow (even though I’m not a big fan of the restaurant itself) because the slogan, I’m lovin’ it, is translated to Russian and written in Cyrillic script! And there’s Dunkin Donuts, Starbucks, Wendy’s, Burger king and all sorts of other American brands all written in Cyrillic.
Speaking of American, there’s a place called Beverly Hills diner which looks like it came straight out of an American 50’s show, with cars for tables and waitresses on roller skates. The first thing in my mind was a $5 shake! If you didn’t get that, shame on you, go watch Pulp fiction, now!
Yep, this is the kind of blog I’m writing here. I won’t give you a photo of Red Square at night (it looks like a coca-cola commercial, you keep waiting for Santa to fly over) but I will give you this Subway trailer.
Here I have some photos that I don’t know how to smoothly integrate into the text but want to share anyway so I’ll just squeeze them in. It’s creepy chocolate, USA vs. CCCP chessboard and a couple of extension cords.
I know, but aren’t you glad you saw them? Speaking of items, my lighter collection got quite a boost from this trip. The lighters got airport security quite excited later, we’ll get to that.
There are two things that were in abundance in Moscow (all of Russia, in fact) when we were there: statues of Lenin and scaffolding. Well, I suppose the statues are always there, not just while we were. But the scaffolding is a seasonal thing. Since summer doesn’t last very long and Russian winter is no time do do any work, everything is renovated while the weather is favorable. Scaffolding everywhere, all over the country!
We left Kiev with the Smurfs, we’re leaving Moscow with Conan the barbarian.
Four days had passed, time to move on.
Trans-Siberian railway
Out of Moscow and into Nizhny Novgorod. Nothing happened. At all.
The train was different from the one that got us to Moscow. This was one of the old school trains and it had it’s charms because of it. It had, as did all the other trains we took from then on, a samovar. It’s a water heater with scorching hot water and we used it all the time to make tea and coffee.
And once, something that may or may not have been food. I don’t really remember exactly where this was, I remember it had been a while since we last stopped anywhere and we were starving so we asked the attendant if we could get some food. She gave us plastic cups with some powder in them and showed us to the heater. We figured it was probably soup.
But as we started stirring, the soup became denser until, finally, it became mashed potatoes. I mean, you can imagine how close to actual mashed potatoes it was. But that was all we had so we ate it.
Yekaterinburg. Used to be called Sverdlovsk. The place where the Romanov imperial family was killed by the Bolsheviks, the city president Boris Yeltsin selected as a reserve capital for the Russian Federation should Moscow became too dangerous. So, obviously, I’ll tell you about a trash can, a massage parlor and a can of soda. 🙂
The trash can made out of an old computer doesn’t need much of an explanation. The massage parlor only needs explaining if you can’t read Cyrillic script because if you can you will notice that the parlor is named Viagra. I don’t think they could have made the hint any more obvious.
The can is here because of the quantity, 0.237 liters. That seems strangely specific and arbitrary, doesn’t it? Well, until you convert it to ounces, than it’s just boring eight.
And there’s the inevitable car part. Again, I’ll spare you the “special” Lada’s. I’ll give you this one regular Lada instead. At first glance you’ll probably see nothing wrong. At second glance you’ll probably still see nothing out of the ordinary. You may notice that the guy is making a right turn without his turn signal. The thing is the car is not making a turn at all, there’s nobody in it! That’s just the way it’s parked!
Also poorly parked is this guy but his parking is the least of it’s problems! What is that and why is it so ugly? Kill it! Kill it with fire!
At some point we passed the obelisk that divides Europe from Asia but, unfortunately, we slept through that.
Another thing we passed was something we didn’t even know was there until after we’d passed it. East Urals Radioactive Trace (EURT), an area contaminated by the Kyshtym disaster (a huge nuclear disaster in the 50’s). That would explain the area where the pine trees were currant instead of green, I was wondering about that while we were passing them. The reason that disaster isn’t “famous” is that they managed to keep it a secret for long enough that by the time the word spread it had happened so long ago that nobody really cared any more (a gross oversimplification, sure, but pretty much the gist of it). They were going to do the same with Chernobyl but the radioactive cloud spread too far north and was detected in Finland (or Sweden, I’m not sure. One of the northern ones, anyway).
We reached Siberia. Tyumen, Omsk, the cities all became one blurry speck in a vast sea of birch-trees and pines.
By the time we reached Novosibirsk we were only half way there.
The city was more or less what we’ve come to expect, I had a feeling we kept coming back to the same city ever since we left Moscow. Not that they were ugly cities or that there was nothing to see in them. It’s just that they all looked somewhat joyless. I can’t find a better word to describe what I felt was wrong with them.
Novosibirsk did have a special treat, though. A bridge that went from nowhere to nowhere! There’s probably a good explanation but I kinda wish there wasn’t, I would like to believe that someone somewhere built a bridge from nowhere to nowhere just because. Wouldn’t that be something? 🙂
A strange thing happened when we were buying tickets to continue our journey. First we stood in line for half an hour only to be informed that we couldn’t use credit cards at that window and we had to wait at the next one. Some 45 minutes later, when it was finally our turn at the window, the woman takes off (presumably to consult her colleagues) because she doesn’t know what to do with the letter “ć” in out passports. She comes back and makes one of the tickets. She then looks at the clock and says her break is starting, closes the window (our passports still with her) and walks away. We can see her drinking her tea through the glass. Fifteen minutes later she returns and makes the remaining two tickets in a minute and a half. And she couldn’t have done that before going on break! I felt the urge to beat her over the head with her kassa ne rabotaet sign! But hey, her behavior fueled my hope of the bridge being there for no reason. I mean, if this is a place where taking a 15 minute break in the middle of a 2 minute job makes sense, a nowhere bridge is not that big of a stretch! 🙂
We got our tickets and we were moving on. The display showed 11 degrees Celsius, mid August. Perfect!
On the train again. There was no power outlet in the compartment so I dismantled the lamp and tried to connect my phone to it using some wires (I can’t, for the life of me, remember where I got wires) in order to charge it. It didn’t work.
Tayshet. Zima. Temperatures in Zima reach -50 in the winter. Krasnojarsk.
Irkutsk. And not a moment too soon. We needed a change of pace. And we got just what we needed. Irkutsk is home to the greatest toilette sign in the world, btw. 🙂
Detour
There’s an island in lake Baikal, some 300 km from Irkutsk, Olkhon island. It’s so remote it didn’t get electricity until 2005! In the summer you can get there by ferry. In the winter you can drive across the ice. In between, while the ice is forming or melting, there is no way across. I can’t imagine living in such a place. But there are people who do.
We were driving to a remote part of a remote area. Cattle walking on the road was a common occurrence.
We stopped at some sort of restaurant and I wanted to go to the toilet. Remember how I said I would warn the squeamish to look away? Be warned.
So, there’s a tin shack with no door, what little privacy you have is provided by the shape of it (imagine a square, break one of it’s sides in half and fold it at a right angle so that the part that was in the corner of the square goes inward, to get a spirally shape). And in the “private” part of the shack there’s just a hole in the concrete. A nasty irregular hole with foul stains from people not succeeding in getting everything inside the hole. As for the stench, it was beyond words. I survived by holding my breath. I wreaked of it for quite some time after. There were outdoor toilette’s in other places, some better, some worse, but none as foul as this one. Ever.
Ok, you can look again! 🙂
After a while asphalt gave way to gravel. It didn’t cause our driver to slow down any. I like that. 🙂
We got to the ferry, it took us across.
It was one of the most peaceful places on Earth! The were only a few cars on the whole island, not a trace of asphalt anywhere. The island was a gem! The view of the mainland was spectacular, the island even more so!
The village was an assembly of small houses and shacks but it was bigger than one would expect here, at the edge of the world.
Our hostel (or whatever type of establishment it formally is) was one of the biggest estates in it and perhaps the only one to feature a two story building. The rooms were quite nice, clean and comfortable. There was a restaurant where we mingled with other tourists, the place was full. The outdoor showers are not really the height of luxury but they weren’t all that bad. I don’t really know how that works the rest of the year, it was far from hot in August (some 10 degrees or so).
In the picture below you can see Shaman rock. There are nicer pictures of it but if I used one of those then I couldn’t brag about climbing a 2 m post (no props, no help, wearing crocks) and I kinda wanted to brag about that. 🙂
Shamanism is really big here and there are ribbons tied to trees all over the place. We didn’t know what those were at the time, we learned about them from our guide in Mongolia. There was an orthodox church in the village as well.
Did I mention how beautiful the place was? Really awe inspiring! A very different kind of beauty than the cities, but in no way less.
The water was clear and inviting. Until you put your foot in. Then it stopped being inviting because the cold went straight through the flesh and grabbed you by the bones.
There’s one grassy hillside which is covered in names spelled out in white stones.
And a special treat: the sheets in the hostel featured “Nu, pogodi!”! For those of you not familiar with the cartoon, it’s sort of the Russian version of Tom and Jerry only with a wolf and a hare. Every episode ended in the wolf failing to get the hare and saying “nu, zajec, pogodi!” which means something like “well, hare, just you wait…”. It was on TV all the time when we were kids, before Yugoslavia fell apart.
Two days at this wonderful place is enough to recharge your batteries. But it’s also enough, period.
On the way back we saw a guy wearing a big ring with the Batman logo on it. A grown man. Wearing a Batman ring.
Back on track
4300 km left to Vladivostok. Three day ride, non-stop. I mean, the train did stop but they were only brief stops. No spending the night at a hotel or even going into town. This was our bathroom for the 3 days. The toilette is in the other corner. Three days is a long time to spend in a train compartment. There was a restaurant car, it was cute, looked like it came straight out of the 60’s (I wouldn’t be surprised it it actually was from the 60’s) but we only made the mistake of eating there once. Terrible.
We passed through Mogocha, a city where the lowest temperature recorded is -62, Amazar, the last city in Siberia and the beginning of the Russian far east, Birobidzhan, administrative center of the Jewish Autonomous Oblast, Kabarovsk, where some policemen boarded the train with a prisoner in cuffs.
In the three days I occasionally went to the back of the car where smoking was tolerated (I tend to indulge in the vice when on holidays) and I started talking to a Russian guy. A big scary guy, but really sweet. We talked about all sorts of stuff in spite of the fact that he only spoke Russian which I didn’t speak. We relied on vague similarities between Russian and Croatian (due to them both being Slavic languages), those few isolated words of various languages that you somehow have in your head, mime and air writing/drawing (writing invisible symbols with your finger).
Vladiostok!!
The San Francisco of Russia! The gem of the far east! -is what I heard people call it. Somehow all that beauty escaped me. All I saw was an industrial city with a military base. Not even the sea helped much, it still felt a lot like any of the cities between Moscow and here. For better or for worse, this was our last stop in Russia. We had taken the famous trans-siberian railway, 9288 km.
We went to see as much as we could of the city before we catch a flight to Beijing.
One of the first things we saw this guy taking a nap on the pavement. We were not surprised by it, though, since it’s not an uncommon site. In fact, I think there was at least one drunk guy sleeping it off in the street in every city.
We had not seen a gravity defying truck before, though. Safety first!
Or a 5D cinema attraction. I was only aware of four (and that’s if you count time as a dimension) and yet, there the poster was. 5D. This was topped by a 7D in Georgia this year. I went into that one. It turns out mechanical tentacles are a dimension. o.O To elaborate, the 7 dimensions were: 3D image, moving seats, fans to simulate wind, nozzles that squirt water at you (after 2 shows my shirt was soaking) and mechanical tentacles that grab your legs from under the seats.
We went to see the view form this hill they have which is supposed to be amazing. There’s a funicular to take you most of the way up but it wasn’t working so we had to walk. We had walked around town quite a bit already so this was becoming torture. And when we got up there I was not amazed. The view was good but not really amazing.
I think the most memorable part of Vladivostok was the submarine they have on display in the harbor. Which also disappointed me at first because the first part is turned into a museum of sorts so all of the original interior was stripped out to make room for display cabinets. So, basically, it was just a room. I got my money’s worth in the second part, though, which was really cool!
And we saw Yul Brynner’s house, a huge bridge being built and some other cool stuff (mostly statues). And we got to dip our feet in the sea of Japan. This was some 5 months after the Fukushima disaster. We didn’t grow any extra toes, though.
Remember the scary part, when the bodies popped back into mind? Here it comes:
We took the train to the airport. It turned out that the station we needed to get off at was a field in the middle of nowhere, no signs, no concrete, no lights, no nothing. We were lost and it was obvious. People started approaching us. Nobody spoke English so communication was difficult. One guy appeared to be trying to get us to go home with him for some reason. Some other people started approaching us and started arguing among themselves. They all looked sinister. We managed to walk away from the commotion but one woman followed us. As we were trying to communicate with her, her boyfriend (I suppose) came along and was getting irritated. He was a big fella. At one point he got so frustrated he hit a road sign with his fist and I stared at the post swinging as if I were hypnotized. I would not fare well in a physical confrontation with a guy his size, if he were to direct his anger towards any of us I would end up severely hurt. I wouldn’t be able to protect my friends or myself. Thus, fear and dead bodies.
In the end we managed to get away from them all and find a bigger road but we were still lost and there was nobody to give us directions. After a while we managed to hail a cab. As soon as it stopped we knew we were going to be ok.
So now we’re at the airport and we have to pass the security check. When my bag got to the x-ray it caused quite an uproar among the security because the screen showed a bag full of guns, bombs and ammunition. They were, of course, the latest additions to my lighter collection but there was no way to discern that from the image on the screen. I was immediately pulled to side and made to open my bag, the guards in a state of alert. Once they realized what the content of my bag was their tension dissolved into laughter.
A bus took us to the plane even though it was no more than 50 meters away, walking there would have taken less time. Protocol > common sense.
The Beijing airport is a city, it’s huge. It was a bit of a shock to see someone working at an airport sniveling and using their sleeve instead of an handkerchief but I’m told that such and worse (by our standards) behavior is normal there.
Even though we never left the airport we got a Chinese stamp in our passports. I know I haven’t really been to China but I still like having it there. 🙂 I don’t know how but while walking around, waiting for the plane to Ulan Bator (Ulaanbaatar), we got to the airport exit without anybody asking for our papers. There was nobody there, we could have just walked out the door and into the city without a visa. And I would have done it too, had we had the time. But we didn’t and China remains on my list.
Mongolia
Love at first sight. Ulaanbaatar is not what you’d expect a capitol to be. There is a small city core with some large buildings and one(!) modern looking sky-scraper but most of the city are either single story houses or, even more frequently, yurts. A terrible place to live if you’re Spiderman, very soothing otherwise. The areal view showed a nuclear power plant right in the middle of the city! I’m pretty sure it was some other kind of thermal, not actually nuclear, but it had the Simpsons cooling towers and we decided to call it nuclear, more fun that way. 🙂
They’re more into Genghis (Chinggis) Khan than Russians are into Lenin! Remember how I said statues of Lenin are everywhere in Russia? Well, here it’s not just statues, everything is Genghis, from the name of the airport to brands of beer and vodka. He’s on money, too.
On the way over from the airport we passed by a plane parked behind an apartment building. Sure, I guess, where else are you going to keep your plane if you live in an apartment building. 🙂 I’d love to hear the story behind that.
While looking for a hostel we got to a traffic light. You know the little guy in the lights? Take a close look at the picture. Yep, this one’s on a horse!
We found a hostel, left our stuff and went into town. Not much to see, really. The square is nice but that’s about it. One of the friends got her camera stolen from her jacket pocket there which was sad, not because of the camera itself but because of all of the photos. But what can you do…
There was a monument to the Beatles somewhere, that was unexpected. Even more so was a poster for Gorenje products (Gorenje is a Slovenian brand) all the way out here.
By the end of the day we’d seen everything there is to see in the city so we went back to the hostel and booked a four day tour in the countryside. They have a great way to present different tours, there’s a big map on the table covered in plastic and they draw routes on it with markers as they explain them. The tour cost around a million monopoly money so there’s me in the picture being a millionaire! 🙂
A terribly maintained road took us out of the city. That was the last time we saw asphalt.
Even using the word road is far too generous for most of the paths we took. Still, between our driver being extremely skillful and the van being comfortable, the ride was quite enjoyable.
We were introduced to the local version of tea. It was tea with goat milk and salt. Yes, salt. Strangely enough, after the initial shock you get used to it and it kinda tastes good.
Our guide was a philosophy teacher at the Ulaanbaatar university and he guides tourists in his spare time because he loves the nature. He was wonderful and he took great care of us!
We stopped in something that someone with a very vivid imagination might call a diner for salty tea and some kind of noodles with mutton.
They took us to the Khustain national park first. There’s a special breed of wild horses living there and they’re beautiful! So is the scenery. Grassy hills as far as the eye can reach, very calming.
We moved on. Didn’t really matter where we were going, where ever we went there was pure, untainted nature in all it’s beauty! Granted, I wouldn’t like to get sick there (with no civilization around). But since none of us did, we were free to enjoy the vast areas unspoiled by human touch.
There’s a peculiar thing about a lot of their mountains, you can see exactly where they start. Plain, plain, mountain! There’s a clear line separating the two, it looks as if the plain was there and somebody took a mountain, made the bottom flat and just put it on the plain. No mounds or valleys or anything to soften the transition.
At the first camp we stayed, where the picture to the right was taken (btw., that IS a road), we spent so much time admiring the sky that the guide asked “don’t you have sky where you’re from?”. “Not like this we don’t” we replied. The area was so flat that there was nothing for the sun to set behind, it was like standing in the middle of a green ocean that slowly turned golden as the sun approached the horizon. At night it became incredible, all that sky got filled with more stars that we’d ever seen! Yeah, I know they don’t have extra stars, but there’s absolutely no light pollution so a lot more of them are visible.
There is one down side to the beauty of desolation – hygiene is a bit tricky. The picture to the left shows a bathroom. We didn’t have a proper shower for the duration of the tour, we only washed critical parts.
I must admit I don’t really remember the names of places we visited or the exact order in which we visited them.
There was a hill with a statue of a deer (and a story of how a hunter nursed a deer back to health there and thermal springs appeared), there was an impressive canyon of a big river, there were smaller rivers… Our guide cooked lunch for us at a particularly beautiful spot by one of them, some kind of a traditional meal cooked in a pot over a fire and it was fantastic.
There was the camel ride which is more fun than it sounds and far more comfortable than I expected it to be. The weird part is getting on and off. The camels kneel for you to get on but when they rise they straighten their hind legs first (still kneeling with the front) so you have the feeling you’re about to fall over it’s head.
There was riding the horses through the river so deep we got our feet wet without getting off the horse.
There was a stunning waterfall.
There was the old capital of the Mongolian empire, Karakorum (I didn’t remember the name, I googled it) where you can hold an eagle on your hand and see how big those bastards actually are (I’m 1.80 m tall and the bird makes me look small), pet a big stone turtle or, if you’re a girl, touch a big stone penis for fertility.
There were yaks which I had never seen before and found very amusing. No Young Nastyman or mind bullets, though (that’s a Tenacious D reference, if you’re confused). 🙂
There were shepherds on motorcycles using the horn to guide the cattle, because horses are to old school.
At one point we reached a point where a river intersected with the road. This is quite common but rivers are usually shallow enough to drive through at those points. This one was bigger than usual that day and seeing how the white truck hadn’t made it across we decided not to risk it. Instead, they took us to a different camp. We were not the only ones who had turned back so this camp was full. As a result, the three of us were placed in the yurt of the camp owners.
All of the guests chipped in and the owners prepared a feast for us, a traditional meal. This included slaughtering a goat. I went for a walk during that part. Once they were done cutting up the goat they used the otherwise useless parts of it to put on quite a show. They started throwing the parts into the air where eagles caught them mid air. A dozen or so of these huge majestic birds gathered for the event, it was quite something! The meal was cooked in a big caldron and it included goat, potatoes, some vegetables and – rocks! They put volcanic rocks in with the food and once the food is done you hold the hot rocks in your hands, that’s supposed to be good for some-thing-or-another, I don’t know. Our guide didn’t seem to be all that bothered by the fact the stone was hot. While I was basically playing tennis with mine he was holding his with calm.
During the night somebody walked into our yurt and asked something in a raised voice. We said we didn’t understand, in English. They tried again but eventually realized we didn’t speak their language and left. We didn’t think much of it and went back to sleep. The next morning we woke up to hear quite a story! Our guide told us that a band of robbers had come to the camp during the night. There was a fight and guns were drawn but the drivers of the vans, including ours, managed to fight the robbers off. Now we knew who the people who came to the yurt last night were, they must have come there expecting to find the owners. The police had come and everybody had been taken into custody to a town some 3-4 hours drive away. Since the guide had the keys to the van, we agreed we’d go there to try to get our driver back.
Our guide was a decent driver but decent wasn’t enough. We got stuck in a bad patch of mud. There is a code of conduct here which dictates that you never drive past somebody in trouble, as our driver had demonstrated several times before, so we knew that if somebody were to happen by they would give us a hand. But we also knew that the chances of somebody driving through here any time soon were very slim. There was no cellphone service. We were stranded. Any attempt the guide made to get us out only dug us in deeper. We tried helping by pushing the van but it didn’t help. I asked whether I could give it a try and in an act of pure desperation the guide said yes. After a couple of minutes of pure sorcery behind the wheel I actually did it, thrilling and surprising even myself! I got my wish of off-road driving in Mongolia and I got to save the day, all at once, I was as happy as could be!
We waited for our driver’s release for quite some time. As you can guess by the photo of the center of the city, there wasn’t much to do.
Finally, we were on our way again but we were way off schedule. It was getting dark by the time we got to the next village and we weren’t going to reach the one we were supposed to spend the night at. At the one we were entering, the most amazing interaction took place. These two women were walking by the road and we pulled over next to them. They spoke in tongues for a while and the women got in the van with us, even though all of us, including the driver and guide, were complete strangers, and took us to a small house with a room fitted with several tables. If that place was a restaurant (which it could have been in the same sense the thing you saw earlier was a bathroom), it wasn’t open for business at this hour. Still, the women brought out food for all of us. What they brought was less food than the place was a restaurant, though. Despite not wanting to be rude or ungrateful, despite being hungry as hell and despite all of our sincere efforts to eat, none of us could finish the dish. The driver and guide not only ate, they seemed to enjoy it. Incredible. The foul taste of mutton still haunts me and to this day I have not had a worse meal.
The woman feeding strangers like that was strange enough but it didn’t stop there. They got back in the van with us and took us to their house so we can spend the night there! We met the whole family but soon they all retired leaving their living room to us.
At this point the guide produced a bottle of Mongolian vodka that he managed to buy without us noticing and gave it to me saying it was a token of gratitude to me for saving the day and, also, to all of us for being good sports about the whole situation. I was really moved! We opened the bottle and finished it right there. It’s funny how life works, that day was, by all definitions, ruined and yet it turned out to be one of the greatest and most memorable days ever!
Our last day of the tour went smoothly, no more robbers or mud, just beauty all around us.
Once again, our guide picked an epic spot to cook us a fantastic meal. The little green dot at the top is me. 🙂 I managed to brush against a particularly vicious nettle while I was climbing.
And then it was time to return to civilization. When we got back to the hostel we were dying for a shower but the tour was well worth the sacrifice.
I’ll finish the story about Mongolia with this photo of three guys on a bike.
We flew back to Moscow where we caught a plane to Zagreb. Our luggage didn’t. But it caught up with us in Rijeka the next day so all was well. No guns, bombs or bullets were missing from the bags.
Adventure Imminent 