In which we drive for a day and a half, but finally get to see some pandas.
Days 101 & 102 (drive from Xian to Chendu)
Another long misty drive day today, starting with another slow escape from the city. Again, excellent toll roads meant that Will was able to eat up the distance at a steady 90kmh, and, again, lunch was taken at another motorway service station with another excellent, value for money buffet.
After lunch, as we travelled further and further south and the sun rose higher and stronger, the mist began to clear and we were able to see something of the hills through which we were travelling. More young, jaggy, pointy, high hills with terracing all over them, allowing almost every inch to be cultivated, mostly, it seemed, with maize. We saw tons of the stuff piled up or hanging in bunches outside farms and houses having recently been harvested.
Here too the excellent roads simply cut through tall mountains or crossed deep valleys. Some of the tunnels were 5km plus long, often with just a brief gaps between them, long enough only for a quick glance left or right before being plunged back in to the flickering darkness of yet another tunnel. Occasionally, we'd see the old road twisting its way along the bottom of river valleys without a single vehicle on it.
Shortly after six in the evening, Will turned off the expressway in search of somewhere to camp for the night, so as not to end up cooking and sleeping in another petrol station. He did eventually find a small patch of rough ground in front of a small row of houses, and George (our interpreter/minder/guide) was dispatched to enquire of the locals if it was okay for us to camp there. It was, so we did. Again, after a quick meal, we all turned in, this time mostly in tents, which was just as well, as we had quite a bit of rain in the night.
***
The following morning, after stowing our now wet tent, and eating a quick breakfast, we headed off once more towards the Giant Panda Breeding and Research Facility just outside of Chengdu. We got there at almost exactly 11.00am, just as I finished my book – excellent, by the way.
It's a big site, set in acres of park land with an extensive network of roads and paths linking a couple of dozen buildings and enclosures, including administration facilities, hospitals, kitchens, research centres and, of course, a number of houses (including two nurseries) to accommodate their star animal attractions. They keep separate the adults, juveniles – which they call 'sub-adults' – and new-born pandas, some of which were only a couple of weeks old, still tiny in their human baby sized incubators.
After 3 hours of walking round and photographing as much of the site as we had the energy to see, we all got back on the truck, which took us to where I'm sat writing this now: Sim's Cozy Garden Guesthouse and hostel. The food here is terrific, the rooms comfortable and the common spaces – including very 'Zen' gardens (complete with free-range rabbits) – delightful.
Day 103 (Chengdu)
Having seen the pandas already and not wanting to walk around yet another huge dirty, noisy, smelly city, we've done very little today. Juli headed out after breakfast with Corinne in search of a market to buy some Chinese style shirts, while Adam and I sat upstairs on the balcony of the bar, overlooking one of the courtyard gardens, taping away on our keyboards, accompanied by the sounds of gently cascading water from below and another traveller softly picking out a tune on his guitar.
In which we see very little.
Trying to do several short posts for China instead of saving it all up, because we're here for a while and you'd probably get very bored reading about it in one go. What do you mean you're bored already?
Days 98 & 99 (drive from Beijing to Xian)
Okay, I'll make this quick, unlike our drive out of Beijing, which was very slow in the traffic, made slower still because we kept being stopped by traffic police. There are no trucks allowed in Beijing, but we're allowed because, technically, we're a bus and we have a special certificate to prove it, which George, our Chinese guide/minder, had to keep showing to bemused officers.
Once out of the city, we made good time on the excellent toll roads. I'd like to tell you about the wonderful things we saw on the way, but the fact is, it was so misty, we saw very little, to the point that I actually picked up a book and read. Got quite a long way through it too, as the kilometres clicked by.
Lunch was from an excellent buffet at a motorway service station. Really good food – and as much as you wanted – for the equivalent of £3.50. Tasty and value for money. Eat your heart out, Little Chef.
Still a long way to go after lunch and, with the sun going down, no obvious place to stop for the night. Eventually, nearing nine o'clock, we pulled into a another service station and George asked inside if it would be okay for us to camp there the night. Not ideal, but sometimes needs must. Everyone mucked in to get dinner cooked as quickly as possible, followed almost immediately by bedtime, either inside the truck or on the roof or, for those with self-supporting tents, pitched on the forecourt. I opted for the roof, which, although a bit chilly, was at least flat. However, I regretted it the next morning when I woke up with a covering of dew. Juli didn't fair much better inside. Half sitting up across two coach seats when you're nearly six foot tall is not especially conducive to a good night's sleep.
***
The next morning – the start of week 15 – I took the first of my weekly Lariam anti-malaria tablets. They have a reputation for giving people bad dreams, but when I took them 10 years ago in Africa, I only had really vivid dreams and was looking forward to more of the same, but so far, nothing. Perhaps after a few more weeks.
Still very misty today, which was a shame, because the few glimpses of scenery the weather afforded us looked very picturesque: all hills and terraces. In other countries we've driven through, we'd be twisting and turning along endless switchbacks, following the contours of the land. This being China, the road keeps on dead straight through tunnels and over via ducts so long, we couldn't see the end of them.
Lots more Kilometres to kill today, which meant managing to get through several more chapters of my book. It's called Skippy Dies. It's set in and around an independent school for boys in Dublin and has nothing to do with kangaroos. I'm really enjoying the way it's written.
We got to the outskirts of Xian by about tea time. I'd say it was rush hour but it was a Sunday. It seems it's just that there's always a lot of traffic in Xian. Eventually we got to the neighbourhood of our hostel, which was just inside the old city wall, which is actually one of the major features of Xian and remarkable, not only for the size of it – about fourteen miles round and wide enough on the top for two chariots to pass side by side – but also because it's largely intact.
We'd opted to upgrade to a private room with en suite and spent the rest of the evening showering, washing clothes and sleeping, trying to make up for the night before.
Day 100 (Xian)
After breakfast on another hazy day, we walked a little way into the centre of the city in search of a bank to change some more money. Xian isn't Beijing. Beijing was smart and tidy and clean. Xian is scruffy, a bit raggedy and just plain dirty. After the bank, we made our way to the bus station to catch a bus to the Terracotta Warriors. The Warriors are about 30Kms out of town and bus number 306 gets you there in about an hour for 7 Yuan. That's about 70p or just over a Dollar.
Juli and I have seen them before, but 10 years ago. Then, there was just a couple of aircraft hanger sized sheds and a small museum, and we'd heard that the site had been developed extensively since then. In fact, apart from one additional and much smaller pit, the archaeological aspects of the place are more or less the same as they were. What has grown, however, is the commercial operation. Where as before we walked from the bus to the site via one state run shopping opportunity, now there's a small town of shops and restaurants to negotiate before you get a sniff of the warriors. In fact, there's such a distance to walk, you can opt to pay for an additional ticket to ride a small electric buggies instead. We walked, but it might have been worth the extra expense to avoid running the gauntlet of all the stall holders selling near identical tat, vying with each other for your business. I'd have to say that the experience was somewhat disappointing.
Back at the hostel, we spent the evening sitting in the courtyard, chatting with Adam and Corinne about their adventures, drinking beer and eating pizza: by far the most pleasant part of the day. Tomorrow, we head off towards Chengdu: home of the Giant Panda Research and Breading Centre. Again, we went last time, but we understand it's been completely rebuilt following major earthquake damage. I do hope we're not heading for another disappointment.
In which we did loads.
This is going to have to be a bit of an abbreviated account of our time in Beijing, because – unless I want to be up all night – I've only got a few hours to write-up five days. (I can almost hear the cheers from here.)
Day 92 (Tian'anmen Square, Forbidden City & Jing Shan)
Also the start of Week 14: half way point on the truck trip and the beginning of the second quarter of our year.
Having been to these places last time and not especially keen to revisit, I spent the day until dinner time blogging and doing chores at the hotel, while Juli went out with Adam and Corinne, so I'll let Juli write this next bit.
The three of us left the hotel/hostel early and walked along the great main road to the edge of the Forbidden City. The guide book said that we could avoid the crowds if we entered through the North Gate and I remembered that last time we were in Beijing we had finished our trip by going into the Jing Shan Park which has a huge pagoda, built on a mound of earth that was created when they dug out the canals that surround the city. From here there is a wonderful view over the whole of the Forbidden City and the modern city beyond. So we walked to the park entrance and paid our two Yuan entrance. This turned out to be money very well spent. The find of this trip to Beijing for me has been the parks and all the things that go on in them. Just inside the gates there was a performance in progress with elderly women dancing to the gathered forces of what seemed to be all of the mouth organ players of Beijing. We stood and watched for a while but were then distracted by another woman who had set up her cassette player and started doing a dance with a huge silver sword. Having climbed to the top of the pagoda, (where a nice Chinese man and his wife asked whether Elizabeth's palace was this large, to which I had to reply 'no' which pleased them immensely) we took our pictures and then heard singing coming from the far side. When we got down we found a group of people singing, probably a folk song, but everyone in the park seemed to know it so gravitated towards the choir and joined in, including a woman doing her knitting while she was singing. Just around the corner there was a impromptu performance area set up, where people just seemed to arrive, get changed into costumes they had bought in carrier bags and then do their 'turn', whatever that might be – a song, a dance, playing an instrument – for an audience who had brought their own chairs and were settled in for the day. No need for old people's homes. The elderly of Beijing spend their days having a ball in the parks in the city. Brilliant! Can you see the same thing happening in parks in England? You would probably be taken away. Leaving the park we tried to do what the guide book had suggested and enter through the North Gate. Unfortunately things have changed and a one way system seems to exist now, so we had to go all the way back around to the South gate. We took a taxi who dropped us off at the side of Tiananmen Square and we walked across, along with hundreds and hundreds of tour groups. We crossed into the Forbidden City entrance and joined a huge queue for tickets. This fortunately moved quite quickly and after paying our 60 Yuan (about $10 – very good value, I think), we were walking into the first courtyard. I suggested to Adam and Corinne that they should leave me and go off on their own as I would be taking a lot of pictures and moving slowly – the main reason Nick didn't want to come again – which they did. I then took my time to stroll around taking hundreds of shots. The last time we were here I had a film camera and could only take 32 pictures – can you imagine?! Now with a digital I could get carried away, which I did. Several hours later I emerged onto the main road again. I had been barged, trodden on, walked in front of, pushed out of the way, stared at by the hundreds, no, thousands, no, hundreds of thousands of other tourists (mainly Chinese). I was exhausted but still in a state of wonder at the place and had definitely filled my eyes. I walked back to the hostel happy and full of stories to tell Nick.
The hostel/hotel has a tour booking concession in the lobby, which arranges trips out and about, here and there. We'd all spotted this when we arrived and met up now with Adam and Corinne to book one to a particular section of the Great Wall plus a visit to the Ming Tombs – both some way out of town – for later in the week. After that we went our separate ways. Our way took us to another huge shopping centre under which lies yet another of the these great food streets with loads of different restaurants off it. Some of them have people outside, partly to greet you, but mostly to urge you to choose their restaurant over the virtually identical one next door. We'd played a good natured game with some of them, pretending we couldn't decide between two places then running off to look at some others. In fact, we went back to the first place we'd seen, and the greeters there seemed very amused to see us again.
After we'd eaten, we headed back up to street level, and immediately bumped into Corinna, who'd had to seek out another hospital/clinic, as her condition didn't seem to be getting any better and was causing her some concern, as it was us. Apparently, she'd been seen very promptly by a doctor who spoke very good English and had come away with new medicine and instructions to rest. Like us, she's been to China before and was considering getting a train to some chilled out little town she went to last time to kickback and do as the Doctor ordered.
Back at the hotel, we started to put our new cruise plans into effect by sending off e-mails, both direct to the cruise company and Reader Offers, the agents Corinne had recommended (a now independent spin-off from the Daily Mail) and waited…
Neither of us slept very well that night wondering if we had done that right thing, and at about two in the morning I got up and sent off some more e-mails when, as a result of our nocturnal deliberations, our plans changed a little.
Day 93 (Temple of Heaven)
The next morning, there was a reply from Reader Offers to say they'd made a provisional booking on our behalf and requesting more information, which I duly returned.
Shortly after we moved into our house in Weardale, we made friends with two ex-farmers, turned super amazing keen gardens, Ian and Dorothy Hedley. Now, it just so happens that they booked on to a trip round China which put them in Beijing at the same time as us, so this morning we took a taxi to the hotel where we knew they'd be arriving the next day to leave word that we'd meet them for dinner on the day after that. There's yet another taxi story in the middle of all that, but suffice it to say that we made a point of picking up one the hotel's cards to make the journey there a bit easier next time.
After leaving our note, we got another taxi to take us to another of Beijing's major crowd pullers, The Temple of Heaven, which is where the Emperor (regarded as the Son of Heaven on Earth) had to go two or three times a year to perform certain rites to ensure a good harvest. Again, we both saw all this last time, but Juli wanted to take more photographs, and I went along too, but spent most of the time seeking shade on another hot day.
When we came out, we couldn't negotiate a taxi to take us back to the hotel for anything like a sensibly price, so began to walk. Fortunately, Juli spotted the name of the train station on a bus stop timetable and, like a good omen, the very bus we needed came along almost immediately. The fare was just one Yuan each (about 10p) and easily negotiated with the very friendly conductor who spoke enough English to complete the transaction. A welcome legacy of their Olympic games, perhaps?
When we got back, there was another e-mail from Reader Offers saying they'd just tried to call. I immediately called back, but got someone's voicemail, on which I left a message. A few minutes after that, the phone rang again, and a few minutes after that, the deal was done. Phew.
Day 94 (Great Wall, Ming Tombs and more)
After a much better night's sleep for having sorted our mini cruise, we met the others outside the hotel and waited for our tour bus, which was late and still had to pick up some other passengers from another hotel. Our guide for the day then explained what we'd be doing that day and how long we'd have to do it.
However, before we could go to see the things we wanted to see, we had to make a quick stop at a jade factory so that our guide could collect her commission for taking us there. Apparently this is how it's done here. The hotel keeps 100% of the ticket price and the guides make their money from tips and commissions. We weren't obligated to buy and the tour didn't take very long, so no real harm done. In fact, on the plus side, the vast showroom (complete with very many under occupied sales assistants) very shrewdly incorporated a man-creche (or bar, as they're sometimes known) where Adam and I enjoyed a cold coke while our women window-shopped. (Actually I did learn something: I had no idea jade came in so many different colours according to its mineralogical make up. I saw a very nice fruit bowl in a subtle shade of orange-y peach, a snip at $62. Not bad compared to the four foot long dragon boat made from a single piece of green jade they had on sale for $62,000.)
Next stop was the Ming Tombs, or rather one of the seventeen Ming tombs, but not the one we were expecting to be taken to and not at all to a central feature of the whole complex, known as the Spirit Way, which, apparently, is separate tour. Hey ho.
Stop number three was the main event: the Great Wall, or rather a part of it. (There are several sections with visitor facilities and rather more of it that has crumbled into disrepair.) Our bit is a perhaps less authentic stretch, having been restored somewhat, which, of course, also makes it rather more photogenic. That said, it's not one of the especially tourist-y bits and has the added advantage of having a cable car (actually a ski lift) to take you up to the top of the steep hill the wall sits on. Coming down, you have the choice to walk, take the ski lift back down, or – much better – speed down on a toboggan run that snakes its way down the hill. Brilliant.
After a couple of hours on the wall under the hot sun (which might account for a moment of madness when, much to the amusement/confusion of the other tourists, we 'Razzle Dazzled' down a stepped section of the wall) we were ready for our included 'typical Chinese lunch'. Expecting a bowl of noodles or something, we were very pleasantly surprised when dish after dish came to our table. More than enough quantity and variety to satisfy all of our group, including vegetarians and non pork eaters.
After lunch we had another shopping opportunity at a silk factory – quite interesting – with associated vast showroom. (This one without a bar.)
Expecting next to be taken back to our hotel, we were surprised to be told the next stop would be the Olympic park to see the famous Birds Nest stadium. After that, another surprise: a tea house, where we were treated to a tea ceremony and taster demonstration. It turned out that the passengers from the other hotel had paid very much more for a fuller itinerary and we were the lucky freeloaders.
After the tea house, the last stop was the night market, but we stayed on the bus and were taken back to our hotel, tired but more or less happy.
Day 95 (Vietnam Embassy, Temple of the Sun, dinner with Ian and Dorothy)
As we had a bit more time in Beijing than our truckmates would have, we decided to get our Vietnam visas here rather than take up precious time in Luang Prabang, Laos getting them there. So this morning we made our way over to the embassy district, which we didn't think was too far from the hotel to walk, but turned out to be a bit of a hike. We'd left it a day too late to get them on the cheaper three day service, by decided – partly because we were there and partly because the original reason was still valid – to go ahead anyway and pay the $90 for the premium one day service. (We'd been told that it might be as much as $80 in Laos anyway, so this wasn't that much more for the convenience.)
After that we took a more leisurely stroll back via a very nice patisserie for brunch and a relaxed walk through the Temple of the Sun park, which has some brilliant hard landscaping you'd think was natural and features some more of the same music and dance related activities seen by Juli in Jing Shan Park. (This time it was Piano Accordions rather than harmonicas, though.)
Back at the hotel, I blogged a little until it was time to get a taxi to Ian and Dorothy's Hotel, where they were standing ready to meet us. We spent a very jolly evening there eating, drinking a little and catching up on all their news. They showed us the suite they'd been upgraded to: very impressive it was too with its two rooms, two loos, two telly's and complementary vibrating condoms.
Day 96 (Lama Temple, Confucian Temple & Peking Duck
After returning to the Vietnamese Embassy to collect out visas, we went with Corinne (Adam not feeling well again) by tube (much nicer than the London Underground) to the Lama Temple: a complex of Tibetan style Buddhist temples in the north-west of the city, where very many worshipers were making offerings of incense in huge burners in front of lots of temples containing statues large and small of Buddha in his many different forms, one of which was over 30m tall and carved out of single piece of sandalwood.
After lunch, we went across the road to the Confucian Temple and took more photos of more temples. (Can you tell I'm beginning to get a bit templed-out?) The largest of these – the Hall of Music – contained all sorts of drums and variously sized and shaped metal percussion instruments plus a number of very long stringed instruments. Confucianism was, of course banned during the Cultural Revolution, but now seems to be making something of a comeback, even cropping up in Political speeches.
When we got back to the hotel, Juli sent some e-mails while I rested. Dinner this evening? Well, we had to have it some time: Peking Duck. Not, actually, the best I've ever tasted, but fun to have it here and in a lively restaurant full of noisy locals out with friends, colleagues and business associates.
Day 97 (Today)
A stay at home day today, mostly spent sat in front of Juli's netbook computer while Juli did some last minute shopping, a bit of laundry and generally got ready to get back on the truck tomorrow morning. We did go out for dinner, though. I finally got the pork ribs I'd been craving all week and we enjoyed a beer called Yangjing, the label on which proudly proclaims the brewer to "Sponsor the China Space Programme."
["So, shall we send this rocket up then?" "Nah! Let's have another one of these free beers.]
In which we board our third and final train, swap bogies (not as disgusting as it sounds) get our first glimpse of the Great Wall and make some decisions about further off-truck travel.
Day 90 (Ulan Bator & on the train)
Very early start this morning together with Adam and Corinne to checkout, get our key deposits back and catch the hostel's own minibus back to the station, the same minibus that was supposed to have collected us when we arrived. Mind you, seeing where it parked this time, we may well have just not seen it before. Driving through pre-rush-hour traffic in UB was a very different experience from coming back after the ger trip, but even though there was only a fraction of the traffic, what drivers there were at that early hour, still had their hands glued to their horns.
A bit before our train was due to arrive, we spied Christopher (the American) and Corinna (Brit, travelling on her own, keen photographer) who were also taking a break from the truck, in Corinna's case to recover from Pharyngitis: another of the walking wounded from our truck. Seems her condition (initially thought to be bronchitis) had been so bad that a paramedic had to be called for her when the truck got to Irkutsk, from where she got the train to UB arriving a couple of days after us.
The train was (of course) bang on time, and we were delighted to discover that it was our turn to have a compartment to ourselves. After catching up on Chris and Corinna's news, we took the opportunity of not having to share our space to catch up on our sleep, having first arranged with the others to come to our compartment for tea and cake at four o'clock. We spent a very pleasant afternoon just chatting and joking and getting up to speed with all the gossip and goings on before a bit more rest time in readiness for the long border crossing into China that evening.
The train reached the first border promptly at 10 minutes past seven. A first officer boarded to check our passports and customs declarations followed by a second, who very sweetly introduced himself as Mongolian Quarantine and very politely requested that he might be permitted to search our compartment. We, of course, agreed that he may then watched as he quickly and simply lifted first one seat then the other. After that he thanked us and left. That was it. Quite possibly the simplest, lightest touch exit border outside of Europe. Mind you, we still had to wait an hour and half before the train pulled out. Next came the Chinese entry stage of the process, but, if anything, that was even easier. We had one small form to complete (not, remarkably, in triplicate) and return to an officer who really wasn't that bothered and another to check our passports. There was a sticky moment there, though, when the officer took some persuading that the photo in my passport really was of me. [Officer: "This is you?"; Me: "Yes," like I'm going to say anything else!] In the end, I decided to stand up under the fluorescent light and put on my sternest passport-face. She seemed to think that this was very funny, smiled broadly and just said: "Okay," before returning our documents and moving on. Imagine that: a state security officer, not only with a sense of humour, but one who only moments earlier had genuine concerns that I might have been travelling on someone else's papers.
Paperwork done, we had then to wait for another four hours while a process we'd previously experienced when we took the train home from Beijing ten years earlier.
For some reason – probably a defensive military strategy – Russian rail gauge (distance between the rails) is a few inches wider than Stevenson's so called standard gauge, on which 60% of the world's trains run, including those in China. For historical reasons, Mongolia adopted the Russian standard (as did Finland, by the way) and so trains like ours moving between Mongolia and China have to have their wheels (or 'bogies' as they're known) exchanged. This is done by breaking up the train into individual carriages and shunting them into an enormous shed. There, the carriages are lifted up off their wheels by huge hydraulic jacks. The wheels are then rolled out from beneath them and another set, in the the other gauge, rolled back under to replace the first. The carriage is then very gently lowered back down onto its new wheels. Job done. This procedure is performed on all the carriages of the train before reassembling it, which seems to require a lot of very uncomfortable shunting. Hours of it, in fact, and we weren't finally on our way until about one in the morning.
***
We awoke the next morning to trees again: a welcome sight after the scrubby nothingness of Mongolia's Gobi Desert. After a while, we saw a few buildings: some old, including a few mud and straw brick constructions, and some brand plus everything else in between. Before long, we were seeing agriculture again. Lots and lots of agriculture. In some places, every available bit of land had been turned over to growing some crop or other and everywhere too were bicycles and motorcycles. We also got our first glimpse of Great Wall, running along the foot of a line of high hills before suddenly, for no apparent reason that I could see, turning sharply uphill and disappearing over the ridge.
At one point our route followed along the bottom of a river valley, downstream of a huge dam. As we went, we saw that the river was crisscrossed by very many small footbridges, fords and ferries as well as much larger structures carrying roads and other railway lines, and again, vines, fruit trees and other crops were just stuck in wherever there was room. The river got wider and the sides of valley steeper, and soon we were passing through sections of tunnel as our valley became a gorge.
By lunchtime, we were seeing more and more new buildings, especially towering blocks of apartments, and by early afternoon (dead on schedule again) we pulled in to Beijing Zhandong railway station. We only had to walk across the station forecourt to find our hostel, a huge – relative to what we've been used to – building with hundreds of rooms over five floors. We'd booked a 'deluxe' double (deluxe, in this context, meaning that it had an en suite) and were pleased to find that, for £30 a night, we had a good sized room, with a window (not automatic) and a fair sized wet room, pretty much in the centre of the town, just two kilometres from Tian'anmen Square and the Forbidden City.
There are no money exchange places just on the streets in Beijing like we'd been used to in Central Asia, but the reception staff pointed us in the direction of a nearby tourist hotel that had an automatic exchange machine, which one of the reception staff there was happy to demonstrate for us. We changed some dollars into Yuan (very quick and easy) and, just to be on the safe side, some more in a bank down the road, (an object lesson in China's form-filling fetish at it's finest). This was followed by a further demonstration of state bureaucracy at the Post Office, from where Juli sent some more bits and pieces home. Then back to shower, rest and change before meeting up with the others for a dinner hunt.
Juli lead our small group of train travellers off to find a food court under a large department store she'd read about in a copy of the DK Top Ten Guide to Beijing she'd borrowed from Adam and Corinne on the train. It's huge. In fact it's big and brash and bright and bewildering. The deal is, you 'buy' a sort of credit card, which you then use in one (or more) of the dozen's of small food outlets selling every kind of Asian food you can think of and perhaps some you might not wish to.
Back at the hotel, we had a look to see which of the websites we use to maintain this blog and save photos on, plus which e-mail accounts were working. Turned out that we could get to all our e-mail accounts, Juli could upload to and access her Flickr account, but that I couldn't do the same with Picasa and neither of us could access our blog to either view or edit it. Fortunately, I'd set up a way to post to our blog via e-mail, which is how you can read this even though we can't.
One last thing to round off this post: we decided to book the cruise that Corinne found to avoid having to fly to Australia. However, when we enquired, we found we couldn't book just a section between Bali and Darwin. Also, it was implied that leaving the cruise early would require additional administration and that it would be a while before they could tell us if it was possible at all. In the end, after a lot of deliberation, we decided that we'd leave the truck trip in Singapore, from where the cruise starts a few days after the others catch their ferry to Indonesia, and stay on the ship all the way to Sydney, where the cruise ends.
Unfortunately, this means missing all of Java, most of Bali and all of the stops the group will make in Australia between Darwin and Sydney, including Uluru. However, it also means not having to carry all of our kit through Indonesia and avoiding ten straight days of bush-camping through the fly-infested Red Centre of Australia. Plus, as we get into Sydney a few days earlier than originally planned anyway, we should have plenty of time to back track a bit to see Uluru and still get back to Sydney in time to greet the rest of the group at journey's end.
Next time, I'll tell you all about what we did in Beijing.
In which I stand on the neck of a giant horse and we sit on the backs of small horses.
[This post is being sent by e-mail, so apologies if the formatting is a bit awry, I'll sort it out later and add photos too.]
Day 85 Cont'd & 86 (both in Ulan Bator)
So, we'd arrived and made our own way to the hostel. It was still pretty early and certainly far too early to get into our rooms. However, they very kindly made us tea and toast with jam while we waited to sort out who had reserved what and which balances and key deposits needed to paid by whom. As we waited, the hostel began to wake up, and we were soon joined by various other travellers either checking in like us, or checking out, or trying to arrange tours and trips out to here there and everywhere. We heard all sorts of languages in addition to English being spoken in a variety of accents and with varying degrees of proficiency in conversation about sights to see and countries to be visited between people from all over the world. Now add to your mental image of this slow moving melee in their small reception area increasing numbers of other residents not going anywhere until they'd had their breakfast (which we now realised we'd been eating) and you've got a pretty good object definition of chaos in motion.
Mind you, every cloud, etc.: while we waited, we made the acquaintance of a couple of nurses from Perth, Western Australia, and got a good lead on a trip out of the city to stay in a Ger (Mongolian yurt) overnight, and see a bit of the surrounding countryside to boot. Also, we looked up the cruises Corinne had found – promising – and the proper USD/MNT exchange rate. (About 1300-1400 Mongolian Tugriks to the US Dollar, if you want to know, or the equivalent of about double what we got on the train changing our leftover Roubles. Doh!)
Before very long – it was still well before checkout time – we were given the key and shown to our room. Not the largest we'd ever stayed in, but perfectly formed, and, most importantly, complete with the promised private en suite. This last, which as you will know by now is our habit, we used the shower before having a quick lie-down.
Freshly clothed, we ventured out in search of lunch and a money exchange. The Golden Gobi Guesthouse is very conveniently situated (I sound like a guide book now) close to the State Department Store on Peace Avenue, the main thoroughfare through Ulan Bator (which, by the way, is also writen 'Ulaanbatar', 'Ulaan Baatar', 'Ulaan Bator', or, more simply, just plain 'UB'). The State Department Store provided both a choice of restaurants and an exchange bureau and much more besides. It's huge (arranged over five or six floors) and is far from being the only large department store in UB. UB and at least some of her residents have obviously got a lot of money from somewhere. A few minutes walk down Peace Avenue, we figured out one possible source when we noticed a large banner advertising the forthcoming 10th Annual Mongolian Mining Convention at a large exposition centre not far from the centre of town.
After a bit more walking and window shopping, we returned to our hostel and had another rest until it was time to meet back up with Adam and Corinne, who had read about an Indian restaurant they liked the sound of. This suited us just fine as, funnily enough, we had also spotted an Indian restaurant we liked the look of. We settled on theirs and were not disappointed. Inside, the tables were arranged around the sides of the restaurant on two levels. Each table was in its own space, draped in rich fabrics to make it seem as if you were dining inside your own private tent. Add to this some authentic looking north Indian furniture and lighting, and the effect was quite magical. (The food wasn't bad either.)
***
The next morning, we went with Adam & Corinne to collect our train tickets to Beijing from the local agents Real Russia use. Real Russia had sent us a map, which made finding their offices – a short walk from our hostel via the highly impressive Mongolian parliament building – a snap. Business quickly and easily done, we went in search of a different hostel, from where the trip out to stay in a ger in the Terelj national park we'd been told about the day before could be organised. This turned out to be a bit more of a treasure hunt, despite getting instruction from them over the phone on how to find their hostel. Any way, find them we did, and were soon sitting in the office of a very jolly Mongolian man, hearing about the trip and looking at photos of the area in which we would be staying. It all looked and sounded good, so, shortly after arriving, we left, $50 each lighter and with the trip booked for the following day.
Since we were in a walking mood, and it was a comfortably warm day, we continued on our sightseeing way towards the Tibetan style Buddhist temple complex of Gandantegchinlen. (Try saying that with a mouth full of marbles. Actually, don't: we don't have the public liability insurance to cover the suits.)
The Monastery, whose Mongolian name translates as the "Great Place of Complete Joy" was one of the very few to survive Stalin's anti-religious purges and, following a restoration in the early 1990s, now has well over a hundred monks in residence. We saw some of them eating and chanting and playing various blow-y and bang-y things. No 'don't chant with your mouth full' or 'don't play with that at the table, dear' here.
Two things they have a great many of: well fed pigeons – you can buy a bag of bird seed at the gate – and prayer wheels in many different sizes arranged all round the monastery buildings. Spinning the wheels bestows wisdom and merit on the spinner, but only if the wheel is spun clockwise.
Dinner that evening was taken at one of the many Korean restaurants in UB. We've never had Korean food before, and were surprised to discover that the main course you order is typically served with a variety of small side dishes (five or six) containing various salads and pickles plus rice.
Days 87 & 88 (Terelj National Park)
After breakfast, we waited to be picked up for our trip out to the country. Expecting a minibus or similar, we were surprised when a car arrived for us, but this was just to take us back to the other hostel, where the minibus and some other passengers – an American, an Austrian and a Swiss were waiting for us. After a quick stop at a supermarket for supplies, we headed out of the city to our first stop on the itinerary: A giant statue of Genghis (now known as 'Chinggis') Khan on horseback atop a museum devoted to the great warrior and father of the largest contiguous empire in history. Because the power was out that day, the staff let us in for half price. Fair, considering we weren't allowed down into the basement museum and had to use the pitch-dark stairs (lucky I always carry my head-torch with me) to climb up and out onto the back of his horse's neck. This point of exit is quite apposite, as you literally spring forth from his loins.
Driving on toward the park, we passed by many gers setup within permanently fenced off tracts of land. This struck me as very odd and a bit like British and Irish Gypsies who buy a plot of land to settle down on, but still prefer to continue living in their caravans. Each to their own.
As we approached the park, we passed more and more tourist camp sites with a mixture of gers and colourful log cabins, all neatly arrange in rows on concrete bases. Thankfully, our destination was a little further inside the national park, very much smaller, a bit more 'authentic' looking and set apart a little from the holiday camps.
After lunch – a dish of rough noodles with onions, cabbage and carrot topped with a few bits of mystery meat – we were taken on a very gentle pony trek on short, stocky horses. According to Wikipedia: "The Mongol horse is the native horse breed of Mongolia. The breed is purported to be largely unchanged since the time of Genghis Khan… Despite their small size, they are horses, not ponies." Well, they were certainly very well behaved and perfect for our level of horsemanship, i.e. zero.
Ghana, the seventeen-year-old boy leading us on our trek – who was equally at home on the back of his motorbike – sang to us as we rode (in between making and taking calls to his mates on his mobile phone) in the strange but beautiful throat-singing style that produces a curious mix of tones and harmonics as if the singer is both singing a tune and playing a drone accompaniment on a wind instrument at the same time.
It got very cold after supper (much the same as lunch) to the point were we were wondering how we going to avoid freezing to death in our un-heated ger. Fortunately, Ghana and his mate brought and installed a portable stove with plenty of firewood. Once they got it going, the heat it produced rapidly warmed us and the ger to the point where we wondered if we would expire due to being too hot. There's just no pleasing some folk.
***
After a bread and jam breakfast, we took to the hills – on foot this time – to get a better look at the wonderful scenery thereabouts. We head up a steep slope towards some craggy rocks, and were rewarded by some stunning views out over the surrounding grasslands and were easily able to see as far as the neighbouring, Chinese financed, Terelj Golf and Country Club we'd trekked past the previous day. As we walked through trees in their early Autumn colours, we saw quite a few vivid wildflowers: the end of what must have been a magnificent display of summer colour. We'd brought a snack to reward ourselves for making it all the way to the top, and it was great just to sit in silence for a moment, enjoying the peace and clean air of the countryside away from the traffic bound city, the silence broken only by the call's of eagles soaring above us. Truly magical.
After lunch (more of the same) we said good bye to our hosts and, reluctantly, got back into the minibus for the return journey to UB. We had an easy journey until about a mile from the city centre, at which point the traffic, with us in it, simply ground to a halt. After half an hour of going nowhere, we elected to get out and walk.
Back at the hostel, we arranged a lift to the station for the end of the week, then went straight out again to a recent find, the Cherry Bakery: a cake and pastry lovers paradise selling all kinds of hip, thigh and stomach swelling sweets and savouries. Maybe city life has its advantages after all.
Day 89 (last day in UB)
We spent the day getting ready for the train to Beijing the next day. First stop, though, was the Post Office for stamps. In addition to regular stamps, they had an amazing array of collectors editions, including sets to celebrate both this year's London Olympics and the previous games in Beijing. The also had a set to celebrate the marriage of Prince William to Kate Middleton, plus several sets celebrating the life of Will's mum, Lady Di. We went back to the State Department Store for lunch and a few more Souvees, then down to their supermarket for train supplies and, finally, for one last visit to the Cherry Bakery. Next, it was back to the hostel, where I stayed and blogged, but Juli decided she wanted to go back to the Monastery to take more photos. In the evening, We went out again to a different Indian restaurant (which also had private tents you could actually close off) and raised a glass to Uncle Bob on our last night in UB.
Well, here we are in China, and trying to catch up with our posts but I can't get to our blog host, Blogspot. So, this is an attempt to post by e-mail: maybe that'll work. However, because I can't see our blog, I can't know if it has, so would anybody who sees this post, and who knows our e-mail address (I'm not giving it out here) please drop us a line to confirm it's got through?
In which we wait a lot, sleep a little, read a lot and see a little.
Day 78 (Bishkek)
After a breakfast of something like scrambled eggs with something like cold bacon, we paid our bill – no card dramas – then went to find a bookshop we’d seen advertised in one of the hotel magazines that claimed to have some English language books. I chose a Jeffrey Deaver (‘Stone Monkey’ – I read another one of his on our Africa/Middle-east truck trip ten years ago and remembered as being a good read) and Juli selected ‘The Time Traveller’s Wife’, which she’d been meaning to read for a while. Next we went back to the ‘ZUM’ State Department Store for a few more souvees and Christmas presents and lunch, after which Juli wasn’t feeling very well again, so we went back to the hotel, where we looked up the symptoms and medication for Giardiasis. (It’s not that uncommon amongst travellers and is caused by a little parasite you catch from impure water. We think we may have picked it up in Dushanbe from the Hotel there.) I left Juli close to the loo and nipped out to the pharmacist with the name and dose of the drug we needed.
We’ve been very impressed with all the pharmacists we’ve encountered on the way. If you have the name of what you want – even written in English – or explain the problem, they’ll fix you up with what you need over the counter, without charging you an arm and a leg.
I returned with courses for both of us, just in time to find that Juli had ordered tea, which I took to be a good sign. A little later we went out for some supper at a very reasonably priced family restaurant attached to the Beta Stores supermarket, which sells everything, including the Beta brand of tea we had at the Khan’s Palace in Sheki, Azerbaijan on Juli’s birthday. (Beta Tea: Super Tea!) After that, we went back to the hotel again – they were very good about letting us hang out in their (otherwise unused) business centre, even though we’d checked out in the morning – and waited until 10.00pm, when we got them to call a taxi for us, which took us to the train station, two hours early for our train. Russian trains, like ours, all run on Moscow time, which is two hours ahead of Bishkek time. We knew that really, but we wanted to be absolutely sure not to miss it, which would have buggered us up no end.
Day 79-81 (Bishkek to Novosibirsk)
The train arrived just after midnight. We had no difficulty finding our carriage, compartment and berths, but the space meant for our luggage was already full of goods and goodness knows what, stashed there by various traders, who have an unofficial (and highly lucrative, judging by the amount of folding stuff we saw changing hands) ‘arrangement’ with the train guards. Fortunately for us, the only other passenger in our compartment for four was a Russian woman named Natalia who just happened to work for the Russian railways and was having none of it. She soon saw that the guard made other arrangements for all this cargo and very glad we were too. Imagine having to explain to the various border officials (invariable humourless, in the middle of the night and with no common language) that all this other stuff was ‘nothing to do with us, officer, honest it’s not.’ We still had to put up with a few bags of rice however, which the guard insisted was okay. Hmmm.
At about 02:45, we stopped at the first border post (leaving Kyrgyzstan) and soldiers boarded. They searched our compartment (and everyone else's, I presume) and took away our passports. Unusually, they also insisted that one of us should accompany them to get our exit stamps. Juli, who was on the bottom bunk and with quick to slip on sandals, volunteered and left the train with the soldiers. After a while, I decided to join her on the platform with the other non-ex-soviet state foreigners (just half a dozen of us in all – obviously not a popular tourist train) outside a small, well, shack really, while one of the others – a woman – was made an example of by the official. Not sure what it was all about, but there was quite a bit of shouting, particularly from the woman. In the end, the official put his big hat on, got up, took the shouty woman’s husband outside an had quiet word with him. That seemed to do the trick, because, shortly after that, we were all back on the train (with our stamped passports) and shortly after that (at about 03:45) the train moved on.
Forty five minutes later (04:30) we arrived at the Kazakh side of the border. Here, in addition to the usual gruff boarder guards who search your luggage, check your documents and stamp you in etc., they had sniffer dogs, who seemed to be having a lovely time running up and down the carriages, popping their heads into compartments at random, having a quick sniff then running off again.
Finally, at half past six in the morning, after next to no sleep, the last of our bunk mates boarded (a young, dark-haired man with the palest skin you ever saw) and quarter of an hour after that we were on our way again, a full four hours after first stopping.
The rest of the day was spent reading our books, chatting with Natalia (no English) who’d been staying at Issyk Kol (apparently a very popular holiday destination amongst Russians) or just staring out the window. There’s not much to see, however. Kazakhstan seems to be mostly open scrubby grassland with the occasional one-donkey town to break the monotony. There were a couple of larger towns, at one of which Juli got off to buy some fruit – including some very delicious apples – just for something to do really; it’s a very slow train, which frequently has to pullover to let other trains, including really long freight trains, pass or overtake us.
We’d brought bowls of instant noodles (like Pot Noodles but bigger) to eat on the train, only the hot water samovar at the end of our carriage (every carriage is supposed to have it’s own) had broken down, so we couldn’t reconstitute them. Nor could we make tea (we brought tea bags too – Beta, of course) until the guard come round with a kettle of hot water.
***
The next night was uninterrupted by borders and the scenery the next day was more or less uninterrupted by features.
We reached Semey, northern Kazakhstan, at about 14:30 and the border about two hours after that. The same border crossing procedure then ensued (including this time searching through the guard’s rice with a curtain pole ripped from the window outside our carriage) and by about 9.00 pm we were in Russia.
***
There was a stop at about 5.00 am the next morning when all the unofficial cargo was offloaded. Unfortunately, this included the guard’s rice and necessitated the occupants of the bottom bunks – Juli and Natalia – getting out of bed so their bunks could be lifted out of the way.
The train pulled into Novosibirsk dead on time at 9.07 am, and, after saying goodbye to Natalia, we walked the short distance to our hotel and were able to check-in and go to our room (on the 23rd floor) almost immediately, despite our early arrival, which was excellent and meant we could have showers straight away to wash the train away. After a lie down we sorted laundry and went down to the hotel’s bistro bar, where we had a veggie, meaty, soupy broth served in a hollowed out loaf of dark, nutty bread. Delicious.
While we were trundling over Kazakhstan, Natalia had a visit from 10-year-old Masha, who, together with her mother and grand mother, had been on holiday at the lake at the same time as Natalia. Masha was quite possibly the most confident 10-year-old I’ve ever met and spoke excellent English, all learned at school. She spent that afternoon in our compartment, chatting with Natalia and Juli, who, for some reason taught her about haikus. Just before the train pulled into Novosibirsk, Masha and her mum came into our compartment again with a map they’d made of Red Street, a major thoroughfare in Novosibirsk, with all the important landmarks plotted along it and instructions on how to find it. So, armed with this map, plus another that the hotel had given us, we set out to find it. We found parks with fountains, parks with statues and a couple of old churches – one on a traffic island – that had somehow escaped the sweeping away of religion during soviet times and the more recent sweeping away of old buildings to make way for many new ones. We also found a KFC (for later) and a supermarket (for more train supplies the next day). After all that, we went back to the hotel, and I finished ‘Stone Monkey’ (recommended, by the way, if you like fast paced crime thrillers).
Day 82-84 (Novosibirsk to Ulan Bator)
After a very disappointing breakfast (for a business hotel) we checked out (no bill to pay) and settled down to wait for our train in their little library, to which I added my now finished Jeffrey Deaver.
Juli checked her e-mails and learned of the sadly anticipated, but far too early passing of her uncle Bob, whom we had hoped to see in Australia, together with Juli’s Aunt, Connie, and the rest of the family. I met Bob and Connie’s daughter Sam when she came to England for a conference along with her husband and two young children. We had planned to spend Christmas with Bob’s family and still will, but it will be a different occasion now with Bob gone. Bob was apparently an avid follower of this blog, and (unaccountably) looking forward to meeting me. I’m sorry that’s not going to happen, and sad too for Juli, who was so looking forward to seeing her ‘Australian’ uncle in Australia. Bob and Connie were going to meet us in Sydney and drive us up to their home near Brisbane, showing us some of their favourite places there and along the way. We had an e-mail recently from Sam who told us that Bob had told her all the places he’d hoped to show us and how she hopes to be as good a tour guide as Bob would have been. Having met her, I’m sure she will.
After lunch, we sent a Moonpig card and gift to someone who’s birthday is quite soon – If you don’t already know it, Moonpig is great, by the way – then Juli went food shopping for the train while I guarded our bags and put a new pin in our Google map for Novosibirsk and plotted our revised route. Soon it was time to return to the train station and await our train in the very grand, ornate and vast waiting hall.
When we boarded our train around 10.00 pm, there to meet us were Adam and Corinne who had come by train all the way from Moscow (and who were still on Moscow time). After stowing our bags and chatting to our bunkmates (Mongolian couple, 50s or 60s) to sus them out a little, we decided it was safe to leave our kit (anyone nursing a young apple tree they’d bought can’t be all that bad) and went along to Adam and Corinne’s compartment to catch-up. Somehow, they had been lucky enough to get a four-berth compartment all to themselves the whole way from Moscow. (We had the same thing when we took the same train in the opposite direction 10 year ago, but that was after paying for a first-class two-berth compartment and being downgraded.)
After an hour or so (we were on Novosibirsk time) we went back to our compartment, where our new Mongolian friends were entertaining their Russian friend on Juli’s bunk. The Mongolian man invited me to join his friend on Juli’s bunk, but I made it quite clear that, actually, we’d come back to make up our bunks and go to sleep. I think he thought that was a bit unfriendly, and that rather tainted our relationship for the rest of the journey.
***
The next day, after an okay night’s sleep (no soft mattress, just the rather lumpy seat cushion) we spent the morning watching the very much more attractive Russian scenery go by. Lots more trees, mostly pines and silver birch already in their autumn colour. Such a treat for our eyes after so many weeks of scrub and desert.
When we judged that Adam and Corinne’s body clocks would have told them to get up, we waited a bit longer then went along to their compartment and passed a very pleasant afternoon talking about what we hoped to see and do in Ulan Bator and, later, in Beijing. We also discussed the possibility of making the journey from Indonesia to Australia without flying. Corinne had done some research on the Daily Mail Readers’ Offers website, which now operates independently of the paper, and has hundreds of discounted cruise offers. One of these was a short cruise from Singapore to Sydney (leaving on our wedding anniversary) via the port of Benoa on Bali and Darwin, Australia, passing through both of these around the time our trip does. She promised to forward the details to us when we got into UB. It would be great to achieve the whole circumnavigation without flying, and, if we can afford it and they will sell us just a short segment, something we’ll give serious consideration to.
***
We woke on the third day just as we were passing the southern shore of Lake Baikal. The early morning sun making the Silver Birch trees shimmer in the low light. Both the railway and the main road that go through these parts stick pretty close to the shore and we did wonder if we’d see a familiar orange truck as we passed by. We didn’t, but I bet we were close.
After the lake, the train turns south towards the Mongolian border, which we finally cleared (after about five plus hours and much to-ing and fro-ing) by about 11.00 pm Mongolian time: another hour lost for now.
Some Mongolian traders got on – quite possibly the same one’s that drank all the Champagne on our train 10 years ago (not that I hold a grudge you understand) and proceeded to rip us off when we changed our left over Roubles into Mongolian Tugrik, giving us what we now know to be less than half what we should have got. (Will we ever learn?)
Day 85 (Ulan Bator)
The train arrived, yet again, bang on time at 06:30 (local). We’d arranged to be met at the station, but the promised driver with our name on a board was not in evidence, so Juli hustled us a cut price taxi – though we didn’t realise quite how cut price until we learned the real Dollar/Turgrik rate – to take all four of us to the Golden Gobi Guesthouse, home for the next five days and nights, about which, more later.
Well, we seem to be having a small technical glitch while bringing you further posts from Ulan Bator. Let me assure you that we’re doing our very best to resolve the problem as quickly as possible, and hope to have news about our train journey here from Bishkek via Novosibirsk and about our adventures in Mongolia very shortly. Mean while, here are some kittens playing with a potters wheel or something.
I read this - again from the Loney Planet guide to Central Asia - a few weeks back when we were still maybe going to drive the Pamir Highway. I filed it away for later, and I think we're now far enough away to share it with you without tempting fate.
"As if Tajikistan didn't have enough to worry about, geologists warn that the country faces a potential natural disaster of biblical proportions. The watery sword of Damocles lies high in the Pamir in the shape of Lake Sarez, a body of water half the size of Lake Geneva, which was formed in 1911 when an earthquake dislodged an entire mountainside into the path of the Murgab River. The 500m deep lake formed behind a 60m high natural dam of rocks and mud. If this plug were to break, as some experts think it could, a huge wall of water would sweep down the mountain valleys, wiping away villages, even into Uzbekistan, Turkmenistan and Afghanistan, with flood waters reaching as far as the Aral Sea. Experts warn that it would be the largest flood ever witnessed by human eyes."
One of the great things about this country is the huge number of different ethnic groups who are part of it. According to the Kyrgyzstan photo book here in the business centre of the hotel, (where we are waiting until we can go off to get our train, having checked out at midday,) 'In general, there are about 90 ethnic groups living in Kyrgyzstan represented by ethnic Kyrgyz, ethnic Uzbeks, ethnic Russians, Ukrainians, Tartars, Huis, Uighurs, ethnic Kazaks, Azeris and other groups.'
This is a poster from the centre of town. Just wandering around here you see such a mix of different people, gangs of girls or lads from all the groups, dark hair or blonde hair (very occasionallt dyed hair), couples from different ethnic and religious backgrounds, and all of this was reflected in the people around us on Independence Day. The women and boys who were performing all wore the specific dress of their group.
The national male hat is the ak-kalpak. It is made of white felt and, quoting from the book again:
'... is perfect in shape, beautiful, convienient and universal. According to legends, the ak-kalpak has holy forces to protect it's owner.Men could wear this hat indoors and during prayers and eating. The Kyrgyz have a tradition to bless people who achieve high status in society, 'May your white hat never fall from your head.' This wish has many interpretations: not to undermine one's own ancestors and in no circumstances loose one's dignity. Losing the white hat, in a figurative sense, meant losing morals or honour.'
In which we finally change our leftover Tajik money, begin to think about our next move, are frustrated by the Bishkek Post Office, are delighted by the Bishkek Post Office, go shopping, get a bit of culture, go for a drive, finalise our ex-truck travel plans, celebrate a Full (blue) Moon and Independence Day Kyrgyz style and get ready to move on.
Days 68 & 69 (money, tickets, parcel)
So, there we were, in a hotel we couldn’t really afford, wondering what to do next.
As previously mentioned, we’d done a bit of homework and had the names and address of a couple of travel agents in Bishkek, plus the name and web address of another, based in Kazakhstan, but operating (by e-mail) across the region. First, however, we had to do something about all this useless Tajik currency we’d lumbered ourselves with. There are a lot of banks in Bishkek and we’ve seen the insides of most of them, but, in the end, it was a money change shop that came to our aid. Not that he did us any favours in terms of the rate we got, but at least now we had some money in our pockets.
Second item on the agenda for the day was finding a travel agent to take care of our onward journey. Again, there are a lot of travel agents in Bishkek – most conveniently situated along the same road – but not one of them does rail tickets. However, one of them suggested we try the post office. The Post Office? I hear you cry. Well yes, indeed. Turns out the post office in Bishkek has a little travel agency in one corner who seem to have cornered the market in rail travel. As it happens, this was quite convenient in that we had a parcel of things to post back to the UK.
The next day, we collected Juli’s box of souvenirs and unwanted clothes from the truck, wrapped it up with some tape we’d bought the day before, and took it over to the post office. Parcels, it turns out, are handled not in the post office, but round the corner from the main building in a small office in the back of an otherwise empty side building. Can’t think why we missed that. Feeling quite pleased with ourselves for managing to do quite a good job of packing and sealing up our little consignment, we were not at all happy to be told that they would only accept our parcel after first inspecting and weighing its contents item by item. There was also a customs from to be filled out, which, although in French as well as Kyrgyz (or possibly Russian) defeated even Juli’s language skills. In the end, after getting absolutely no help from the staff there (though a little from an equally frustrated but more experienced service user) we left vowing never to darken there doors again.
Fortunately, another snippet of information we’d gleaned from the Lonely Planet guide to Central Asia was the address of the Bishkek branch of DHL. Hurrah! or so we thought, because, although very friendly and helpful, the size and weight of the parcel meant their best price for carrying it back to the UK for us was the equivalent of a whopping great one hundred and eighty US Dollars: quite out of the question.
Dismayed, though with a neatly re-wrapped parcel under my arm, we resigned ourselves to having to take it back to the truck and deal with it in another city. ‘Maybe it’s expensive to send stuff from here because there’s not much cargo going between Britain Bishkek,’ we reasoned. ‘Perhaps it will be cheaper to send it from Beijing,’ we hoped.
However, before we could take the box back to the truck, we needed to return to the post office travel agency to book our train tickets. We’d popped in the day before, and the woman there, though she spoke no English, with the aid of gestures, diagrams and my map, was able to tell us everything we needed to know about tickets from Bishkek to Novosibirsk. How much, which days, what times, how long and, crucially, whether there were any seats available or not. In fact, she’d been so helpful that we stopped along the way to buy her some flowers, which, a little to her embarrassment, we presented to her on our arrival. This turned out to have been a good call, as subsequently she was super helpful. Not just handing over the tickets (entirely in Russian, of course) but taking the time to explain that times on Russian trains are always in given in Moscow time and even working out what that meant in terms of local times in Bishkek and Novosibirsk. She showed us where on the tickets it states which train, carriage and seats we were in, and even showed us which of the two station in Bishkek we need to be at on our map. Sorted!
With a bit more of a spring in our step, we headed back to the truck via where we thought Adam and Corinne’s hostel was. You will remember that they had chosen to over-fly Tajikistan. Well, we’d gone out with them for dinner the night before. They’d told us then where their hostel was and what it was called, but in the hot light of day and pretty tired after lugging that sodding box all over town, it was proving somewhat elusive. Just as we were about to give up, entirely by chance, I spotted Adam on his way to the bank. He gave us directions and a few minutes we were sitting with Corinne in their room. We’d wanted to see if their hostel might be a more affordable alternative to our hotel. In the end, we decided against it, but while we were there, they explained that they were temporarily flying home on family business and very kindly offered to take our box with them as hand luggage and to post it for us when they got back to the UK. Result!
So, with the first part of our travel plans in place and Juli’s parcel taken care of, we went back to our hotel to research the remaining piece of the jigsaw: arranging alternative accommodation. A quick Google and a phone call later – I tell you: having Wi-Fi and your own computer is a God-send – we were just on our way out of our hotel to check out another down the road, when the manager called us over. We’d enquired at reception previously about staying on if the price was right, but were told that they had no vacancies on two of the nights during the days remaining until our train to Russia. Evidently one of his reception staff had told him about this conversation, and the net result was that he offered us almost as good a price as the hotel down the road was offering and to find us, at his expense, alternative accommodation of the same standard or better for the two nights if required. (Apparently they were anticipating some cancellations.) We had a quick chat between ourselves and decided to stay. So, three for three. Touchdown!
That evening we went out for a really not bad Chinese meal in a restaurant not far from our hotel and relaxed a little.
Days 70 to 73 (treading water)
For the next few days, we occupied ourselves by mooching around some of the shopping centres, taking a tour of the local souvenir shops, patronising a few of the local cafes and bars – often over-priced and largely underwhelming – and generally killing time. I had some blogging to do and Juli visited the History Museum. (Not really my scene.) The first of the two potential ‘eviction’ days came and went with the good news that cancellations had indeed meant that our room was not needed (on either night) and so we unpacked and were please to be staying where we were, even though the lack of English channels on the telly meant that one night we amused ourselves by watching ‘Hugo’ dubbed into Russian.
At the same time as all this time wasting was going on, we still had to complete our travel arrangements, but this was now in the hands of Real Russia, a specialist Russian travel agency based in London, and a recommendation from the Kazakh based virtual travel agency we’d contacted after failing with the real ones in Bishkek. Through them (very good, by the way) we’d sorted a hotel in Novosibirsk, the next train in the chain from Novosibirsk to Ulan-Bator, and were well on the way to completing the journey, tickets-wise, with our last train from Ulan-Bator to Beijing. We’d also identified and contacted hostels in both of the afore mentioned cities, so everything was going along quite nicely. And yet, at the end of my diary entry for day 73, I’ve written “Bored.”
Days 74 & 75 (a change of scenery then more of the same)
What was need was… well, something different, so, after a visit to the ‘so-so’ Bishkek Art Museum, I pestered Juli into ‘phoning Ainura, the woman she’d met (along with half her family) at lake Song Kol. She wasn’t free to join us until later in the afternoon, but would be happy to meet up for a coffee or something. Great.
When she arrived, she was accompanied by her sister (who turned out to be her cousin) and, rather than simply go for a coffee, suggested that we all go for a bit of a drive so she could show us her village, another hotel she was keen on (not hers) and one of her own shops, this one with a cafe attached, which sits at the side of the road above an old orchard where her yurts (which she lets out) were pitched. We had a completely unexpectedly lovely time in the company of her (good English) her sister (very little English) and various others of her immediate and extended family (absolutely no English beyond: “Ah! Marg-a-ret Tacher!”) Her uncle, who cooks at her cafe, made us a simple but delicious pasta dish called Beshbarmak, which means ‘Five Fingers’ in Kyrgyz because of the way your supposed to eat it. She told us that he makes it with boiled beef, but Wikipedia states that it’s usually made with horsemeat. This was washed down with a local beer called Arpa – you have to roll the ‘r’ – and later we taken down to one of her yurts in the orchard to meet her Father, who was playing, I think it fair to say, a somewhat drunken game or cards with his mates – a monthly fixture, we were told. He then took us and introduced us to his wife, who was cooking in a sort of permanent camp-kitchen that was in another part of the old orchard, and wanted to know why we (or possibly just me, as the man of our party) weren’t eating with them and drinking vodka. Remembering Juli’s adventure of a few weeks earlier, I explained through Ainura that, unfortunately, we’d already eaten and that I didn’t drink spirits. I don’t think he was very impressed, but any way, after wishing us well and thanking us for visiting his country, he eventually let go of my hand and we moved back up to the safety of the roadside cafe, where we drank more Arpa accompanied by a kind of curly smoked cheese. Very popular with the tourists, we were given to understand.
The next day, feeling a little off colour for some reason, we did a bit more souvee shopping, had a nice but rather expensive-for-what-it-was lunch at a cafe by one of Bishkek’s theatres, followed by a little light interneting (including updating our Google Map with details of our impending train journeys). Later, we went out to try an Italian restaurant we’d spotted earlier, but that turned out to be a bit of an expensive disappointment too. Hey ho.
Day 76 (Kyrgyz Independence Day and a ‘Blue’ Moon)
Today (day 76) the 31st of August, is Kyrgyzstan’s Independence day and the second full moon of the month and so a Blue Moon. Luckily, we saw this coming and pre-ordered from the hotel restaurant a bottle of Russian ‘Champagne’ and, accompanied by fresh vegetables, Kuurdak, identified in their menu as “a national dish” (of Kyrgyzstan, I hope) and one requiring lots of time to prepare, so something to be savoured, but more of all that later.
First, though, we been told variously that no one gets the day off, everyone gets the day off, that there would be events and happenings all day, only from about 5.00pm and, in one version, for three days solidly. A little tricky to know what to expect, then, based on those descriptions, so we decided just to walk down to the main square and see what was occurring.
The various parks and green spaces were full of people of all ages out for a jolly day. Something that seems very popular is for the whole family to have their photograph taken in front of a gaudy banner proclaiming Independence Day and the date painted in vivid colours, often surrounded by stuffed animals and huge, blousy, unnaturally bright fake flowers. There were lots of people setting those up here and there, in between others selling pastries, drinks, ice-creams, candy floss, balloons and every kind of small plastic toy you can think of. In the evening, these were augmented by all manner of sticks with flashing lights, whirly things with flashing lights and cars with flashing lights. No; wait: they were the police, who looked like they had been given general instructions to do nothing unless absolutely necessary, which it never was. The whole thing was very laid back and we felt absolutely safe, even when the odd car managed to find its way on to the cordoned off streets and mingled with the pedestrians making there way to the centre of things.
At the centre of things, a large crowd had assembled in front of a small stage where hundreds of performers in colourful costumes took their turn to dance, sing or play for the audience, interspersed by small groups and solo artists performing their latest hit. Sometimes there would be so many performers at a time that they overflowed the stage and spilt out on to the space in front of it. While one group of performers were on stage, the other artists would wait their turn just standing around elsewhere in the square or in one of the two dressing-yurts that had been erected either side of the stage. There were photographers and video camera crews and people conducting interviews plus others who seemed to be just hanging around a little closer to the action then the rest of us, politely held back behind an exceedingly thin and sparse blue line. Sometimes, the policemen on duty would be far more interested in what was going on on-stage than in keeping us lot in our place. At other times, they would leave their posts and gather together in clumps for a little chat and a laugh. I say ‘policemen’ because, with one exception they were all men. The one token policewoman is worthy of a mention in dispatches, however, for her brave stance against the oppressive male regime, which he showed through her complete disregard for authority, demonstrated by her sling-back sandals with a good three inch of heel, her matching handbag and they way she spent most of her time, when not chatting with her male colleagues, texting on her mobile phone, possibly about all the jewellery she was wearing. No one seemed to mind though, including two, obviously more important policemen in big hats with lots of gold braid on their epaulettes, who smiled and chatted just like their subordinates. I think the Kyrgyzstan police force must be a very egalitarian and laidback organization within which to work.
However, every rule must have its exception, in there was one policeman in a patrol car who spent the day barking orders to other motorists and pedestrian through his Tannoy system and trying out every variation of siren sound his vehicle was capable of producing for no apparent reason whatsoever. The other policemen simply ignored him, as did the majority of motorists and pedestrians, so I guess, as long as he was enjoying himself too, that’s okay.
[Speaking of donkeys in black and whites, on the way back to the hotel, we saw an actual donkey giving rides, made up to look like a zebra.]
A Zonkey?
After lunch and a lie down, followed by some tea and another lie down, we got ourselves ready for our double celebratory dinner, which we’d arranged to have brought to us in the hotel’s outdoor eating space. Shortly after announcing our presence, the long awaited ‘champagne’ arrived. In hindsight, the ‘Pomagne’ (remember that?) style plastic cork should have sounded warning bells. The eruption of white foam all over my trousers when I opened the damn thing – and I’ve opened a few bottles of bubbly in my time – should have given me cause to pause. The ease with which this so recently highly effervescent liquid filled our glasses should have given me a clue. However, perhaps because we were so looking forward to it, so wanting it to satisfy our craving for fizz, that it was not until we actually tasted this poor, pale, neigh pathetic impersonation of a the drink from which this below average beverage, so bereft of bubbles, steals its name, that we knew our champansky would not do; would not do at all.
Still, all was not yet lost: we had, after all, the main event to look forward to. Oh, who am I kidding: you’ve already worked out that the meal was a disaster too, right? In fact, Kuurdak turns out to be boiled mutton with chopped onions, and the fresh vegetables, were so fresh, the chef hadn’t even wanted to take the time to cook them. Lesson learnt: come to Kyrgyzstan for fabulous scenery, come to Kyrgyzstan for amazing hospitality, but don’t come looking for gourmet delights.
After our disappointing dinner, we headed back to the square to see what happens after dark on Independence Day; we’d been told there might be fireworks at 9.00. (Woo-hoo!). The square was still as busy as before, including with folks of all ages having their photos taken. One enterprising chap had set up an optical instrument of a different kind: a very large but still portable telescope trained on the full moon and was charging any one who wanted a look 20 Soms a go. (About 25p) Obviously, we couldn’t resist and were amazed at the detail it revealed.
After a lot of pop-y singing on stage, at nine o’clock sharp, even though there was still an act in full flow, the fireworks began. Not the most amazing display ever, but amazing to be so close to the display itself. (That’s another thing, possibly in Kyrgyzstan’s favour: they’re a lot more relaxed about people’s health and safety. You only need to see the state of the pavements in their capital city to know that.) I took a bit of video of the fireworks (not the pavements) which you can see below.
Days 77 (final preparations)
Lots to do today: last chance for laundry; change more money into three currencies (Kyrgyz Som, Kazakh Tenge and Russian Rubles – we’ll get whatever Mongolians use when we get there) to cover the three countries our first train travels through; and shopping for some essential supplies including tea bags and plastic mugs. (Wish we’d brought our stainless steel mugs from home.)
We travel with US Dollars; it’s still the most widely used and accepted form of transnational currency. Dollars to Som: no problem. Dollars to Tenge: a bit more of a problem to find someone who’ll do that direct (rather than going Dollar to Som then Som to Tenge and taking two conversion hits – three, if you count the original Sterling to Dollar hit back home) but with so many money changers, we found one without too much difficulty. The problem exchange was Dollars to Rubles. We got very confused by all the conversion factors been quoted at us by people whose interest was not necessarily served by helping us to understand what was going on, so we came back to the hotel and did little research before venturing out again, only this time a little more savvy.
While we were out, we noticed quite a few little girls (and some not so little girls) with very large, white pom-poms in their hair. Also we noticed that everywhere you looked, young people of both sexes were very smartly dressed in black trousers with white shirts or black skirts with white blouses. We’d been told by Ainura that the 1st of September is traditionally know as Bell Day and marks the first day of the new school year, but had assumed, being a Saturday, that school would still be out. Perhaps Kyrgyz children go to school on Saturday mornings, maybe or they just love to were the uniforms anyway. Who knows.
All ‘to do’ items ticked (and a quick bite of lunch had too) we headed back to the hotel. On the way, we saw a man out walking his camel. (A Bactrian, in case you were wondering.)
Tomorrow, after breakfast, we’ll settle our hotel bill (bank anti-fraud measures permitting) and then wait (in the hotel’s business centre-cum-library, if they’ll let us) until it’s time to take a cab and all our clobber to the station to catch our first train. It leaves Bishkek number two station at forty-two minutes past midnight (local time) and gets into Novosibirsk, Siberia, Russia at 08:06 local time, two days (and two borders) later on the 5th. After a night there, we catch another train (possibly meeting Adam and Corinne on-board) late in the evening of the 6th that arrives in Ulan-Bator, Mongolia (three nights, two days and one border later) early in the morning (06:30 local time) of the 9th, where we have hostel accommodation for five nights.
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