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.]
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.
(See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gandantegchinlen_Monastery for more.)
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.
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.
TTFN - N
[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.
***
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)
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.TTFN - N
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