Mongolia

The next moring saw us pulling into the worlds coldest capital city( range of -49 to +38C). UlaanBaatar(Red Hero, renamed by the communists when they took power in 1921) at 6am.

Having read on our tours web site that 'the only capital city where you are more likely to be hit by a horse and cart than a Honda'. It's fair to say that I'd been expecting a little less than the city had to offer, there were many small investment banks with semi-high rise offices throughout the city, roads and modern cars everywhere, bars, resturants catering to every need, wine was on sale in many places, something we'd not noticed in Russia. All this is mixed in with Ger/Yurt encampments on the city limits.

This is a city that is changing at an incredible rate. Everywhere you look there are cranes errecting new office blocks, modern houses and appartments, a sharp contrast to the Soviet tennement type blocks you see throughout the centre.

Mongolia has a population of only 2.7 million, half of these live in the capital and a third of these are beleived to live below the poverty line. This is apparent in parts of the inner city and as we drove out into the country the next day, lines of new housing being completed along one side of the highway whilst ger camps are bursting literally on the other side of the road. It seems the divide between rich and poor will become more and more evident as the city leaders catch up with the free market.

Our city leader, Ider was a nice chap who spoke very good english due to a couple of years living in Canberra. We had a look round the city on the first day there, the main square, Sukhe Bator with the revolutionary leader; Damdinii Suhbaatar, statue taking centre stage is the focus point of the city with everything spreading out from here. There is also a mausaleum for Suhbataar here, a common feature for dead communist leaders but this one is not open to the public.

Also spent an enjoyable couple of hours in the history museum reading about the exploits of Chengis (Gengis) Khan. He has again become something of a patron saint of the country since they received the freedom from Soviet rule, apparently it was forbidden to even acknowledge his existance during these times. He has everything named after him, roads, buildings and even a beer.

The food here consists of mainly meat, with meat on the side, all pretty tasty though and incredibly cheap.

Mongolia was once a very Buddist country with over 700 monestarys. Most of these were destrroyed under communist rule during the 1930's. 14,000 monks were killed and many thousands more were forced to give up their vows. The 1990's saw this change and religious freedom has returned to the country, we paid a visit to the Gandan monestry the next morning which has returned to a practicing place of worship and school for would be monks.

Ider also took us up to a world war two monument, I'd not heard of their war effort before but it seems a few thousand cattle herders were sent out to give the Russians a hand on the front line.

Then we were off to what we had come to see, a night out in a ger and relaxing stay in the countryside. As I mentioend previously the developmenst on the way out of town are staggering, a builder will not be out of work here for many years.

It was good driving out into the country and seeing nomads herding their mixture of livestock, goats, sheep and a few cows all in one group, no chickens in any of the herds we saw though. Camels are common to the area too.

I'd naively had a picture in my mind of staying in a proper traditional ger without any of the creature comforts you'd find in town and maybe meet a proper nomadic family on this trip so as we entered the nature reserve and wound our way up the hills I was a little dissapointed to see lots of specially build tourist camp sites along the roads.

We pulled into one an hour later, The Mirage Ger Camp, this was nestled on a gentle slope surround on one side by jagged hill tops and gentle rolling hills on the other.

There were only 20 gers on the camp and a larger one for a dinning room/ bar. The gers were incredibly comfortable with three large single beds in each and a stove, chests of drawers and even an electric light. There were also electric lights along the footpaths to each ger. Not only this, there was a proper toilet and shower block at the end of the site. We were definetly not going to meet any indigenous people out here.

It was without doubt though a great place to stay at and we only wished we could have had two nights instead of only one.

Due to an allergy preventing me from joining in a horse riding expedition and further agrivating the suffering of the poor beasts I decided to tackle the highest jagged peak on the north side of camp.

I headed out across the land and soon all I could hear was the rubbing of all the cicadas legs and the occasional very large bugs flying straight at me as I scared them from their lazy afternoon in the sun.

After making several attemps on the summit I had to finally admit defeat to the mountain, the top point was almost vertical from every point I tried to reach it so a nice long walk across the gentle rolling hills into the next valley was taken on instead.

When I returned to camp loud singing could be heard from the bar veranda, we headed over to have a beer and met up with a group from Oosterlittens, a small settlement(400 people) in the North of the Netherlands.

They were a good bunch of guys, taking one of their fathers on the Trans-Mongolian train ride as he'd always fancied doing this. Over a few beers they gave Lauren no end of abuse for not being married at her age and telling her that her clock was ticking.

I later joined them on a walk up a closer jagged peak that evening so I finally got the sense of achievenment I'd failed on earlier.

On the way back to town the next day we passed a place where quad bikes were for hire. Naturally this appealed to all of us and at 6 quid for an hour a bargain. A guide took us out through the mountains and along the river, crazy dogs came running out from any settlements we passed chasing us off their land but we soon learned to ride straight at them to scare them off. A good time was definetly had by all.
We got back to the site and made clear the fun we had to the owners and then handed over the agreed cash, at this point he turned into a tosser and said the price was double for forein tourists, there was no price anywhere to be seen and our driver had agreed the price before we left anyway. Luckily our driver was not a man to take any messing around and from what I could gather he told them to piss off and he'd not be bringing them any more business, good man.

There were a couple more things to see in the capital although our guide seemed to think the town had nothing to offer, we left him back at the hotel to rest and checked out the Bogd Khan Palace and the Chojin Lama Monestary.

These were originally lived in/ set up by brothers originating in Tibet, one set himself up as the first Lama and the other was considred to be the holy king, nothing like keeping it in the family. Both very interesting especially the Lama Monestary that had one room full of icons performing rituals involving tantric sexual positions. The Palace also had a ger inside for the king made of hundreds of snow leapord skins and a large collection of stuffed animals. I found this odd as I'd been under the impression that buddism doesn't belive in killing things. This was also true of the Gandan Monastary where one of the only three living lamas once lived, another being the Dalai Lama. The belief here though was that the spirit of the reincarnated lama could only reside in a prepubesent boy so around the age of thirteen the boy would be sacrificed so the the spirit could continue to be reborn.

That was pretty much the end of our Mongolian adventure and the next morning we headed off to the train for the final section of the organised tour.