Mongolia: Monasteries, milk and museums

Day 1 - Ulan Bator
We arrived in Ulan Bator, Mongolia at 7.30am on Monday 14th May, after a not very restful sleep, but were picked up by Nassan from our guesthouse. She took us to our room, which was in the apartment of her mother and grandaughter, they were very nice and gave us some breakfast. We finally had a shower, it felt so good to have warm water!

After that we felt a lot better, and decided to explore Ulan Baator. We spent most of the morning running around really, we had wanted to check out some museums, but they were both closed, we tried to find a cafe for a coffee, that proved difficult. However, Ulan Bator is quite a small city, so after all that running around,we had a fairly good feel for the city.

We walked to the Gandantegchinlen Khiid Monastery, which was pretty impressive, one of the buildings had a huge golden Buddha, surrounded by hundreds of little Buddha dolls.

Day 2 - Terelj
On Tuesday we arranged a day trip out to Terelj National Park. Our guide/driver Ulzii picked us up early in the morning, and drove around, stopping at various sites. A lot of it was very off-road, luckily the jeep and Ulzii managed it!

Terelj was absolutely amazing, the scenery was so beautiful, it looked like we were in the middle of nowhere, even though it was only a little more than an hour from Ulan Bator. Some of the things we saw were camels, yaks, a cave, ovoo (a primitive shrine made out of rocks, sticks, and scarve, sometimes with animal skulls), and Turtle Rock, a big rock formation in the shape of, yep, a turtle.
In the afternoon, we visited a ger family. These people still live the traditional Mongolian nomadic life, looking after livestock. I was a little hesitant about visiting them, it felt kind of strange to be dropping in and looking at them and their home. But it seemed that a ger visit was part of every tour, so I prepared myself to feel awkward and intruding.

The family were, however, really lovely. The husband and wife were there, their three children are living in Ulan Bator so they can go to school. They made us feel very welcome, filling us with Mongolian tea, which is made with boiling water, salt, milk, and not much tea. Leon drank about 2 litres of the stuff (the British and their tea...) They didn't speak much English, and Ulzii's was very limited as a translator, but it was fun trying to communicate using dictionaries and phrasebooks.

We rode horses, watched them milk the cows, and played a game of knuckles with dried out animal ankle bones. Afer spending a few hours with the family, it was time to return to Ulan Bator.

Day 3 - Ulan Bator
On our final day in Mongolia we went to the Natural History Museum and the Mongolian History Museum. The National History Museum had the famous Gobi desert dinosaurs that I had to drag Leon away from. The rest of the museum was a little bit funny, in a 'local' kind of way - lots of rocks with captions. A whole bunch of little Mongolian children were there for a school excursion, as they walked into the rooms they all said "Wow!". Very cute. There were also some good dioramas of the different regions of Mongolia like desert, steppe and forest, and the kinds of animals and plants you would find there.

The Mongolian History Museum was fascinating, it was well organised with lots of English explanations. The section about Chinggis Khan and the Mongolian empire was really interesting. There was also a costume gallery, with examples of all the different types of clothing worn by Mongolian ethnic minorities.

Mongolia is such a beautiful country with an amazing history, I hope we can go back sometime to spend more time in the countryside.

Crossing Continents

Before we set off on this trip, one of the things that most people wanted to know about was the leg of the journey on the Trans-Mongolian - now it comes to it, however, it is rather tricky to write about. Not that it wasn't interesting, it most certainly was but it was on a slightly calmer, more personal level than for example the sights of Moscow or Beijing.

It would be easy to answer people's questions, if I could remember them! I think one of the most common was "won't you get bored?" The simple answer is "no"! There wasn't really time. Sure we were on the train for 4 days straight and we had both stocked up on books which came in handy but otherwise we kept ourselves entertained fairly easily.

We shared a compartment that was about 2 metres by 3 metres with two lads from Switzerland. That was a bonus because we could easily chat in English (they of course were excellent) and a little French (Leon did what he could!). They were also cool guys and we played cards and shared many a beer!

The rest of our carriage seemed to be full of Chinese traders. At some point (we never worked out when) they filled every available nook and cranny of the train (including the roof space and the ventilation shafts!) with merchandise (all sorts of things - clothes, computers, medicines!) and whenever we stopped they would leap off and frantically sell what they could to the people who met them on the platform until the whistle blew and then they would all jump back on! As we got further from Moscow and deeper into Siberia the number of customers grew so it seems that one can't get shonky leather jackets outside of the big cities in Russia!

There were also people waiting on the platforms selling things and considering that we stopped for at least ten minutes every three hours or so at the longest there was never much chance of going too hungry or thirsty. We had stocked up before we left Moscow but it was handy to keep the cold beer supply full!

Other than that time seemed to pass fairly quickly as we made our way through Russia, left Europe and crossed into Asia, and finally crossed the border into Mongolia. Personally I am always happy watching the world go by train windows, and the few hours we spent passing Lake Baikal were particularly impressive.

We pulled into Ulaanbaator a little tired (border crossings always seemed to be in the middle of the night!), fairly dirty (no showers, or really any hot water to speak of in the bathroom/toilet) but a little sad to think that the longest no-stop train journey of our travels was over.

They Klosed the Kremlin!

So our first major stop - Moscow. The city of The Kremlin, St Basil's Cathedral, a long and varied history, and, I have recently discovered, beer cheaper than water!

So which of those things did we check out I wonder? Nearly all of them I think. Nearly all? Surely one must see the Kremlin! Sadly the title tells it all - they klosed the Kremlin! In preparation for Victory Day (9th of May) the Kremlin and its surrounding area was closed off and ringed by frightening looking Russian guards! No Lenin Mummy for us ....

Nevertheless we did manage to see a lot of Moscow, mostly from traipsing the streets, but it is truly one of the most impressive cities to be seen from the pavements. The domes of Russian Orthodox churches suddenly appear from round any corner it seems, not to mention various other ornate state buildings.

One of the first things we saw was the VDNKh (The USSR Economic Achievements Exhibition Centre). Less a centre and more a vast sprawl of impressive buidlings built to glorify the successes of Soviet Russia. Certainly, it may be a little strange now but there is no denying that it is an impressive collection of Socialist imagery - lots of 'people' holding on to sheafs of corn or standing over machine cogs. Subtle it was not!

Next on the list was St Basil`s Cathedral which looked just like it should according to all the postcards, except for the fact that it was bathed in sunshine rather than snow and grey skies as one imagines Moscow!
Later on we went to check out Novodevichy Convent and the cemetery there. Somewhat morbid we`ll admit but it is where various illustrious Russians are buried including Chekhov and Sergei Prokofiev. Sadly our cyrillic wasn`t quite up to the task of identifying individual`s names - nevertheless we`re fairly sure we had a good look at all the tombs there so we must have seen them, we`re just not sure which they were!

We were staying in Godzilla`s Hostel which was a reasonable enough place. Despite only booking one night, they managed to fit us in for three nights, and two of those were in a roomy double. It was certainly in a good location and although the facilities weren`t top notch they were certainly more than reasonable for a hostel.

Our last couple of days in Russia were taken up by the Victory Day parade and the preparations for said event. This is when we discovered that we probably weren`t going to be able to wander around the Kremlin as we`d liked but we did manage to walk around the rest of the centre of Moscow as they closed all the roads so that was fun. The Kremlin certainly looked impressive from the outside as flags flew and posters showed Russia in all her glory. We also found one of the best places for a decent cup of coffee was the rather impressive GUM department store, housed in a fancy 19th century building.

Before we knew it, it was time to leave the Victory Day party people on the streets of Moscow and head for Yaroslavsky station to catch the Trans-Mongolian train to Ulaanbaator. Our hearts sank a little as we discovered that Yaroslavsky was the most wretched hive of scum and villainy this side of the urals but despite such wanton hyperbole we spent a couple of hours nipping to the nearby supermarket to stock up on supplies for the upcoming journey.

Training for the Trans-Mongolian

We left Sheffield at about midday on Thursday May 3rd on our first of many trains through Europe. We arrived in London, caught the tube to Waterloo, and were met by Matt, Ellie, Alexis, David, Tom, Jen, Robin, Lee and Chris.

After a few drinks, we were ready to catch our first international train, the Eurostar, to Brussels. We said goodbye to everyone a few times, and then boarded our train. Matt and Ellie had kindly supplied us with a bottle of champagne and some Ferrero Rocher, so we started in style!

Arriving in Brussels, we found the platform for our overnight train to Berlin. We had only bought seat tickets, not sleepers, so the journey was quite uncomfortable, but we managed to get some sleep.

We had a few hours to kill in Berlin; we had some breaky and coffee, and read a little. There was a slight panic when we found out that our train to Warsaw had been changed and was now leaving from a different station, we had to use the local train system, but eventually we were on the 6 hour ride to Warsaw.

The train took a bit longer though, as apparently there was a fire, which we discovered was also the reason for the station change. We arrived in Warsaw tired and hungry on Friday night, and after a traditional Polish meal of pizza, it was time for sleep in an actual bed.

Our last train for a few days was the 24 hour journey from Warsaw to Moscow, passing through that pesky Belarus (it required a transit visa, even though we were not leaving the train, and the visa was specific to one day, so if for any reason we had been delayed, we would have had to go to Moscow via Latvia and Estonia!).

On this train, we had a sleeper, we were meant to share with a Polish woman, but once she saw ua, she changed rooms! So we had the whole place to ourselves. After some practice of sleeping on trains, dealing with border control (Corey's non-European passport was always doubly scrutinised) and eating snacks as main meals, we were ready for the marathon Trans-Mongolian train!

We know this blog is very behind, internet access so far has been a little difficult. You should see our paper diaries! We are now in Japan, so in the next few days should be able to get up-to-date and put up some photos!

Vis A Vis Visas

As of last Thursday we hold visas for Russia, China, Mongolia and a transit visa for Belarus. Considering we're going to Asia I can already see this is going to be a really fun repeating exercise of the trip!

Saturday was the big leaving do and was most successful, so many thanks again to all who made it and are reading this!

Most of our stuff has now been collected from Sheffield and is slowly making its way to Sydney in two tea chests and a couple of suitcases (Cheers to The Cassidys on the off chance they'll read this! :)

We have booked in to hostels in Moscow, Warsaw (we weren't able to book tickets ahead so that could be a fun time in Warsaw station :), and Mongolia, which you can see with those groovy links to the right ..... except for Mongolia .....

Here we are making some final alterations to the itinerary!

The Plan So Far

It seems that a few people are wondering so here is the route as far as we have it:

Leave Sheffield by train to London on the 3rd of May,
London to Brussels (Belgium) by Eurostar,
Brussels to Berlin (Germany) by German Rail,
Berlin to Warsaw (Poland), still on German Rail but overnight,
Warsaw to Moscow (Russia) (hopefully via Minsk [Belarus], we're waiting on visas!)
Moscow to Ulan Bator (Mongolia) on the Trans-Mongolian Railway
Ulan Bator to Beijing (China) on the second leg of the Trans-Mongolian

This is nearly all booked now. The rest is a little more hazy but will hopefully run something like:
Qingdao (China) to Shimonoseki (Japan) by boat
Some sightseeing in Japan (checking out Nara and popping back to good old Fukuoka!)
Shimonoseki to Qingdao by boat

Qingdao to Hanoi (Vietnam), hopefully on a train!
Have a good look around Northern Vietnam

Then to Laos for a little more sightseeing

On to Thailand (probably do some sightseeing in the North)

Next stop Cambodia (who knows, there could be some sightseeing! We hear that Angkor Wat is rather nice! :)

Back to Thailand to get some beach relaxation going on

Through Thailand to Malaysia

Then maybe Indonesia (time and money may become an issue at some point soonish!)

Oh yeah, and somehow get back to Sydney too!