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Mike's RTW Trip 06/07
Have spent 1.5 days on the train going from Udan Ulay to Ulanbataar in Mongolia. I had a whole 4 sleeper carriage to myself which was great! I met up with some other tour group and their guide Claire, who is a Kiwi and we spent most of the border crossing playing scrabble. The crossing only took 9 hours to do! You have to remain on the train for about 5 of those 9 hours. That evening I met an Aussie guy called Dan, 2 Dutch students called Johan and Martin and a Russian chap called Yury and Claire joined in as well. We started drinking vodka shots and managed to finish 4 bottles of vodka, 1 bottle of champagne and 4 liters of beer. Needless to say at 02:00 the wheels came off and I had to get rid of my dinner. I manged to find my way back to my compartment and passed out on my bed. I woke up about 2 hours later freezing cold. I got a blanket and went to sleep. I then woke up again and was still freezing cold, so decided to get into my bed. When I checked my watch I only had 30min before we got to Ulaanbataar. So not too much warm sleep for me. I felt rough that morning but not as bad as Dan. Luckily I did not lose anything during the nights drinking, but Dan took his memory stick out of his camera for safety and put it in his underpants.... as you do when your drunk. He then forgot about it and in the morning went to the loo.... you guessed it, he flushed it down and lost 300+ photos.
Doing the city tour with a hangover in the freezing cold was rough. Eventually we got some lunch and then went to a supermarket. I have to say tomatoe juice is a winner for hangovers. We left for our Ger camp 100km outside of Ulanbataar.
It was a stunning day. Not a cloud in the sky and very little wind. Seeing our camp in the middle of nowhere was stunning. We arrived and had our luggage taken to our Gers. The Ger is a traditional nomad dwelling that has a wooden frame and covered with wool blankets and white cloth. Inside we had 4 beds a table and wood burning stove. Its very comfortable even if I kept knocking my head when going out the door.
We had lunch and then Dan & I headed off for a walk. We did 2.5 hours and managed to get to the top of two peaks which gave us a good view of the Steppes. We then passed by the Shaman's holy trees, which apparently total 100. But nobody is allowed to count them. You have to believe that there are 100. I was tempted but was a little worried that I might have bad karma for the rest of my trip :-)
That evening we did some archery and then had dinner. I bumped into a group of English travellers that I met in Moscow. They were having breakfast in my hotel there. They were Pete, Paul, Marie and Caroline. It was good to sit down and chat to them as they had just spent 3 days with a nomad family which they said was a good experience. They even saw the husband slaughter a sheep, which for them was quite an experience.
I manged to get an early night and was in bed by 12. They light a fire for you before you go to bed which heats the Ger up very well. Only problem was they lit the fire at 9pm.
The next morning we had horse riding planned and so 10 of us got given some leggings and a helmet to put on. They saddled us all up and off we went. U had a lovely chesnut colured horse. The horses don't have names they merely get described. I have not ridden a horse in a while but it all seemed to come back to me. Within about an hour I was comfortable trotting, cantering and gallopping my horse. He was so obedient with me as a number of people were struggling to get their horse to move beyond a walk. I decided there and then that I would try get a horse ride in eveywhere I can on my trip. I hope to get a 2 / 3 day trek in some time as that would really be great.
After lunch we had a trip to one of the local nomad families. There we were shown how they milk the mares. They do this from about 8am in the morning and then every 2 hours. The mares milk is for them as they drink about 3 litres of it a day. The mares milk is allowed to ferment first and becomes alcoholic. We were given some to drink and I have to say its an aquired taste. Although they also let us drink the fresh stuff which was much more palatable. It was sweatish and no strong flavour. They also gave us some hard pieces of curd, which is just revolting and everybody had a piece to ditch once we left.
They told us that about 30% of the Mongolian population is nomadic and that they move a number of times during the year. The land is free to everyone and they basically move to better pastures every so often or move to a better spot in winter.
The 3rd day we left the Ger camp and headed back to Ulanbataar. They put us in our hotels which were really nice. We then headed off to a mini Nadaam festival. The real festival is July 11th-13th. Its was a bit wierd as it was very very small. But at least we got to see what it was all about. They had singers, dancers, an acrobat act, wrestling archery and horse riding. We were entertained for 2 hours. The only problem was that it was about +2 C and a windchill of -2C. When you have no winter clothes that's cold. The archery was impressive as the master archer shoots from 75m and can hit his target 90% of the time. Its pretty impressive to watch.
After getting back we went out with our guide Baggie to a rock pub. The pub had a lot of English football club flags and so all the English chaps were happy. They also have an actaul radio station that broadcasts from inside the pub! They also had a live Mongolian rock band that played covers and they were really good.
We then left and headed to a night club. That was interesting because as it got later we had some professional dancing and a strip tease. As we were about to leave Dan decided to do a bit of a pole dance... and he was pretty good. Luckily he kept his clothes on. He even got cheers from the locals.
The next morning we boarded the Trans-Siberian to Beijing. As we were getting onboard it started to snow. The worst part was that I forgot to take any pictures of that. It snowed for about the next 6 hours on the journey.
The journey was a lot better this time as I had made so many new friends and so we chatted, dined, played scrabble etc to pass the time away. After waking up in the morning it was such a huge contrast in the terrain outside. Where I had gone to sleep to the Gobi Desert outside my window I now woke to lush green mountains and fields outside and they passing of the Great Wall of China. Lunch on the train was now Chinese food and it was the start of some decent food again. YAY.
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