The longest 650km journey of my life

Mercedes and I arrived back in UB early yesterday morning after a beautiful eight day tour through parts of central and northern Mongolia. The countryside we drove through was absolutely spectacular. The lakes we visited were stunning. But really, the most exciting story of the tour was the journey home.

We were told it would be a 22h bus ride back from the provincial capital of Moron to the national capital of UB. These cities are 650km apart. It is an indication of the state of Mongolia's roads (well "roads" - they are more like pot-hole filled trails through grass most of the time) that this didn't completely surprise us.

The good news is that the journey actually only took us 15 hours. However, both of us agree - this was still the most painful journey of our lives. And we have pretty low standards.

Because of a local Naadam festival in Moron, the buses to UB were sold out when someone attempted to purchase us tickets a few days in advance. Instead of a bus we journeyed back in a van. This actually sounds like an upgrade. It was not. Fourteen adults were crammed in the back of the van that back in Canada might seat six. Also it was Barney-themed.

Mercedes and I were in the back that had a row of seats for three people. When someone decided to join us in our row, we opted to take the two window seats and let her sit in the middle. Bad decision. Once we finally set off (after we waited 2.5 hours for the van to fill), two rather large Mongolian women had pushed themselves between us and in the process shoved us to the side. This left us each with about 10cm of seat, and perhaps another 25cm of unsupported gap between the seat and the door, in which to fit our bodies. I tried putting bags underneath me for some support, but shockingly, a bag is not as comfortable as a seat. Especially when the bag is not even with the seat and has no back support. Adding to the comfort was a door with many metal bits sticking out that I was squeezed in next to. It made for a very bruised side.

As we journeyed onward the weather grew colder and rainier. When we closed our windows to stay dry and warm, the women between us would yell in Mongolian and gesture at us to open them. When Mercedes didn't, the woman next to her would reach across Mercedes' face and grab it open herself, often hitting her face in the process.

When we left Moron there was one very drunk man on the bus. A drunk man who took quite the liking to me and Mercedes. He told us repeatedly (through the two women who spoke some English and were forced into the job of translators) that we were very beautiful. He also asked us to join him in a tent for the night, kept grabbing us to smell our hair, and insisted on taking photos with our arms wrapped around him.

As the trip progressed more and more of the passengers joined in the drunkeness. A bottle of vodka was always being passed around. At one of our many, many stops (approximately one every 45 minutes) someone grabbed a teacup from the restaurant we were stopped outside of, and a bottle of very strong apple wine was shared amongst the passengers. They insisted we join in. And each finish two cupfuls.

As drunks do, the men eventually started singing. And didn't stop their sing-a-long of Mongolian songs until 3:30 AM when one of the women between me and Mercedes yelled at them to stop. Our original drunken friend tried to start things up again, but no one else dared cross the angry woman and he slowly petered out.

The rest stop with the apple wine was actually enjoyable. Someone was selling bagfuls of absolutely delicious strawberries. And it was amazing the sense of camraderie that developed amongst everyone. People were sharing their food (and their wine). Everyone was exchanging phone numbers and talking like old friends. I guess bad experiences do bring people together. And we all watched on as somehow in the middle of a vast open field the driver managed to fix the axle of the van with no tools.

All told I think I had about 3 hours of highly interrupted sleep. I arrived with bruises in strange locations (such as my shoulder), a sore back and tired muscles, and a great "worst journey" story.

A very manly festival

Mercedes and I have spent the past week exploring Ulaan Baatar (UB) and enjoying the celebrations surrounding the Naadam Festival. This is a festival that occurs each year in all cities across Mongolia. The largest version of the festival is held in UB. This festival celebrates the "three manly sports" of Mongolia - wrestling, horseback riding and archery. It is pretty much the best (and most random) festival ever.

Leading up to the festival, performances of traditional Mongolian singing, dancing, and horsehead fiddle playing were held in the city's main square. As a tourist it was a great way to learn a bit about the country's folk art. Traditional singing involves either throat singing or a "long version" of traditional song that is so called because of the long trills it involves. Throat singing came about because it is said to sound like the wind in the open wilderness. I beg to differ. It sounds awful. The dancing though was quite spectacular and seemed to share some elements with traditional Russian dancing, but also involved a lot of shoulder shaking that I failed miserably at recreating. The horsehead fiddle came about when a man's beloved horse died. He used the horse's hair and skin to construct a fiddle that he then used to play mournful songs about his horse.

 

The opening ceremonies were held on Monday. One of the focal points of the ceremonies (and the festival itself) is the celebration of the nine honoured horses and the nine white banners. I'm not entirely clear about what the flags represent but it seemed that national hero Chinggis (Ghengis) Khan received nine white flags 800 some years ago and they spurred him on to victory. Or something like that.

The banners are carried by men on the nine honoured horses (apparently these are chosen at random for no particular reason. I find that hard to believe as they are called the honoured horses, but that may just be part of the randomness of it all) from the main city square to the stadium in which the opening ceremonies take place. There, the banners are placed on the stadium floor and soldiers stand guard over them until the festival is over. When wrestlers win a match they go perform some sort of praise ritual to the banners. Perhaps thanking them for strength? Really though, the ritual just looks like the manly wrestlers are flapping their arms like a bird.

The opening ceremonies also involved strange interpretive dancing by children and a parade that involved people in traditional dress, people carrying a random assortment of flags (Mongolia, India, China, Canada, the US and a few others), and then people dressed in a juice box costume and as a bunny rabbit and a robot started showing up. There was also a recreation of a Mongol horde (perhaps the Huns...not sure exactly what horde they were, but they were terrifying looking) attacking another horde. It felt like something out of medieval times.

Onto the sports:

The wrestling starts off with about 1,000 wrestlers (based on my crude calculation), and 10 rounds later a winner is declared. It is a single elimination event and wrestlers are randomly paired against each other. This, combined with the fact that there are no weight categories, makes for some very uneven matches. As soon as any part of a wrestler's body other than his feet or his hands touches the ground, he is out. This happened within seconds in some matches. For others (especially in the later rounds) it took considerably longer.

The wrestlers have quite the costume in tiny shorts that look like underwear and a tight fitting vest. The vest came about because many years ago a female competed and won (a big no no in the manly sports festival). So now all competitors must show they are men and that they have no breasts by wearing a revealing vest.

The archery was a bit less exciting. But it is the only sport women are allowed to compete in (a recent change). The archers took aim at a pile of something (it looked like perhaps rocks), and were awarded points based on how which stones were hit. People stood around the targets to convey to the judges how many points were earned for each shot. At first I thought they didn't need to worry too much as these were professionals. But pretty quickly Mercedes noticed that in fact these poor souls needed to dodge out of the way every so often to prevent being hit by a wayward shot. Also, the men shot from behind the women, meaning if any of them mis-shot, the women could be hit in the back. I didn't see it happen, but it definitely could.

The other sport, horseback racing, is a 35km long race. The jockeys range in age from 3 to 9 or 10 (at the very most) years old!! This is because they want light jockeys on the tiny Mongolian horses. These kids ride without a saddle and apparently every so often a child falls off a horse. We definitely saw horses with no children galloping along toward the finish line. Nowadays there are ambulances chasing behind to collect the children who fall off. They had only introduced helmets this very year to help prevent the serious head injuries and deaths that result. Also, every year horses drop dead at the finish line. We were standing near the finish line and there were some very tired looking horses who did not want to continue on. Luckily, we didn't see any deaths or serious injuries.

The two year old horse that comes in last gets a song of empathy written about it, while the top five horses in each race get songs of praise written about them.

The winners of all sports receive titles, honour and monetary prizes. It makes for some tough competition.

I must say the Naadam Festival was pretty amazing and I'm really glad I was in UB for it. Mercedes and I have moved on to the city of Tsetserleg, a bumpy 11h bus ride from UB. We will be touring around the countryside for about a week, sleeping in gers (the traditional nomadic tent), and testing out just how bad my horse allergies are. It is likely there will be no internet access along the way so this may be my last post until the 22nd. Until then, Happy Naadam!

Stair climbing on the Great Wall

Beijing was full of beautiful temples and modern architecture, but nothing can compare to the Great Wall. Really, a trip to Beijing is incomplete without a visit to one of the sections of the wall. Mercedes and I visited the MuTianYu section which is located about a two hour bus ride from downtown Beijing.

I don't really know who would be driving what up and down all the stairs, but I'm glad they were concerned about safety.

We chose this particular part of the wall because it was known to have fewer visitors and have more original sections than others nearby. It also promised to be a more challenging climb than the most visited sections (there's probably a reason for that). Even knowing ahead of time that it was supposed to be a tough hike, I was surprised at how difficult the wall was to climb. It is composed of never-ending stairs, broken up only by the gatehouses which originally provided shelter and served as lookout towers when the wall was used for protection. These days they were mostly used to house tired tourists looking for a reprieve from the scorching sun. The day we visited the wall it was a balmy 38C with a cloudless sky. It made for absolutely amazing photos, but it also made for very sweaty tourists.

When we arrived at the wall, it was suggested that we take the gondola up the side of the mountain to reach the wall to give us more time to explore. Turns out this "gondola" is a two person chair lift with a roof of sorts that was not designed for tall people (I managed to bang my head on the roof as I got off, only to have the guard yell to me after the fact to "watch out").

While this was a random enough way to ascend up the mountainside, the descent was even stranger. It was possible to take the chairlift back down, but the far more exciting option was to take a toboggan down the side of the mountain. A steel track was at some point installed and anyone (over the age of 8) is free to travel down on a tiny sled with a built in brake system. I can definitely say that I never thought the sentence "I tobogganed down from the Great Wall" would come out of my mouth (or even be plausible), but that is what I did. I didn't take any photos while going down, but here's a picture of the track as seen from the chair lift going up.

Upon arriving we were told that the best views were from the last gatehouse accessible to tourists, about a 3km walk (of nothing but up and down stairs) away. I decided to go for it, figuring the views would be worth it. They were not. The walk to the last few gatehouses was straight uphill, and the climb from the second last to the last gatehouse was up about 500 very steep stairs (so steep that descending involved almost bum-sitting my way down). This photo doesn't really convey the steepness, but the rise on each step was probably about 40cm.

I am usually quite comfortable climbing that many steps, but having done nothing but climb stairs for the past hour and doing so in the scorching sun made me quite shaky upon reaching the top. The views were nice, but no better than they had been at many other points along the way. And I would have been able to enjoy these other views without feeling dehydrated and exhausted.

The one benefit of walking so far was that I got entire sections of the wall to myself at times, allowing for some great photos of a tourist-free wall.

To be fair there were some stair-free flat-ish sections, but they were not as prevalent as I'd have desired.

I think what amazed me the most were the vendors who had somehow managed to carry freezers of cold water and beer, and souvenirs, up and down the steps in order to sell to thirsty tourists ready to pay outrageous prices for something to quench their thirst. I'm assuming the umbrella was not taken down each and every day, but it's quite possible it was also carried around.

I finished the day ready for a nap, but pleased with the experience.

Upon arriving back in Beijing, Mercedes and I found Magnum bars for less than $1 Canadian. A perfect ending to the day (for those of you who don't know what a Magnum bar is, well it's pretty well the perfect ice cream bar and normally sells for 3 or 4 times the price).

Although I saw many more exciting things in Beijing, I will not be writing about them as I must also update about Mongolia and the Naadam Festival (a festival of the "three manly sports"). It is pretty much the greatest festival ever. Stay tuned.

Culinary adventures at the Beijing night markets

Beijing has some absolutely amazing food - tasty dumplings, fresh steamed buns and flavourful noodles. It also has some very interesting street food, particularly at the night markets seen around the city.

These markets are marked by their red lanterns (now lit by energy efficient fluorescent bulbs rather than candles) and are well known for their unique protein offerings.

The market is essentially a long row of food vendors all trying to tempt tourists into trying strange and exotic foods.

Upon arriving at one market, a snake on a stick was shoved in my face. Mercedes actually braved up and tried snake after being assured it was quite delicious by some people from our hostel, but claimed it was a horrible soft, mushy texture and far too salty. I decided it fell into the category of meat and didn't fit in with my pescetarian ways.

I suppose starfish may count as seafood, but I was not too keen to try.

Despite the fact that sharks live in the sea they were too mammal-y to even consider trying them. And the sea urchins just looked sharp.

Worst of all I would say were the scorpions still moving on their skewers. One vendor took particular glee in waving them in the faces of unsuspecting female tourists, laughing at their shrieks.

Also available? Dog and cat. Both looked like normal pieces of meat, but a vendor was kind enough to show the origin of the cut of meat to prove the authenticity of his claim (although he showed it too quickly to snap a photo).

Despite all of these awful sounding foods, there were actually quite a few very tasty items available. I tried crab dumplings, fried tofu, sugar coated fruit and fried banana, all of which were delicious. And it was definitely fun watching other brave tourists try all sorts of proteins - insects, reptiles, unusual mammals and more. Better them than me.

Aboard the Trans-Mongolian

First off, sorry for the lack of updates last week. China blocks Blogger along with many other websites like Facebook and Youtube. Every so often I would try to visit a website only to be told that the server did not exist. Even certain search terms on Google were blocked. A few years ago I remember seeing a comparison between Google search results in China and the rest of the world for Tiananmen Square. Well I wasn't even allowed to search the term Tiananmen Square while in Beijing.

I'll update on Beijing soon, but first....my journey to Mongolia!

On Wednesday morning at 7:47 AM, Mercedes and I took off on the Trans-Mongolian train which runs from Beijing through Mongolia before continuing all the way to Moscow. We got off in Ulaan Baatar, the capital of Mongolia.

It took over 12 hours for the train to make its way through China to the Mongolian-Chinese border. The first few hours the train alternated between spectacular views of the mountains and long periods of darkness as we tunneled through the mountains.

Eventually the mountains flattened and the land began to stretch on to eternity. From the outer edges of China (in the appropriately named province of Inner Mongolia) all the way to UB the land did not change. It is big, the Gobi Desert. Vast expanses of arid land with little more than the occasional ger (polite Mongolian term for a yurt, which is the Mongolian nomadic tent) and random herds of horses, sheep, cows, camels or even yaks to break up the scenery.

The train arrived at the Chinese border city of Erlian around 8:30 PM. We finally left the Mongolian border city of Zamid Uud over FIVE HOURS later at 1:47 AM. That time was used to emigrate all passengers out of China, change the wheels on the train cars as Mongolia and China use different tracks, change the restaurant car (Chinese food in Mongolia would simply be unacceptable), immigrate all passengers into Mongolia and who knows what else. It really seems as though a more efficient system should be possible, especially considering this happens multiple times each week, and has been happening for many, many years. But I suppose that it is all part of the adventure.

We finally arrived in UB at around 1:20 PM making the total trip just under 30h. That time passed surprisingly quickly. The ability to get up and walk around, stretch out on my berth and the novelty of it all made for a comfortable journey. I don't know if I'd be saying the same thing had I spent another 3 or 4 days taking the train all the way to China, but I quite enjoyed the journey I did make.

That being said, beers were necessary once we finally made it to the city.

Alright, that is all for that journey, but I will definitely update more on Beijing and what I've seen so far in Mongolia (it includes horsehead fiddles, throat singing and more!)