In Ulan Ude I boarded my last Russian train, headed for the Mongolian border. While I was glad to have visited Russia, I was also glad to leave. Despite the Siberian sunshine, my general impression of Russia was one of gloom. With the notable exceptions of Galina and Sveta in St. Petersburg, and of my young guide in Irkutsk, I had found the people dour. The grimy cities offered crumbling sidewalks, traffic gridlock and soulless apartment blocks. On the plus side I had enjoyed the smaller towns, appreciated the Russian Orthodox churches and icons, and truly loved the countryside - so much so that, having seen the Siberian forests dressed in autumnal gold, I now wanted to return to see the winter snows.
Also coloring my reaction to Russia had been my visa problems (I won't be using G&R International if I return, believe me!) which loomed larger as I neared the border. I also worried about the custom's declaratsia I had not acquired on entry - according to the warnings I had read I could have all my cash and traveler's checks confiscated, so I rearranged my money belts with one, holding just a couple of hundred dollars and my ATM card to be shown to the custom's officers, while the other, I hoped, remained hidden.
But it seemed that news of the change to the regulations, which now required only amounts over $3,000 to be declared, had actually reached the Mongolian border, and the woman handing out the exit forms told us to cross out the currency question. I sighed with relief as the guards disappeared with our passports and forms. In my compartment we settled down to play Yahtzee, blackjack and liar for the three hours it took before our passports were returned, the train pulled out and the toilets were unlocked. A few minutes later we reached the border, another set of guards handed out another set of forms and we endured another three hour wait. I'm still wondering why the Mongolian entry form, was in Chinese (kindly translated for us by the provodnik).
The friendly woman running my Ulaan Baator homestay told me that she had two daughters (I think I was sleeping in their bedroom) and that her 80-year-old father spent the summers living in a ger (yurt) in the mountains. Mountains like those ringing Ulaan Baator: once a scenic delight and now an environmental disaster as they trapped the city's pollution.
After a quick shower I headed downtown, where I could hardly miss the Soviet influence: disastrous pavements, roads wide enough for tanks and monumental buildings surrounding the central square. The temperature seemed near freezing, and even wearing my thermal underwear top I shivered - until the sun came out in the afternoon and I boiled. After changing money (cash, no TCs) at the Post Office I was able to buy orange juice, cappuccino and fried rice at the nearby City Coffee, before wandering round the Choijin Lama temple, which seemed to be inactive. Still, I was glad to see the Chinese-style lions, Bhutanese-style thangkas and fierce guardian deities, but horrified by the dismembered corpses, blood dripping from severed heads and limbs, that covered the ceilings.
In general I find Asian museums, dusty and badly labeled, disappointing - Shanghai being a notable exception - so I was pleasantly surprised by the Natural History Museum's fabulous dinosaur exhibit. This featured mounds of dinosaur eggs, some looking like cannonballs, and immense skeletons, some two stories tall. The eggs were labeled as being 75 million years old, and nearby were plant remains twice as old. Impressive!
Next day I left town in style, with an eight-seat minivan, guide and driver all to myself. I had had my doubts about visiting Mongolia, afraid it would be flat and boring, but the trip to the tourist ger camp where I would spend two nights was enlivened by hills rising to either side and groups of cattle, sheep, goats and horses. Camel country is further south, but we saw a few of those, too.
Our first stop, just outside Ulaan Baator, was at a large cairn, where each of us added a stone to the pile and then circled it clockwise to ensure a good journey. Given the state of the (heavily potholed) road, the precaution seemed justified. While motorbikes are gaining favor among the young, dirt tracks and open grasslands seem expressly designed for the traditional horses.
My guide filled me in on the current political situation: the June elections returned 32 Communists, 32 Democrats and 4 "others" to the State Great Hural (Parliament). Despite the dispatch of a delegation to seek advice from the Israelis, well accustomed to coalition governments, the deadlock remained unresolved.
Soviet rule in Mongolia (in what was once called Outer Mongolia, that is, Inner Mongolia being part of China) was marked not only by the "urban planning" that produced central Ulaan Baator, but by a forced transition from a nomadic lifestyle to collective farming. This did not long survive the end of Communism, after which the farms were broken up and the livestock shared out. My guide said that two hard winters quickly separated those who had adapted to the new system and prepared properly from those still expecting government handouts. The latter lost their flocks and migrated to the city, which no doubt explained the child beggars I encountered there. Capitalism in action?
It took several hours, broken by a few photo stops and a toilet break involving some low bushes, to reach the tourist ger camp, full of tourist gers. Although superficially the same as gers intended for year-round use, these lacked both floors and adequate insulation. A brazier lit in the evening turned my ger into a temporary sauna, but the heat soon disappeared through the chimney hole. But although I found the ger chilly I couldn't fault the food - good, hot and plentiful.
The first afternoon we visited a real ger. The mares tethered outside were a sign that the elderly male occupant was making arak, fermented mare's milk. I found it tasted a little sour, and not particularly alcoholic. His wife had gone to a new ger raising, which marked a marriage (celebrated when the first baby shows up). The groom's family builds the ger, the bride's family furnishes it, and both sides provide the (essential) animals. My guide's favorite refrain was "everyone knows everyone", which certainly helps when looking for a nomad's current camp, but may be an exaggeration in a country with a population nearing three million.
Next day we drove over reasonable roads to the monastery built on the site of Genghis Khan's fabled capital, Karakorum. Alas, only a few stones are left of Mongolia's Rome, briefly capital of an empire even larger than Rome's. Indeed, ever since Vienna I had been crossing land that once knew the ferocity of the "Tartar hordes", but like all empires it had become only a memory (although that memory is still quite vivid in Russia, I believe).
After a picnic lunch by a swift, silver river we visited a container market - shipping containers were used as shops. We were waiting for a Dutch tour group to show up. Gas prices had risen so fast that my guide had had to bring along extra funds for them, otherwise they would have been stranded.
As in Siberia, the horizon was far distant in Mongolia, the sky an immense blue bowl above me, and the first, cloudless, night the stars made a brilliant display. I was sorry to return to Ulaan Baator, where I did a little shopping (having to store my day pack in a locker before I was allowed to browse the shelves), spent a little time on the 'net, and indulged in some Western style food at Chez Bernard. Mongolia would be a great place for a trek on horseback, but its capital has little allure.
The train from Ulaan Baator to Beijing was full of tourists. I shared with a British couple and the first American I had met in quite a while - in fact I couldn't remember the last one. The countryside turned more and more sandy until we were crossing true desert - the Gobi. As with any desert viewed at speed it became boring, but we knew that the real excitement of this part of the trip was at the border, where the carriages were jacked up to allow the bogies to be changed - from the wider Russian to the narrower Chinese gauge. The operation was smooth, fast and hard to photograph from inside the train. It took a lot longer to process the paperwork, before we could finally move on into China. I was ready for the comforts of Beijing, but first I would spend a couple of nights in Datong.
Originally sent from Yogyakarta, Indonesia, 21 January, 2005
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