Ger Camp and horse riding

The next day I felt average after drinking too much the night before and spent the morning writing postcards and talking to Jenny about life in London and what to see there. Just before lunch Jenny, peter and I climbed up another one of the hills near by. The views were amazing. The landscape was similar to home and the weather equally as hot.


In the afternoon we went for a horse ride to a local Nomadic family to hear about their lives. I was given the big horse while everyone easy was given the small Mongolian native horses.


We were not given any helmet and I was a bit concerned about falling off. Our horse riding guide also did not speak any English which added to the fear. In the first few minutes of the ride my horse took off towards the main road. I tried to pull back on the reigns like you normally do to stop a horse but this only made the horse speed up. I was a little freaked out and now of the guides seemed to care when I yelled out for help. Finally I got the horse to stop just before the road. The rest of the ride was fine though he did try to speed up a few times again.

The ride was great fun and it was a wonderful way to see Mongolia. After around 30 mins we reached the nomadic family and got off our horse and went inside. Toya was there to help translate all of our questions to the family and to help us follow the correct etiquette in the ger. We entered the ger and had to walk in a clockwise direction. The ger belonged to a woman and her husband. They lived their with their youngest son who was still not married. Because it was school holidays the family´s grandchildren were visiting. This meant there was around 9 children also sleeping in the ger.


The ger was similar to the ones we stayed in but instead of western beds they had small traditional Mongolian beds. We ate some traditional food which the family had prepared which consisted of yoghurt, cheese, milk tea and biscuits with butter. I really liked the tea and the yoghurt. We asked the woman as many questions as we could think of. I wished I had thought of a few more during the horse ride.

We learnt that Nomadic families spend most of their time just with their families and meet up with other nomadic tribes at naadam festival. They farm all their own food and occasionally ride into town to barter for supply that they can not create themselves. The family moves four times a year and has a regular camp site at each location. They owned the camp site that they stayed at in summer. Toya told me that land ownership had only been introduced to Mongolia in the past 3 years.

After a lovely chat to the Nomadic woman we rode back to camp. I took a different horse because Peterś horse was really small and he looked like he could touch the ground while riding it. His horse was really slow so I made my way home a few km behind the pack. Peter on the other hand had a few issues with my horse and was lead by one of the guides all the way back to camp.

Me on the smaller Mongolian horse

Back at camp no one was up for drink games again so we had hot chocolate in Jenny and my ger with roasted marshmallows over our little pot belly stove.

Gandtegchinlen Khid and the Ger camp

In the morning we took a local bus to the Gandtegchinlen Khid or Gandan temple. The temple is the largest one in Mongolia and managed to survive the communist purge in 1930s. I had read a bit about how Buddism came to Mongolia in the book Trish gave me on Tibet. It appears that the Tibetian were afraid of the Mongolian empire so in an attempt to have them on side they told Chinggis that he was a reincarnation of a holy person. The Tibetians were then included in the empire as spiritual advisers. The temple was really but after Tibet it is hard for anything to compare.

Toya then suggested that we could a horse show as we were going to miss the Naadam Festival. The horse show was around 70km out of town in the Gorkhi Terelj national park close to the Ger camps we were going to stay at. The horse show was a bit of a joke and it felt like the locals had just gotten together to make a bit of money. However I was still happy cos I got to see The archery, wrestling and some horse acrobatics. There was also a throat singer, who made the weirdest noises I have ever heard.

The throat singer

horse archery
archery

Me being Mongolian!
Mongolian wrestlingThe winner

After the show we went to our Ger Camp. I was really excited to be staying in the camp and was glad it wasn't really touristy. It was about 300m over a hill from the tourist camp so we were alone but close to really toilets and the restaurant. Jenny and I got a Ger to ourselves.
Dan, Chris, Dean and I hiked up the near by hills. Some of the climb was really hard and Daniel is like a mountain goat and left the rest of us in his dust.

While hiking the boys managed to scare the hell out of me by talking about bears and wolfs which are often in the area. I kept hearing things are was convinced it was a bear. I had no idea what I would do if i saw a bear or what you were meant to do. Everyone talks about how dangerous Australia is but I would rather a deadly spider over a bear any day. Naturally we didn't see any and made it back to the gers alive. After dinner we played a few drinks games one of the gers.

Ulaanbaatar

We arrived in Ulaanbaatar to be greeted by our guide Toya and her friend Mirror, who was training to be a guide. They took us to a bank to get our money exchanged. You can not get money out in Ulaanbaatar without a VISA card. so lucky I had read ahead in my LP and brought enough Chinese yuan with me cos I don't have a visa card.

After that we went to our hotel. I was really looking forward to a nice hot shower but was very disappointed when I turned on the taps. Mongolia has centre hot water for every suburb. Unfortunately our suburbs hot water was under repairs for the next ý days so I had to have a cold shower. And cold in an understatement. In the words of Jenny," You get an ice cream headache from just washing your hair". It felt like the water had come straight from the north pole! and I could not stand under the shower for any long period of time with out going numb.

After our showers we headed out for lunch and then a look around the town. We had lunch at Nomad cafe which was some of the best food I have eaten this trip. After getting sick of Chinese food it was great to have a veggie soup and real bread. In china you can only get sweet bread.

We went for a walk to the main square and saw the statue of the man himself: Genghis Khan or Chinggis according to the Mongolians.

The main city square in Ulaanbaatar

Genghis Khan looking likt the giant man he was

One of the first things you notice in Ulaanbaatar other than the city looking like a war zone, is that all the signs are written in the Russian Cyrillic alphabet. Our guide Toya told us that the Mongolian language was originally written in sand script but with the introduction of Communism in1924 and the influence from Russia the language was written in Cyrillic. The Mongolian language is a Turkic and sounds very different from Chinese.
Ulaanbaatar looking like a war zone

Ulaanbaatar looking like a war zone
The mixmash of buildings that you find in Ulaanbaatar

The Mongolian people are much larger and healthier looking than the average Chinese person, as their diet consists of meat and dairy. While on the train to Mongolia a local girl told us not to eat any of the vegetable because they come from China and the Chinese poison them. I am not sure if the Chinese really try to poison them but a lack of knowledge about food handling might lead to them making you ill.

Any back to our the tour of Ulaanbaatar. In the main square there is a statue of Damdin Sukhbaatar, who in 1911 with the help of the Soviet Red Army declared Mongolia independent of China.

Sukhbaatar and an old Soviet truck

After look around the square we made our way to a place for dinner which served all you can eat stir fries. I was still full from lunch so could not take fun advantage of the situation. I did notice that Mongolia was a lot more expensive than China.

After dinner we went out for a few drinks at the "tiger beer" beer garden which had live music and felt very westernized. The walk home after drinks was a bit intense. We were followed the whole way by street kids asking for money. It felt a bit like Phenom Penh, Cambodia with this uneasy feeling. The side walk had massive holes in it everywhere and the streets were not well light. I felt like I was going to fall into one of the holes and never be able to get out.

The gang at the beer garden

I had a chat to Toya, our guide about it and she said the city was now very unsafe at night. She had to take a taxi home after dropping us off and said there was a chance she would get robbed. didn't like the idea that everyone was at risk of being robbed.

That night Jenny and I went to bed while the others went out for a few more drinks. Daniel couldn't sleep so went out again at 2am. He tried to get into the club across the road but the door was lock. He was then approached by a large Mongolian man who told Dan to give him lots of money and he would take him to some prostitutes. Daniel kindly declined and ran back to the hotel.

The train from Beijing to Ulaanbaatar

The train to Ulaanbaatar left Beijing at 7,30am. I was in a room of 4 with Jenny, and the two Aussie nurses Tracy and Yeresa.

The train crew Tracy, in red, Jenny and the back across from me and Yeresa front right.

The train ride lasted for around 1 and half days with a five hour border crossing. The ride mainly consisted of eating and hangout in someones cabin.

From the front left Peter, Daniel, Maryanne, Jenny, Tracy, Chris and Yeresa

Daniel, Maryanne and Dean where in a cabin with a random guy called Mathew who was from London and was going to Mongolia to meet his Professor and study rock formations. He was going to spend the next 6 weeks travelling around Mongolia and sleeping in tents. It sounded great fun. I was so jealous!

At the China Mongolia border crossing the bogie have to be changed. In Russia and Mongolia the train runs on 5ft gauge which is slightly larger than the standard gauge used by the rest of the world. I really wanted to see the bogie's be changed so I made everyone stay in the train at the border crossing. It was great to watch. The train was taken in to a shed and each carriage was disconnected.

The wheels and the machine used to lift the train

The carriages were then lifted off the bogie or wheels and all the wheels were removed. Then new bogies were wheeled in by some pulley system and the carriages were re lowered and reattached. It was so much fun to watch and we were all taking photos out the windows.

The train lifted and the wheels removed

The wheels being moved into place

After the excitement of the bogies I had a few drinks with Maryanne, Dean, Daniel and Mathew.I woke up early the next morning after getting to bed at around 5 to find that we were travelling through the Gobi desert. It was great to see blue sky after so much pollution in China. The Mongolian landscape was amazing with small ger tents dotted in the most isolated places.

Ger tents in the middle of no where

Slowly we got closer to Ulaanbaatar small towns appeared which where a combination of ger tents and wooden houses. Finally we reached the city of Ulaanbaatar. A home for around 1 million people. Even though it is the capital it still is a mixture of ger tents, soviet concrete buildings and wooden houses.

The city with a mix mash of buildings

Meeting the Vodka train team

The next day I slept in heaps. I went down to the expat hutong area for breakfast and then went shopping for the finally things I needed before I left for my big train ride. I went back to the hostel to check out of my room and check in to the room which was booked for me via the Vodka train tour. It took me around 1 hour to get the receptionist to understand what I was talking about. It seemed very odd if Vodka train normally used this hostel that she had no idea about the tour or a pre booked room!!

After becoming rather frustrated I went for lunch with an English girl, called Mini, who was on her gap year. She was waiting for her friend who was meant to have arrived the day before from south America. She was a bit stressed where he was and was getting sick of waiting around without any news. After an extremely long lunch we returned to find her friend waiting at the hotel.

I went up to my room and meet my new travel buddy for the Vodka train. Her name was Jenny and she was a journalist from London who had been travelling for the past 5 months through New Zealand, Australia and south east Asia. She had just been really ill for the past few days in China and was really ready to move on to a new place. After chatting for a while we headed down stair for our information session and to meet the others.

I decided to do the Vodka train tour as my Dad was not very keen on me travelling through Russia alone. The vodka train claimed to be for young independent travellers who did not want to feel like they where on a tour. In each tour you were meet by a guide who would take you to your hotel and tell you about what there is to do and see in the city, then it is up to you to work out your own plan.

The team consisted of two Germany guys called Peter and Bjorn, 5 people from New Zealand, Maryanne, Dean, Chris, Emma and Daniel and two other Aussie girls, Tracy and Yeresa and Jenny and I. Mark was our guide in Beijing and spoke very little English and recommended if we wanted to eat breakfast that we should go to McDonalds. At the initial meeting he was meant to tell us about the trip and important information like could we really not get money out in Mongolia. The whole meeting was a waste of time expect we learnt that we left for Mongolia in two days time at 6,30am.

After the meeting Peter, Bjorn, Tracy, Yeresa, Daniel and I went out for a drink at the guitar bar that I went to the other night with Dad and Steph. Everyone seemed really nice and we got to know each other better.

The next day I rented a bicycle and rode around Beijing. First I went to the Lama Temple and chatted with a monk from Tibet. He was really sad and told me that he had been sent to Beijing to work at the Lama temple and could not return to Tibet. I took him at I had been in Tibet and we talked about how it was changing. It was really nice and the temple was interesting even if it did not contain anything that was from Tibetan Buddhists.

The Lama Temple

After the temple I rode to the temple of heaven park and the shopping centre and got some last minute things for my trip.

The temple of heaven park

That night I had dinner with the Germans, Jenny and Daniel at the peaking duck restaurant and then went out to a roof top bars for a few drinks. The Germans where both Chemist and studying their PhD in Heidelberg Germany. Daniel was a carpenter from, Nelson NZ, who was moving to England at the end of the trip to try and find some work.


The next day I did not do much and went out for a few drinks with the others. The next morning we left for Mongolia.

Summer Palace and more fun in Beijing

We took a local bus to the Summer palace in the morning. The last time we were their the lakes and rivers were frozen over and the place was in need of a new paint job. I felt it was fitting to see the summer palace in summer.

The whole palace has been restored since the last time I saw it. It looked fanastic and I was really happy to see China putting in effort to restore such amzing sights for the Olympics. We could not see all the temples due to restoration which for fine cos we needed most of the day to see everything that was open.

After a long bus ride back to the hostel we sent to the acrobatics. It was held at what looked like the local school hall. Most of the people in the performance looked around high school age. The show was great but very amateur. I liked the contortionist but it looked so wrong to see them turn themselves upside down and bend the wrong ways.

After the acrobatics we went to dinner in the expat hutong street. We had the best Indian that I have ever eatten . It was really well presented and tasted amazing. After dinner we went to the guitar bar and watch two guitarist play.

The next day we went shopping on of the big shopping centres in Beijing. They sold copies of everything. I did not need to buy anything so helpped Dad and Steph bargin with the shop attendents. Dad had a bit a of trouble getting the prices that he had paid last time in China so went to another market to try his luck. While he was gone I sat and talked to some local girls who owned a shoe store and helpped them sell their shoes. It was amazing how many people did not even notice that I was not Chinese.

After shopping we had peaking duck for dinner and I took the bus with Dad and Steph to the train station. It was really hard to say good bye as I had really enjoyed travelling with them and was not going to see them again for a while.

After farewells I tried to take the bus back to the hostel but all the buses on that line were cancelled. So after waiting for 45mins I took a taxi back. As I knew the way back the taxi driver gave me a discount on my fare! How nice is that!

The Great Wall

Early in the morning we took a tour bus to the Great Wall. The bus took us to Jinshanling and we were to walk along the wall to Simatai. The walk was mean to be only 10km but we were told it would take at least 4 hours to walk it. The last time I was at the great Wall it was freezing cold and I was sick this time I was hoping to walk more than 20m.

We had the choice of walking for 30mins up to the wall or taking the cable cart up. As my Dad wanted to save himself for walking up the wall, he took the cable cart and Steph and I walked. The plan was to meet at the top, however the cable cart ended about 6 watch tower behind where the walk started. This meant Dad had to walk an extra 6 watch towers. I tried to wait for him but gave up and sent him a message that I was walking slowing with an Aussie guy we met on the bus called Mike. Dad on the other hand had made friends with a local who took him on a short cut and was now ahead of us. In the end we found each other and walked with Mike to Simatai. Steph on the other hand had power walked off and we were joking that she would be waiting for hours until we finally reached the end.

Walking up to the wall

The Wall was amazing. I still can not comprehend how they made this massive wall so many years ago. It stretches out as far as the eye can see, balancing along the peaks of mountains. Some of the walking was really hard with steep plunges and scrambling ascents. Also the Jinshanling part of the wall had not be restored so was falling apart below your feet and in area if you were not careful could have easily fallen off the side of the wall.

When the end was finally in sight, Dad was not the only one who was sick of walking. Dad, Mike and I took the flying fox down off the wall. I was a bit scared at first of the thought of taking the flying fox but it was great fun in the end. We find Steph at the Restaurant at the end of the walk. That night we got back to the hostel at 8pm and I felt very average. I went to bed while Dad and Steph went out for dinner at a street cafe in the expat hutong area behind our hostel.