Ulaanbaatar to Beijing

18. August 2007 - 19. August 2007

Baynaa took us to the train station in Ulaanbaatar in the morning and after getting on the train we again had a stinky compartment - we were sharing with two Italians who absolutely reeked of unwashed clothes and unwashed bodies. It was disgusting and we really didn't enjoy the ride very much. Thankfully it only took around 30 hours.

We travelled through very barren looking countryside - the edges of the Gobi desert. And saw a lot of camels and flat, sandy and dusty landscape.

Lena and I got out our Chinese textbooks and we tried to brush up on our little Mandarin we can speak. Crossing the border into China late at night was an experience, as we all had to leave the train (the carriages had to be put on a different undercarriage, as the rails are a different gauge). At the station we all had to go through customs and get our visas checked and then we had to wait for our train to come back. The station was blasted with dreadful chinese pop and easy listening classical music... But we were in the fresh air and didn't have to smell the Italians!

We arrived at Beijing Railway Station at lunchtime the following day, managed to queue for a taxi and got to our hostel without a hitch. And the hostel turned out to be more of a hotel: clean, friendly staff and cheap!

Mongolia - Stepperiders

14. August 2007 - 18. August 2007

We were picked up from the train station and drove straight out of Ulaanbaatar to a ger camp about an hours drive away from the capital. The camp is a small business run by Mendee and his wife Baynaa. We had booked it on the internet and it was absolutely fantastic. We can only recommend it: www.stepperiders.com

The camp is tucked away in a valley on the side of a hill with a breathtaking view and no civilisation in sight. There are three gers for the guests (nice and clean and warm), a ger for meeting and eating and two gers for cooking and living. Also after the disgusting toilets on the train, the latrine-toilets at the camp were spotlessly clean and wonderful! There is also a shower with water that is either heated on the stove or by the sun.

The first two days in the camp we spent with a very nice English couple - Jane and Andy - and Baynaa and her two children - Tamujin and Anujin, as Mendee was on a horse trek with some Americans. We relaxed, went walking in the lovely countryside, helped to collect cow dung for the fire, played with the children (that mostly consisted of us playing "horse" with them and carrying them on our backs until we were gasping for breath) and I even braved the horses the second day.

I strapped on a helmet and jumped on my little Mongolian horse Andy and I had named Clive. Lena and the two others gave me good pointers and off we went with our guide Hassaa. And I even got the hang of it after a while and enjoyed myself! It was a lot of fun and exhilarating to canter accross the steppe.

On our way back to camp we were invited by a Mongolian family to their ger for some Arak - fermented mare's milk. It tasted like sour buttermilk with a slight vinegar taste. Not really great, but not really bad either. I am sure it is ok if you get used to it. The inside of the ger was extremely warm, as the family had just slaughtered a goat that was being butchered in front of the ger and were cooking parts of the meat on the stove in the ger. We were also offered dried yoghurt that looked like biscuits, but tasted like very, very strong Pecorino. The children gobbled them like sweets - we definitely preferred the Arak.

We stayed for four days at the stepperiders camp, enjoying every minute of it. The food was really good, and Baynaa and Mendee were extremely friendly and helpful hosts. We were very sad to leave, because it was so peaceful and relaxing.

Irkutsk to Ulaanbaatar

13. August 2007 - 14. August 2007

We boarded the train to Ulaanbaatar at five o’clock in the morning and were not very happy about the fact that we had to share our compartment with the big, black and stinky dog „Tim“. Not only did „Tim“ stink, he also bit Lena in her shoe! Thankfully „Tim“ and his Russian owners left the train after about 9 hours. We were then joined by a very nice Russian woman and her son. After hours of waiting at the Russian border, we finally drove on into Mongolia. There, customs only took a fraction of the time. Also the people seemed much more relaxed and friendly.

A Few Days at Lake Baikal

9. August 2007 - 12. August 2007

We had booked a home-stay in Listvjanka on the shore of Lake Baikal. After arriving at Irkutsk we were picked up by mini bus and driven there. To our great surprise Anne and Malcolm - the couple we had shared a compartment on the train with - were also staying in the very same flat with us! Our host Svetja worked at the local sanatorium and only spoke Russian. But we managed to communicate with our little phrase book and a lot of smiling. Svetja had two grown-up children who had been camped out to the family's datsha. Svetja would make a Russian breakfast every morning at nine. It included bread, jam, cheese and meats. And every day of our stay somehting special like sweeet dumplings with quark filling or lovely deep-fried pancakes with sour cream and home-made jam. We got our own set of keys, so we could come and go as we pleased.

Listvjanka used to be a tiny fishing village squeezed bewteen the mountains and the shore of Lake Baikal. It has turned into one of the main tourist places on the lake, as it is easily accessible from Irkutsk. Rich Russians have built themselves little castles - and I mean castles eith towers and turrets! - right on the lake-front. Next to these new post-modern horrors of architecture the tiny wooden, Siberian houses with their colourful windows and carvings seem strangely out of place. I am sure they will all have disappeared from Listvjanka in a couple of years, replaced by more castles and modern buildings.

The tourist information in Listvjanka is staffed by a clique of bored Russian girls that can speak a little English. But don't even bother asking for information or a map of the area, as all you will get is a bored stare and the answer: "We don't know." or "Sorry, the maps sold out yesterday!" Why bother having this tourist office? It is the second worst place in Listvjanka, only surpassed by the cafe next to the tourist office! If you want ot be thrown back into communism, come to this place! Sit down and enjoy the spectacular view of the lake and the harbour. And enjoy it for a while longer, because although there are six waiters and waitresses nobody will bring you a menue! The staff will completely ignore you, even if you wave! Enjoy the great view. Then, after a very long time a waitress will come with a menue. She will not smile and hand you the menue without cathcing your eye. After you have chosen your order wait again for ages. And I mean ages! Then place your order and wait (again). And then the food will come... The only positive thing about this place! The food we had was reasonably priced and very good! The salad with Omul (a local salmon), potatoes, tomatoes and mayonaise was excellent.

The fish we ate in Listvjanka was fantastic! Cheaper than the meat dishes and always really nice. And at the other restaurant we went to the service was even good!

Lena and I spent our second day hiking in the surrounding mountains and we ended up at a fantastic sandy beach on the lake, where we went swimming. The water was absolutely lovely - cool, refreshing, clean and very clear! We walked for hours without seeing anyone, except the occasional Russian camper. At one point Lena became a little worried, as we had to climb along a narrow path, a sheer cliff dropping into the lake... But we arrived back in Listvjanka safely in the evening - tired and with aching legs.

Today we took the boat to Irkutsk and will leave for Ulaan Bator tomorrow morning at 5:30.

Moscow to Irkutsk with the Trans Siberian Railway

5. August 2007 - 8. August 2007

We flew from Berlin to Moscow on the 5th. Lena's parents and brother had driven us to the airport with our back-packs stuffed to the limit for half a year abroad.

My hand luggage was checked for explosives - I had to go into a little room and the security people used an ancient machine to suck particles from the inside of my bags. Then they put the vacuum device into an even more ancient looking computer to get an analysis... pretty bizarre...

After arriving at Moscow Domodevo and taking the express train into town, we managed to use the metro to get to Komsomol'skaja metro station. We locked up our bags at one of the three train stations and tried to find out from where our train would depart at 11 o'clock that night: Nobody at the information desk spoke English, so after some guessing and looking around we assumed correctly that the train to Irkutsk would leave from Jaroslavskij station.

Lena and I hung around the station for a few hours, shocked by the cliché that nearly everybody was either drinking or completely drunk! Normal looking young menwere out cold, lying on benches or propping each other up, or in a drunk embrace - snoring quietly.

From Moscow to Irkutsk we shared our compartment with a lovely English couple from Norwich - Anne and Malcolm. Thank God we weren't thrown in with the Germans in the compartment next to us. Anne and Malcolm dubbed them the "Happy Clappies". They started singing and played the guitar at 10 in the morningand stopped late at night. Luckily they quite often departed for the resataurant carriage to continue their singing there... They behaved as if they were part of a Christian sect or something...

Every carriage has its own attendant - nearly all of them women, dressed in blue and white uniforms. At every stop they lock the toilets, open the doors and wipe the hand rails with a little cloth. After two days we also found out that tere wasa shower in one of the carriages, and we happily paid the 111 Rubels to be able to use it! The food in the restaurant carriage was ok, but too expensive for what it was, but we bought our supplies from loclas selling fruit, vegetables, bread, dumplings, drinks etc. at some of the stops. The rural places had a much better and wider range range of products than the stops in the cities.

The landscape varied only subtlely: birch trees, wide and open pastures and the occasional small village or town with expansive vegetable gardens. We covered 6700 km from Berlin to Irkutsk, crossing seven time zones, and our sleeping pattern is a shambles...

Off and away

Dear Friends,

Tomorrow morning Lena and I are heading for Moscow to board the Trans-siberian Railway in the evening! We are really excited and will post something new about our trip as soon as we get the chance to.

Daniel