Ulaanbataar to Beijing (or: The Very Long Train Ride - Part 2)

this part of the journey was going to be quite short, we departed UB at 8am and arrived in Beijing at 2pm the following day. still we were going to be passing through some interesting scenery (and a change of gauge).



in many ways i think the first part of the trip was more exciting - 5 days with about a dozen foreigners amongst 400 hundred odd locals. when you're the odd ones out you tend to bond much more quickly. the 2 georgian blokes who operated the russian restaurant car didn't speak a word of english (neither did their menu) but we got along with them really well and had a couple of great nights. the restaurant cars on the mongolian and chinese legs were cheaper, cleaner, spoke more english and, well.. were more restauranty. the trains during the leg to beijing was also predominantly tourists with few locals. the stops were unexciting with no dodgey goods being sold and the attendants running the show were much stricter and more likely to keeps things clean (like the toilets).



i was sharing my cabin with the australian bloke (only other one on the train as far as i could tell) and two mongolian women (who slept for pretty much the whole 30 hours straight). the pom was, again, way down the other end of the train so i spent most of my time with the two groups of dutch friends i had met along the way. although there was less mingling on this leg the scenery was much more exciting. after passing through the gobi and crossing the border (again a lengthy process although we were lifted in the air at one stage to change the wheels) we immediately encountered many more people, typically tending to their crops or (somewhat mysteriously) planting rows of trees next to the rail line.



as we drew closer to beijing the countryside became more hilly and we even caught glimpses of wall fragments (the 'great'ness and genuineness of which was hotly disputed). we passed through steep valleys, alongside wide rivers and under impressive bridges. unfortunately we also passed through countless tunnels of all lengths which made photography a 'blink-and-you'll-miss-it' kind of sport. on encountering the outskirts of beijing the scenery changed to heavy industry, construction and smog (although i've been repeatedly informed it's just fog, apparently common in springtime).



beijing itself it very busy, very neat and very large. at every opportunity there are neat flower beds (where in UB there were dust gardens) and the streets and back streets are lined with locals playing board or dice games and tiny shops selling all kinds of animal, vegetable and mineral. beijing is surrounded by 6 (!!) ring roads and the CBD is apparently about 40km across so you can imagine the size of the tourist map i picked up. navigating the streets is however very easy, as most signs have both english and mandarin and the city has a sensible grid layout. after leaving the train i said goodbye to all my friends and set off to my own (pre-booked) accomodation. after showering i set off down the street to find some lunch and promptly bumped into most of them again doing the same.



that evening i went to the see the national acrobatics group perform which was nothing short of spectacular. on the bus on the way there i met two australian girls who were about to set off on the train towards st petersburg. it turns out kat had studied at UQ so we exchanged information before the show. on the way home i again bumped into the (bloody!) dutch who were on the way to check out beijing's (apparently only??) bar and club district. well 'bar street' turned out to be a deceptively long walk, during which we didn't pass a single bar. when we got there though there were plenty of bars and people and the street surrounded a lake which was quite picturesque at nighttime. there was karaoke, heaps of tourists and expensive beer so we didn't stay long. on the way home (and only about 200m from my hotel!!) i found a bar with a mix of locals and foreigners, cheap beer, a live band and a much better atmosphere than anything we found earlier in the evening.



so this morning i woke up to the sound of thunder and heavy rain and decided to do a few inside things until the weather calmed down somewhat. the next couple of days i will check out the (real) wall (take the 919 express bus from some bus station) and the central tian'an men square and forbidden city and gardens complex. i might also swing by one of the closer markets to see if i can get my wallet stolen for a nice leather jacket.

ps. i'll be home tuesday afternoon if i don't get a chance to write again before i leave.

Ulaanbataar

Now being completely and totally prepared i had not read a single book about the trans-siberian railway or any of the cities along the way until i was on the train and borrowed someone else's book. however, reading about mongolia i was getting more and more keen to arrive and more and more disappointed that i was only going to spend 3 days there! mongolia has a population of about 2-3 million with over 1 million of them living in the capital UB. the rest of the population still live nomadic lives moving about the rest of the country side. so basically mongolia's landscape is in almost pristine condition with few townships marking the rolling hills and steppes.



having only 3 days we (the pom, the belgian and i) decided to try and see a bit of everything and spend half the time in the terelj national park (about an hour and a half out of UB) and half the time in the city. well for a predominantly nomadic peoples (even in UB half the pop lives in tents) they have made a good effort at creating a very large city. the air when we arrived was thick with dust from the strong wind and 'gardens' (read: patches of fenced dirt) which are everywhere in the city, it was like a heavy smog and made it so that you could only just make out the hills which surround UB. the city itself is composed mainly of communist style appartment blocks which are in an advanced state of decay. the written language is a mix of traditional mongolian script (looks like a cross between chinese and arabic) and quasi-russian (looks like russian but apparently is not). actually speaking more than a couple of words is a laughable prospect but the people are invariably very friendly.



around the central square area and parliament building there are several nice and large buildings however the appeal of the large square was diminished somewhat by the clouds of dust blowing across it from the gardens surrounding it. while in the city i visited the mongolian historical museum which despite being housed in a smallish building was packed with information in english, rock art and tools (some dating back to the early paleolithic - about 800,000 BC), spear heads, whole rooms dedicated to Genghis Khan and objects from the pre-, post- and communist times. i also checked out the lama monastery which contained a 30m high statue of some buddhist deity and a lot of pigeons.



definitely the best aspect to UB was the food. it was very big and very nice and very cheap. the first night we ate at a place with the slogan 'meat is for men, grass is for animals' and that was pretty much the theme everywhere. the currency is one of those in which there are way too many zeros on every note but we had lunch for about $2 and dinner for $5. the final night we ate at 'The Great Mongol' - opposite the state department building near the state circus for those interested - with some people i had met in the national park and a local guy on whose couch Maarten intended to sleep for a couple of weeks. the house brewed beer was very good and i had a mixed grill. ok it wasn't very mongolian but there were 5 types of meat and it arrived on 3 plates!! it cost about $11 and the mongolian ate my salad.



the national park was beautiful. endless rolling green hills dotted with Gers (tent houses), horses and rocky peaks. i spent my time horse riding, meeting a local family and climbing some of the peaks surrounding my ger. the local family served me some sort of yak milk tea, little dried bits of curdled yoghurt (apparently a sweet, but basically yak milk which has been left outside for a couple of days) and some home made bread. i politely tried a bit of everything. camping next to me was group of 5 people including an australian bloke and 4 (more bloody!) dutch. we spent that evening playing a local game with goat's anklebones.



i was sad to be leaving but nearly everyone i had met so far was going to be travelling on the same train to beijing so i wasn't going to be lonely...

Moscow to Ulaanbataar (or: The Very Long Train Ride - Part 1)

Just a quick hello from Ulaanbataar, Mongolia!!



We arrived this morning at 7.30am after 5 days on the train from Moscow. The journey was quite amazing and definitely a great experience. The scenery gradually changed from spruce and pine forests in central Russia to rolling grassy hills and frozen lakes in Mongolia. The view was dotted at regular intervals with muddy wooden villages and wide icy rivers. Luckily we could open some of the windows and i was able to take a couple of photos - capturing the experience however was impossible.



the train itself was no less exciting. i was sharing my 4 berth cabin with a young Belgian ecologist named Maarten but we were the only english speaking passengers in our half of the train! it seemed nearly everyone else on board was a mongolian trades-person carrying dubiously large quantities of leather goods or clothing. most cabins were completely packed full of goods, with mongolian women and children perched on top while their husbands were all in the next cabin drinking vodka and arguing.



although none spoke english they were all very friendly and more than willing to wander into your cabin uninvited to recount tales of Genghis Khan and the mighty mongolian empire (in Mongolian) or to share some vodka (at like 9am in the morning). Or more usually just to see if you were in need of a genuine leather jacket or boots.



at dinner the first night we discovered that we weren't the only tourists on board as we passed through a carriage (which became known as the netherlands) on the way to dinner containing 16 dutch tourists (the carriage, not the dinner). we also discovered a young english journalist way down the other end of the train perched amongst several mongolian women and a lot of new leather handbags.



so we spent the journey swapping guide books to siberia, playing cards, learning dutch and buying 2 minute noodles off the locals at station platforms. about 30min before every stop there was a mass movement of goods throughout the train as the mongolians prepared to move their entire stock onto the platform. and at every station there was inevitably several hundred locals awaiting teh arrival of our train. what proceeded during the 10min stops was like a local market in fast forward! if we were lucky we could push our way through and stretch our legs for a couple of mins before resuming our journey.



so there will be more detail and hopefully some photos later but that's all for now!