The Gobi Desert. One of the harshest environments in the world...

Arnika gives the fermented camels milk a try

Day three of thirteen is spent travelling to the first real town of our tour. A seven or eight hour drive further south into the Gobi we drove to Dalanzadgad. The journey was nothing too exciting apart from the oppourtunity we got to try fermented camels milk. While driving along some rather empty piece of country there happened to be a man sitting on the side of the road. Our awesome driver Gana not being able to tell us what he was doing pulls over and starts talking to the man. The next thing we have an old soft drink bottle full of some milk like substance in the van. “Camel”, Gana says. Looking into our food guide of Mongolia where we see that a local delicacy is fermented camels milk. Skeptical about it we each took turns having a sip. After one sip, there was no need to re-try just in case we didn't catch the flavour the first time. It was absolutely horrible. Think of a nice beer, maybe stienlager pure, then mix it with milk, then leave it out in the sun for a few days, finally put a little camel urine into the mix.

Some locals on their motorbike, check the awesome head scarf

A marmot sits up for a photo

I wait for a hitch, it doesn't come, I'm still waiting till this day

Later in the day we arrived in Dalanzadgad. The first thing we noticed upon coming into the lovely paved town was the ridiculous signs pointing out that trees are the way of the future for Mongolia. This was rather ironic seeing after driving through Mongolia for three days we hadn't seen a single tree. But supposedly South Korea is planting lots of trees near Dalanzadgad LINK. Other than the sweet signs Dalanzadgad doesn't have much else going for it. Once you get out of the very small town centre there are no other paved roads and just sad square blocks of peoples houses. But interesting enough everyone actually lives in gers even though they are in a town and therefore not really packing up and moving down the valley every few months. This is like the old meets new, with traditional homes that have modern utilities like electricity but still not sewerage or water systems.

The sun sets over Dalanzadgad

Mongolian horses roam the steppe

The gang walks down into the ice gorge

After plugging in all our electronic devices we headed off to the town centre where there was a local market and a monastery. The market was basically just a place where country people come in to sell their animal carcasses and in return get some supplies for the countryside, so nothing really interesting for us apart from an ice cream. The sun set nicely over the monastery, night time came in, some vodka was drunk before heading to bed.

A goats skull marks a sacred site in the ice gorge

The ice gorge without a much ice

Deep in the ice gorge where the sun melts the ice

The next day we headed off for two days of exploring around the Gurvan Saikhan National Park. First destination was the ice gorge at Yolyn Am. After walking right past the actual gorge we walked around for two hours trying to find it and instead explored some scenic hills, we turned around and realised that the gorge was right near the entrance and so quickly walked down through it. The gorge was really impressive being a rather deep cut through a tightly winding valley. Along the gorge there are lots of sacred stone piles which give the place a magical feeling. But it was getting well into the afternoon so we headed off to the Bayanzag Flaming Cliffs.

The flaming cliffs I never really saw, thanks Tom for the photo

From the gorge it was about a three hour drive. Within an hour of driving I started to feel rather ill. We stopped along the way at some random yak statues, but I couldn't pull myself out of the van. Another hour down the road we were at the Flaming Cliffs, feeling terrible I hoped out the van because I really wanted to see a dinosaur fossil as which the Flaming Cliffs are famous for. I opened the van door and get out, basically I collapse onto the ground. Being a hard man, I still think I can enjoy the cliffs and so the drivers after checking whether I was still alive drive off to the other side of the valley where they'd pick us up after we'd found some fossils for ourselves.

Meet Gana our driver, my best Mongolian friend

I stood up with confidence, but the feeling was short lived. Everyone else was now getting into licking dirt to see if something would stick to their tongues which would confirm it being some kind of fossil. (please don't read the next wee bit if you don't want to read something disgusting.) After finding someone with some toilet paper in their pocket I had to find a small trench and lay my own dinosaur eggs. Soon the lower half of my body had evacuating its interior, but that was not enough. After catching a whiff of all the processed mutton I'd been eating the top half of my body evacuated itself through the dental exit. A delightful mixture of last nights mutton and lunch times self made pasta was now covering some undiscovered dinosaur bones. Feeling more relieved I kicked some dust over it to give someone in the future a nice surprise for when they are licking the dirt in search of a fossil.

This is me about to die

I'm stumble across the valley of dinosaur bones

I next had to doing a somewhat short walk across the valley. Normal people wouldn't find this too much of an extreme journey, but I was feeling like passing out. So being encouraged by Arnika and Tom, I crossed the ancient dinosaur valley to collapse into the waiting van. I spent the evening and night not enjoying life in a ger while throwing up and desecrating the squat which happened to be the most exposed squat in Mongolia, with only a small two foot high three sided wall stopping the bone chilling wind.

The girls walk get lost in the snow covered sand dunes

Thankfully the next morning I awoke feeling a lot better. So the journey continued, I didn't really take much notice of what was going on outside of the van on this day, instead just concentrated on the back of my eye lids and turned my body into recovery mode. Waking up, I found we'd arrived at another amazing location. The Khongoryn Els are Mongolia's largest set of sand dunes. Stretching over 100km, it felt as though we were in the middle of a classic sand dessert insert of the more scrub filled Gobi. Here the nomad family we were staying with owned a herd of camel that we got to ride up to the dunes. Seeing that their was only five camels and nine of us tourists we rode the camels in two parts. That is the first group rode to the dunes, were dropped off to play in them while the camels came back to the gers to pick the second group up then lead them to the dunes and pick up the first group and take them back to the ger and then return to pick up the second group. I was part of the second group and we got to the dunes after a pretty fun camel ride. Unfortunately the weather was changing and a little bit of snow was starting to fall. But we stayed in the dunes expecting the camels to return soon enough. After two hours of standing on the dunes which were now white with snow we finally saw instead of camels, our van coming back to pick us up. We ended up with only half a camel ride because the camel herder had just decided to let the camels rest instead of picking up the stranded tourists.

Camels are awesome, I wish i could bring one home

Me on a camel, woah!!! Misty the camel is the best camel ever.

I stand on the sand dunes while the snow begins

The camels tough it out in the snow

The gers after the snow starts to fall, pretty romantic

Back in the warmth of the ger, we kept a close check on the level of snow on the ground throughout the evening. The snow continued to fall, which didn't provide us with much confidence in the next day. This was lowered a little more when Gana indicated that the following day was going to be a lot of hills, so we'd best get moving at 7am. So after a short nights sleep we wake up to find it continued to snow throughout the night, and also to find that it was rather foggy and so visibility was down to about 100 meters. But this is Mongolia and waiting for the storm to pass isn't an option. So we packed the vans and took off.

Great visibility makes it hard to even see our own tracks we came across multiple times

More digging, in the background examples of the mountains we were driving over

The ger camp we stayed in was situated along a valley bottom and we had to cross the hills opposite the sand dunes to get to our next destination. Unfortunately the hills were actually mountains, and so we had to find the right 4wd track to make it over them. This took a good two hours of driving back and forth in the white out until some cloud lifted a little and the track was found. Finally running already well behind schedule we set off into the mountains which were under about a foot of snow, surrounded by cloud and with only a small 4wd track running up them that was very easy to lose. The following few hours were the most life threatening of our entire trans-mongolian adventure. Starting out with a breakdown of one of the vans, the drivers did a bit of tinkering, then we followed each other up. Making it about five mins at a time before a van would get stuck in a snow drift, we spent hours digging snow out from under the tires. Then each time we'd get stuck it would mean driving backwards and reattempting to bust through the snow drift. And if getting stuck in snow drifts wasn't scary enough, then driving along the mountains ridges where the track cambered to the point where it was seriously close to having a van tip over made the nature of the adventure very real and seriously putting thoughts of religion and after lives into our minds. Nothing was more welcoming than the buddhist goat monument marking the end of the mountain pass.

Driving along the mountain ridge

Dig Gana dig, a few feet of snow can't stop Russia's finest vans

A mountain goat sculpture welcomes us out the mountain pass

A look back at mountain pass we drove over, utterly glad to be out

All the hours lost before and during the mountains meant that we still had a seven hour drive left to Arvaikheer. There was no messing about once we got to our ger for the night, it was straight to bed where surely a few thank god we are still alive prayers went down while.

Mongolia, The tour days 1 and 2. Take it to the limit!

The ger camp out in an isolated basin which was surrounded by less than nothing

I dream I can converse with a nomad of Mongolia.

“Is your herd fattening up well?” I enquire.

“It is cold and the winter approaches, the autumn has been dry but my herd is fat enough to survive” he replies in his rugged and well worn voice, he stands wearing a long coat with sleeves that go past his hands which are clutched behind his back.

Limestone hills roll up out of the Gobi

The bitterly cold wind blows. “Yes it will not be long till snow is falling, what will you do if the winter is harsh?”. I do not have much hope in survival, I can barely handle the current weather and it is only late October.

“We will make it through. Mongols know how to survive, this is how we live”. He then invites me into his ger and shares a meal of rice and mutton with me. I give back a bottle of vodka in return for the hospitality.

Standing at the edge of a huge cliff at Tsagaan Suvraga

Rolling steppe, building up layers of browns like a chocolate cake

Warmed by the vodka, we speak into the night. “What do you think about moving to the city and forgetting about this hard way of life?”.

“Many families are moving to the city for money and modern amenities, it is a shame to see them go. They give up so much for so little, I have everything I need in my ger which only takes two hours to pack up. This may not be a lot of tangible goods, but I have a purpose in my life out on the steppe. Survival is not easy and so it gives your life a lot of meaning. My spirit is always awake, there is the openness and freedom which the sun shines on every day and what the millions of stars light up every night. I do not need to keep buying new things; I’m contempt with my current state. Every day I wake up with a job to do which lets me survive the day, why would I want to horde stuff I do not need for today.”

You could get lost out here, but you'd have to run for a day to get out of view over the horizon

The endless steppe of Mongolia meets the big sky of Mongolia

He pauses, then in reflection says, “You are similar to me, you travel with just a backpack and no more. You find purpose in survival and achieving your goals of getting where you need to go.”

I agree with everything he says, but I will return to the west soon, to the comforts of the city. It won’t be long before I am sitting once again behind a desk every day feeding the pockets of the greedy. I can’t escape this though, there are some things I cannot give up, things I was brought up with my entire life that I have been made to believe I need. It is sad but true, the emptiness that I feel from having too much stuff without any point but to numb the senses has created a hole that can’t be filled.

A lone traveller walks the hills in the Gobi Desert

The tour begins:

After a hectic morning we jump into the van, another group has had to change their plans because of a storm so we have another van tagging along with us for the first eight nights. Our two vans packed up full of life's necessities roll on out of Ulaanbaatar. It is only an hour before we are out of the city of one million people and onto a completely empty valley with only a 4wd track, some old rubbish on the side of the track and large barren mountains within view. It was fantastic to see how easy it is to get away from everything in Mongolia.

After driving for less than an hour out of Ulaanbaatar we were in the middle of nothing

The gang plays around in the granite rocks of Baga Gazryn Chuluu

Wild herd of Bactrian Camels, double humps are the best.

On the first day we drove south to the north of the Gobi Desert. It was a great way to start, we were greeted by a herd of wondering camels, drove through huge valleys surrounded by incredibly sharp mountain ridges and saw the sun set over a peaceful lake. The only concern was that it was well dark and we hadn’t found our ger camp to stay in for the night. This was our first lesson in trusting the driver, without any road signs or actual roads it was incredible how all of a sudden we turned up at a camp site surrounded only by complete darkness. A cooked meal of mutton and rice made by the family was a great treat before we went to sleep, with the fire roaring away fueled by some good old cow dung.

Me vs Camel. Result: Camel 1, Me nil.

Over looking the first nights ger, there is no shopping malls around

The sleep was not the most comfortable ever. Just sleeping on an old hospital styled bed with a few pieces of wood and a rug to support you on the old beds rusting springs. This was the least of our worries, as later into the night when the cow dung had run out and so the fire basically out the cold set in. This wasn't the coldest night we were to have, but it was a bit of a shock compared to being inside over heated accommodations in the city. So after a long night we gratefully welcomed in the family hosts who got the fire going again and brought in some hot water and breakfast. Getting out of the ger we were surprised to see that surrounding us was a fortress of rock formations named Baga Gazryn Chuluu. So we spent an hour playing around before we were again off in the awesome Russian van for another day of adventure.

The sun sets over Ulaan Suvraga

Russian Van and Ger at night!

Day two was spent driving deeper south into the Gobi, after driving past the Sum Khokh Burd ruins, an ancient temple surrounded by a small lake and built from rocks found no closer than 300 km away, we were next to just drive for hours past absolutely nothing. This nothing was incredible. In the afternoon after only having seen the odd herd of animals and random nomads out on there yamaha motorbikes we pulled into a town which had a petrol station. We somehow managed to acquire some petrol even though there was a shortage of gas and we were in a town that seemed to have no decent roads coming into it that a petrol tanker could drive down. Feeling a bit safer after not having been given any fuel at the last two petrol stations the day before we headed off to Ulaan Suvraga which is a place with a set of cliffs that are a burning rusty red colour and look like they were stolen off the planet mars (the lonely planet describes it as a 'badlands', i'd say it was bad ass!). This was only a short drive to our ger for the night. This was a beautifully located camp, in the middle of a small isolated basin where the sun set and lit up the desert into a orange glowing landscape which was a magical way to end a great day before returning to the ger for another mutton and rice dinner and cold nights sleep.

A gully running down a cliff is a mega tourist attraction in the Gobi

A random temple out in the middle of the Gobi

Mongolia, Ulaanbaatar, The Mystery Of The Missing Stalin Statue

It is going to be difficult to write about Mongolia. We spent two weeks here which were mostly spent in a Russian van driving around the country side. But the experience was so amazing and so different to anything that I’ll not be able to accurately describe it, and even my incredible photos I got won’t do justice to the beauty of the land.

Ulaanbaatar

The marching band army of Mongolia

The first two days were spent in the capital city of UB, staying at the appropriately named UB Guesthouse (US$5 a night, great deal). Here we used most of our time sorting out a tour to go on around Mongolia, and a little bit of time partying with friends made on the train into town.
The city is quite similar to Russian cities, big industrial plants are interwoven with ugly apartment blocks. But the Asian influence and general Mongolian feel of the place gave it a refreshing feel. There are numerous building projects going on showing that the place is experiencing economical growth, although this might just be all the American dollars flowing in as aid, which is most likely secretly going to the exploitation of untouched mineral deposits around.

Chinggis is a big dude, watch yourself around him, he is crazy

The first day we explored a few local sights, after seeing the Ulaanbaatar square with Chinggis Khan sitting appropriately at one end over looking his empire we headed to the Museum of Natural History. The museum is stocked with poorly taxidermied animals and some fossils included a full t-rex skeleton. Presentation had obviously not been included in last years budget, as every animal had fully visible stitch marks and facial furs which had been stretched poorly over their skeletons.

The natural history museum's priceless artefacts are protected by this dude

That night we went out for a local dining experience. The place chosen had a cheap menu to persuade us in. After accepting the invitation we were invited down into the basement of the restaurant, this was one of those horribly uncomfortable situations where you have no idea what is going on due to language barriers. We assumed we were actually being seated at the very last available seats which happened to be large couches which looked like the place where local mafia would sit around and have vodka and cigars while being entertained by some 'women of the night'. Then after watching some dodgy man trying to convince a young lady to go with him into the bathroom we were finally seated in our actual seats out of the basement. Mutton was the only real option on the menu, so variations of this was ordered. The best being buuz (pronounced booze) a dumpling filled with tasty mutton. YUM!

Prayer wheels, turn them clockwise to send off a prayer

After getting in a feed Tom, our two European friends from the train and I headed off to a nightclub that according to the good old lonely planet had a 15m Stalin statue inside. Disappointingly the statue was now a myth, but the club was still pumping Mongolian styles so we stuck around. Even though Mongolia is kind of a backwards country, you’d assume they could still get talented DJ’s in the clubs. The DJ was well off point, playing terrible techno from the year 1999 while struggling to mix together two tracks without completely screwing up, but nothing yelling into the microphone couldn’t fix to get the 10 people large crowd pumped again. Loads of classic cheesy dance moves went down until the clubs midnight closing time was reached.

Gandan Khiid's main temple, inside the giant buddha (example here)

The following day we got up early enough to get to the main monastery in UB, Gandan Khiid , in time to see the practicing monks do their morning prayers. The monastery was really good, slightly over run by pigeons, but the guano and feathers gave the place a real Buddhist atmosphere. The highlight was the 25 metre Buddha statue contained in the main building. Obviously very different from western views on idolatry but was quite fascinating. After turning a few prayer wheels we headed off to the black market of Ulaanbaatar.

The kids play with the pigeons

The market is one of the biggest in Asia and contains nearly everything you could ever need and none of it the real deal making it all fantastically cheap. We got everything we needed for going out into the wilderness for two weeks at a super low price and didn’t even manage to get pick pocketed while doing so. Although some other travelers told us they’d purposely placed a few lose bills slightly hanging out of their pockets after reading about the notorious theft that occurs and managed to have it all flogged.

Next we ran back to the hostel to make our tour meeting. We managed to, while heavily sweating, arrange a 12 night adventure with an American couple around the Gobi Desert for 6 nights and then up around Central Mongolia for the rest of the time. This begun a mad rush of things that needed to be completed before going into the middle of nowhere such as applying for a Chinese visa and getting train tickets out of Mongolia. The following 20 hours were the most stressful of the entire trip after doing endless odd jobs and having to deal with an incompetent train ticketing office multiple times. Needless to say that tears were shed and getting into the van to leave on our stress free adventure was the perfect remedy for nearly wanting to kill everyone around.

Irkutsk and Olkon Island, the last of Russia

Hell Yeazz! Mystery pastries bought off a Babushka on a train platform somewhere in Siberia

Arriving in on the train to our final Russian destinations was quite exciting. In one respect it was sad that we were going to be leaving Russia soon, but knowing what was beyond outweighed this. As with travelling, it is all about the now and the excitement of what is to come. It is basically the ultimate form of consumerism, are you satisfied now, and will you be satisfied in the future, all without any social responsibility.

Welcome to Irkutsk, we love the industry

A shrine over looks the beautiful Lake Baikal

The ferry across the straight onto the island

The island is only over that little bit of water, which takes only about 20 minutes by ferry

We used Irkutsk as a gateway to Lake Baikal, as it is still 70 odd kilometres from the largest lake by volume in the world. So a day was spent wondering around before going up to Olkon Island which is on the edge of the lake. Our first task was to get a Mongolian visa, after having trouble trying to get one in Moscow we were slightly worried that it would be the same here. Moscow is a little bit crazy though, and the consulate in Irkutsk was very straight forward, an application form and some money was all we needed for a visa, and it took all of half an hour to complete everything.

Would have liked to go bear hunting, but you can't do everything

Another long train into Irkutsk is broken up with a snooze

After the visa business it actually got cold so sight seeing was postponed till later in the afternoon. Unfortunately that afternoon we failed to see what we set out to see due to not having a map on us. But on the other hand, seeing Irkutsk is one of the major tourist destinations of Russia for people on the Trans-Mongolian line it means it is full of travellers. So being in a real hostel, with real travellers was really exciting. It was the first time since Moscow where we’d actually stayed with foreigners in Russia, so the lack of sightseeing was made up for by socialising with all the cool people.

Wondering the forests of Olkon Island, a magical moment

Another beautiful shot, we scored it awesomely with the weather here

If you ever want to feel awesome, have a moment like this, me standing over Lake Baikal

Leaving the next day to Olkon Island was great, being able to actually truly get away from the post soviet cities that had dominated our trip was a pleasure. The ride to Olkon Island took a solid 7 hours, which was not that great being in a minivan, but we got there in the end and got to have a sweet ferry ride across the straight to the island which gave us a great view of the width of the lake.

The town on Olkon Island was pretty futuristic

Olkon Island is about 70 odd km long and probably makes up about 1/10 of the length of the lake. When you are on here you are really isolated away from everything. It was surprising that the town we were staying in actually had any thing going on, but because of the natural beauty of the place and a couple of really well run guest houses set up for tourists and plenty of things to do that it was pretty good. But the best thing and one of the major factors of actually coming here was the food. The guest house we stayed in (Nakitas guest house), and I think all of them do it, served three meals a day, each with probably more in a meal than we’d been eating in a day prior. So apart from spending a lot of time eating, we did get out and go for some walks around the forest and shore, took a life lengthening dip in the freezing cold lake (see below video), and met lots of other travellers who had been doing the Trans-Siberian, but just not stopping off as we’d done through Siberia. The two nights here were fantastic and were capped off by going to the local night club, which was just someone's house who served beer and had a laser light.

Twenty five years added to my life right here

Getting loco in the club on Olkon Island

After another really packed minivan ride back to Irkutsk we got bought our final train ticket out of Russia and spent another night at the same hostel here went to some of the local markets for a bit of fun. In the morning it was a short dash off to the train station and then we caught the train on out of the mother land.

Rocking it on the main street, nicely paved with compacted dirt

Travel team stands by the greatest volume of fresh water in the world

Although I'll do another post about the train in the future, this is sort of the end of the Russian section of this blog. So in post analysis I'd say that Russia was totally awesome, period! Some things weren't all that great such as all paid service people being horribly rude, there being little set up for the backpacker crowd out of the Europe side of Russia, and it being quite expensive to stay anywhere. Discounting these things as being part of the adventure, it was a great place to visit. There is so much recent history everywhere which makes just about any destination fascinating. If you aren't into historical events, then riding the train might satisfy you instead. Meeting real Russians in there natural environment was really fun, especially being plied with unnatural amounts of vodka. The adventure of going across Siberia was really fulfilling in terms of feeling like you've achieved one of those things that people put on a list of things to do before they die, and kind of makes you feel as though you're a pioneering explorer.

Goodbye Lenin, will love you forever

If you were ever thinking of doing the Trans-Siberian, then totally do it. Don't be put off by the difficult visa regulations, or the language barrier, or the price of it. These things can all be worked out somehow. I'd also really recommend doing something like we did and going to smaller cities through Siberia. They give you another view on Russia you wouldn't get by just visiting St Petersburg and Moscow. And finally you should definitely ride third class (platzkart). It doesn't get any more real than the class of the people, we met others who'd travelled second class and got stuck in a carriage with two old Russian dead beats for five days (boring!).

Costs:
This is the final costing section of a month in Russia,
Average nights accommodation: 700 rbls
Average days spending on food: 250 rbls
Train tickets about 6000 rbls
Total spent in Russia: ~32000 rbls = NZ$2200
Running Total: $6873