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14th September 2001
Ulan Ude. 11000km from home. 8000km cycled personally.
We have reached Ulan Ude, 10000 km from home, further East than Singapore and just over half way there. I have been having an absolutely amazing time over the last couple of weeks. Even more so than before? Is it possible? The last couple of weeks have truly been a rollercoaster ride.
Whilst in Krasnoayarsk the owner of the hotel had decided to get herself a little free publicity (is this unfair of me?) by telling the TV companies of our stay in town and arranging for an interview. This seemed like a fun idea although it is newspaper articles that are the most use since you can show people what you are doing even though you can't speak their language. So for one glorious hour we were the centre of attention, being asked all kinds of questions including did we have wives and why not, and had we been in any really dangerous situations. I'm pleased to say we haven't (and we haven't been in any dangerous situations either!). They filmed us riding our bikes round in circles and took great interest in things like cycle computers and bells. The only negative side was the media's vulture-like interest in Scott as an American, the day after Airplane meets Towering Inferno, before he had even been able to contact friends and family back home. That it seems is what the media do best!
Within hours of the interview we were again having a riotous time with the locals. We were invited to go to a the flat of a student called Vladimir to drink vodka. "Russian tradition. You must". Vladimir liked to play his guitar. He liked to play it very much and he practiced very hard. So much so that that when he played 'Yesterday', you'd never have believed it was the only song he knew. Maybe that is unfair but we saw no evidence of him playing or even liking any other song in the ten days we were in Krasnoayarsk. And believe me, we heard Yesterday a few times, even being made to join in Karaoke on one occasion. Boy do the Russians like Karaoke. It was painful at times, watching the same person returning to the mic repeatedly through the night. They seem to have a very high tolerance of tone deafness here.
Having spent a wonderful 10 days in Krasnoayarsk improving our Russian and our vodka drinking skills, Rory and I left three days later than expected, due in no small part to the local hospitality. It was that good.
Andy and Scott had left ahead of us, giving us a little more time for Rory's knee to recover and our livers to be punished. When we finally did leave, the fact that we had been off the bikes for ten days began to show.
On the road out of Krasnoayarsk we found ourselves attracting more car horns than usual and our suspicions were confirmed when a car stopped ahead of us and flagged us down, saying they had seen us on TV. They chatted to us and then presented us with badges for a Soviet football team from Leningrad (as was).
The weather was clement and the scenery was as beautiful as ever - to anyone who has images of Siberia as a cold, hostile place with an unchanging landscape and nothing to see, I advise you to come here. We passed through towns and villages in the Siberian style: log cabins with decoratively painted blue window frames and babooshkas sitting on their stools passing the time of year. The road we were on was the main, and only, Moscow to Irkutsk road and at times it would be a large open road, occasionally dual carriageway even, whereas at other times it would shrink to a local road passing through tiny villages. This was nothing compared to what was to come though.
On the first night out of Krasnoayarsk, Rory and I camped about seven, feeling a rapidly descending chill in the air. We were aware of winter coming on fast and had even been warned that it had snowed already in Irkutsk (this turned out to be untrue). So we stopped relatively early, hoping to be all packed up and in bed before it got too cold. The temperature was to fall to minus 5 that night, which is actually not as bad as it sounds. With thermal underwear, t-shirt and fleece, not to mention those thick woolen socks you can be quite comfortable in your tent at that temperature.
The following morning we awoke around nine am to find the sun just begining to rise over the now golden yellow and red birch trees. There was a thick frost and as the sun began to thaw the leaves, a very strange thing happened. The leaves began to fall, sounding like a gentle rain. And once they had all thawed, the leaf fall stopped as abruptly as it began.
That evening, cycling along looking for somewhere to camp we passed a large rock of coal, about the size of a front pannier. This set our minds thinking and we picked it up to burn later, adding many kilograms to our load. So later that evening, having set up camp we built a fire and having allowed it to get going, placed the lump on it. We then proceeded to have fun, experimenting cooking food, drying out the local produce and ultimately boiling water for hot water bottles. This was all good boys own fun and what's more we went to bed with warm feet. Needless to say we stoked the fire again in the morning and were fairly late hitting the road. This set the tone for the next few days.
Having decided that it was important to catch the others up before Irkutsk Rory and I opted for another spot of hitching. We put our bikes on a flatbed truck, and joined them for the very bumpy ride. This was just the start, on the paved if imperfect Russian roads. Before long we hit the first patch of gravel road and were glad to be on the truck as it kicked up an enormous plume of dust behind us. This kind of road can slow you down to a mere 10km an hour (about 6mph) so this was the time to be hitching. This lift took us about 70km, so only made up for the fact that we'd left late that morning but we hadn't actually made any ground up on Scott and Andy who we reckoned had been moving pretty fast. We cycled on, keeping an eye out for likely looking vehicles approaching from behind and we did not have to wait long. Our next lift came in the form of a very heavy duty 6 wheel drive Russian bus. It seemed to be in transit, with no one aboard the separate passenger compartment so we stacked our bikes up in the back and sat back to enjoy the ride. This too was a short one lasting about 20km before we were dropped in the middle of a beautiful village on the Trans-Siberian railway. It was a narrow settlement with a large and long green space along the road and railway. In the centre was a well from which we drew water and then I approached a local man, asking for moloko (milk). I was led from one house to the next in a search for fresh milk (unpasteurised tastes so much better), as if we were following a trail, zeroing in on the milk that awaited us. Eventually we struck gold and I was presented with a 2 litre coke bottle full of milk for the princely sum of 14 Roubles (about 30p). We then went to the shop and bought amongst other things, eggs although they decided that the ones in the shop were not good enough for us and disappeared off for five minutes to find some more. Having bought our supplies for the evening we proceeded through the village onto the dirt road, looking for somewhere to camp.
We found an idylic spot almost immediately in a large open field with pine tress scattered around. On reaching a suitable spot out of view of the road we noticed a fire in the corner with a guy sitting by it but decided that it was not a problem. Before long we were approached by the cowherder's ten year old son and his friend who were facinated by our bikes and very keen to help us build a fire. It was the easiest fire I've ever built, just waiting for the tinder dry wood to turn up and then applying a lighter.
The cowherder himself turned up soon enough and greeted us with a bottle of Russian "cognac". This bears absolutely no relation to any drink of the same name you may know and is closer to pure spirit. We shared a brief tipple although I was happy to stick to my beers. We tried to show him our newspaper article although we suspect that he couldn't read. This is somewhat surprising for a country that supposedly achieved a very impressive 97% literacy rate in Soviet times, actually claiming an improbable 99%. He spoke no English and his son knew just a very few words but we were able to communicate with gestures and our very basic command of the Russian language. It was a very pleasant encounter, sitting around the fire with this cowherder and his son, before they took the cows in for milking.
When they left us we continued with our pyrotechnic and culinary experimentation, making scrambled eggs on toast and refining our hotwater bottle production. Needless to say the kid was back the following morning to ride our bikes around the field and generally be "helpful". We left late after restarting the fire, hoping to achieve a lift before too long.
It was a wet day and the dirt road was streaming. It was hard in places to gain any traction at all and the mud served to drag us down to a very slow 10kmph. After two hours, constantly looking for a lift, we completed the 20km stretch and were back onto the contrasting perfect tarmac of the next section of the main Moscow to Vladivostok road. It really is bizarre following the same road for days, coming across both the worst road I have ever cycled on and some of the best road in Russia. It was only once we were back on tarmac that we managed to get a lift, 80km to a town that would become known to us as grumpy town. We asked for directions on several occasions and were greeted with surly replies and sent on a wild goose chase around the muddier, grimmer areas of town. Eventually we found our way out of town and back onto the open road where we found the Cafe Alena, a relatively high class joint where they actually took our coats and pointed us in the direction of a washroom before allowing us to enter. Understandable really, if a little unexpected. Needless to say the gretchka (cracked wheat) and eggs were the same as anywhere else.
We continued in this way for a couple of days, getting short lifts, camping and building fires before we eventually got what we were looking for, a lift taking us the several hundred kilometres to Irkutsk. This was on a brand new crane making its maiden voyage from Moscow to Vladivostok. Our driver was a very kind and friendly Georgian who spoke very little English. As is often the case this posed little problems and we all managed to make ourselves understood a fair amount, resorting to the phrase book when necessary. On this occasion the driver didn't consult the phrasebook on the move but there were times when we thought drivers would. After a while though, there was little left we could say with our basic Russian and we sat back to enjoy the ride.
Strangely in this area of eastern Siberia, we have met many people from the Caucuses - Armenians, Azeris and Georgians. On one occasion we even met a woman who had an eight year old son by an Armenian and a two year old by her present husband, an Azeri. Here's hoping that leads to a small pocket of cross cultural understanding amongst these two opposing peoples. Presumably this is a result of Stalin's ethnic blending policies, moving peoples around the Soviet Union in the hopes of homogenising them and reducing nationalist forces. This seems not to have worked too well given the history of the last ten years but it provides an interesting contrast to the ethnic cleansing of more recent tyrants (would you call Stalin's policy ethnic dirtying?).
We were dropped late at night just outside Irkutsk, right by the large, three dimensional concrete sign that so many Soviet cities have. I suppose there is something to be said for civic pride. We had decided not to arrive in the city late at night but the following morning to give us time to find somewhere cheap to stay so we camped in the middle of a cornfield, not really having too much of a clue about the lay of the land. In the morning it turned out we were within easy sight of a farm - given the fact we were actually in the corn, not such a good thing! It was another cold one, down to about minus 6 but apart from a necessarily brief call of nature about 4am I was not uncomfortable. It will get colder though.
We rolled into Irkutsk mid afternoon and had the celabratory beer in the park, not knowing whether Scott and Andy had arrived before us or not. After this the next priority was finding an internet cafe to find out if the others had left a message so we walked into the main hotel on the square for information, thinking they may have facilities. It was here that one of those strokes of luck happen, we overheard English voices and met David and Liz, a intern at the British Council (an organisation which promotes Britain, and the studying of English) and a transcontinental motorcyclist who were staying in the same guest house. We had arranged to meet at the British Council anyway so Liz already knew of us and we made arrangements to meet at the Council the next day when it would be open. Liz and David then helped us greatly by finding us a relatively cheap hotel (although at nearly ten pounds each per night by our usual standards very expensive). Irkutsk is an expensive town due mainly to its proximity to the stunning and very beautiful Lake Baikal. It took some very hard work to persuade the hotel owner to let us in with our bikes, many nyets were eventually followed by a da. Persistance is the key in Russia.
The following day we went to the British Council to meet the people with whom we'd been corresponding for some while. The place was run by Anatoli, aided by Masha and Nastya who owned Irkutsk's only pair of green leather trousers, of which she was very proud. They had tea and cakes prepared for us and made us feel very welcome. Before long the others walked in the door, having recieved our email and followed the directions we gave. Instantly the British Council people could not get a word in edgeways as we exchanged experiences good and bad and generally caught up. Andy and Scott had both had wheel problems, Scott breaking his "indestructable" 40 spoke wheel and had encountered various interesting characters including "bare foot truck driver" who saw them on two separate days, driving the same route in opposite directions and gave them food, gay truck driver who tried to get a little too close to Andy for comfort (and ended up being too close to Andy's fist for comfort) and some friendly construction workers who let them stay in their shack when very cold and wet. We soon checked out of our hotel into the very cheap and slightly dodgy place Andy had found us.
The British Council had said they would arrange for us to meet the local media but we had absolutely no idea of the scale of what they had in mind. They sent out a press release to 4 regional television stations, 4 regional newspapers including the regional editions of the former organs of the Communist Party, Pravda and Isvestia, and one radio station. Two days later we were to be greeted by a full blown media circus.
The press conference was due to kick off at 3pm. I had headed over to the other side of the city to do my laundry in the morning giving myself a reasonable schedule to get back. However luck was not on my side. Firstly, my route to the laundrette involved a bridge that hadn't been built yet and a wild goose chase around the student area of the city. Despite taking over an hour getting there, going from the non existant bridge at one end of the city to the old one at the other I still had enough time once my clothes were clean and dry. I set off back to the British Council, knowing my way this time until disaster struck. My chain snapped! I was stuck on the wrong side of town, with an attractive bike that was going nowhere and about half an hour to spare. I removed all valuables from the bike and locked it to a fence, having little alternative. I then tried to flag down a Lada but none of them were stopping so I resorted to a taxi bus - private minibusses that follow a set route for a resonable price. This took me via the far end of town to the centre, about 10 - 15 minutes walk from the British Council. Arriving with 5 minutes to spare, having tried to bribe the driver into driving me to the door, I was forced to run the remainder of the way, arriving very hot at 3pm on the dot, just as things got going. Changing into my freshly laundered clothes backstage, I think I managed to make the best of a bad job. This example of timekeeping may not entirely surprise some of you!
We spent over an hour sat in front of the cameras, with a Union Jack on the table in front of us, along with my broken chain (I had to explain my late arrival somehow), fielding the usual questions such as what do you do (a difficult question for me since the concept of drifter is hard to translate), what inspired you, have you had problems and do you have wives (if not do you want Russian wives!). This was all great fun but hard work and we were glad when it was over.
Also present were the regional directors of BP, who sponsor the British Council and when the conference was over we spoke to them. They were very friendly and interested and being an oil company, offered to find us oils and spirit (alcohol for burning). We arranged that we would visit them at their headquarters the next day and hopefully pick up some goodies. We had to be at the British Council at 11am to be picked up.
We arrived to find a black Toyota Landcruiser (the vehicle of preference for those that can, on Russian roads) with darkened windows waiting for us. We were chauffer driven to the outskirts of town to the Baikal business centre and greeted by the regional Chief Executive, a Brazillian called Jorge and his staff including an affable Scotsman named Mike. They were all very friendly and helpful and gave us a spot of corporate hospitality into the deal. They came up trumps, managing to get us some spirit from the Vodka factory (a by-product that is drinkable although it is advisable to dilute it) and various lubricants.
Next on our itinery was a talk to a group of over 100 students at the linguistic department of the University so we curtailed our visit and returned, again chauffeur driven, to the British Council.
We arrived fashionably late at the University having to force our way through a packed room of over 100 students, mostly girls. We were not quite sure what they wanted from us so we introduced ourselves and fielded questions. As usual the same ones come up but that cannot be helped really. We tried to impress that we were just ordinary people who had realised what was possible if we wanted it, saved money for a while and then literally just got on our bikes. We knew that other people had done similar long distance cycle touring (although I don't know of a similar trip across Siberia) and that it must therefore be possible for us. We were fairly phased by the superstar reception we were getting by this point and when we tried to impress our ordinariness upon them one of the girls piped up, "Yes but to us you are heros". Life sucks eh? We have done something unusual but we haven't been challenged greatly or heroically overcome any great obstacles in our path. All the attention was certainly fun but it becomes a bit bizarre after a while. You almost find yourself empathising with those poor rock stars bemoaning how they just want to be ordinary - "I'm mega rich, I play the guitar to adoring fans, and get as much sex and drugs as I could possibly want - life's shit!".
We narrowly avoided being made to sing "Yesterday" and are not quite sure whether they belived us when we said we stood to attention and sang "God save the Queen" every night.
Since Irkutsk it has been nice to get back on the road to relative normality. We encountered an unexpected mountain range and our first snowfall on the way to lake Baikal, camping at 900m. Andy's brakes were at the end of the road by the top of the last pass and he found himself descending 500m using his feet as an additional braking system. As we descended to Lake Baikal we were cold and wet and the cloud made it difficult to appreciate the enormity of the lake.
Baikal is about 50 miles across, over 400 miles long and a mile deep in places. On top of that it has several miles of sediment on the bottom and contains 22% of the worlds fresh water. In the winter it freezes and they drive across it. The Soviets even used to build a railway across it at one point until one year it crashed through the ice to find it's resting place far below.
Standing on the shore of the lake one evening, the Trans-Siberian Railway separating me from our tents, it was as if a mighty sea was raging before me. Waves crashed down on the rocks, spraying 10ft high. On the horizon was nothing but water. The conditions were not ideal for bathing - temperature falling towards freezing and a mighty wind raging but I dipped my feet in Baikal which I'm told means that you will return to Russia. Something I'm very happy to do. The lake is surrounded by some breathtaking scenery and this only served to remind me of the whistle stop nature of our trip and how much there is that I would like to see more of. On this trip so far, it is only Russia that I really feel the urge to return to, although this may be because of its sheer immensity and the fact that we have spent long enough here to get to know it a little, and want more.
There was some quite hard cycling between Irkutsk and Ulan Ude, between the weather and terrain. The last night before reaching Ulan Ude we built a large fire and sat around it chatting, writing diaries and cooking. When we went to bed we were surprised to find the temperature had fallen to around minus five, the fire had served us well. Later in the night the temperature fell at least as far as minus eight and this was the first night I was really cold. I woke at around 4am and having answered nature's call and crawled back into my sleeping bag, I noticed that I was really cold. I was wearing long johns, double socks, t- shirt and thermal top, leaving only trousers and fleece as extras but it was too cold to be getting out of my sleeping bag again so I dragged my fleece inside and used it as an extra blanket instead. This was in the region of minus 8 to 10 and we expect considerably colder, but there are ways and means to keep warm. It's when we get wet and cold that the problem arises. Still, only around 5 weeks to Beijing where I'm told it is a balmy 22 degrees. And then on to a South East Asian Christmas on the beach.
Ulan Ude is the capital of the Russian Federal Republic of Buryatia, the first to be granted autonomous status by Stalin, in grateful thanks for the Buryats part in the "Great Patriotic War" The Buryats are a Mongoloid people (I think this is politically correct) who were nomadic until the early 19th century. They ascribe to a form of Tibetan Buddhism. We are finally feeling far from home, the corridor of Europe within Asia that follows the Trans-Siberian Railway and Road is behind us and suddenly we are in an Asian environment.
Ulan Ude is described in the Lonely Planet as downright bizarre. I'm not sure if in my brief experience I would call it that but it is certainly different from other more Russian cities we have visited. The most visibly distinctive thing about the town centre is the disembodied head of Lenin proudly overlooking the central square. Ulan Ude ended up with it because no one else would have it and it has to be said, it is a little bizarre. It is a small town with not an awful lot going on, just a slight frontier feel to it, perched on the edge of Russia with a surviving indigenous majority unlike most of Siberia where they were severely reduced if not eliminated by the Russians as they moved eastwards.
We experienced media attention here too, without any soliciting on our part. We had to arrange special permision to cross the Mongolian border by bicycle (most irregular) and the lady at the tourist office independently arranged both for the local paper to interview us and for details of our trip to be placed on the official Government of Buryatia tourism website. The cause of tourism in Buryatia is one I'm very happy to be associated with. I urge you to see Lake Baikal - it is truly unique and this is a facinating region of a facinating country.
Until next time - probably Ulaan Bator, shortly before we cross the Gobi desert. All you vegetarians out there, enjoy a decent meal on my behalf - I look forward to rice with rice if I'm lucky as my friends eat Yak!
19th October 2001
Ulan Ude to the Mongolian border
The journey from Ulan Ude has been a beautiful one, with the transformation from Europe to Asia becoming complete. In Siberia we had all felt part of a European civilisation and the landscape had not seemed entirely foreign either. This was probably just the effect of the corridor created by the Trans Siberian road and Railway but nevertheless we did not feel we were truly in Asia. Both the landscape and people were shortly to change. As we rode from Ulan Ude towards the border the landscape turned to an awesome mountainous steppe. For mile upon mile we cycled through barren, uninhabited lands on a huge scale. This was beginning to feel like the central Asia we had expected.
30km out of Ulan Ude we found Russia's largest Buddhist Monastry, although I think this probably isn't too difficult - I don't imagine there are that many of them. The Buryats are Mongolian speaking Tibetan Buddhists (the Mongolians are Tibetan Buddhists too), but I have often wondered about the propensity of many of these Buddhist cultures to eat meat.
The monastry was set in the centre of a long, wide and open valley, some way from the main road. We eventually found ourselves outside where there was an array of stalls selling souvenirs and a cafe that couldn't serve us coffee because all its mugs were in use!
Venturing inside there was a new building under construction and we walked down the path towards it turning the prayer wheels in the correct, clockwise direction only to find the path turning leftwards - we were walking around the monastry anticlockwise. We swiftly remedied this, retracing our steps, again turning the prayer wheels clockwise, only this time from the other side of course. There were many Burats there, seeking a blessing from the Lama (for a very reasonable 10 Roubles) and not a (western) tourist in sight, our good selves excluded of course.
The main monastry building was beautifully decorated with Thankas (religious paintings framed in the characteristic red and gold silk) and the ubiquitous golden Buddhas. It was, as you might expect, a very peaceful place.
Visiting this monastry was another sign of the approach of Asia proper and whetted my appetite for more.
As we cycled towards the border, our thoughts began to turn to leaving Russia and how much we had grown to love the place. There was a genuine sadness in our conversations about this, despite the anticipation of new experiences in the lands to come. We had found the people very friendly almost all of the time and the landscape awesome. We all felt sure that we would be returning to this great land in time.
We had some respite from the cold as we headed south from Ulan Ude but this was not to last. On the second night we camped fairly high up, near the top of a pass. The land was dry and bare but it was still a warm 4 or 5 degrees when we retreated to our tents at about 9pm. So I thought, I can do without sleeping in all my clothes for once an have a little space to move in my sleeping bag. This turned out to be a very bad idea. I awoke at 4am only to find that a mild evening had turned into one of the coldest nights yet, hitting minus 8 to 10. I was so cold that I did not even want to unzip my bag to put my fleece on so just pulled it inside as an extra blanket. This of course was also a mistake, it's worth getting a little cold now to stay warmer later. Moral of the story - always assume it is going to be colder than you think. The climate was now distinctly dry, a taster of the high Mongolian plateau to come, making the cold slightly more bearable.
We fought our way into Kjahta, the border town against a strong headwind, not helped by a knee injury Andy had sustained by having the cheek to want to ride up a mountain pass at the same time as a car overtook an oversize lorry on a blind corner a few days previously. We arrived in Kjahta tired and hungry, eager to find the Hotel Druzhba, the standard stop off for those crossing the border.
The Druzhbar was a pleasant enough hotel with friendly staff and clean rooms. Our first job was to have a pensive beer in its bar/restaurant and mull over our thoughts of Russia. We also had a meal to accompany this and I must say it did complement it nicely. Again, we all felt sad to be leaving, Russia had stolen our hearts.
We decided that since it was our last night in Russia we must have one final vodka night. So we went down to the local shop and purchased, amongst other things a large bottle of vodka.
In the shop we met a mister G Tsogt, a Mongolian mining corporation executive. He was in town to meet a lorry making its way south from Russia. He seemed friendly enough and asked if we were staying at the Hotel Druzhbar. Twenty minutes later, back at the hotel he knocked on our door clutching another bottle of vodka and joined us for a few drinks. A few drinks turned into a few more. I was deliberately following the Russian rule of eating something such as a hunk of bread or cheese or a "cakey thing" as we call them, after every shot was knocked back, not wanting to be in too bad a state for the border the next day.
At around 9pm we decamped to the bar, Mr Tsogt smuggling another bottle of vodka in under his jacket. It was a rather strange bar, due in part we thought to the fact that this was a border and garrison town. There was a small dancing area on which several men and a couple of women were dancing. We suspected that these were either soldiers or business travellers letting off steam. We decided not to join them on the dancefloor, it was male dominated enough as it was and we wouldn't have wanted to decrease the other mens chances with the few ladies, if that was what they wanted. So we continued drinking the vodka at a table and only later had a bit of a dance.
A while later Mr Tsogt approached us and told us that there were people about in the bar who wanted to pick a fight with us simply because we were westerners. He seemed quite serious and anxious for us to go back to our room. We didn't want to risk any trouble so we allowed him to usher us back to our room. Rory was a little drunk it must be said (I was not sober myself) and he decided that there wasn't any genuine risk in such a public place if you weren't looking for trouble. So I followed him back to the bar - we might as well get in trouble together if at all. Andy in the meantime was being very drunk in the room, telling Scott that he would regret it if he didn't do up his shoelaces for him, not to mention help him off the floor so he could return to the bar!
Rory and I decided that we were going to order some chips since they were pretty good earlier (a rarety) and I at least wanted to avoid the loss of dignity I had experienced on vodka in Ulan Ude. We ordered sucessfully and innocently sat at a table waiting for our food. Before long Mr Tsogt had returned, anxious again to prevent trouble by returning us to our room. We explained that we had ordered food and we would return as soon as we had eaten it. This turned out be be longer than we expected since they had to call Moscow for permission to peel the potatoes but they arrived and again they were very good.
After the chips arrived we decided to take Mr Tsogt seriously, if only out of courtesy, and return to our room. Rory decided he wanted a Russian souvenir and thought that 4 Vodka glasses would be very appropriate. So he slipped them into his pocket and we made our way back down the corridor to our room. Half way down he announced that he was taking them back, saying he had been seen by the barmaid. Thinking this a little odd since he had by this stage got away with it, we returned and Rory then proceeded to try to buy them off her. She took 100 Roubles off him (I fronted it) and she made a killing at the expense of us and her employer! Vodka does wonderful things to your judgement!
The time had come the next day to leave. We packed our bags and made our way to the border via Kjahta's derelict cathedral, designed by an Italian architect. It was obiously a very beauitiful building in its day with ornate plasterwork and a high dome. The old military only border had been right next to this but fortunately for us they had just this year built a new civilian one just up the road. This was still for Russians and Mongolians only but fortunately we had permission from the Vice President of the Republic of Buryatia to cross with our bicycles. This took a few hours with questions like "Do you have any guns or drugs" being asked. I struggled for an answer, wondering what I would say if I had done, and then came up with the required "No". I also discovered by jumping on their luggage scales that I have actually put weight on on this trip.
Mongolia was to be yet another mind blower - people, landscape and live wires sticking out of hotel bedroom walls, but for now that can wait. I'm off to cross the Gobi Desert where I'm told the road is virtually non existant, a fellow cyclist last year (see www.cyclingsiberia.com) carried 20 litres of water constantly and had to push his bike through thick sand for two days, and gers (nomad's tents) are few and far between. So if I survive, I'll fill you in from Beijing (probably up to 5 weeks based on our friend's information).
Wish me luck for the hardest part of the trip.
25th November 2001
Suuk Baatar to Ulaan Baatar
Passing into Mongolia from Russia meant finally saying goodbye to European culture. Despite being east of Singapore, the Russian culture is basically a European one. We were heading into a country that was best known for conquering half the world 800 years ago and being a byword for the back of beyond today.
Crossing the border, things were instantly different. We passed from a smooth tarmac road onto rubble as we crossed the demarcation line although fortunately this proved to be temporary. The Americans had built a new road to Ulaan Baatar in the last few years (Mongolia is a strategically significant place, perched between Russia and China).
Our first night was spent in a cheap hotel in a typical border town. There was not an awful lot there but we did get a taste of Mongolia. There was lots of open land (no fences in Mongolia - no one owns any land) and lots of dust/sand. The town had an almost wild west feel to it. Our initial images of Mongolia were further impressed when seeing a couple of loose wires sticking out of the wall in our hotel Rory joked about them probably being live and touching them together to see. Of course he expected nothing but decided, just in case, to insulate himself with his plastic knife. Blue sparks flew and the hotel lights flickered. In any western building the fuses would have blown faster than you could say "what the XXXX" but Mongolian electrics are made of sterner stuff and the system bravely took the strain.
Riding through the Steppe, gers (nomads tents) are visible frequently, sat in the middle of nowhere, awaiting the next move. At the end of our first full day's cycling we were looking for somewhere to camp and saw a cluster of three gers parked by a salt lake, surrounded by a herd of sheep. We decided to camp at a respectable distance and see if they approached us. In time an old man came over to talk to us and we showed him our equipment and gave him a little food. He was particularly taken with our somewhat noisy stoves. After we had exhausted the communication possible with our mutually limited Russian he said that tommorow morning we could come across to the ger to get water and say hello.
In the morning, bracing ourselves against the cold we visited their home and were offered not only water but tsai (usually described as salty milky tea based drink) and dried yaks cheese (an aquired tast to be honest) and some bisuity things. The family were incredibly friendly and again it was remarkable just how much you can say with very few words.
From there it was on to Dharkan, Mongolia's second city, about the size of a large village in the south of England. Dharkan proudly boasts Mongolia's tallest building at 17 stories, although having been to Ulaan Baatar we suspect that this has now been superceded.
The journey to Ulaan Baatar was a bleak but beautiful one, taking about a week crossing the mountainous steppe. The hills go on, one pass following another, all looking similar to the unfamiliar eye. Rarely was there a tree and settlements were few and far between.
One of the stranger sights of this part of the trip was near the top of a pass where we found an enormous heap of goats feet, separated just above the ankle. We were later to discover that these were being dried in order for a special ingredient to be extracted. Just one of the many strange things you see in these far away lands.
By this time it was getting pretty cold and we were as good as sewn into our clothes 24 hours a day, revealing flesh only for those biological necessities. Personal records were broken for the length of time elapsed without showering or changing any items of clothing (although these were later superceded in the Gobi).
Ulaan Baatar was a strange and interesting city. It was the first place we had been since Prague that was on the backpackers circuit so being surrounded by westerners was a novel experience. It is something like Kathmandu in the respect that it is cold and isolated and people like to say they have been there, but not as colourful.
The prescence of large numbers of westerners meant western restaurants, of which we were very glad having been surviving of our basic camp food and the Mongolian diet of mutton, minus the mutton. The Mongolian attitude to food is basically, "why would anyone want to eat anything other than mutton?". And tough mutton at that.
The only unfortunate thing about the many eateries in Ulaan Baatar, apart from the price (about $3 or 4 for a decent meal!) was teh fact that Ulaan Baatar seems to close down by about 8 or 9 pm. Not knowing this on the first evening we went out hoping to treat ourselves and found ourselves eating in the only place open so far as we could tell, the same pizzeria that we had lunch and our celebratory beer in. Not that the food was bad or anything but we'd hoped for something different!
The hostel we stayed in was listed in the ubiquitous and unreliable Lonely Planet and was thus a good place to meet other travellers. Nassems Guesthouse was in fact a series of flats in a block, including the ones in which the family that ran it lived. According to demand, they rented out extra flats and put people in granny's flat too. This was where we ended up and she was very accomodating but, despite the fact that they are making money out of you not doing you a favour, you can't help but feel that you are in someone's home and have to tread lightly.
It was here that we met Ben, from Adelaide who had recently completed a boat trip by canoe, raft and rowing boat from source to sea of the Yenitze river in Mongolia and Russia. This had taken 3 months, rowing continuously in a team of three people living out of each others pockets. Remarkably they hadn't killed each other. This is what I'd really consider an adventure. What we're doing is a mere stroll in the park by comparison. The amazing thing was that prior to doing a similar source to sea trip on the Amazon last year, ben had hardly been in a boat.
One of Ben's fellow travellers, Tim, had last year cycled from western Europe to Beijing via St Petersberg and the Russian far north, crossing the Gobi in the process. Since he was passing through Ulaan Baatar we thought we should pick his brains and exchange tales. When we met him a few days later his advice was to fill us with a certain trepidation.
Tim had been carrying 20 litres of water and on one occasion had still run out. We also got the impression that food and settlements would be fairly thin on the ground. Based on his advice we judged it would take up to five weeks to reach Beijing. So I for one began to have a healthy sense of unease about the desert.
We decided it would be a good idea to register our prescence in Mongolia before proceeding across the Gobi, so headed down to the British Embassy like good little citizens. We were filling out the forms in the main lobby when first the Consul and then the Ambassador walked in. Natuarally we explained what we were doing and since they were very down to earth, chatted for a while. After letting us know what to do in an emergency they told us of a special service the British Embassy in Ulaan Baatar provided.
Every Friday night, for two hours the Ambassador and Consul played publican at what was known as The Steppe Inn, a small outhouse within the Embassy compound, decked out something like an English pub. Entrance was by invitation only but most of the ex-pat community in UB had become regulars. This was to cause the closest thing to homesickness that I have experienced on this trip so far. Shortly before heading off into the unknown perils of the desert I found myself in an English pub surrounded by English and other westerners. It was quite an odd experience being served beer by the British Ambassador to Mongolia. At one point she had to leave for an official function but said she would be back as quickly as possible and true to her word she returned within the hour. A woman with her priorities straight! True to English drinking tradition I bought two pints shortly before time was called, but unlike an English pub we had an hour's drinking up time!
This was to be the Last Supper before heading out, only it was a liquid supper. After a week's solid eating and drinking, we braced ourselves for the journey to come.
4th December 2001
The Gobi: Bleached bones, rutted roads and broken bikes
The morning of departure came and a sense of trepidation with it.
Our first day out of Ulaan Baatar was a relatively easy one. For the first 30km we enjoyed the pleasures of paved roads. Tarmac turned into rough concrete turned into nothing. We had not so much taken a wrong turning as failed to notice the track leaving the road which continued down into a some kind of coal storage facility. We asked directions for the next town and the locals variously pointed us across open pasture. So we followed the general direction of their gesticulations until eventually we came across a track heading south. This must be the Ulaan Baatar to Beijing highway!
The road was simply a path followed by vehicles over time, there was absolutely no engineering to it. When it got bad, vehicles took another path resulting in there being many parallel tracks, some of which were smoother than others. In general though the road was far from smooth. It was corrugated meaning that our bikes and our bums were being continuously pounded, at this time the Brooks sprung saddle was greatly appreciated.
We asked for directions at a semi permanent Ger encampment and after taking water from their spring moved on, camping soon afterwards in the central reservation of the UB - Beijing highway. By this I mean the space between two alternative paths the road had taken. The road was virtually silent except for a rush hour between about seven and nine when maybe two or three vehicles passed us.
On this first night the temperature dropped below minus 10 (where his thermometer stops working) although it was probably minus 15 since the inside of his tent is generally 5 degrees warmer than outside! Cold enough to know about it anyway! We soon learnt to keep a water bottle inside our sleeping bags and fill a pan ready for melting in the morning.
We began climbing, reaching 1700m before the landscape began to level out, leaving us exposed to the harsh winds. It was not long before we came across a cluster of 4 or 5 houses where we were invited in for tsai (a salty, milky liquid that supposedly has some tea in it). Actually we as good as invited ourselves in but when it's that cold you don't worry about technicalities like that!
At this point the landscape was still rolling steppe, much as it had been before Ulaan Baatar - hard, sometimes rocky ground and sparsely vegetated. Where the passage of vehicles had revealed the ground beneath it was left either thick with gravel or rutted to about twice the depth and wavelength of corrugated iron. Not fun for bike or rider in other words. It would continue thus.
It was the constant pounding of these corrugations (or dongles as they are called in Africa I believe) that caused the first injury to a member of the team in the Gobi. Rory suffered a fractured bolt on his front rack. Whilst he replaced it we were again treated to local hospitality, it having had the decency to snap near a small cluster of dwellings.
The people live in two room houses with a warm kitchen heated by a stove in the centre of the building. We were invited in to the living room/bedroom and treated to a mini feast of tsai, dried yak cheese (an acquired taste), biscuity things, doughy things (we have acquired our own vernacular for snacky things and other miscellaneous foodstuffs) and a sort of sweet sandwich of soured cream between two slices of thicker solid cream.
Cycling along in the desert, musing on just how deserted it all was we came across what looked like a 1960s urban monstrosity. Genuine Stalinist brutalism (ok so time periods are a little out of sync here but bear with me). Out of nowhere loomed this enormous block of flats that looked like it could have been transplanted direct from Sheffield, Birmingham or Minsk. As we got closer we saw bumps in the ground which it became clear were hardened aircraft hangars and the airstrip came into view. A relic of the time when Mongolia was the Soviet Union's Airstrip One in it's standoff with China.
The block of flats was bizarre. Not actually that old despite its architecture, it had been completely stripped when the Soviets/Russians left in 1993, leaving nothing but the concrete shell and a few strips of wallpaper hanging off the walls. It must have housed hundreds if not thousands of people and the services needed by such a community. The Mongolian nomads probably weren't that much interested in it anyway, it says more about the paucity of Russia than anything else. Stripped of security fences and the other paraphernalia of secret airbases that you find in deserts, this looked somewhat out of place. As did the MiG 21 pointing skywards, skewered on a iron girder. We spent some time looking around, spoke to some Mongolians who had temporally made it the site for their Gers and were on our way again.
Over the days that followed the vegetation became more sparse. Where previously we had seen many wild horses, cattle, birds of prey (including a golden eagle) and rodents, as food sources became scarcer we saw less of the large animals and the birds of prey that fed off them and the main wildlife was the desert marmot, a small perfectly camouflaged rodent which, when you look carefully, is everywhere. Eventually even these disappeared leaving the occasional herd of camels and those animals carefully tended by the nomads.
This was not all that lurked on the desert plains however. Out of the corner of his eye Scott saw something moving rapidly across his field of view. When he pointed, as first we couldn't see it because it was well camauflaged but when we looked carefully we could just make out a herd of antelope of some kind. They stood till for a couple of seconds and then disappeared at high speed.
The landscape began to take its toll on the bikes at this point. Punctures were becoming very frequent due the thorned plants that make up just about the only vegetation able to survive here and the lack of a distinction between on and off road. Cheap Chinese tyres may not have helped. Picking out thorns became a regular evening ritual.
Andy and Rory began to have problems with their front racks. They both suffered sheared bolts on a couple of occasions and also had welds fail too. Mending these with pliers, brute forces and hose clamps took a little time and sometimes ingenuity on their part. Other major problems we would face were a derailleur on Scott's bike demolished by Rory's pedal (when the bikes fell over whilst leant together) and my chain continually snapping and refusing to stay fixed. The grit was taking its toll on the moving parts.
Carcasses and bleached bones were a regular part of Gobi life. Horses, cows and even one or two camels (where the rest go I don't know - perhaps they don't die). There is rarely much left of the bodies except the dried skin and bones. On seeing a cow carcass Scott pulled on its horns and unexpectedly they came away in his hands. He kept them and tried to find a way of fixing them to his bike to complement his eagles claw (salvaged from road kill in Kazakhstan) and rubbery alien. This gave me an idea. The next time we saw a dead cow I removed a horn and that night attacked it with a hacksaw blade and red hot nail, trying to turn in into a musical instrument. After much work - horn is a very hard material) I managed to drill a hole through the tip and fashion a mouthpiece and it did actually strike a note. I went to bed very late but quite satisfied. NB Normal bedtime in the Gobi was between 6 and 7 and even in the slightly warmer climes of China it is rarely later than 8.
The endless plains and shallow undulations continued for 10 days until we finally reached China. We knew the Gobi continued for hundreds of kilometers on the other side of the border but we did not know in what state we would find the road. It could be more of the same for all we knew.
We finally reached the border on the 1st of November. The passport control people took great interest in my passport in particular. Apart from the fact that I look like a terrorist at the best of times mine is one of the new ones where the photo is digitally scanned and printed into the passport. This baffled the Chinese who kept on running their fingernails over it trying to work out why they could not feel the impression of a stuck in photograph. The hologram saying British passport over the top of my mug shot did not seem to make much difference here.
When we reached the other side the contrast was to be amazing but that's another story.
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