World Travel Stories

Tag: Mongolia

  • Impressions of Ulan Bator

    ULAN BATOR, JUNE 2002 – I had absolutely no idea what to expect from the capital of Mongolia.  I had read some things about it, seen a couple of pictures, but that was it.  And I was very excited to arrive with the train in this city.  And it showed to be very surpising and fascinating. 

    Settlements

    UB suburbs

    Ulan Bator (UB as some call it over there) ‘suburbs’ begin about 50 km before the city, in the valleys of the hills surrounding UB.  These are settlements, consisting of very basic wooden houses, and gers.  The roads are dust tracks, and the dust is blowing over these settlements all of the time.    Unbelievable… that was my first thought when seeing these suburbs.  Horses , old trucks and old cars are the main means of transport here.

    Downtown UB

    Horses can also be seen in the center of town, but this becomes more rare these days.  The center of town still is covered in a sovjet atmosphere, and it seems that painting the walls also stopped with the end of sovjet times.  A lot of construction going on, but there are more ‘half constructed buildings’ than finished ones.  People are dressed in western clothing, seemingly following the fashion trends from a couple of decades ago, but now and then people dressed in traditional clothing can also be seen.  The city has one big shop for tourists (the ‘state department store’ ), and going to the postoffice and bank is also an experience.  UB has some great museums.  I visited the Natural history museum, where dinosaur skeletons and eggs, found in the Gobi desert, can be found.  The museum needs some modernisation, but it is all very interesting.

    Süh Bator square, mausoleum and parliament Appartment blocks in UB

    Our hotel was located in one of the appartment block housing areas of town.  Dust roads, decaying appartments and other buidings, like the school and hospital, but also rusty containers, which are used as garages for the likewise rusty vehicles, old factories, many little shops, outdoor grocery markets, but also some internet cafés, and ‘telephone offices’, where the locals can buy a phone call… Wandering around here gave me an insecure feeling.  Many local people just wander around here, people from whom you can see they have very little and to them you are very rich… also street children over here, in winter they live under the street, near the steam pipes commonly used for heating over here.  All very thought provoking and to me somehow a saddening experience.

    Past and present

    Gandan monastery

    On the edge of town , the buddhist Gandan monastery shows that buddhism is reviving here.  A busy atmosphere over here, and not only because of the tourists.  The Boghd Khan palace on the other hand, is completely deserted.  We were the only visitors over there.  The palace is a museum and very nice artifacts, paintings, statues, etc.. can be seen here – but still it gave me the impression that for Mongolians , this was all to long ago, and that they more care about the present time problems than about the glorious past of their nation.

  • Fun in the bogey shack !

    ERLYAN – DZAMYN UUD, JUNE 2002 – We are in the Chinese train on our way from Beijing to Ulan-Bator in Mongolia, and approaching the border.  The sunset in the Gobi desert is fantastic, and we hurry to take a couple of pictures.  After that, it is quickly dark and coming up are the usual passport control and customs declaration with the usual waiting and sitting around (in our case sleeping…).  But this border has also something special : the changing of the bogeys of the train.  Mongolian railways have a different rail gauge than Chinese.  So the train drives into a ‘shack’ where the railway men decouple all carriages,  lift the carriages with hydraulic cranes, detach the bogeys, and replace them with other ones !

    Sunset in the Gobi desert (China)

    Look, no wheels…

    It is an interesting experience to be on a train “hanging in the air without bogeys” , as we do, but normally one can get off, move around in the shack and observe the process, which takes about 2 hours to complete.  We are still in the carriage…for border control reasons, doors are locked, and we seem to be late to get off – somehow this was confusing where to get off or not.  And temperatures are rising now that the fans cannot work… till 40 degrees Celsius.  Some people already start stripping…(the rest of this story is censored)

    Fun in the bogey shack ! More fun in the bogey shack ...

    Will they keep us here forever ? 

    After the bogeys are well in place and all carriages are hooked on again, next stop is within… two minutes ! Chinese border control & customs.  It takes for ages, and I sleep all the way through it (except when they want some papers from me) and when I wake up…. and it is already daylight and we are still here !  At this stage, nobody knows when we are to leave.  And the toilet doors are still locked.  Some urgencies can be solved after begging to the military men on the platform (to leave the carriage for just a couple of minutes).  Finally we are moving …. ! We leave China with the salutes from the Chinese military men on the platform and music from the speakers !

    Mongolia, here we come !

    Next stop : Dzamyn Uud, where we can wait again for Mongolian border control and customs.  It all goes seemingly a little bit smoother here, and after another couple of hours an engine arrives (the rail Mongolian engine to take us to Ulan-Bator), and we are happy as little children ! One certainly learns to wait in these places.

    Back in the Gobi desert ... in Mongolia this time

    In my compartment, there is a Buryat woman from Ulan-Ude.  She is teacher in Russian – by the way great for me to practice my Russian ! –  and she tells me she does this trip every other week or so… She teaches in China and in Mongolia ! It is very hard for me to realise she has to undergo the whole 5 to 6 hours (or more ?) process each time, just to go to work !

  • Living like a nomad…

    TERELJ N.P., JUNE 2002 – We arrived in the early afternoon in Ulan Bator (UB) with a Mongolian train, coming from Beijing.  We had travelled for a full day and night, with an almost endless stop on the Mongolian border in between… We were tired, after having seen so many desert, steppes, horses, camels, … and swallowing so much dirt.  But we were very excited to see this city from the distance.  The most striking part to me are the ‘suburbs’ which are a mixture of traditional nomad yurts (called ‘gers’ in Mongolian) and basic wooden houses, sometimes not much bigger than sheds.

    Mongolian Countryside

    The next day, we left the hotel early to go into the Mongolian countrysite with the bus.  Our destination of today was to visit some Mongolian nomad settlements, and to go to the Terelj National Park, where we would sleep in ger tents ourselves !  Everybody was pretty excited about this idea.  The first thing on the way were the ‘suburbs’ we had already seen from the train,  in close-up this time.  These appeared to me really unbelievable and so different. Mongolian people just prefer to live in a ger, and the sheds are mostly only used in winter (by the way, temperature difference between mid-summer and mid-winter is 70 degrees Celsius !).  Also in the suburbs , horses are a normal way to travel, and on rare occations some use them even to go ‘into town’.  But these days, also a lot of old (Russian) cars around.  The dust in these places , like on the infamous ‘black market’ I visited, is covering everything !

    The countryside was soon becoming desolate, and the dust dissapeared, and nice green hilly landscapes were unfolding.  Almost no other traffic on these roads, only nomad settlements and horses and herds besides the road.  We stopped to meet some men reparing their truck – standing in the middle of the road, but if it is broken, what can you do ?  The pieces of the engine were on display before the truck, and someone was hammering on some pieces… These men were friendly guys and they asked us ourselves to have their picture taken, as if they were proud of their repair work that was now lying in the middle of the road.

    Nomad family

    Mongolian Gers Real nomads in here !

    Later we stopped to visit a nomad family.  This campment consisted of two ger tents, and some herds of sheep & goats, some horses, and two very big dogs – which were to my relief very friendly and did ignore us all together…  Our Mongolian guide asked the ‘chief’ (the oldest man) if we could visit them and enter the ger.  The inside of the ger was very nicely decorated, with a family altar and several carpets.  Our guide translated some of our questions.  We learned that this ‘man of the family’ was the 70 year old son of the woman sitting in front of the ger (she was believed to be ‘almost 100 years’, but her actual age is not precisely known) .  Mongolian people are rather superstitious, and we had read about not turning your back to the altar or elderly people, always move in clockwise direction inside and (obviously ? ) not leaning on a supporting post.  The man explained us they could set up the tent in about 15 minutes, and that the outside consisted of three layers of felt during winter.

    Ger camping

    Real tourists in here ! Lots of rocks to climb

    Then it was time to move on, and to move into our own ‘ger for one day’.  In the fabulous environment of the Terelj National Park, there are several ‘tourist campments’ with ger tents.  There is a wooden restaurant with bar, and there are some light bulbs here and there, but there is no running water in the gers, no showers,  and as in a real ger, you have to make your own fire to keep you warm in the evening.  And the stay was very enjoyable, I could easily stay another week in this place.  During the day some walking between the rock formations, enjoying the views or some horseriding, and in the evening talking with the locals (i.e. learning some Mongolian for you, for them learning some English) , having fun playing cards or billiards (very popular with the locals, but they get very noisy at night, especially some drinking… – it is also a tradition that they sing traditional songs afterwards).  But to me the real spectacle only begins around midnight, because then the stars are bright in the ink black night, and this is a great place to see them all (or nearly all).  I drifted a little bit away from the camp at night, and I could see nothing but stars and the milky way ! It was so wonderfull ! However our Mongolian driver who was with me – who only spoke like three words of English, but knew a lot about star constellations… – warned me not to stay long out there, because of the wolfs…

    The following morning, for the first time during this trip I really felt cold,  partly because we did not get up in the middle of the night (some did…) to keep the fire going in our ger, but also because I had to leave this fantastic place & these people today.   But I hope to be back one day…