Back in Beijing

We haven't posted for ages and there is a lot to catch up on.

After our brief delay in UB because of the snowstorm, we finally got away on our second trip out to the Mongolian countryside two days later.  We had joined up with a Lithuanian couple, Gintas and Vida, who had responded to an add that we left in the hostel before we left on our first trip. 

Our second trip was another 12 days - this time to the north of Mongolia.  The main highlights were Amarbayasgalant Khiid (a monastery), Lake Khovsgol in the very north of Mongolia (the second largest fresh water lake in the world), Great White Lake in central Mongolia and Khustain National Park (where you can see Mongolia's wild horse, the takhi).  We also took in a few towns and other scenic spots along the way.

We had another Russian minivan for the trip and it was very nice with only four people inside instead of five.  The only downside was that the second minivan seemed a lot older than the first and it was always breaking down.  One day we were supposed to arrive at the Great White Lake at around midday and have some time to look around in the afternoon.  Unfortunately, soon after setting off the car ended up breaking down - luckily it was right in front of someone's ger.  We were broken down there for 6 hours and the ger family spent all day helping our driver fix the car, including driving him back to town to get a spare part to fix the problem.  They also let us use their ger to make our lunch. 

When we first went inside that particular family's ger, we noticed that it smelt strongly of sheep.  Looking around, we saw that there was a sheep's head and legs on a bench inside the ger, right near the bed where we were sitting.  It must have been recently killed.  After a while, the mother built a fire outside and took the head and legs out. She put the head and legs into the raging flames to burn all the hair etc off them.  Then she brought them back into the ger. The smell was really strong .  Then she put the head and legs into a big pot over the ger fire.  At this point I left to get some fresh air but I presumed that she was going to boil them up with some other things to make a kind of a stew.  Thankfully, that was one traditional Mongolian food that I didn't have the opportunity to try.  We ended up spending most of that day playing cards and didn't end up getting to the lake until after dark.

Lake Khovsgol was really huge, really clear and really beautiful.  We were there for three days and we stayed in a ger right on the lake.  The first two days we were quite overcast and there was snow on the mountains.  The third day was really cold as well but it was lovely and clear, and the sky and the lake were a really bright blue.  We went horse riding each day but this time we always came back to the ger to sleep (I wouldn't have really liked to be out in a tent with the sleeping bags we had).  The first day we went for a short ride around the lake shore.  The second day we rode up a mountain behind the lake where we had a lovely view of the lake and the mountains surrounding it. There was snow on the ground and it was really pretty.

The third day Gintas and Vida opted to go for a walk instead of a ride, so Paul and I rode with our horse guide back to Khatgal (the small town at the head of the lake).  We started around 10.00 in the morning and it was really cold.  The puddles of water on the ground were frozen over and there were big icicles in the small stream that we passed.  It took quite a while to get to Khatgal and I was relieved when we finally got there - I was riding with a different saddle that was really uncomfortable. 

The Mongolian horses are quite hard to control.  When they're not being ridden, they just all run together as a herd, grazing wherever they want.  This means that when you ride them, they all want to stick together.  If the lead horse does something, they all want to do the same thing.  If the lead horse goes left around a tree, your horse will go left around the tree, even if you try to make it go right. You have to be really forceful to get them to do something different.  Also, if the lead horse starts trotting, all the horses start trotting (except for the really slow ones!).  This isn't so good if you just want to go slow.  On the other hand, some of the horses that they give to tourists are really, really slow (understandably).  When the horse guides ride them they're fast, but once a tourist gets on them they know that they will have things easy and they are always dawdling and trying to eat grass!  Luckily, I managed to control all my horses ok and didn't end up with a really slow one the whole trip.  Still, none of them were as good as Spike from the first trip. 

After Lake Khovsgol we took two days to get to the Great White Lake where we went horse riding again, this time to an extinct volcano.  The volcano had (at one time) spewed a lot of lava out over the plain and there was a lot of pumice stone lying around.  It was hard work for the horses picking their way through all the rocks on the plain but they always seemed to find the best way.  We walked up the last section to the crater which was really deep. 

It would have been really nice to stay a little bit longer at that lake but unfortunately we had to leave after two nights.  It was really cold and windy while we were there which meant that we ended up spending a lot of time inside.  It would have been nice to explore more around the lake as it was really beautiful.  I'm sure it would be lovely to swim in the lake in summer but we weren't even thinking about it as it was soooo cold.  Our ger camp was right on the lake and every evening some Mongolian horsemen would come past herding their yaks in front of them.  The yaks would stop around the gers to eat grass. Luckily this was usually around sunset which made for nice photos.

After the Great White Lake we visited Karakorum again.  We were supposed to have our third and last shower of the trip at Karakorum but the water was so cold that Paul couldn't even stand to have a shower.  That meant that by the time we got back to UB, he had been 6 days without a shower - lovely.  I doubt that Gintas, Vida or I have ever had quicker showers - we were in and out like a flash, especially Vida who really felt the cold.  It was really fun travelling with Gintas and Vida and we had a lot of fun drinking vodka and playing uno at nights in the ger.  We also met quite a few other travellers who were all doing the same route - some of whom we've also run into since we got to Beijing - it's a small world.

For our last night out in the countryside, we stayed in a family ger near Khustain National Park.  The family moved out of their sleeping ger and stayed in their kitchen ger, so that we could have their beds.  Their ger was really nice.  At night, all their sheep and goats came to sleep around the gers - if you wanted to go to the toilet you had to go through the whole herd.  They all slept really close together to stay warm.  That day we had been to the market where our driver had bought some fresh meat.  That night, he (and the ger family) made us the traditional Mongolian barbeque which is cooked with hot stones.  We had the same thing on the last trip but this was a more sanitised experience (no goat slaughtering required).  It was still a really nice meal though.  We washed it down with beer that we had left on the outside of the ger to cool down.  That night was really cold and there was no wood in the area so we had a fire made with dung.  The dung was nowhere near as good as wood for warming up the ger and it was always going out.  Luckily the family let us use the woollen blankets that they got as a wedding present - they were so warm and lovely that I don't think any of us were cold.  In the morning there was frost on the ger and the fresh animal dung on the ground was frozen solid.

On our last day we visited the national park to see the takhi.  Unfortunately our van broke down again in the middle of the park so we didn't get to spend long looking at the horses but we did see two herds in the distance. Luckily Vida had binoculars with her so we could see them a little bit better.

Back in UB, Gintas and Vida immediately started trying to plan a second trip to the Gobi.  Paul and I had a few days until our visa ran out, which we mainly spent shopping for cashmere.  The Trans-Mongolian wasn't running on the right day for us to leave UB so we ended up deciding to take a local train to Zamyn Uud on the Mongolian border, cross the border and then get a bus from Erlian to Beijing on the Chinese side.

We had an interesting ride on the night train from UB to Zamyn Uud.  I'm not sure what the situation was but for some reason there were five people staying in our four bed compartment.  Paul and I had our own berths, as did another Chinese guy.  On the fourth berth a Mongolian husband and wife were sleeping together.  This didn't really worry us but it couldn't have been two comfortable for them as the beds were really skinny.  Still, they seemed to manage to have a good sleep, stripped down to their underwear.  We arrived at Zamyn Uud around 7.00 in the morning.  We went to the area outside the train station where all the jeeps wait to collect passengers and transport them over the border.  The first couple of people we talked to wanted 50 yuan each (about AU$8) to take us over the border which we didn't want to pay.  Finally, after most of the jeeps had filled up with passengers and left, we managed to get the price down to a more acceptable 35 yuan each (about AU$6).  The price must have been good because one Chinese guy jumped out of the jeep he was in and wanted to come in ours instead - he was paying 50 yuan in the other one). 

After finally agreeing on the price we set off for the border.  It wasn't far away but we had to join the back of a huge line of jeep all lined up on the side of the road at the border.  The line moved so slowly.  It was really cold and we hadn't slept very well so it wasn't a very fun wait.  There were Mongolian ladies walking up and down the line of jeeps selling big jars full of milk tea with dumplings.  It looked really nice because we hadn't had breakfast but as they were re-filling the jars over and over again I had second thoughts and had to resist.

We finally got to the Mongolian border post and got our exit stamp.  Then it was back into the jeep and over to the Chinese side.  We were the only non-Chinese/Mongolian people in the line at immigration.  Soon we were pulled aside and taken to a special area to fill out our health declaration forms.  Then when I went through immigration, the lady behind the counter kept looking at my passport photo and then looking back to me.  Then she motioned to some immigration officers who told me that they needed to conduct a general inspection of my luggage.  They asked me whether I wanted to wait for Paul and I said I did.  They took us to a small room where they asked us to unpack our bags.  Paul went first.  While he was unpacking his bag the immigration officer asked us all kinds of questions - How long were we in Mongolia for?  Why were we there for so long?  What were our plans in China?  Why hadn't we made any arrangements for our time in China yet?  Did we have enough money to support our holiday?  I was thinking "Geez, we don't look that scruffy do we?"

After they made us unpack our bags they got us to pack it up again.  I'm not sure whether they were just practising their interrogation techniques or whether they really thought there was something dodgy about us.  Well, after that we had to go through customs.  They made us scan our bags even though we had just had them inspected.  When they scanned Paul's bag they pulled him up and said he had a long knife inside.  He showed them his Swiss Army Knife but they said that wasn't it and he was going to have to unpack his whole bag so that they could have a look inside.  He wasn't too impressed with this as he had just got done unpacking it and repacking it for immigration.  When he was about halfway through unpacking it I realised that they were probably talking about the butter knife that he carries in case we get takeaway food from the market and need an knife and fork.  Sure enough, that was what they had seen on the x-ray.  Once again, Paul had to pack up all his things.

When we finally got through the border we realised that we hadn't been smart enough to arrange for our jeep to take us to the bus stop in Erlian and that she had taken off once she took us to the border.  We had to get in a shared car to go to the bus stop which wasn't very far away but cost us another couple of dollars.  By the time we got to the bus stop it was after midday.  We booked a bus ticket for 4.30 in the afternoon and went to get lunch.  Around this time, Paul realised that he had lost his toiletries bag while he was unpacking and repacking his bag at the border.  He ended up having to buy everything again.

The bus took about 12 hours to get to Beijing and we arrived about 4.15 in the morning.  We didn't want to pay to catch a taxi to our hostel so we waited 45 minutes for the buses to start running and it wasn't too hard to get a bus which only cost 2 yuan.  We went to get breakfast and then crashed out for most of the rest of that day.

In Beijing, our first order of business was to get Paul a new camera.  This involved several days at the electronics markets that our Chinese friend who jumped in the jeep with us at the Mongolian border had told us about.  We also allowed ourselves a little bit of extravagance and went to the China Open to watch Safin and Nadal play where we managed to get ourselves on tv.  I also had to visit hospital for rabies shots after being scratched by a cat in Mongolia.  I wasn't too worried about it until I emailed my travel doctor at home and they advised me to have the shots.  After that, of course I panicked as it had been two weeks since I was scratched and I made Paul take me to the hospital straight away.  I am still waiting to find out whether it will be covered by insurance.  Apart from that, we also went back to the Forbidden City which we didn't manage to see all of last time.  It was a lot nicer this time as the weather is much, much cooler and there were a lot less people. 

Yesterday we went to the Great Wall - we walked from Jinshanling to Simitai which was about 10km.  It was a lovely day with blue sky - the first we have ever seen in Beijing.  It was a really nice walk although very steep in places and we were quite tired of all the steps by the end of it.  Today we are supposed to be leaving for Xian but we have yet to book at ticket - we will see how that goes.