Thursday, October 29, 2009

Tibet at last!

Well, we finally made it to Tibet after almost 48 hours on the train.  It was such a scramble getting the permit in time - we only received it by email on Tuesday morning and we were supposed to leave on the train that afternoon.  But it arrived in the end and our group of 7 all managed to be in the right place at the right time to catch the train.  What a relief!
 
We arrived in Lhasa this afternoon and were met by our Tibetan guide.  We organised everything with her via email so it was nice to finally put a face to the name.  We are all a bit tired and headachy due to the change in altitude - the train was over 5000m above sea level at one point!  But we are all looking forward to starting the tour proper tomorrow morning.
 
More of an update later as we only have a few minutes of internet to let everyone know we arrived.

Saturday, October 24, 2009

15/10/2009 – Final chapter on Mongolia

 I know I am a bit behind with my blogging. What can I say? Times flies when you are having too much fun!


Seriously though, Mongolia is one of the most the most beautiful country I have ever visited. It had so much more than I had expected. It wasn't just the culture and the desert that I thought would impress me, it had a LOT more to offer. Take its landscape for example. It wasn't just sand dunes and steppes - there were glacial lakes, alpine forests, sublime tranquil mirror-like lakes and plenty of wild animals. The hospitality of the nomadic people continues to amaze me.


We spent the first 3 days just getting to know the capital city – Ulaan-baatar. It was actually a very cosmopolitan city. It was of course not your Hong Kong, Sydney or even Brisbane. But it was new and it felt very 'fresh'. New buildings and roads were being built every week. When we were first there, the main road (Peace Ave) was being repaved, when we came back from our first trip 12 days later, there was a new road. Then 2 weeks later after we came back from our second trip, it had fences on it separating the opposite lanes.


It was such a nice change that it was actually cold. I think we had our first cold night this year on our first night in Mongolia. Then it just got better and better with a snow storm and below freezing temperatures! I absolutely loved it! It was such a relief that my backpack was so much lighter when I had 4 layers on my including my down jacket. I felt like I was a mini sumo-wrestler. They actually were quite popular in Mongolia. I guess that's why all these Mongolian girls smiled at me when I looked super big with all the layers of clothes on. Maybe????


We were lucky that we met this Italian guy, Raffaele, on the trans-Mongolian train, who introduced us to this English couple (Steve and Sam), with whom we later formed a group with to go to the Gobi.


Gobi tour

We did this tour with UB Guesthouse. We were required to bring our own lunch and couple nights of breakfast/dinner. So the night before our 12 day trip, we went shopping together for groceries. I think we managed well with about 7 days of salami, tomato and bread and 2 days of instant noodles. We had to local Mongolian restaurants twice just to break the salami streak :)


Gobi was absolutely amazing. I have never seen anything like it before. The steppe was so enormous and flat that you could see a little hill tens of kilometres away. There were no trees at all. Just tiny strips of bush, grass and dirt everywhere. It was really really dry. No wonder the Mongolians love eating animal fat – need to to keep their lips moisturised.


I was really amazed to see the Mongolian herders herd their sheep, goats and sometimes camels in the Gobi. It was so difficult just to find water or dig a well, let alone having plenty of water for the animals. By the way, watch out New Zealand, Mongolia might actually have more sheep per capita than you!


I could really appreciate what the word 'remote' means when at times we drove for a couple of hours without spotting a single human soul (besides ourselves). Because the Gobi was so flat, it felt like the road that we were on was endless - winding to the middle of nowhere. It was very rewarding after a long day in our Russian van to watch the sunset over the horizon on the steppe and the full moon rising at the opposite end of the sky. It was as romantic as it gets.


In the desert, every night was a freezing night for us even in September. Because there were no trees for fire in some places in the desert, we quickly settled into the routine of what locals do in the desert – collect dry dung to burn. The Englishman Steve became quite good at it and he truly deserved his new nick name – sh*tman.


On our first day in the Gobi we stopped by this small oasis lake in the desert for lunch. While we were eating, a pack of horses came over and drunk and played in the water. It was surreal to see these semi-wild horses just wander over 15 metres in front of us for some play time.


Life must be pretty tough living as nomads. They tend to look much older than their true age. An owner of a ger we stayed in was only in his 40s and showed many deep wrinkles on his face from years of living in the harsh desert climate.


The scenery was so beautiful that I often sat in the car and stared out the window for hours. When we drove to the top of this bigger hill and looked down at the endless steppe in front us, it was not difficult to imagine maybe Chinggis Khan himself once stood on the top of the same hill staring down at his next prey.


We often spotted eagles, falcons, vultures, foxes and gazelles. Apparently there were wolves around as well, but we never had the opportunity to see them. Our drive, Baila, drove his Russian van as if it was a safari 4WD. He nearly got some foxes a couple of times too. True Mongolian spirit!!!


We met some random Mongolian herdsmen when were having picnic lunch one day. They probably saw tourists and came over to have a yarn. They spoke no English at all, but all seemed to be very very interested in us. We offered them some food and they invited us to join them in rounding up their yaks and horses and roping small ones. I have no idea how they managed to throw the rope onto running yaks' necks with high accuracy. They were awesome riding these wild yaks like western cowboys. I wish that could have been part of my extra-curricular activities when I was in school!


They later taught us boys how to do wrestling and wrestled with us. They may have looked small, but they were full of muscles – probably from years of tackling yaks! I think we lost every single wrestling match except when I won one against this 50 year old man. I know what you are thinking, at least I won one! So there!


We also did a 3 day horse trek in this place called Eight Lakes. We went in September just in time for the leaves to change colour. Apparently it looked like Canada according to Sam. I trained my horse really well after the end of first day. In the second day, I could canter and the horse pretty much did anything I wanted! It was heaps of fun riding horse, especially rounding up goats and sheep. Maybe it's my true calling who knows!


Has anyone being rammed by a goat before? I have. What happened was I was eating an apple when this goat came. I was patting it fine. But as soon as I finished my apple and chucked the core out, the darned animal rammed me in the knee. Maybe it was waiting for the leftover apple core. It tried to ram me again but I grabbed its horns. It looked small, but it was darn strong. I told the tourists who all came out to see the goat. And the goat ran towards me and wanted to ram me down again! It was nuts! I was like 5 times its size. I am glad the tourists found it funny.....bastards.


Mongolian food was ok, but after 12 days of mutton dinner on the trip, I almost became a vegetarian. We had mutton rice, mutton spaghetti, mutton with mashed potatoes, mutton with boiled potatoes, mutton noodles. Even the hot water we got was mutton water. Can you imagine brushing your teeth with mutton water? I can. It was as if you were brushing your teeth with left over dinner soup. I could not handle it after one rinse.


Steve, Sam and Raffa were so sick of eating mutton bread for breakfast, they ate their well-stocked choco-pies pretty much everyday. Raffa, being an Italian, were super picky with his food. Naomi actually does an excellent impersonation of Raffa...... "Nooo! I cannot eat anymore moo-ton. It waz moo-ton last night, and now moo-ton again tonight. Noo moo-ton for me".


Unfortunately Naomi got food-poisoned for a couple of days during the trip. It was not a nice experience I was told going on bumpy roads when all you want to do is chuck.


Naomi had already talked about the whole goat bbq dinner we had. It was one of the best meals we had in Mongolia. A whole goat cost AU$25 - cheap as chips!


It was a great trip and the Gobi really impressed me. But after 12 days of living with nomadic families, we were quite eager to go back to the city and have hot showers every day and eat food without any mutton in it.


Northern and Central Mongolia

We met the Lithuanian couple, Gintas and Vida and organised a trip with Khongor Guesthouse this time. Our original travel day was delayed due to the snow storm in Mongolia. It was the biggest one they had in 15 years or something. Coming from Australia, it was actually quite exciting for Naomi and I. We were making snowballs and pegging them at each other and were writing on the snow that fell on people's cars. A hot shower that night was a real blessing!


We eventually left on our trip 2 days later. Our main goal was to get to Khovsgol Lake and the White Lake and to see old monasteries on the way. The tour with Khongor was a little more luxurious as all meals were provided and we did not have to camp at all. Just as well we didn't camp, as the night temperatures around the Lakes were like -10 degrees.


Before we went to sleep on the first night of this trip, we had an absolutely cloudless sky with thousands of stars above us. I was pleasantly surprised when I woke up at 3am to go to the toilet to discover that it was snowing and the ground was covered with snow. It would have been a very beautiful scene if I wasn't just wearing a t-shirt and pair of shorts! As the toilet was like 15 metres away, needless to say, it was little too far....


It really was very beautiful the first couple of days though when there was still snow on the ground on the side of the road and up on the hills. Northern Mongolia was completely different in scenery than the Gobi. It had a lot more trees and was more mountainous. The towns/villages also were more developed. We ate lunch at restaurants in the first couple of days.


We did another 4 days of cross-country horse trekking. We rode around Lake Khovsgol and the Great Lake. I really enjoyed it, in fact, I think I might have to go and buy a horse when I get back home. It felt like a dream riding in the light snow.


We also tried some fishing, but unfortunately the equipment that we were given was not the right sort and so we had no much luck.


The van we were in this trip was definitely not as good as the last one. I lost count of how many times it broke down on the side of the road. I think our driver (Sagi) spent all his spare time fixing the van. Poor guy. Once we broke down for 6 hours in the middle of nowhere. Luckily we found a nomadic family to use their ger. That was the thing about Mongolia. It seemed that any random could just walk into anyone's ger and use their beds, stoves, watch their tvs and drink their tea etc. I was so impressed by the hospitality of these people as they had not much at all, but still gave us some of their mutton for lunch. We had about 5 lunches just in random people's gers and hung out with their families and played with their animals. We even got to try their fermented horse milk ('airag'). I even got to ride a yak! It was pretty weird riding one, but fun nonetheless.


Naomi got scratched by a family's pet kitten. She was so worried that she might have developed rabies, as soon as we got back to Beijing, she rung the travel insurance people and asked them for a recommended hospital to have some rabies shots. The Mondial Assistance guy was just like... "Right....you got scratched by a cat.....right.....I don't think that's covered.". Meanwhile Naomi was so stressed out, this guy was still not taking her seriously. Hopefully they'll give her some money.


We had a great time hanging out with the Lithuanians at night playing uno or card games. We also tried some of the local vodka.


All in all, northern and central Mongolia seemed more developed than the Gobi trip. They were both stunning, but just very different. The first trip was more outdoorish than the second trip.


Ulaan-baatar

After we got back to UB, we spent a few days just relaxing and shopping for cashmere. The price was like ¼ of Australian price. So a real bargain.


We went back to China on the 8th of October. We caught a local train to the border town (Zamyn-Uud) then a jeep across to the Chinese border, and a cab to the local long-distance bus stop and did an overnight bus to Beijing. It took us 36 hours to go from UB to Beijing, but we only spent around AU$80 for the whole trip compared to the Beijing-UB train which cost us AU$201.


I really loved Mongolia. It was definitely my favourite country so far and I would love to go back one day to visit the western side where the Kazakh people live and where the eagle-hunters are.

Thursday, October 22, 2009

Xian, Chengdu

We're currently in Chengdu trying to sort out a permit for Tibet which is proving pretty difficult.  We have found 5 other travellers who are keen on going and were put in touch with a guide through an Australian couple who we met in Mongolia.  Still, communicating and coordinating everything through email is time consuming and stressful.  Although we don't yet have confirmation that our permits will be ready, we have gone ahead and booked our tickets on the train so that we don't miss out.  It seems like lately we (well, at least Paul who is mainly in charge) have been spending most of our free time trying to sort it out...

Between emails though we've managed to spend a few days each in Xian and Chengdu.  Xian was really nice and had a lot of atmosphere.  We stayed at a great hostel near the Muslim quarter and went out in to the back streets every night to get food off the streets.  We had some very interesting food there that we never had before, including hand made noodles which were really delicious.  I suppose it was a little bit like watching someone make a pizza - when you ordered they pulled the noodles by hand right in front of you and dumped them into a big pot of boiling water.

Of course we checked out the terracotta warriors which was interesting.  We were relieved that we went on the local bus instead of on a tour.  It wasn't that hard to get there in the end (especially when you have Paul to read the signs on the bus).  We stopped on the side of the road across from the warriors to buy some local pomegranates - they were everywhere around Xian and were really nice.  Other than that we just checked out a few sights around town before moving onto Chengdu.

Chengdu is not as atmospheric as Xian but it does have the pandas going for it.  We spent more than AU$10 to get in before we realised that we could have gotten in for just 1 yuan with a special promotional card you can pick up around town - I think it's supposed to boost tourism after the earthquake.  The pandas were very cute, especially the little babies - one of which was lying in a humidicrib - so sweet!  We also tried to local super hot hotpot which is full of peppercorns and chillies.  We were a bit weak and we went for a combination hotpot which had a mild soup as well as the really spicy one.  It's amazing how much different food there is in each region of China.  We also had an interesting snack set which was lots of different little snacks that are a specialty of Chengdu.  The tea houses are also really famous here but as Paul doesn't really drink tea we haven't tried one out yet.

Nothing else of huge interest has been happening as Tibet has been consuming a lot of our time and energy.  We will all be so disappointed if it doesn't work out so fingers crossed that it does happen after all....

Thursday, October 15, 2009

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.