(26/10/2006-7/11/2006)
The train journey from Ulaanbaatar was not that exciting to begin with, as the area of the Gobi it passed through was pretty flat and boring. Again I was travelling with Luca, but Nina stayed in Mongolia and this time were were joined by Sally. The border controls were a lot less strict than those in Russia, just a quick stamping of passports, but the wait was just as long because they had to lift all the carriages up and change their bogeys (the bits the wheels are on) as China uses a different gauge to Russia and Mongolia (who like to be different from the rest of the world...). We knew were were in China though because we were greeted by martial music and there was no more Cyrillic, just characters on all the signs. The next morning we woke up passing through Chinese countryside, obscured by the soon familiar haze of dust and pollution. Nearing Beijing were got our first glimpse of the Great Wall, the train even stopping so people could get out and have a look.
In all I spent 12 days in Beijing, the first day with Sally and Luca, then Sally left to visit a friend in Japan and Luca left to go down the east coast after just over a week, only a few days before Nina arrived. The first day the three of us went to see the Forbidden City, which despite three of the main buildings being under restoration at the time was nice to wander around in and provided amusement with names for halls such as the Hall of Literary Excellence, and signs telling you not to climb a wall because "A Single Act Of Carelessness Leads To The Eternal Loss Of Beauty". The next major tourist attraction I saw was the Temple of Heaven, which didn't impress me too much as it had been restored to look brand new (as many ancient buildings had been, I soon discovered, truly old attractions being something of a rarity in China), and the smog was so bad that day that everything further than a few meters away looked faded.
The hostel we were staying at offered a tour called the Secret Wall, which Luca and I went on. They took as to a part of the Great Wall not normally open to tourists, where it had not been restored at all. near the village that they dropped us at it was fairly ruined, but after walking along it for half an hour or 45 minutes we reached parts with whole towers and battlements intact, but trees growing in the middle of it. as there were only those of us who were in the minibus there on the wall, it was wonderfully empty of other tourists, and when we go back to the village we were given a home cooked meal, which was delicious. The next day we both went to the Summer Palace, which has huge grounds that we only had time to see less than half of. The parts of it that you pay to see (on top of the entrance to the ground) are obviously ridiculously over restored, although we did get a free demonstration of ancient music and dance which was cool, but wandering around the grounds is very pleasant. We got slightly lost and discovered a huge area of unrestored buildings, or at least they hadn't been restored for decades, which was far more interesting than the bits we'd paid to see. As it neared sunset we decided to get the boat across the lake to the island, and as the only foreigners on the boat became the star attraction, having our photo taken with about 30 different people, one after the other, which was pretty funny.
Of the other tourist attractions that you're meant to see, I saw the Drum and Bell Towers by accident while wandering around the streets looking for music shops, the main art gallery, and with Nina visited the Lama Temple (a Tibetan Buddhist temple) and the Dongyue Taoist Temple, which was interesting as it had full colour statues representing the Taoist Hades. I didn't know anything about Taoism before, other than some people had told me it was a nice hippy religion, but it turns out to be more like a Chinese version of Catholicism. The monsters were cool though. What was more fun than most of these attractions though was wandering through the hutongs (the traditional narrow winding streets that Beijing used to be made up of until they started ploughing new roads through them all for the Olympics) and the parks, where we saw girls fishing in a fish pond, an old man practising calligraphy on the flagstones with a giant brush dipped in water, and even visiting African delegates for the China-Africa forum that was happening at the time.
Food was another highlight, from our first meal (Peking duck of course) to our snacks of fried squid and sparrows on sticks for breakfast. After a few days (and a nasty experience where me and Sally ended up with 3 plates of different kinds of stomach when we wanted noodles) me and Luca settled on one restaurant about 2 minutes walk from the hostel, which had good, pretty cheap food, and a hilarious waitress, so we went there nearly every meal. After a while the food being so oily (nearly everything is fried in China) did get a bit boring, but after two weeks of mutton mutton mutton in Mongolia, it made a nice change.
Possibly the most interesting part of my stay in Beijing though, was the heavy metal gig I went to with Luca on his last night. According to the Lonely Planet Beijing had a decent metal scene, so having gone for more than a month without my music and getting tired of Asian pop everywhere, I did a search on the internet and found that there was a night with about 10 different metal bands playing. It took us a while to find the venue, as it was the other side of the city in the student area, and we were joined by 3 other Italians, Fabio (who travelled with Luca after he left Beijing) and a couple of guys in their 50s or 60s. The first band was a death metal band with a tiny girl vocalist who had the voice of a demon, and it just got better from there. At the end of the night I bought 5 CDs of Chinese death metal, classic metal, pop punk and folk rock.
After 11 full days in Beijing, I decided it was time to move on if I wanted to be in Chengdu to meet Sally and see stuff on the way, so on the day that I met both Sebastian (who I'd met on Olkhon Island) and Louise (who I'd met in Moscow) in the hostel, I got the night train to Datong.
26 February 2007
Mongolia
OK, if you missed it on my livejournal blog, here is the account of my travels in Mongolia. Over the next few days and weeks I shall be updating my blog more as I now have time, what with being in Australia and all...
(14/10/2006-25/10/2006)
The unplanned train journey to Mongolia with Nina and Luca, with Miia and Chris the Canadians in the compartment nextdoor, was fairly uneventful, but as I was travelling with others for a change it was not so boring, even the 8 hours it took to cross the 5km between the Russian border check and the Mongolian one weren't so bad. When we got off in Ulaanbaatar we were surrounded by people trying to get us to go to their guesthouse, but we'd already decided we'd go to the Golden Gobi guesthouse as it had been recommended to us, and they had a free pickup for us too.
Once there we asked about tours we could do and discovered that Sally, the Australian I'd met on Olkhon, was waiting for others to go on a 10 day one to the Gobi, so that we were able to have it all organised before the afternoon to start the next day. That sorted, we got our train tickets for Beijing for when we got back, ate, and went to the black market, a huge place full of pretty much everything, although all I got were some gloves, the two girls got some pretty cool Mongolian boots.
The tour was for 10 days with the driver Tsengel and the guide Tsenguné a.k.a. Cowboy Clint in a Russian jeep-van-thing, but I don't have the time or energy to give a blow by blow account, so instead here are some of the highlights: on the first day, and quite frequently afterwards we could see some huge birds of prey, eagles, hawks and condors, not far from the road. Also on the first day we stopped at some very impressive rock formations that would make a good setting for a Western. We'd often see heards of various animals, sheep, goats, cows and horses weren't that exciting, but on the second day we saw some camels, and on the third Cowboy Clint yelled out "Yak yak yak yak yak!". The third day was the first really interesting stop at a place called Bearded Vulture Canyon, and then at a salt lake where we discovered some bones which we could only assume to be the remains of a Ninajoelosaurus Rex and a Sallysaur. After that we had some fun when Tsengel spotted some gazelles a while after sunset and drove of the road to chase them in the van headlights.
The fourth day featured the joys of camel riding. At first this wasn't much fun as the camels were stupid and slow so to reach the sanddunes before sunset they had to be tied together and rushed along so close that my shin kept banging into the bony arse of the camel in front. On the way back though I managed to get mine to gallop, which was great fun. We then saw the Flaming cliffs, where lots of dinosaurs were discovered, a ruined monastery pony trekking in some mountains to a waterfall, and finally Kharakhorum, Chinggis Khaan's ancient capital, although there is nothing left of it. Instead there's a new city and a Buddhist monastery with temples built in Chinese, Tibetan and Mongolian styles, and plenty of very violent and explicit paintings that undermine the hippy stereotype of Buddhism as a peaceful religion. And on the last day, as we all suffered from the vile cheap Mongolian vodka of the night before, we saw Turtle Rock and Penis Rock, which looked as you would expect them to.
Apart from one night in a hotel, all the others we spent in girs, commonly known as yurts in the West. They have a stove in the middle which heats it wonderfully, but if you forget to get up in the night and put more wood (or coal, or dung) on it then gets bloody cold. Another interesting experience was driving. Like Olkhon, out of Ulaanbaatar Mongolia has very few real roads, and those that do exist are in a terrible state, so everyday we would have about 300km of rollercoaster like driving. But it wasn't scary because you soon realise that Tsengel knows exactly what he's doing and you're probably safer than on the roads in the UK. Even when things break, such as the front right suspension did on the seventh day, ten minutes with a bit of rope was all he needed to fix it and it was fine right back to Ulaanbaatar.
The main problem in Mongolia was the food, as 4 out of 5 meals included mutton. The food was very nice, even camel (which tastes like beef), but mutton soon gets very monotonous, and I never want to taste it again in my life. The cold was also getting quite bad by the time we left, so even though that was by far the best and most fun part of my trip so far, I was still glad to be moving south to China.
(14/10/2006-25/10/2006)
The unplanned train journey to Mongolia with Nina and Luca, with Miia and Chris the Canadians in the compartment nextdoor, was fairly uneventful, but as I was travelling with others for a change it was not so boring, even the 8 hours it took to cross the 5km between the Russian border check and the Mongolian one weren't so bad. When we got off in Ulaanbaatar we were surrounded by people trying to get us to go to their guesthouse, but we'd already decided we'd go to the Golden Gobi guesthouse as it had been recommended to us, and they had a free pickup for us too.
Once there we asked about tours we could do and discovered that Sally, the Australian I'd met on Olkhon, was waiting for others to go on a 10 day one to the Gobi, so that we were able to have it all organised before the afternoon to start the next day. That sorted, we got our train tickets for Beijing for when we got back, ate, and went to the black market, a huge place full of pretty much everything, although all I got were some gloves, the two girls got some pretty cool Mongolian boots.
The tour was for 10 days with the driver Tsengel and the guide Tsenguné a.k.a. Cowboy Clint in a Russian jeep-van-thing, but I don't have the time or energy to give a blow by blow account, so instead here are some of the highlights: on the first day, and quite frequently afterwards we could see some huge birds of prey, eagles, hawks and condors, not far from the road. Also on the first day we stopped at some very impressive rock formations that would make a good setting for a Western. We'd often see heards of various animals, sheep, goats, cows and horses weren't that exciting, but on the second day we saw some camels, and on the third Cowboy Clint yelled out "Yak yak yak yak yak!". The third day was the first really interesting stop at a place called Bearded Vulture Canyon, and then at a salt lake where we discovered some bones which we could only assume to be the remains of a Ninajoelosaurus Rex and a Sallysaur. After that we had some fun when Tsengel spotted some gazelles a while after sunset and drove of the road to chase them in the van headlights.
The fourth day featured the joys of camel riding. At first this wasn't much fun as the camels were stupid and slow so to reach the sanddunes before sunset they had to be tied together and rushed along so close that my shin kept banging into the bony arse of the camel in front. On the way back though I managed to get mine to gallop, which was great fun. We then saw the Flaming cliffs, where lots of dinosaurs were discovered, a ruined monastery pony trekking in some mountains to a waterfall, and finally Kharakhorum, Chinggis Khaan's ancient capital, although there is nothing left of it. Instead there's a new city and a Buddhist monastery with temples built in Chinese, Tibetan and Mongolian styles, and plenty of very violent and explicit paintings that undermine the hippy stereotype of Buddhism as a peaceful religion. And on the last day, as we all suffered from the vile cheap Mongolian vodka of the night before, we saw Turtle Rock and Penis Rock, which looked as you would expect them to.
Apart from one night in a hotel, all the others we spent in girs, commonly known as yurts in the West. They have a stove in the middle which heats it wonderfully, but if you forget to get up in the night and put more wood (or coal, or dung) on it then gets bloody cold. Another interesting experience was driving. Like Olkhon, out of Ulaanbaatar Mongolia has very few real roads, and those that do exist are in a terrible state, so everyday we would have about 300km of rollercoaster like driving. But it wasn't scary because you soon realise that Tsengel knows exactly what he's doing and you're probably safer than on the roads in the UK. Even when things break, such as the front right suspension did on the seventh day, ten minutes with a bit of rope was all he needed to fix it and it was fine right back to Ulaanbaatar.
The main problem in Mongolia was the food, as 4 out of 5 meals included mutton. The food was very nice, even camel (which tastes like beef), but mutton soon gets very monotonous, and I never want to taste it again in my life. The cold was also getting quite bad by the time we left, so even though that was by far the best and most fun part of my trip so far, I was still glad to be moving south to China.
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