Mongolian Wanderings

We got to the Gandantegchinlen Kiid just before dusk. We were given the tip “In Mongolia, every car is a taxi” and waving at a passing car proves it. The monastery itself feels vital after China. Young monks wander the grounds being cheeky and older ones smile. There’s close to 200 monks here all part of the resurgence of Buddhism in Mongolia. With the snowy mountain backdrop it feels more like Tibet once would have.

In the morning we head out into the steppes to another monastery, Manzushir Kiid. It was given a kicking by the Chinese in the 1930s with crumbling ruins flanking a restored temple that’s a modest museum. Snow starts to feather down as we hike up to the monastery and we’re exploring the temple just as it gets heavier. The museum has relics like wand made from a human shinbone and several masks used during ritual dances. The Buddha is from a different period to Yunguang, but is definitely more sensuous. But up behind the temple there are small shrines built around faded and burned rock paintings and we head up there as the snow sets in. Offerings are still made here with blue ribbons tied around the poles as a form of prayer. Our guide, Tsegi, tells us that blue is for the Mongolian sky and as the snow flurries down it seems a stretch.

We saw several poles with blue cloth tied around them as we drove in. Our driver, Ogott, proves to be a man of few words but many beeps. As we pass his preferred shrine, we don’t have time to stop so he blasts the horn three times in tribute.

After the temple we stop for lunch in a ger (yurt-like felt tent). I was concerned it would be a co-ordinated touristy thing complete with hokey displays of ‘traditional dancing’, but we seem to

randomly stop at the nearest ger. The dome structure is designed to shed snow and keep the heat in, while being mobile enough for nomads. In winter there’s a little antechamber by the door to keep the heat in. As we come in we’re met with the mewling of newly born goats, soaking up the warmth. We are offered a milky tea though Tsegi warns us our stomach might not be able to take it. We have a few polite sips. It’s a little awkward with our hosts as we’re having a translated conversation back and forth. A neighbour arrives with a sticky newly born goat which he places by the fire and we all watch it struggle to stand. The neighbour wants to ask us about sheep. We work out this is because we’re Australian and hence must know all about sheep, in the same way Brits know all about growing tea and Americans can detail the ins and outs of their foreign policy.

I sneak in a toilet break and notice that the outhouse uses cow dung as a glue to hold the wooden structure together. Back inside dung is burnt in the fire and it has dried so much there’s no smell. Our tea was prepared on this fire and there was no noticeable stink. The whole ger is cosy and natural with not a traditional dancer in sight.

We head back to Ulaan Bataar with another train to catch. We encourage Otgoo to break the drive at his shrine and honour it by doing a three circumnavigations. We solemnly pick up three stones, dropping one on each lap and making a little prayer that we’ll get to the train on time. Otgoo makes a single lap, tossing all three stones in one go. We ask Tsegi why. “He is lazy,” she laughs. But as we pull out we see some lazier worshippers, who do a quick lap in their car. Nirvana has developed dive-thru.

Beard weird: Walking up to the monastery I get my first beard freeze. It starts with a moistness that hardens as I scrape your hand across it. It’s best prevented with a scarf or shaking off the icicles as you go.

Ethnic headgear count: Disappointingly two (an Uyghur man at the station and tourist shop)

Galloping Gourmets

After the long train trip we go for a big meal. In the carnivalesque cuisine of Mongolia, meat is cheaper and hence more plentiful than vegetables. But it’s cooking based in the scarcity of the steppes so all parts of the sheep are eaten including the testicles. The first dish I order is mutton porridge, a glutinously thick stew with suspicious globs of meat in it. It reminds me of a hearty Scotch broth, minus any of those annoying veggies.

As the Mongols were nomads they needed meat in any form including their national animal, so the horse is eaten. Which brings me to the main – skip ahead if you’re a Black Beauty fan. The Cowboy dish has three hefty horse ribs with potatoes on

the side and a doughy dumpling pancake over the top. Perhaps this pancake is for modesty or to grandly unveil the meat beneath.

And what does Mr Ed taste like? A nutty meat that could even be another cut of mutton. It’s definitely no racehorse as there’s fat lining the bone, though another piece is rangy like good game. It would have been good to wash down with koumiss (fermented mare’s milk) but the menu only runs to beers. Dessert items include peanuts, chewing gum and cigarettes – all good walking foods so we take the hint and head out.

Way of the Rails #1: Quick Guide to the Train Life

We splurged between Datong and Ulaan Baatar and got a 2-person soft sleeper. This cosy cabin is like a pokey hotel room – only one of us can open our bag at a time and stowing on the top bunk makes more space. The top bunks folds down and there’s a nice fold-down ladder. There’s a share shower – basically a hose, sink and drainable floor, but it does the job for a train. You also get a large thermos flask that conductors will re-fill (or let you re-fill depending on their friendliness) from the coal-fired boiler at the end of the carriage. As well as tea and coffee, it makes for budget saving soups and noodles.

Of course there’s also the dining car. Our ticket includes dinner which in China was a couple of dollops of meatballs, rice and carrots and celery on the side. It’s bland but bearable. And you can throw in a couple of beers if you’re after flavour.

In the morning and on the other side of the border, we couple with a new dining car complete with ornately carved woodwork and a Mongolian ala carte breakfast. My sausage omlette comes with a sauerkraut-like slaw of carrots and cabbage. It’s springy and flavoursome, making a change from cup noodles.

Erlian Border Crossing

China already seems to be behind us as we pull into Erlian. Already we’ve seen the landscape growing drier and stations have lost their grim institutional look. Actually crossing the border is a formality. Customs officials snatch up our passports and give us no idea of when we’ll see them again. We begin the long slow wait for the gauges to change. Mongolia is temptingly close but really it’s the distance between two gauges. And how long does it take to cross that distance? At least two hours as our bogie is lifted onto a new set of wheels. Swapping bogies makes trainspotters giggly, but it’s fairly dull for anyone else.

The guidebook chirpily tells you that once you get your passport back you should explore this “lively” border town. In fact it’s a plain train station that does duty free. To be fair I did ignore the instructions about getting your passport back and hopped off for a few minutes to go to the bathroom. I’m about to leave the terminal when I notice there’s now a guard on the door. I smile sweetly and push on the door but it’s locked. I ask the guard and she says “You wait. 10:30.”

This means more than an hour of looking in the Duty Free area which on closer inspection is

more of a supermarket with a dozen bottles of Malibu and a collection of obscure whiskies. I’m a little nervous without my passport but buying a few sachets of Coffee King in “American Flavour” keeps me amused for at least ten minutes. The rest is striking up conversations that consist of “Hello” and “I’m out of Mandarin now”.

Back on the train and we get a second serve of Customs – Mongolian style. The green uniforms are similar but the Mongol version is tricked-out with more military bling. And the female inspector has higher cheekbones with more makeup. Her approach might have just been bossy in China, but here it’s refreshingly brassy.

Yunguang and Heng Shan

Datong needs a marketing makeover. In the hills of Shanxi, it’s gotten a little lost of the last couple of hundred years and most Chinese know it for coal rather than culture. A friend in Beijing asked me before we left “Why would you want to go to Datong? It’s the sick bowl of China.”

The walls of this bowl are mountain ranges that both protected Datong and made it a stop for camel trains heading north. They traded religion as much as tea or spice. Datong has sheltered Buddhism and it’s best known for the Yunguang Caves, where thousands of sculptures were carved into the sandstone cliff faces that have survived centuries. This is why we hop off the train.

But first we visit the Hanging Monastery, suspended from Heng Shan (Heng Mountain), one of China’s five sacred Taoist mountains. Taoists seek to climb each of these mountains making offerings as they go and as we approach Heng Shan small shrines appear in the hillsides. The monastery itself though is Buddhist so pilgrims gather here from both religions and there’s even a smattering of Confucianism. The monastery has been routinely trashed over years, but has been balancing three religions on this cliff face since the Northern Wei dynasty (AD386-534).

And it’s a precarious balance. Stilts built into the rock support the building but every footstep creaks with weight and another large tour group bounces the structure under us. I’m reminded of every Indiana Jones film where someone would almost certainly hack out a stilt from under this relic and the whole building would slide into the trickle of water below in Jinlong Canyon.
To take my mind off how narrowly we seem to be defying gravity, I ask why so many of the Buddhist statues have been beheaded. “Red Guards,” our guide says flatly. You can build a miracle into a cliff face but you can’t defy the Cultural Revolution.

We make for Yunguan Caves. More than 250 caves of varying sizes were carved into this 1km stretch of Wuzhou Shan. Because Datong was on major trade route, the caves reflect how Buddhism adapted to China. Earlier caves feature Hindu gods like Vishnu and Shiva, but the latest feature Buddhas who are more Chinese looking as the religion journeyed East. With more than 500,000 statues from tiny intricate carvings to the 14m-high Sayamuni, Buddha burnout is a real risk. A slow wander to appreciate the little differences is ideal, but our guide hurries us along.

On the way back into town small structures pimple the surrounding ridges. These beacon towers from the Ming Dynasty are reminders of the strategic importance of Datong as it was a line of defence against the Mongol hordes to the north. The Mongols swept down to sack Beijing and stretched beyond the reach of the Trans-Siberian with an empire that went as far as Germany. And in this empire, synonymous with barbarians and Genghis Khan, is our next destination.

This post also appears at Viator.

All aboard, Beijing

We’re not going to catch the train out of Beijing. Our first leg of the Trans-Mongolian and the cab doesn’t seem to be going fast enough to get us to Beijing West Train Station. It’s about ten minutes before departure and I’m trying to communicate with my scraps of Mandarin that we need to go faster with frantic pointing ahead and looking flustered. The cab driver takes this has a critique of his music and switches from the hip hop station to some fluffy Canto-pop. Actually the determined rhymes and driving beats of Eminem suited the mood better.
This trip has been a dream for me ever since I studied Russian history at university. The Trans-Mongolian is an offshoot of the longer Trans-Siberian Railway that runs from European St Petersburg to Vladisvostock on the Sea of Japan. It’s a journey of more than 9,000km as cultures slowly change and borders blur. Our route (if we make the train) begins in Beijing then stops in Datong before wriggling north up through the steppes to Mongolia. We’ll hop off the train in Mongolia’s capital Ulaan Baatar before swerving up to Irkutsk where we’ll visit the world’s deepest lake, Baikal. From there we’ll meet the Trans-Siberian as it follows the ancient route of Russian tea caravans. It’s a long slow haul from here so maybe we’ll break the journey in Yekaterinburg, where the last of the tsars were murdered. Then the onion domes and grandeur of Moscow, before swerving up to St Petersburg. And because we can’t get enough we might keep on to Helsinki in Finland.
But all of this depends on us making that train. The cab veers off the main road and we see it in clear English: Beijing West Railway Station. Maddeningly we go into an exit loop so the sign passes us by twice before we get any closer to it. We pull up out front and I make a mad dash to locate the platform, while my partner, Nikki, unloads the bags and pays the taxi. There’s a metal detector (why do they need to know if I’m carrying my keys now?) and few gruff officials but then I’m there. There’s a scramble of characters on the departure board, but I can just work it out: platform 6. Doubling back and Nikki is dodging through lanes of traffic wrestling with both bags to get to the same metal detector delay. But we’re going to make it.
At the platform there’s another mix-up. Our carriage seems to be filled with smoking soldiers and our seats can’t be seen for bodies and fug. We grab a conductor and he takes another look at out tickets. He frowns and makes an executive decision that we just don’t know how to book tickets. He takes us two carriages down, where there are fewer soldiers and plenty of free seats. The train lurches to a start just as we drop into our new seats.

This post also appears at Viator.

Really going

When do you really know you're really leaving on a trip? In the middle of your day there's the realisation in a month/week/day I'll be in another country. For me there's usually a physical prompt - something that makes me realise I'm leaving.
This week I got the last of my visas, which usually acts as a good nudge. The Russian visa however is the most anti-climactic- grey scrub on your passport though. Oddly it's also the visa that cost the most and required the most organisation. Mongolia just shrugs and charges you next to nothing, while China's does take a little organisation but at least looks impressive once you have it.
Packing is the other big signifier. People are always wanting to know how to pack or what to bring. I have revolutionary method that consists of putting out a bag a week before I go and dropping things into as I think of it. It's best in the loungeroom so you can look over during a commercial break and think "I haven't got a toothbrush. Better do something about that."
And of course there's still the last minute frenzy, but they have shops wherever I'm going so I usually try not to get too worked up about forgetting stuff. However, when I said this to a friend in the middle of the packing frenzy she pointed out "Do these shops sell my passport?"
Which reminds me...

Bookcrossing the Big Trip

After I leave The Big Trip on the bench, I hang around for a while. It's like a kid on its first day of school and I'll admit it can be a little hard to let go, to leave it to fend for itself in the world. Strangers walk past looking at it oddly, then move on. Two passing early birds from the gym see it point and I overhear one say something about "terrorism". And I'm thinkng if I don't get out of here soon my first experiment in setting a book into the wild will end alarmingly.

Bookcrossing (or BCing or BX depending on your street cred and character count) is a way to swap books with complete strangers and log them online to see where a book travels. It began back in 2001 when Ron Hornbaker decided he needed the shelf space at home and has been steadily building. In Australia, there's a small community of just over 1000 people dropping and collecting books from each other. But the network ranges as far as book finders from Brazil to Burkina Faso with travellers being the main movers of folios. It's like hitch-hiking for books or a library that won't stand still.

But right now my forlorn little book is going nowhere. I do another lap before farewelling it and thinking it'll just sit there for weeks being eyed suspiciously. I'm begining to doubt the kindness of strangers and even loving something then setting it free. But by the next time I log onto my computer there's an excited message from a BXer who wants to know exactly where I left it. It seems that when you log a book some BXers set up an alert on a certain area and can pounce on anything nearby. They even logged the find and promised to give me an update. I'm so chuffed I leave another copy in my Beautiful Laundrette on the way home.