Pilgrims through this barren land

After the climax of China, Mongolia seemed like a bit of an epilogue and we really had little idea of what to expect. We'd heard from a number of people that Ulan Bator was really dangerous for foreigners as there was a neo-Nazi group going around attacking folk over foreign companies taking over the mines. I have to say, we got off the train with a little trepidation not wanting to fall at this last hurdle.

We were met at the station by Meg who is a Couchsurfer in Ulan Bator, and who is primarily on Couchsurfing to gain business for her tour company. I am always a bit uncomfortable dealing with Couchsurfers who are on for business (as that's really not the point of it) but Meg came highly recommended and had even made it into Lonely Planet so she seemed too good to miss. We'd organised a tour with her a while previously but had changed at the last moment as there was no-one to go on it with us. Instead, we were to take a 7-day (6-night) Gobi Desert tour along with a French couple and a German girl who we were to meet that evening. Meg had a bit of a hangover from the previous evening's activities but was still on very cheery form and I felt reassured that we were in good hands. We caught a taxi back to her flat (one of these unofficial taxis which are really most of the taxis in Ulan Bator - I think that's asking for trouble but given that Meg was in charge I deemed that it was probably OK.). There we met her parents (who live in Ulan Ude in Russia), her wee brother and her baby daughter. I was particularly impressed with how good her brother (12 years old) was with the baby. He would play with her and generally look after her so Meg could deal with organising us and our tour. He kept singing a song to her which I picked up the tune of (but not the words of course!). It was called "Goyo Goyo" and translated toughly as...

Chigchihen chinee bishee (I'm not as little as a little finger)
Chihee ooro ugaaya ( So, I will wash my ears by myself)
Timee ho, ain (Okey-Dokey)
Goyo gogo goyo ( I like it)

Huruuhan chinee bishe (I'm not as little as an index finger)
Huvtsaa ooroo ugaya (So, I will wash my clothes by myself)
Timee ho, ain (Okey-Dokey)
Goyo goyo goyo. (I like it)

Erhihen chinee bishe (I'm not as little as a thumb)
Eej aavda tusalya (So, I will help my mom and dad)
Timee ho, ain ( Okey-Dokey)
Goyo goyo goyo (I like it)

And after some detective work, I managed to find a video...

He was clearly the model uncle and some great husband/father material when the time comes for the lassies to take an interest in him!

Meg's family didn't really speak any English (the brother's few words of English were developed through playing Command and Conquer) but seemed a lovely bunch and served us tea, made us food and even went as far as fashioning us pillows when they noted that we didn't have anything. In the evening we met up with with Manon, Arnaud and Sabine who were to join us on the tour. The plan was that Meg, wee brother and baby would all be coming so that the wee brother could look after the baby while Meg was doing her tour guide bit. After the meet up we helped Meg shop for groceries and I was surprised at how European the store was compared to the Chinese ones. I was bemoaning the fact that we'd bought all our train food in China as opposed to buying nice familiar stuff here. When we went to bed Meg was expressing some concern for the baby who looked a wee bit spotty but we decided that it was probably just mosquitoes.

We woke the next morning we woke to a complete change of plan. They were convinced the baby had Chicken Pox and while it wasn't serious it seemed a bad idea to take her into the desert. Meg said she'd already done the traditional Mongolian thing of getting the ill baby to drink some of the mother's morning urine and I wondered how many child-protection type agencies would be down on her if she tried that in the UK. Meg and her wee brother were bitterly disappointed (especially the wee brother who was in a really stroppy mood as a result) but Meg had managed to rope in a new guide in the form of Enkhee who had already arrived and was drinking tea alongside Turo, our long-haired driver. Enkhee didn't seem to have Meg's confidence or command of English (despite the fact that she taught English grammar which was a little worrying) but we reckoned all would be OK.

Our van was amazing Russian affair which had been modified in various ways (including I reckon a different engine from the original) and had loads of levers which I came to assume were for the 4-wheel drive. It was a great machine and Charlotte and I decided that we wanted one. Inside it had silk curtains (it doubled as Turo's living/sleeping space after all), a patterned red carpet, and quilt-type padding on the walls. It looked fabulous until you realised that the padding was there protection if/when the van rolled...

Soon we rattled out of Ulan Bator. Despite our love of the van we never grew a love of the ride which was like being jiggled around in a tumble dryer. This was exacerbated by the fact that most roads in Mongolia are unsurfaced and are not really roads, more just a track where vehicles have driven before you arrived. Once we got out of the city, the landscape was green with with the occasional group of houses or gers ("Yurts" as most people know them - the tents that Mongolians are famous for) but over time it became less green and more barren and uninhabited. At one point we came to a kind of lake/puddle which had some dried up animal bones around it including a skull which still had a bit of skin on. It was like a movie! We took in an abandoned temple before setting up camp at Baga Gazriin Chuluu right next to some pretty nice rock formations. Enkhee made us dinner of Mongolian noodles with lamb - pretty nice!

One of the things you need to get used to in a situation like this is going to the toilet when there's not really any cover and certainly no actual toilets. The girls in the group developed a dignity saving method which involved tying a jumper around the waist before squatting in the open desert. Maybe it should be patented. Also, it's worth mentioning our tents which were the "pop-up" variety and thus came as large discs. It sounds like a great plan but in reality pretty tricky to put up and take down as they needed weighted with stones or they just pull their pegs. Taking them down was like some crazy "Crystal Maze" puzzle game, particularly when it was blowing a gale and chucking down rain!

Anyhow, after some tent trouble (and a lot of help from Turo the driver) we eventually managed to pack up the camp and went rattling south towards our next destination. I was feeling a little unsure about how this was going to work given that there's no water and no shops in the Gobi but was reassured when we stopped in a dusty, remote wee town which had a store selling beer, snacks and various groceries and a well where the locals got water. We had a stop like this pretty much every day so we were able to stock up on some alcohol for the evening as well as mineral water to make sure we didn't dehydrate (a real concern for me as I need to drink a surprising amount).

That afternoon we visited Tsagaan Suvarga or "White Stupa" - a spectacular place of white and red dunes. Where we were camped was actually called "red stupa" and was even more spectacular. By this point there was no doubt that we were in the desert.

Our next destination was probably the most surprising. We had been in very obvious desert territory up to this point but over the next day's drive, the landscape became greener and more lush to the point that I could have been persuaded that we were somewhere in the Scottish Highlands. This was Gobi Gurvansaikhan National Park which is particularly well known for Yolyn Am, a valley that is filled with ice for most of the year. We'd had some pretty hot weather so it was most disconcerting to suddenly be walking on what was pretty much a glacier. We were lucky as it was likely that it would be completely defrosted within the next couple of weeks. It made me realise exactly how cold Mongolia can be. It's on a latitude with the likes of Oregon but has the added complication of being very far inland which means that the climate isn't regulated by large bodies of water. This means that over the course of 24 hours the temperature can change by as much as 35 °C which leads to hot days and cold nights (as we discovered when trying to adjust our sleeping attire. We camped in the park that night at one of the most fragrant places I've ever been - the whole place was carpeted with herbs including thyme and mint and it smelt gorgeous. It was surprising that Mongolia is quite so herbal as they don't tend to use herbs to flavour their food.

The following morning it looked like Turo wasn't going to manage to get the van started which is a bit of a problem when you're in the middle of nowhere. However, after a bit of tinkering (they're good mechanics these Mongolians) and a bump start the van spluttered into life and we jiggled off back into the desert again. When we arrived at our destination, we had our first close encounter with some nomads. It's common for tourists to come to Mogolia and stay in ger camps but Meg is far more into supporting the local nomads where she can. To this end, a lot of them keep a spare ger or two for tourists and also take them on camel rides for a small fee. Charlotte, Sabina and I volunteered to be introduced to the camels who turned out to be the most noisy, smelly, flatulent and bad-tempered animals we'd ever come across. It was an amazing experience though as we rode towards the sand dunes at Hongorïn Els - these were your classic sand dunes that you've seen in movies and 1980s adverts for Fry's Turkish Delight. Our guide spoke no English but was most enthusiastic and explained by a series of mimes that these were two-humped camels whereas the Australian ones were single-humped. Fact for the day! I was given a camel with a particularly flaccid hump. Hmmmm.... We managed to get Enkhee to persuade the nomads to let us try some of their camel and goat-milk related products which we saw drying on on the roof one one of the gers. They turned out to be pretty good, some like cheese (with a kind of fruity taste) and some like biscuits.

We weren't staying in their spare ger but they'd leant it to us to chill out and eat dinner in as it was pretty hot and exposed outside. As we munched away on our pasta we could hear the strumming of a guitar and some singing from one of the other gers. Enkhee hadn't really introduced us properly to the nomads so we weren't too sure about the protocall of invading what might have been a private party. However, we were feeling a little isolated and uncomfortable so we decided to see if we could join in and got Enkhee to broach the subject with them. They were most enthusiastic, so with bottle of vodka and fiddles in hand we ventured in. There was about 3 blokes sitting in a kind-of circle with Turo, our driver who was clearly a regular at this particular ger (I got the impression that the nomads that we met were generally friends of Turo's). They were all pretty far gone but took our offer of more vodka with enthusiasm and seemed to enjoy mine and Charlotte's music. Turo let us try his "camel vodka" which (we think) was made with fermented camel milk although it was hard to be sure. Charlotte sang some Puirt, I did Tatties and Herring and the Mongolians sang and strummed in a very drunken way on a guitar that they couldn't tune. Overall a grand time was had by all and for the first time, we felt we'd made "first contact" with proper Mongolian culture.

We got up-close-and-personal with the dunes the next morning and managed to climb partly up them. There was some pretty crazy wind and rain but un-deterred we climbed up and I wrote my name in the sand (what a cliche!). It wasn't all sand and nothingness, mind. Right next to the dunes was a massive stretch of beautiful grassland filled with rivers and horses and goats and things. And herbs of course. Stunning.

We stayed in a ger the next night and Enkhee made us some Mongolian steamed buns. They were a lot like the buns we'd had in China but with mutton. We were a bit annoyed as we would have liked to have been shown how to make them but unfortunately she wasn't that good about communicating things to us. It was a funny situation for her mind as she'd been pulled in at the last minute and didn't do tours that often. In fact, she herself had only been in the Gobi on one previous occasion so she was kind of learning as she went along. The buns were great mind! On the way to our campsite that day we came across a bus full of Germans which was stranded in the sand. They'd obviously been trying to get it out for a while and sand had mounted up around the back wheels. After a bit of digging and some pulling from Super Turo and the van of wonder we liberated the grateful Germans whose guide expressed her gratitude (in German via Sabine) saying that she was sorry we'd had to spend our time helping them. We were delighted as it was all part of the adventure for us!

Our last night was spent huddled in the rain and cold near Erdenedalai, Turo's home town. It was probably the most exposed site we'd been on which we bemoaned the next morning when we had to pack up the crazy pop-up tents in a howling wind and pouring rain. After some struggling we managed and jiggled our way back to Ulan Bator where we met Meg, her brother, a much recovered baby and a very welcome hot shower. It had been an amazing experience and as a thanks-you we took Meg, Turo and Enkhee out for dinner and some large German-style beers that evening. We also bid farewell to our fellow tourers whose company we'd really enjoyed.

Our final day in Mongolia was spent picking up our train tickets from Moscow from an unmarked office in a pretty dusty and unkempt part of the city. In the afternoon we helped Meg clean and dry the camping kit in the playground down the stairs from her apartment. The local kids and parents seemed very amused and interested as to exactly what the white, long haired wierdo was doing scrubbing tents! We bid farewell to Meg, her brother and the baby the next morning and caught our train heading for Moscow - the start of the long journey home.