It's the 4th of august now and I am posting from a post office/internet cafe in Ulaanbatar. We just arrived back from the ger camp we spend 2.5 days at. In my last post I was a bit short about the traintrip we had from Beijing to Ulaanbatar and I forgot to mention a bit which was heaps of fun. The thing is that the railway in China is different from the one in Mongolia, and at the border crossing we had to change the wheels of all carriages before we could enter Mongolia. Once our passports were taken away by border attendees we had to wait before they would return. The compartments were opened and we were free to roam the platform and shop. We went to the shop to get some snacks and stuff and just when we wanted to go back on the the train it took off to go and change the wheels. John, Jamie and me were just too late while the others were just in time. Result was that we had to wait on the platform for about two hours untill it would return. Very boring indeed, so we decided just to go walk towards the hanger where the train was at and try to hop on it again or at least see how they change the wheels. Although we were told not to go off the platform we started walking towards it and just before we reached the hanger we saw the train move again a bit towards the platform. Thinking we were in deep we just stood there in doubt untill we saw that most carriages were lifted in the air and that the train couldn't return yet. A bit nervous we entered the hanger were we saw the others in our carriage just looking outside the windows. We thought the Chinese would be pissed off when they would see us entering the hanger, but on the contrary, they basically ignored us and when it became clear to them that we actually belonged in the carriage they even opened it for us so that we could hop on. Quite something that could have gone wrong but turned out to be a lot of fun. By the way, it's quite amazing that the wheels have to be changed anyway, I've seen anything like that. Thankfully the tracks between Mongolia and Russia are the same!
Back to more recent events then. The rest of the day after arrival we spent in UB. The city isn't much special, quite ugly actually, but we had time to go on the net, refresh and just hang out a bit. The next day we took off early to first go to a local monastry and afterwards to the Ger camp. Around 1 pm we arrived in the Ger Camp and immediately had lunch. The area where the camp is located in is amazing and nothing like UB. On the way we saw heaps of cows, horses (of course) and the occasional yak. The gers itself were much like the Yurz we slept earlier in at the Karakul lake near Kashgar although instead on sleeping on the group we had beds this time and a stove in the middle where we could make a fire to stay warm. Because there was no sun the first day it was quite chilly and we lit the fire right away. We soon found out that it's either cold or really hot because the fire was clearly to much for the small ger. Anyway it was nice anyway, it felt like going back in time when providing yourself with a good fire to keep warm. That day we didn't do too much, just hung around a bit, went to a local family to drink fermented horse milk (3% alcohol) which tasted horrible, in my opinion. That night, after dinner we decided to make a big camp fire up on the hill near our gers and went into the woods to collect some wood to get the fire started. At one point we managed to have a big one and enjoyed it untill Sana (our Honcho) received a phone call that he had to put it off. We decided to just let it run out and leave but 10 minutes later a car approached and the site manager insisted that we had to put it off and warned Sana that he would report this. While this was totally unfair, since it was our idea to do it, we saw the guy was unreasonable and there was not much we could but putting the fire off, which we then did. A bit dissapointed we left the fire and returned to our ger. We had some local vodka and went to sleep.
The next day we woke up early to have breakfast. The idea was to go horse riding afterwards, since we reserved 10 horses. However, most of the horses been given out to a group of Japanese and therefore we had to wait untill 11 am before they gathered enough horses to go. The horse trip was (for me at least) absolutely amazing, and one of the highlights of the whole trip. They were asking people who could ride horse because there were a couple of rough ones and more particular; they were supposed to be fast! So I said that I could and I was given the best horse of the group, although I've driven a horse only once before. Anyway, the first half half hour I was led anyway untill I asked if I could off by myself. I could, and I could say the horse was just amazing. It wasn't the biggest one but it was responding amazingly well. And it was fast! As soon as I tried to get it gallop it did it immediately. I was going real fast for a moment but got it to stop pretty quickly because Steve's horse was following it, tripped and fell. Luckily Steve and the horse were okay, but the horse caretakers weren't too happy. The rest of the trip I was keeping it tamed, although sometimes that was really hard because it just wanted to go and run. When were heading back to camp two hours later there was a long stretch of land and my horse was almost impossible to keep calm anymore. I then asked one of the caretakers if I was allowed to go nuts the last couple of hundred meters and they allowed me. I let go of the rope and horse just took off real fast. This was absolutely amazing and by encouraging it the horse just went faster and faster untill we had to stop when we reached the camp. I was completely psyched and didn't want to stop anymore. Horses rule! I asked if I could take the horse for a ride that evening by myself and Sana said I could. We then had lunch and proceeding by chilling out for a few hours. Around 6 Tash, Dave and me headed over to the horse camp and found that the horses were taken by the damn Japanese again and we had to wait untill they returned. When we gotten three horses afterwards they were all very tired and the trip was nowhere near as fun as the one in the morning. A bit dissapointed we returned after half an hour. I guess you can't have it all... We had dinner afterwards and spend the night just hanging around a bit.
The next morning we wanted to get up around 5 am to see the sun rising. We did get up at that time, but were to sleep to see it all trough and went back to sleep. Later that morning we had breakfast at 9 before getting in the bus that brought us back to UB at 10. The trip took about an hour and we went back to the hotel we were before to leave our bags and charge some electronic devices. After that we headed straight to an internet cafe where I am now...
However, during all this, Jamie received a call from home that her grandmother passed away. She gotten messages from her parents before that her grandma was not doing well. Although she saw it coming it's still a mayor setback, especially since she can't be at the funeral. She will continue at the journey and it is to us to cheer her up. Anyway, it's a setback and I wish Jamie the best for the rest of the trip...
thank you, bye bye!
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