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Diary w/e 30 July
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24th JulyToday we left the comforts of our hotel in UB. We were up at a sensible time (about 1 am according to G's body clock, but she did very well) and after breakfast we started repacking the car to accommodate our new circumstances. It took a while, but after lashing two big bags on the roof rack under a groundsheet we found there was room to use our extra seat in the back of the car without terminal claustrophobia. We planned to head out to the Terelj Ghorki National Park, about 30 miles east of UB, and find a tourist ger camp to stay in for a few days while we checked out the glorious mountain scenery. And broadly, that's what we did. I was surprised by the suggestion that we should have the curry that we had missed last night there and then before we left UB. I said nothing as the men will obviously have a good survival routine when 'out in the countryside', and I didn't want to interfere. The restaurant turned out to be closed much to Richard's disappointment - I was quite relieved to be able to get under way as I was unsure about what to expect outside the city or how long the journey might take. UB is not an easy town to get out of, as road signs are almost non-existent, and all the maps seem to be either far too small and focused on the city centre or far too large-scale and therefore useless. Once we were off the edge of the city centre map, all we had to use was a 1cm=5km map, which was always going to be a challenge. Because UB is spread east-west along a river valley between two ranges of mountains to the north and south, you would think it would be easy. But no. We found bits of UB that most Mongolians don't know exist, including a quite bizarre area which was clearly "car city" where there where a whole load of little private garages (often doing welding out in the open without any apparent protective eyewear or safety gear), what seemed to be an open air car market and millions of Mongolians just driving, parking or milling about. After we extricated ourselves from that, drove past a large army barracks somewhere (the armed guards outside looked at us a bit suspiciously as we drove past for the second time) and explored innumerable dead ends, we were beginning to wonder if we would ever escape from the vortex. But finally, after retracing our steps most of the way back to the city centre and trying a different exit at an earlier roundabout (why didn't we realise that no road sign at all meant "turn right here then next left"?) we found ourselves on what seemed like a good paved road, with the urban sprawl of apartment blocks, small businesses and gers thinning rapidly. That combination was our best sign yet that we had found the road we were after, and so it proved. After a few miles we actually saw a road sign which said Terelj was the second left turning up ahead. Our faith began to weaken after a couple of miles when we had seen no left turn at all of any significance, and only the comforting presence of the main railway line to our right kept us going. After about another ten miles, we found a decent (paved!) left turn which was actually signposted to Terelj (we never found out what had happened to the first left turn to somewhere else). We turned up it and dived into the mountains. The scenery rapidly became quite enchanting. Winding valleys with beautiful streams running along them, gracefully rounded weathered granite peaks, pine forests marching up their flanks and across the ridges, and a single road threading itself through valleys and over passes: it looked like a rather gentler, more intimate and less crowded version of the Alps. We paid our 25p car toll and our £1.50 per head park entrance fee at two separate toll barriers and started to look for somewhere to stay. Our LP guide gave us a few suggestions, but fairly vague directions. Our prime target was a camp described in LP as Tsolmon Ger Camp, in a secluded valley a few kilometres away from the main road and its fairly continuous string of camps. We struck off the main road at a signpost to a Ger Camp called Buvveit which seemed to be run by a company called Tsolmon (which we hoped was right). We followed the rather straggly signs for a couple of miles (or thought we had) when they seemed to peter out and we found ourselves climbing a rather steep, narrow and bumpy track up to a crest - where we saw a big ovoo, three workmen eating their tea and a fabulous view over a massive, beautiful and obviously quite deserted valley. We amused them by turning straight round and heading back down the same bumpy track, and after a bit more casting around we finally found our target. We clambered out of the van and one of the camp people wandered over to see what we wanted. She had very little English, but spoke a bit of German and we managed to communicate that we would like to stay for a few nights. After being asked if we had a voucher or a reservation ("no" to both, of course) she managed to get to grips with the idea of passing trade and explained their complicated price structure ($30 per night per person, including ger accommodation and three meals a day). We said OK (the price was the same as LP had said) and she showed us to a couple of gers and asked us what time we would like to eat. It was that simple. When they saw how much we had in the back of the car, they called for the yak cart to convey it all to our ger, but it was not necessary - we only took in one bag each. But the encounter with the yak was quite special - a hugely long-suffering animal with only one speed (dead slow), he reminded me unaccountably of something as he was pulled around by the ring in his nose, lugging a huge cart uphill... After a quite reasonable evening meal (it was a simple menu - you simply ate what was put in front of you and not curry as R kept reminding us), we retired to our gers, the stoves were lit and we rapidly built up a warm fug with a tang of woodsmoke, drying felt and other odours best not mentioned. Our enquiry about hot waterin the washblock was met with a confusing mixture of English, German and Mongolian (which was either intended to obfuscate, or to tell us that hot water should be available between 12 noon and 2 pm and between 8 pm and 9 pm, but there was some problem today so there wasn't any - we never really got to the bottom of that one) - but a personal inspection of the wash block revealed that there was in fact currently no running water of any type, hot or cold. So we gave up washing as a bad job for today and concentrated on getting warm for the night, which promises to be cold. The camp itself is in a charming setting. It does indeed have its own secluded little valley - it stands right at the head of the valley in a sloping grassy area a couple of hundred metres across. It is surrounded on three sides by craggy peaks, and on the other side there are glorious views back down the valley and across distant ridges of mountains. The gers sit very naturally within the landscape and have a very prehistoric feel about them. It has 36 gers clumped together into a small "village", a single quite modern wash block (flushing loos, but no water to wash in so far), a central restaurant ger (much smaller than at the 3 Camels camp, but very cosy for about 40 or 50 diners) and a larger bar ger which looks like a circular ger/greenhouse and will seat about 100 people, but which is only used when they have big parties in. Our gers are very traditional, and slightly smaller and less luxurious than at the 3 Camels. They are circular, about 3 or 4 metres across and the walls are a little over a metre high. Once you have ducked through the low wooden door and moved towards the centre, there is soon room to stand up and in the middle they reach a height of about 2.5 metres. There is a fairly standard single bed along each side, and a wood burning stove in the middle (with a removable steel chimney which goes up through the centre of the roof). Apart from a small table (with a candle), two stools and a small low dressing table, that's about it for furniture, but it is very comfortable once you have settled in properly. The walls are made of wooden lattice work wrapped around with a layer of felt, then canvas on the outside, all tied round with canvas straps and weighed down with a couple of big rocks on ropes slung over the top of the roof. The roof structure is made of about 30 light wooden spars, again with a covering of felt, which rest on top of the wooden lattice walls at one end and fit into a circular wooden frame at the top (which is partly glazed and partly open for the chimney). When it rains you can demount the chimney and pull a canvas cover over the top section to stop water getting in the chimney hole. The weather today has been drizzle or rain most of the day - in some parts of the mountains it was torrential but here it was quite light, but steady. As the evening wore on, though, the clouds parted, the rain stopped and the temperature started to drop as the stars came out. Rich and I played chess and had a nip of our Bushmills to celebrate nothing in particular. So tonight we are mainly settling into ger life with Ger-aldine at the Buvveit Ger Camp in the Terelj-Ghorki National Park about 30 miles east of UB at GPS ref N 47º 52' 35.54", E 107º 28' 06.86", at an altitude of 1,530m. 25th JulyA quiet day. The night was actually very cold, and the coverings on our beds had a tendancy to come untucked, letting cold draughts in everywhere. Once the stove went out, the temperature dropped rapidly and I had one of those uncomfortable nights of half sleep where you are permanently feeling cold but not quite cold enough to get out of bed and put on more warm clothes. So we were pretty tired and anyway we were all keen, for different reasons, to have a day of chilling. So we did just that. The weather was mostly dry but only intermittently sunny, and we dozed, read and drank in our surroundings. We ate our three meals, and even spotted a column of woodsmoke over the washblock which signified hot water - so we managed a noonday shower and sock wash (though the sellers of power showers have nothing to fear from these wash blocks). We spotted marmots (G saw one hiding behind the steps to Rich's ger before it ran off) and other widlife. In the late afternoon G and I were feeling guilty at out total lack of activity of any kind so we managed a short walk up to the peak on one side of our little valley - which gave us some lovely views over the camp and beyond. There are a few flies and one or two mossies, but none of us got seriously bitten (they are, after all, laid back Mongolian mossies). The wild flowers are pretty sensational and the views fantastic. At dinner, there was quite a large party of German tourists in on an organised tour - just for the day. This camp seems to cater mainly for the German-speaking market, but we can happily get by. The only slight problem is that they do seem to have a habit of hogging the single mains power socket in the restaurant for charging their camera and phone batteries, much to our annoyance. No towels involved, though. There was also a small party of 4 Israelis with their guide (they were on the last night of their 3 week touring holiday before flying back to Israel tomorrow). We made some neutral comment about "tricky times" back home and one of them shrugged his shoulders, sighed, rolled his eyes and said "yes, since Adam and Eve". One obsession the camp staff seem to have is to know precisely when you want your next meal, before you leave the restaurant. We were almost rugby tackled on the steps outside this evening by a waitress who was desperate because she had forgotten to ask us before we left. It is quite disconcerting having to decide at 7.30 in the evening what time you are going to want breakfast! The 3 Camels was just the same, so maybe it's a Mongolian thing... We think they might have heard somewhere that western tourists are a bit fed up of yoghurt as the desert with every meal, so they are being creative. Tonight's offering was a beautifully unwrapped and presented... Kit Kat! (R still talking about curry). Here's hoping for a good night's sleep and a more active day tomorrow, at the same GPS reference as before. 26th JulyA much better night's sleep. So full of energy today and raring to go. Rich and I decided that we were finally going to get round to that horse riding we had talked about, so we asked Eruna (sort of deputy camp manageress) to arrange it and shortly after 11 we set off for a two hour amble around the surrounding area. I'm not sure whether it was me or my horse that was regarded as a remedial case. Hopefully the latter, as he was being led by a strap on his bridle before I even got on him. But I spent two hours being towed around on a pony by a Mongolian chap (on his pony) who had obviously ridden since he was about 2. Rich was the lucky one - he was allowed to control his steed independently but his pony was quite lazy and very independent-minded about his direction in life, so that more than once he could be seen trotting off happily to the left as Rich tried desperately to yank him back round to the right (and vice versa); again, the animal became quicker and more compliant as home approached. They were made for each other. He went where I told him to most of the time, he just needed a bit of persuading sometimes... We did see some lovely scenery, though - we covered much more ground than we could have done on foot, and found some lovely hidden paths through the mountains. The sun was shining and the day was gorgeous. Dessert this evening was another surprise - two jammy dodgers each! We will start a sweepstake on tomorrow's offering... Then, after dinner, (no mention of curry from R), another walk with G - this time a bit further and higher and we waded through an absolute sea of wild flowers about which she waxed lyrical. I was more interested in the landscapes, fading off into ridge after ridge of mountains in the distance. Julie Andrews, where were you? Then more chess and whiskey and bed. We planned an excursion tomorrow (before we gert entirely housebound here) to see if the road marked on one of our maps up to the foot of the highest peak in the region (2,800 metres, still a dwarf compared to the 4,000 metre peaks in the west) actually exists. Might be interesting. So no change on the GPS, but a different party of Germans tonight are being a little less raucous than last night's bunch, so that's good. 27th JulyAfter all our exertions of yesterday, we were all feeling a bit lethargic again today, I'm afraid. We had a continuation of the rather surprising trend of vegetable cup-a-soup to round off each morning's breakfast, but we were disappointed to find that the wash blocks were depressingly bereft of all running water (except in the loos, and we weren't going to wash in that). We had planned an excursion last night to get us out from the camp; our idea had been to see if we could follow a red line on one of our maps which might or might not signify a track leading across rivers and through passes right into the heart of the national park to the base of its highest mountain. We had arranged to have a packed lunch from the kitchen and take the whole day over this exciting venture. Note: in Mongolia, to prepare a packed lunch, you prepare an ordinary lunch, then you pack it in something - whatever you can find, really. Very logical when you think about it, but it makes transportation a little challenging. The morning dawned grey and very rainy. In fact it rained solidly for most of the morning, while we pathetically deferred our starting time in the hope that things would brighten up a bit. In the end, we were forced to drive off in the rain purely through embarrassment at the thought of sitting eating our packed lunches in our gers while our hosts looked on scornfully. We drove up the valley in the pouring rain (while the Land Rover honoured me, as driver, with the official trouser drip treatment through the sunroof "seal"). Once the paved road petered out, we gave G a rather inauspicious introduction to the realities of driving off road. She did not take too kindly to sliding sideways down muddy banks (come to that, nor did I) while we tried to find a good place to ford a raging torrent that was clearly unfordable (I could have done it if you had let me). In the end, we chickened out and returned to the camp within about two hours, sneaked into our gers and ate our packed lunches as the rain teemed down outside. Almost as soon as we had done this, the weather perked up. The clouds magically rolled back and the sun shone through. G and I were well into "resting in the Ger" mode by then, but Rich got itchy fit and to alleviate his fit of cabin fever (or was it ger fever?) he went off in the Land Rover on his own to find some offroad driving challenges in the vicinity. And I found them. I drove down a track that goes down the middle of a valley and seems to lead to a nearby village. But civilization wasn't really what I was after, so I turned left somewhere and tested the Land Rover's rally ability. It's really quite good so long as you keep your eyes on the ground and miss the big holes. As I didn't have a passenger for the first time, I was able to really see what the thing could do, and I was quite impressed! You can go pretty much just as fast on road as you can off it. Anyway, I got to a stream ford, but felt that going straight over the stream would be a bit of a waste of time, so I turned left again and went directly up the stream bed. I got a few hundred metres but then a fatal lack of judgement meant that I was stuck with two wheels digging themselves deeper and deeper into the gravel and before I knew it the Landy was resting on it's chassis, wheels spinning. Immense. We are of course prepared for such an event, so I got the winch, shackles, ground anchors, sledge hammer etc out of the back and started work. I had to find a solid anchoring point to attach the winch onto, but the problem is that around here, all the trees are tiny (if there are any trees at all) and the ground is all loose, and I need to pull a three ton Land Rover out of a hole, so I would need something a bit more substantial. I got three ground anchors (ground anchors look like four foot long chunky steel tent pegs) and I managed to bash them into some almost solid enough earth with the sledge hammer. I attached them together with straps so that they were reinforcing each other and attached the hand winch to one of them. I put a snatch block (big hefty pulley type thing) over the tow bar of the landy, but the steel cable through the winch, around the snatch block and back to the ground anchor (where the winch was also attached). I then started winching. After ten minutes I took the Landy out of gear and started winching again (much more effectively this time) and I was off my chassis and onto solid pebbly ground in no time. It took a while to pack everything back up (made more difficult with a now bent ground anchor that would fit in properly). After a full day's manual labour in the blistering sun and some testosterone fuelled driving, I was back on form and felt pretty pleased with myself. While he was away, G and I roused ourselves to another nice hike of a couple of hours around the mountains, returning in time for our pre-arranged dinner at 7.30. Unfortunately Rich did not, and as we now had the whole camp to ourselves (all the other guests had left during the day, with no arrivals until tomorrow) his unpunctuality was painfully obvious. He turned up 45 minutes late; after we had extracted an apology with a mangle, we got a bit more of the story - about him driving along a stream in a hidden valley and changing his mind at the last minute about which way to go at a fork and ending up grounded on a pebble bank and having to get all the gear out of the back to winch the car back onto its wheels. He doesn't think there is anything broken underneath, and he feels a lot happier for having done it. Good. I made up for this by thrashing him at chess after dinner - our grand master series stands about all square now. Bobby Fisher has nothing to fear from us - indeed nor does Micky Mouse. Then ready for earlyish bed as we leave in the morning. We have been promised breakfast promptly at 8.30, another intriguing packed lunch experience and HOT SHOWERS before we go. We shall see.. So tonight we are mostly thinking ahead to our return to UB tomorrow, and worrying about whether it was a marmot, one of the camp dogs or something altogether more sinister that managed to get into our ger and snaffle the remains of our packed lunches while we were out this afternoon... Our GPS reference is of course unchanged - which is something of a record for four nights in a row. No wonder we are getting a bit restless... 28th JulyUp and at 'em. There are few stranger feelings than packing up and leaving a 36 ger tourist camp where you are the only guests and the staff outnumber you by about 8 to 1 and are all willing you to leave so they can get the rest of the day off before the next lot arrive. Everything worked with massive and uncharacteristic efficiency. Breakfast arrived at the table at the same moment we did, we were presented with our packed lunches as we left the dining ger, the shower water was piping hot and there were any number of willing helpers to get our bags down to the car. We then had an audience of about half a dozen as we laboriously packed everything in and strapped the bags to the roof rack. One of our hosts was forthcoming enough to explain that the other car waiting nearby was ready to take her into UB for a weekend off as soon as we had gone! Eventually we got away and drove slowly back through the beautiful scenery (and rather pleasant sunny weather) towards the edge of the national park and the main road back to UB. We stopped by the road to make a couple of phone calls and were overtaken by the UB weekend off party, so they hadn't been joking! We diverted via the Immigration etc Ministry office to pick up our passports with our extended visas. A short worried pause as they couldn't find them, but once the big boss man had pointed out to the underling that we were filed in the bottom drawer heap rather than the top drawer heap, it worked out ok and we are now legal until 6th September if we want. If they ever have a fire there, there will be a random pile of about 500 passports going up in smoke, with no proper records of any of them as far as we could see. Ah well, it didn't happen to us... While we were waiting, we were able to help out a rather flustered Israeli student who was going through what we had been through last week with the application process - and it was strange how clear and logical the whole procedure seemed once you were explaining it to someone else, compared to its complete stupidity when you were experiencing it yourself for the first time. Just shows how quickly we humans can adjust to the most ridiculous things. We decided we would ring the changes on the hotel front and so we called the Puma Imperial Hotel on a recommendation from Eamonn at CNCF (backed up by Lonely Planet). We explained that we would like to take a couple of rooms, subject to them being able to park our car securely. We got the usual reassuring noises about their car park (an underground one this time!) being able to accommodate us. We got there, and of course it couldn't. It was far too low as usual. On the upside, the rooms were fine - really nice, actually - and the hotel was more central than the Edelweiss. So there was much head scratching and finally an arrangement was reached with a guarded car park just round the corner, who could take the car for 5,000 Togriks a day (£2.50). I saw the place and said I was happy with the layout, but the price seemed a bit steep compared to the 3,000 we had been paying before. There was then talk about maybe lodging the car at a ger belonging to someone who worked in the hotel, whose family might be prepared to look after it for as little as 1,000 a day. This was all getting a bit silly, and we had to get off to see the CNCF ger village this afternoon, so we said we would leave it to them to sort out and we would come back later. We then drove over to the CNCF office in central UB to pick up Aisling (Eamonn's assistant, who we had met at the Irish Pub the previous week) and drive up to the ger village with her for our visit. She took us out to the north of the city, up towards the mountains. As soon as we crossed the main ring road, the landscape changed. We were now in one of the "Ger Districts" that surround UB on three sides. It is effectively a shanty town of huts and gers crammed in closely together, with mostly mud tracks to get around (and after the rains in UB during the week, it was extremely muddy). It extends 5 to 10 miles north of the city here. Basically the inhabitants are people who have been forced by economic circumstances to move into the city from the countryside. In addition to the general economic turmoil and collapse which followed the splitting of Mongolia from the USSR in 1990, there were a couple of years around 2000 in which the weather was so bad that the livestock couldn't reach their food under the deep snow, meaning that many animals (around 11 million, one third of the national herd) starved to death in the early spring. This "zud" as it is called has meant economic ruin for many of the herdsman (whether nomadic or not) and they have had no choice but to flee to UB in the hope of jobs and basic support. The Christina Noble Children's Foundation have set up their own ger village in this area to provide a home background for children who, for whatever reason, have no available family support of their own. When they first set up the village about 8 years ago, it was in green fields a few miles north of the Ger District. It is now surrounded by it, and as you look north from their compound, you can see the huts and gers creeping inexorably up the mountains beyond. Aisling also explained that they run other projects apart from the ger village and the mobile night clinic that we would be seeing. For instance, they fund and run a drop-in clinic at the hospital in the ger district. Any child registered with them (and any of their siblings) can be looked after there if the state system fails them. For example, they have had a situation where there was a child with a broken arm and the hospital had run out of plaster of paris to set it. Their clinic was able to get the plaster and set the broken arm. The CNCF village is really just that - a small ger village in the middle of the ger district. We managed to climb into a neighbouring compound (used, supposedly, by the UB fire brigade for rescue practice, so there was a nice high tower we could climb up) to take this photograph. It has its own fence, enclosing perhaps a couple of acres of land. On that land, they have around 7 or 8 "family" gers (here is Aisling showing us one of them) plus an office ger (here is Eamonn holding up the roof and Geraldine looking a little too comfortable at the Village Manager's desk), a computer room ger, a larger community ger, a small playpark, a greenhouse in which they grow many of their own vegetables, a guard's ger, an old shipping container which has been converted into a very basic toilet and wash house, a cookhouse ger, a very large coalshed and a small nursery and school, which is the only permanent building on the site. It looks pretty familiar, though it has only one classroom and it is nice to see that a bit of toilet humour by the toilets is allowed! They have their own well which provides washing water but all drinking water has to be shipped in. There is no mains water or drainage anywhere in the ger district. Electricity is available, but is not terribly reliable. The system is that each child lives in a ger with a "ger mother" and four or five other children. The ger mothers are effectively foster mothers for the whole family in their ger and they are effectively on duty 24 hours a day, with a couple of days off each month. Many of them have their own stories and reasons for being there. They are allowed to bring a child of their own with them (possibly two in some cases, I can't quite remember). Each family ger operates as a small family unit, with the children helping out in all the normal household tasks. The children range in age from 18 months to 17 years (and this autumn, they are really proud because two of their very first children, who have been with them since they started 7 or 8 years ago, are going on to UB University - one to train in video photography and one to study for a social work degree). The ger mothers tend to stay with them for a long time. They have a policy of offering them a ger of their own wherever they like if they decide to leave after serving more than three years, but many of the mothers have been with them longer than that. Meals are mostly prepared in the cookhouse ger, where their village cook does amazing things, cooking 100 meals or more at a time in a small cookhouse with two coal stoves, one electric cooker and a microwave. Not all meals are cooked here, though, and the ger mothers do a fair amount of cooking in the family gers on their wood stoves. It was school holidays, so we saw many of the children while we were there. There are currently 37 in residence. This little 18 month old boy had only arrived with them a week earlier. The scabs on his face were the healing wounds where hot oil had been thrown at him by his stepfather as a parting goodbye when he made his new wife get rid of him. When he first arrived, he was crying all the time, had sleeping problems, etc etc, but with the love and care he is getting both from his ger mother and from his "sisters", he is already starting to come out of himself, to the point where he even played a bit of ball with me (an evil-looking bearded monster with a big nose and funny roundy eyes) after a while. The physical wounds are healing, and hopefully the mental scars will also fade away in time - we were really struck by how upbeat and resilient all the children seemed (a common Mongolian trait, as we have been discovering, and as we saw again later in the day). The insides of the gers are spotlessly clean and tidy - Rich kept very quiet at this point (the contrast with his bedroom at home, which is shared with... well, no-one, actually... is stark!) They have three beds around the ger, each with a sliding base that pulls out into another bed. One of the ger mothers can be seen here modelling the arrangement - though this is a rather more realistic picture of a bed in use as a settee by Geraldine, one of the ger mothers and Olga, the village manager (amongst others)! They are even able to use the space for artwork - here are a couple of the girls working on some papercut art. One of these two is apparently very talented and has won all sorts of prizes for her work. Apart from the beds, each ger has a table like this with a couple of small stools, a wood burning stove, a small wash basin by the door, a couple of other small storage units - and that's about it as a living space for six people, in temperatures ranging from the sunny 25º when we were there (and more) to the -40º temperatures in the freezing long winter. As you can see from the pictures, there is an ongoing process of renovation - gers do wear out in the harsh Mongolian climate and they are continually having to replace the covers, the lining, bits of the wooden framework and so on. So you can see some bright shiny white gers and some that look pretty grey; and in the internal shots you can see some with lining and some with bare felt where the lining is being replaced. There is a state education system in Mongolia, and all children are supposed to start school at 8. But with this much social upheaval and deprivation, it is not surprising that many children never quite make it to state school, or drop out at an early stage. So the school at the CNCF village is not particularly meant for the children who live in the village, it is intended to provide a service to the wider community. What they do is provide a "catch up" service for children who are perhaps 10 or 11 years old, who have never been to state school for whatever reason and who are therefore so far behind that they cannot sensibly join the normal state system. They aim to get those children up to the level which is necessary to "re-insert" them back into the state system. They have two classroom teachers at the school, one taking a class in the morning and the other taking a different class in the afternoon. The village cooking ger also provides lunch for both sets of these children (hence the "100 meals at a time" mentioned above). Eamonn and Aisling showed us round, with Olga the Village Manager answering our questions as well. She qualified as a doctor in Mongolia, but has left medicine to go into the voluntary sector. Her English is very good - many of her medical texts were in English, and she also did an English course when she left medicine. She also speaks Russian. She spoke very realistically about how many things were better in the old Soviet days, but she is also optimistic about the future. After we had toured around, a thought occurred to me. We wanted some film of the village, but felt a little uncomfortable ourselves about wandering around the place shoving a great big video camera into people's faces. And they had a budding video cameraman on site! The connection was obvious, so we asked if he would like to take our camera for a tour around the camp and record some footage for us. He accepted very rapidly and we then saw our expensive kit disappear in his hands, reappearing about an hour later. He scooted all round the place and appeared to do a very professional job (he had some previous experience) so we are very hopeful we will get some really good film footage. We promised to send him a DVD of his work when we get home, and he got some flying time under his belt with a camera which is as advanced as anything he is likely to work with outside a TV studio. Everyone wins! As we just hung around while he filmed, other children slowly came out from the gers to play. Rich found himself engaged in a serious football kickaround with a lad wearing a Wigan Athletic shirt (who was actually quite good!) and G was grabbed by some of the girls to try her luck with the Hula Hoop - not very successfully, I'm afraid. We ended up having such a good time with them that we were sorry to go, but they needed to get on with their routine and we had things to do as well. We just had time to scoot back to the hotel and eat a quick meal before we had to race out again to meet up with the mobile night clinic which is run by CNCF. This is a Unimog truck (donated by a Mercedes dealership in Ireland) which drives around the city every Friday night (twice a week in the winter, when it is much busier) on a set route, stopping at various places to check up on known bunches of street children. They have a nurse and a doctor on board, plus a driver, a couple of volunteers, a security bloke and (in this case) three foreign hangers-on. We rode around with them for just over two hours, in which time there was a steady stream of street children piling into and out of the truck at each stop. Some of them were not "true" street children, in that they did actually have proper places to sleep but survived on the streets by begging, cleaning cars or selling chewing gum. But many of them had nowhere at all to stay, and would simply be curling up somewhere sheltered for the night. Mostly, we didn't feel able to take photographs, but there was one particular stop where this was not a problem. So here is a picture of a "family" of 8 lads who live together and this is a picture of what they call home - a concrete housing for some heating pipes. In the summer they live around and on top of the casing, and in the long winter they live down below, amongst the warm pipes. As you can see, they were a very cheery bunch of lads and they were obviously very attached to each other. They were quite happy to be photographed, and wanted to have their pictures taken with us. Washing was not something they could do, though, and any injuries they picked up were likely to get badly infected. They were particularly happy here because CNCF had just received a container of clothes and other useful things from some supporters in Hong Kong, so they had been given some new clothes as well as some candles (very useful where they live at night) and the usual packed lunch type meal that CNCF give out from the clinic. Some of the kids we saw had pretty nasty injuries, but they were very stoical about having dressings changed and wounds cleaned - sometimes things which must have been very painful. The nurse on the truck was as wide as she was tall, and she had a great way with the kids - she has been doing this a long time and is well known to them, and trusted by them. She would cheerfully slap a new dressing onto some horrible wound while talking to the kid about goodness knows what, and it didn't seem to bother either of them that the disinfectant she used for general cleaning up came out of an old (sterilised) beer bottle. She did have what looked like a pretty good medical kit for most normal injuries, though. And the doctor was taking careful notes and doing brief examinations of the children when she had some concerns about their overall health. One amusing episode broke the tension for us a little. Rich suddenly slapped his ankle and went "ouch" (or something like that!) in response to a bite from some kind of insect, and one of the volunteers (who manages the CNCF "Give a Ger" campaign) said something in Mongolian and burst into an unstoppable fit of giggles while all the others laughed loudly. It turned out she was suggesting that one of the fleas from one of the street kids had probably "fancied an English" and decided to eat out tonight! Finally, after finishing their evening round they kindly dropped us off at our hotel, and it felt very uncomfortable walking into such luxury after what we had seen that evening. So tonight we are mostly thinking quite hard about what we have seen today, in the Puma Imperial Hotel, UB, at GPS ref 47º 55' 16.50" N, 106º 55' 07.89" E, altitude 1,276 metres. 29th JulyAfter yesterday's frantic activity, a quiet day for us in UB. G and I decided it was time to do a bit of culture, so we went off to the Mongolian Natural History Museum. We spent a happy morning looking round loads of stuffed animals (the backbone of every museum we have seen so far here) and also fossils - including a load of dinosaur's eggs, a huge (well 10 feet tall, anyway) dinosaur skeleton and a very striking fossil of two small dinosaurs actually engaged in mortal combat (presumably they were engulfed by the sand dune, volcanic eruption or whatever it was while they were busy fighting - a valuable lesson for argumentative siblings there, perhaps). Yeah, don't fight in case you are engulfed by a sand dune. Obvious really. There were also a load of geological exhibits - well, lots of lumps of rock, anyway, and a couple of big iron meteorites, one weighing in at a tonne! Then there were lots of insects on pins and reptiles in jars of formaldehyde. Oh, and then there was the (nearly) whole room devoted to the one and only Mongolian cosmonaut, who went up to the Salyut space station in the 1980's, and the large exhibit about the Mongolian mountaineering team who conquered Everest in about 2000, and the Mongolian contribution to Antarctic research. And don't forget the summary of the world's geography, which included a note to the effect that the largest island in the continent of Europe is somewhere called Britain, at around 230,000 square kilometres. Reassuring to know we're on their maps... Oddly, there were about 5 small shops also scattered at random intervals around the place, which was quite a relief. I bought a tacky souvenir mug for the 800th anniversary of Mongolian Statehood which changes colour when you put hot stuff in it, and G bought an even dodgier tiny model of a ger. I also couldn't resist a book of Mongolian short stories translated into English, dating from the mid-80's. Full of moral tales about how wonderful the communist system is, and quite a period piece in its way. We were ready for a nice cup of tea by now, but unfortunately you can't get those in UB. So we went to the Bistrot Francais, where Rich had beaten us to it and was updating the website with all the work he had done on pictures and videos, whilst eating a spaghetti bolognese and drinking a beer. Very civilised. We took a long and late lunch, during which we decided on a long list of things we would do that afternoon, then decided not to. So we went back to the hotel for a couple of hours then went out for a Mexican dinner of Nachos and Fajitas at Los Banderos, not far from the hotel. The restaurant has actually moved right to the other side of town since our Lonely Planet guide, so when the taxi driver started going in what I thought was the wrong direction, I got quite agitated with him, pointing at the map etc - remembering how we had been ripped off a week ago on the short journey back to our hotel. He just ignored me, and pulled up outside the restaurant with a look that said "now will you stop bugging me?" If we had tried to find the place on foot, we would have been out by about a mile and a half, but thanks to his local knowledge, we found it was less than a five minute walk from the hotel - he probably wondered what on earth was the matter with us, that we needed a taxi to go that far, and then be shirty about it.... During our couple of hours in the hotel, G and I agreed a completely new itinerary for our next expedition out to the country. She didn't much fancy heading up to the north east (back past where we have already been by a couple of hundred miles) so instead we plan to head west and a bit south, to take in the ancient capital of the Mongols at Karakoran (built by Gengis Khan's son (I think), but abandoned not long after when they finally completed the conquest of China and moved the capital to Beijing under Kublai Khan, his grandson). There is also a famous monastery there and then we move a bit further west to take in a place called Tsetserleg (a provincial capital which is said to be quite nice, and nothing to do with the fact that there is apparently an expat English couple there who run a cafe where you can get PROPER ENGLISH TEA!) We will also visit a couple of very nice lakes a bit further west, one of which sits next to a dormant volcano that you can climb to the top of. Sounds fun, and until our plans change again, that will do... We don't leave on that expedition until Monday, and tomorrow we plan to do the big monastery in UB and maybe spend some more time at the black market; Rich will probably want to see if he can buy an AK47 to go with the bayonet he saw there... So tonight we hope to be mostly sleeping (eventually) in the Puma Imperial Hotel (rooms 403 and 415) to recharge our batteries before more sightseeing here in UB tomorrow. But in fact I have already spent half the night doing updating for the website, so looks like a day of yawns for me tomorrow. And now, to cap it all, they seem to have started some kind of outdoor concert in the main square at 3 am just to keep us wide awake - I kid you not, it's a Wembley Arena sized sound system out there, blasting it out as if it was 8 in the evening, though nobody seems to be out there. What on earth is going on? This will wake up every person within a mile of the city centre. Reception at the hotel don't have a clue what it's about either, and won't call the police about it - they think this might be some kind of rehearsal/sound check for a show in the square tomorrow afternoon. What kind of logic is that - rehearse at top volume at 3 am so that you will disturb the least number of people (they'll all be asleep, won't they)? Just one of those Mongolian things, I suppose - sleep deprivation torture to help make the dinosaur fossils more attractive perhaps? Oh for the hills..... 30th JulyThe sound testing went on until nearly 5 am, keeping us both awake. When they stopped, the noise of the jackhammers as they did some urgent road repairs next to the square was a quiet lullaby in comparison. So not surprisingly, I slept in late and only woke up after G had gone, leaving me a note to say she was visiting the big monastery in UB (the Gantandtegchenling). Apparently she had a great time, saw lots of interesting stuff and accidentally found herself right in the middle of some big Buddhist ceremony by joining what she thought was the tea queue. Apparently it is the biggest monastery in Mongolia and G has ducked the question about whether it lived up to its name (which supposedly means "the great place of complete joy"). Rich and I raced through a late breakfast and I gave Eamonn a call to see if we could get him to check my website stuff on CNCF for accuracy before we published it. This resulted in a rendezvous at the Bistrot Francais at 11 for coffee and croissants. Rich and I got there a bit early, and shortly after we sat down, he spotted a "mongolrally.com" T shirt coming into view and asked its occupant whether he had done the rally last year or this year. He enigmatically replied "both" and it rapidly transpired that we were talking to Tom (with the T shirt) and Steve, the organisers of the whole rally. Tom had just flown in overnight to deal with some Customs issues in UB (to do with a waiver of the normal import duty rules) and was jetlagged to pieces (a bit like G last Saturday). We invited them to join us and there followed a good three hours of general chat about the rally (which Rich plans to do next year) and other stuff. Eamonn joined us and our late second breakfast drifted agreeably into lunch as Tom's eyelids drooped. There is a food theme developing here, driven by Rich (who seems to have rediscovered his appetite big time). They gave us some really useful tips on road conditions and other local knowledge around the bits of Mongolia we are yet to visit. They also gave us some more suggestions on how we might link up our GPS information with Google Earth to create tracks of our travelling which anyone could follow over the internet (they do something quite whizzy along these lines on the mongolrally.com website). We will spend some time working on that over the next week or so and see if we can do something about it when we are back in UB in ten days' time. They are well plugged into the expat network in UB and were off to play or (if they could get away with it) watch cricket at 3. Our plan was to head back to the Black Market this afternoon to buy a few things and spend some more time rubbernecking, so we said goodbye to them and went our separate ways. We have swapped contact details and will get in touch again when we are back in UB next time (by when some of the Mongol Rally cars should be starting to arrive). Gerry decided she was not up to being mugged or pickpocketed at the market, so she stayed at the hotel to catch up with her work on the website (and not sleep at all) while Rich and I took a taxi to the market. It was a beautiful hot sunny day - probably the best day we have had since being here. I bought extravagances such as a 20p plastic soap dish to replace my broken one, and a new wash bag for G (75p) to replace her torn one. Rich concentrated on basic essentials such as the Mongol herdsman's boots (really cool and only £13.50 for fabulous suede lined soft leather), a new wallet to store his extensive funds, some wooden bowls and spoons for entertaining passing nomads in his room at uni (£5) and a much-needed bayonet for his AK47 (marked "CCCP" and everything) for £7.50. I failed to buy a new belt - they were all much too flashy for me (the Gucci, Versace, etc) apart from the basic ones which were far too basic - know what I mean? To our surprise, we managed to avoid all the muggers and pickpockets and got back to the hotel to show off our purchases by 7.30. So it must be nearly time to eat again, mustn't it? At Rich's insistence, we managed to stow away another curry (nobody else complained) at the Indian Restaurant in the hotel, reassuring ourselves that we would be losing all this weight while we are scratching around for food on the road over the next ten days. Our plan (version 3c) is to do an eight day circuit around the Karakoran/Tsetserleg area as we discussed yesterday, taking in a load more gorgeous countryside. We will almost certainly be unable to update the website while we are doing that, but we will store all our diary entries and photos until we are back in UB, so there may be a website radio silence (a bit like when the Apollo missions passed behind the moon) of a week or so - though we should still be able to pick up emails via sat phone. Hopefully we will get today's diary online before we leave UB in the morning, but you never know. So tonight we are mostly hoping they don't have that flaming concert in the square this evening, and looking forward to getting back out on the road tomorrow. All at the same place as last night - so definite itchy feet undertones as well. |
