Category: Ben’s posts

The ferry to Bodø was a bit dodgy but my travel sickness tablets also seem to be pretty effective sleeping pills so I was fine! After that we took a train to Oslo where we had somehow managed to reserve seats in a really old school carriage where we had MASSIVE seats which was pretty fun! We spent the day watching Norway go past which was pretty cool. Having just come off the ferry around the top it didn’t seem that impressive though and made me think we’d been on MegaTrip for too long as awesome scenery was not impressing me as much as it should have done!

That evening we made it to Oslo which a Norwegian friend of mine had advised us not to visit claiming it was a bit rubbish so my hopes had been lowered. It came as quite a surprise when it turned out to be a near perfect example of a clean, friendly city. The centre of which seemed completely devoid of the usual ugly concrete buildings which plague large cities.

While in Oslo we visited the Nobel Peace Center to see the announcement of this year’s winner (which actually happens in the Nobel Institute) but was being shown on a big screen where we were. There were several youth football teams from around the world there and a famous Norwegian footballer who used to play for a UK team but, not being football fans, we didn’t know who he was (though we did later see him in a Norwegian TV advert!)

Soon after we arrived we were approached by a journalist who wanted to interview us, apparently for a Norwegian national newspaper, though it didn’t go that well as we explained we’d just happened to be there and hadn’t made the trip specifically. I think we got slightly more interesting after the winner was announced and we got to tell her about our recent experience in China. We then got to hear all the stories about the prize being censored from Chinese media and the Chinese government’s response and the winner’s wife not being allowed to collect the prize which were all good examples of what we’d said. The journalist did seem a bit bored by the whole thing though so I doubt we made it past her notebook! We did ask her why someone would say Oslo was a bit rubbish as it seemed so inappropriate but she said that everyone in Norway thought that, and seemed to agree too! We decided it must be just that everywhere in Norway is so beautiful that Oslo is relatively a bit crap!

We also visited a proper fort which put the one in Helsinki to shame! It had towers, high walls, loads of canons and even had royal guards with silly outfits (who we also saw outside the king’s palace). The story of the Norwegian monarchy is a bizarre one too. Apparently in the early 1900s the Norwegian people voted to instate a monarchy (as they didn’t have one and wanted one!) they then voted to have a Danish prince as their king. He was rightly pretty chuffed by this and so the Norwegian royal family was created!

Oslo also has a really cool opera and ballet theatre with a sloping roof which you can walk up starting at the water front.

We visited a Viking museum with some restored Viking burial ships in it. We also spent a lot of money as Oslo is expensive for Norway (like London is for the UK) which, as Norway is already the most expensive place we’ve ever been, makes you feel like you’ve got holes in your pockets. The 10 minute bus ride back from the Viking museum cost us about £7.50 and we struggled to get any lunch for our £20 a day budget, eventually opting for making our own ham and cheese sandwiches which still cost £15!

We took a train from Oslo to Bergen which was truly spectacular. We passed ice fields and glaciers and even went up into the clouds at one point. We also took a detour onto the Flåm (pronounced Flom) railway. That was also spectacular as it weaved down the valley through tunnels in the cliffs and occasionally out on the cliffs as well as over a waterfall and below another one where the water has a 100 metre free fall drop. I realised that I wasn’t bored of scenery, it’s just that my standards have gone up! It was great on the train too. Half the fun was just listening to everyone (ourselves included) going ‘ooooh!’, ‘wow!’ and, after a brief exchange I’d had with a group of Malaysian tourists where I’d said it was lovely which they thought was a fun word, I kept hearing them saying how lovely it was too! The railway ends at a small town (called Flåm) by a fjord where we saw another seal!

Most people get on a boat from there but we went back up the railway and caught the next train onward to Bergen.

Bergen is a lovely place! There isn’t much to do there (especially off season when all the attractions are closed – making the Bergen City Pass, which includes entrance to all the museums, seem pretty bad value for money). But it is fun just to look around. It’s almost entirely made up of painted wooden houses, many of which, including our hotel, are perched on the side of a very steep hill meaning we had a very impressive view over the city.

One thing we did do is take the Funicular train up the mountain for some awesome views of the town. We then walked back down which was fun but was all downhill so, I thought, would have been more fun with one of those push scooter things which, Laura says, are for kids!

Bergen is also a bit cheaper than Oslo which made the whole thing a bit less scary!

Also, I think this is very funny but the look Laura gave me when she saw me taking the picture makes me think it might be slightly immature humour:

After the craziness that was the first day on the M/S Lofoten (ferry) and the strange daze that was the second day (including a dream about joining some society of polar bears and the odd few minutes on deck after being woken up to look around) I was very surprised to find that I felt absolutely fine on the third day. It was a good thing too because the scenery was amazing, a lot more spectacular than anything I’d seen earlier while on the boat. We sailed through narrow channels with rocky hills/mountains on each side and then finally, just before we arrived in Svolvær, the captain told us that we were going to take a small detour into Trollfjord which we thought we weren’t going to get to see as they normally only do that while travelling in the other direction and only during the summer months. It was one of the most spectacular things I’ve ever seen. A narrow channel, about a kilometre long, with sheer rock faces and steep mountain sides on all three sides. I took a few pictures but none of them really do it justice. The boat then did a three-point turn in the narrow channel, which was fun to see in itself, and we headed off on our way. It was so incredible to see and easily made the boat trip worth it just for that, despite the sea-sickness! We also saw quite a few sea eagles while we were there.

So then we arrived in Svolvær and despite our best attempts to discover where the cabin we had booked for our stay here was had almost no idea (the web-site gave no directions!). I had found a likely location which we were going to get the bus to but as it was getting late (and we were planning on taking the bus to somewhere pretty remote) we decided not to risk it. It’s a good job we did too because the taxi driver took us to the camp/cabin site we were staying at and it was nowhere near where we thought it was (and seemed to be nowhere near anywhere!) It turns out that it it about 4 kilometres away from the nearest town which isn’t too far to walk, unless you’ve got a massive back pack on! We discovered a while ago that about 2km is the furthest we can walk with all our stuff in one go!

The taxi driver dropped us off and said, “well here you are, it looks like there’s no one here though. Bye!”. By this point it’s dark and we’re nowhere near anywhere with seemingly nowhere to stay, a packet of biscuits to share, and our ride back to civilisation driving away! I wasn’t sure what to do but fortunately Laura’s special power of reading every bit of writing within 30 metres paid off and she found a phone number. We rang them and, after a pretty long conversation where the guy on the other end seemed to have no idea who we were or why we’d be there, he sent an old man with a torch down to meet us. He looked confused and had seemingly no idea who we were either (they’d already forgotten our booking once when I rang up so it wasn’t that suprising that they’d forgotten it again) he fumbled around for a bit saying things like “no that won’t work”, and “now where did I put it…” before handing us a key and saying he hoped it was ok and that we’d have to sort it out in the morning. I was pretty worried at this point! Fortunately the camp site reception had some food for sale so we bought a few essentials to get us through to the morning. He showed us where it was on a map and then headed off onto the darkness. Eventually we found our cabin.

It had been empty for a while and was freezing cold. We turned all the heaters and lights on and discovered a really nice, if a little cold, cabin. Things were starting to look up! Then we discovered that the three items we’d bought from the site’s shop were some gone off eggs, a half drunk carton of, going off, milk and some bread that claimed it didn’t go off for the best part of a year!

Fortunately, we had some jam so decided to risk the unbelievably long life bread with it. It turned out to be some kind of sweet bread but we hadn’t got anything else so decided it was ok. I used my phone (Offmaps) to work out where we were and we came up with a plan for the next morning before going to bed.

The next morning we discovered that our cabin actually had an incredible view and we walked to Kabelvag, the nearest town, to do a supermarket shop. We also had some amazing fish soup for lunch in the pub in Kabelvag.

Since then we’ve had a really nice stay. We found a seal, coincidentally called Boris, swimming in a bay nearby and watched it for about 30 minutes as it dived down to look for food and generally looked like it was having a good time!

We had a couple of clear nights so stayed up to try and see the northern lights. One night we saw them, though they were very dim and hard to see (not like the Scandinavian tourist boards want you to think they are!). We’ve been inside the arctic circle for over two weeks with, luckily, about half of the nights being clear (or with clear patches) and have only seen the Northern lights once, very dimly! I think we’ll have to come back when the sun is a bit more active…

Yesterday we visited the aquarium and saw three more seals, tentatively named Norris, Doris and Horace, a couple of really cool otters, who even managed to look cute while ripping dead fish to pieces, and loads of fish in tanks which mainly looked a bit scary. We also saw a video of shots of the area set to a folk/dance soundtrack which claimed to be in 8 languages but had no words so could really have claimed a few more!

We also read a whole rooms worth of blurb about how awesome it is that Norway is almost carbon neutral despite being one of the world’s biggest oil producers (25% of GDP). I’m not sure about that though as they can only say that because they’re not the ones actually burning the oil/making it into plastics – it’s mostly exported. Someone is, so they need to acknowledge that the profits they make from selling the oil have an associated cost to the environment (as the value of oil is a direct result of it’s uses, most of which are harmful to the environment).

We also went back and got some more yummy fish soup!

I also took this picture which I think should be on a packet of some ‘mountain fresh’ washing powder:

Today is our last day in this cabin and, as there’s a storm going on outside, we’re mainly going to be sitting about doing nothing!

Tomorrow we’re staying in Svolvær (hopefully the weather will be better or we’re going to get pretty wet on the way to the nearest bus stop!) and then we’re taking the ferry (gulp) to Bodø!

The nearest bus stop!

A storm brewing!

Well Finland has been quite an exciting time for us so far, though not exactly how we expected.

We started in Helsinki. It’s a lovely, quite small, city with few tourist attractions other than generally walking around saying things like ‘well this is nice’.

Fortunately we were staying in Hotel Glo which was our favourite hotel of all time. Our room was REALLY cool but the main attraction was the extras you could get for free. One day we borrowed some Glo-bikes and cycled around the city but my favourite was the PS3 I managed to have brought to our room so I spent quite a while playing Ratchet & Clank. Aaah, games! I had to give it back when we checked out though :-(.

On our second day we visited Suomenlinna island, the ‘Fortress of Finland’ which could be listed alongside The Great Wall in an Epic Military Fails Top 10. It was built to protect Finland in 1748 (at the time under Swedish control) but the fort has almost no military advantage over the adjacent, unfortified, island which provides plenty of cover for boats from cannon fire leaving the fort with almost zero value as a naval stronghold. As we discovered more about the island things just got worse. The ‘fort’ has a very large and palatial mansion for the governor and extensive gardens which were regularly re-landscaped. Finally we discovered a sign next to a pond which finished off any fort credentials it may have had. Apparently the pond was originally supposed to be a moat but they got bored of digging it and made it into a pond instead.

One of the coolest things on the island was a WW2 U-Boat which was great. There were also some cool cannons which I was surprised they bothered to add (expecting they would have rejected them in favour of more flower beds).

We watched a large passenger ferry sail between the island and its very close neighbour while we were on the ‘battlements’ which was fun. We waved manically at the passengers who mainly looked disapprovingly at us. Not deterred by this we carried on and eventually had almost everyone on the back of the boat waving back at us!

Unsurprisingly, the fort was all but destroyed the first time it was actually attacked.

On our last day in Helsinki we took a tram around the city with a leaflet provided by the tourist information office as a guide. This was possibly the single most boring hour of my life and left us both with a deep inner void. It took us about a further hour to get over the boredom but finally we managed to drag ourselves into Fazer which is a bit like Betty’s tea room only more chocolate based. We had chocolate and ‘chocolate tea’ which perked us right up. It turns out Fazer chocolate is very, very tasty and well worth trying.

A sleeper train called the Santa Claus Express took us from Helsinki to Rovaniemi where we are now.

The town is almost empty at the moment. We’re not sure where everyone is but we know they aren’t in any of the cafes, restaurants, supermarkets or roads we’ve visited. One person we have seen is Santa though!

We visited ‘Santa Claus Village’ yesterday and met the big man himself. It didn’t, however, go quite as my childhood dreams of meeting Santa led me to expect.

Firstly, as it’s September, there’s no snow. I’m willing to accept that this is beyond his control. Also, probably for the same reason, there was hardly anyone there. This is also beyond his control and makes me think he isn’t fully appreciated. Santa is for life, not just for Christmas.

The things which were within Santa’s control however, were the large number of, not very good, souvenirs on sale. The large empty square in front of his office with loud tinny Christmas music being piped through a large speaker system which gave it the feel of some kind of low budget, Christmas themed, Day of the Triffids knockoff and the unexplained ‘house of horrors’ style corridor leading to his office (which we later discovered is supposed to be a magical clock that he uses to stop time while he delivers all the presents).

When we actually got in to see Santa he seemed displeased that I didn’t support a football team and was offended by Laura’s observation that he didn’t have many people visiting him that day, quickly pointing out that he’d actually already seen 200 people. I tried to make it up to him by thanking him for all the presents over the years to which he replied “yes, I remember” as if making a mental note to give us both a lump of coal this year. Santa then gestured to an, unusually large, elf who took a photo of all of us before Santa sent us on our way. The photographer elf then led us through a door to another oversized elf who showed us the photo and explained how it would cost us 50€. This was a surprisingly large cost and got me started on a train of thought that Santa was taking advantage of his status and that maybe the whole delivering presents to the whole world thing was just a front for his village where he extorts money from visitors. I’m still not sure it makes good business sense though. Instead of buying it, I took a photo of the photo of us and Santa on the screen outside and was promptly told off by an elf which was probably the highlight of the trip to the village.

After meeting Santa we went to his post office and sent some post cards. Laura also bought this advent calendar which pretty much sums up the whole experience:

Is that child on the sleigh laughing or crying?!?

Fortunately all this has been made up for by us visiting a really cool reindeer farm and several hundred very friendly husky dogs, some of whom took us along a trail in a husky powered quad bike.

Probably the most minor accolade for Rovaniemi is that it is home to THE NORTHERNMOST McDonald’s:

We also visited the Arktikum Museum here and really enjoyed it. It’s mostly about the geography of the area and the lifestyles of the indigenous population but there was also a small but pretty convincing section on how Finland was royally screwed over during WW2. Having been invaded by the Russians and promised help from the allies which never came they were forced to ally with the Germans for a brief time after single handedly defending themselves against the, much larger, Russian army before finally managing an agreement with the allies to fight the Germans (and surrender some of their land to the Russians). During this time most of the country seems to have been generally blown up.

So I’ve been looking for Batman based things and more specifically Batman: Arkham Asylum / Arkham City based stuff since we left the UK and have to say it wasn’t going too well for quite a while. In China I saw a person with a Batman T-shirt in the Forbidden City in Beijing but that was about it. As they were a tourist I figured they probably didn’t count anyway.

Interestingly there was almost no presence of games at all. I managed to find a stall in a market with a Wii and a PS2 for sale but that’s about it. I didn’t ask if they’d been chipped but think they probably were (that would explain the lack of games shops!)

In Mongolia I found a small selection of PC games in a supermarket in Ulaan Baatar but again no Batman. In the toys section I did find these ‘generic’ super hero figures though:

I couldn’t find any games in Russia either which surprised me, especially in Moscow and St Petersburg which are both full of very rich people. Maybe I was looking in the wrong places?!

However, we’re in Finland now and Batman is back on the scene!

Firstly games shops exist again and I had no problem finding a copy of Batman in one such shop in Helsinki:

That particular shop sold electronics, games, DVDs and cosmetics which I thought was pretty strange combination.

We also found this picture in a media photography museum (it also had a Moomin exhibition, which is what we had actually gone to see!):

I have no idea what it says but he appears to be selling some kind of ‘Bat-juice’?!

Finally while we were in a supermarket (also in Helsinki) we found this:

Result!

Woohoo go Rocksteady! I couldn’t understand the words but the pictures looked good (especially the massive close-ups of Jamie and Sefton – Rocksteady directors!) I thought Harley’s pig-tails looked particularly physically realistic in the screenshots too! I’m really looking forward to reading up on the game’s progress once we’re back in the UK.

Since we first saw that magazine cover (shortly after getting into Finland) we can’t seem to get away from it as it’s for sale in just about every shop with magazines in it!

Is was interesting to see that games aren’t yet as truly global as film and music but, as pirated copies of most CD’s and DVD’s are readily available in all the Asian countries we visited, I’m not sure how much revenue the film/music publishers are actually getting from the region anyway!

For example, in China where IP and copyright laws exist but are largely ignored. While showing us around a busy market full of fake goods, mainly clothes but also things like ‘VAIO’ laptops, our guide was proudly telling us that the fake goods manufactured there were of a higher quality than the originals so most people preferred them! With attitudes like that stopping piracy is going to be pretty difficult.

So we’ve arrived in Moscow after a mammoth 83 hour train journey from Irkutsk. It took us through Siberia and over the Europe-Asia continental divide. There is an obelisk next to the track marking the divide which we couldn’t see because it was 3am!

Crossing the continental divide in the dark:

What the obelisk would have looked like during the day… in winter (taken from our guide book!)

During the journey totalling over 5000km, each of the (~1 metre diameter) wheels of the train rotated about 1.5 million times, that’s a lot of revolutions!

This has been our longest individual train journey ever (our Canada trip was split into two train journeys taking two days each). It’s been pretty much as fun as living, eating and sleeping in a small room for 4 days can be (without a games console). Having said that, Laura’s been putting a in lot of hours driving trains in Zelda on the DS during the trip – it turns out that not only does the microphone not respond very well to you actually blowing into it (as required by the game) but it also often mistakes the general noise of the train for being blown into which has made some parts of the game near impossible (but has only made Laura more determined, if a little light headed)! Apart from that we’ve been reading and watching the scenery go past. The views from the train haven’t been as spectacular as those in Canada but have certainly been worth taking the trip for.

In the countryside it’s mainly flat or rolling hills with forests and lots of cute wooden houses with brightly painted shutters, impressive vegetable patches, and sometimes enormous satellite dishes on the side. We’ve been stopping in towns of varying sizes along the way where people try to sell you junk food or fish (I’m really not sure what we’re meant to do with a fish on the train but someone must think it’s a good idea because sometimes they’re the ONLY thing available from the platforms).

The guide book told us to expect people selling cooked russian food like potato bread on the platforms at every stop but we’ve only seen that once so it’s a good job we didn’t rely on it. The restaurant car exists and has an extensive menu featuring many dishes from all around the world which they hand to you when you sit down. The waiter then leaves you for a few minutes to choose what you want to eat before telling you that it isn’t available and that you might prefer one of the three things which are available instead. We went through this ritual twice!

The Restaurant car

Getting between the carriages was a little crazy!

All the trains have a constant supply of boiling water provided by some seriously old school technology (coal fired samovars) which we’ve been using to heat up different types of pot noodle from each country we’ve been in. The results of our extensive testing are that Mongolian and Russian ones taste pretty much exactly like chicken and mushroom pot noodles (whichever of the many available brands or flavours you eventually decide to try) whereas the Chinese ones are all really spicy (whichever brand or flavour you go for). We’ve also been making oatmeal for breakfast and drinking a lot of tea (without milk).

A coal fired samovar

Noodle-tactic!

Outside our cabin

The Russian towns and cities we’ve been through along the way have been interesting. They all seem to have a lot of derelict old buildings and bits of machinery that look like they haven’t been used for decades just dotted around amongst the functional buildings. I guess they’re throwbacks from the communist era. Another one is that there only seem to be about 6 types of operational trains in Russia, one for each decade as the government would pick one and order loads of them every now and again.

We’ve experienced 1st, 2nd and 3rd class train travel so far on this trip. First and second were both great – though we did cheat in second class and buy tickets for all four of the bunks in our cabin – that’s still cheaper than first class and pretty much the same as you’re not sharing. Though you do get people trying to bribe their way past the train guard and into your cabin a lot when you have spare bunks (regardless of whether you’ve paid for them or not). Especially just after the passport checks at the borders!

Third class in China was quite an experience and we enjoyed it a lot though it would have been a lot harder without the guide explaining what’s going on for us! Also, as the carriages are just split into compartments rather than cabins they have an enforced lights out at 10pm. I tried reading past this time using a small torch and was told off by the carriage guard! Talking also isn’t allowed. This would be ok if you were then left in peace to sleep, except the guard then walks down the carriage every twenty minutes making noise and shining their torch in everybody’s faces to make sure they’re not breaking the rules…so if you are woken up easily like me then you just end up lying awake for hours unable to do anything for fear of being told off by the guard who’s shining a torch in your face, or will be soon!

One of the train based highlights was ‘changing the bogeys’ at the China-Mongolia border where they split the train up and lift each carriage off it’s runners and then switch them for ones with differently spaced wheels before reassembling the train (confusingly, in a different order!)

For some reason all the trains in Russia work on Moscow time so even though our train departed at the respectable 6.10pm from Irkutsk it actually departed at the not so respectable 11.10pm.

We arrived into Moscow at the equally bad 4.40am and as it’s Moscow there was no time zone change to save us. So right now we’re sitting in the train station waiting room waiting for something to open or for it to get light so we can walk to our hotel and drop our bags off.

Here’s a collection of pictures that didn’t make it into the blog (until now!):

China

Mongolia

Though our trip around Mongolia was mostly about seeing the landscape and meeting the locals it’s pretty hard to travel around Mongolia without hearing about Genghis Kahn, the founder of the Mongol empire which caused so much trouble in China, Russia and Europe (he’s actually called Chinngis Kahn here and as he’s Mongolian I think we should go with that!)

He’s a national hero here and most of the family gers we’ve visited had a large picture of him hung in a prominent place near the place of honour. Even our hotel in Ulaan Baatar has this one hung up in the breakfast room:

Most of the biggest mountains we visited have a story of Chinngis kicking some enemy’s butt there, usually against the odds because he was apparently so awesome.

The view of him from nearby countries seems to be mainly that he was a trouble maker with a bad habit for massacres. Though I think every leader worth their salt at that time had a few massacres in their repertoire so it’s not too suprising. Mongolia itself has been the victim of a few in recent history (the Russians took it on themselves to destroy all the temples and massacre all the Lamas they could find during their recent occupation.)

We also discovered how the Mongolians got through the Great wall of China and it’s pretty simple! They just rode at it quickly on horses throwing dirt at the bottom until they’d made a ramp to get over. Genius!

Warning – this post may not be suitable for anyone who doesn’t like reading about toilets!

I think it’s about time that we acknowledged that Mega Trips aren’t just about the sights, people, animals and food. They’re also about the toilets.

The hotels we’ve stayed in so far have all had western style toilets but, venturing out, almost all the other toilets in the cities are squat ones. I’ve used these before but have always been a bit sceptical about them. However, after some practice (and some tips which Hannah in Uganda passed onto Laura while we were there – thanks Hannah!) I’ve decided they’re actually pretty functional and probably more hygienic than their western style counterparts as public toilets. Laura disagrees and thinks that if you’re going to go to the trouble of making a flushing toilet you might as well go the whole way and add a seat.

Once we went into the countryside any large rock or mound was fair game while we were on the road or camping. The tourist camps we stayed in for a couple of nights had western toilets and even showers, but we spent most of our nights in gers owned by families which usually came with a drop toilet (and no shower or running water). A drop toilet is an, initially deep, square hole in the ground with a couple of planks to stand on and anything from a small fence to a very basic shack around it. Some of them even had doors though most didn’t and the doors that were there were often just lying on the ground nearby. As a result, most of them had pretty impressive views! Like these:

Fortunately, once you’re used to the squat toilets the transition to drop ones is pretty painless.

My most memorable toilet based experience so far happened at the family ger at the White Lake. This particular toilet had only three small fences around it so offered little protection from the elements. It had spectacular views of lightly frosted mountains in the distance and the rolling grassy plain leading up to them. Just below the mountains were some gers with smoke from the stoves rising out of their small chimneys and not far to the right the clear waters of the lake lapped against the shore while nearby horses ate the grass.

Having got up early one morning I went to relieve myself in the morning twilight. At that moment the sun peeked over the top of the mountains in front of me and I witnessed a truly incredible sunrise. It just didn’t seem right to be squatting there as the sun rose above the mountains and their shadows crept across the grassy plain, and I realised just how incredibly beautiful my surroundings were. Fortunately, just at that moment a nearby horse relieved itself too, and I didn’t feel so bad after all.

So we’ve made it back from our trip into rural Mongolia! It’s been quite a trip. When Khishgee (said as ‘Hish-key’), our guide, turned round from the front of the truck to us just after we set of holding a large bag of non-descript meat and said “sheep head meat?” we knew we were in for something special! We were initially a little hesitant (unsure if we were looking at a bag of brains or not) but she was having none of that so we all ended up having a piece and agreed that it was actually pretty tasty.

The culinary highlight of the trip was watching Ulyiibayar (he liked to be called ‘Byra’) our driver blowtorch a marmot for lunch outside the van after the traditional method of stuffing it with hot rocks and waiting an hour or so had failed to cook it sufficiently. That was also tasty (it turns out blowtorching meat has pretty much the same effect as barbecuing it).

Apart from Byra and Khishgee our companions were Florian, Amy and Katrina who were all from Australia. The small group size meant that we fitted into a single truck. The truck had a forward and a backward bench seat in the back with only 4 seat belts. This meant the forward facing middle seat, which someone had to take each day, had great views but also involved a certain no seat belt risk element. We thus named this the Seat of Scenic Death.

We spent most of our first day driving to a monastery. The asphalt roads quickly gave way to full on dirt tracks. It had been raining and was pretty bad conditions for driving, though Byra and his wonder truck (an awesome Russian built mega off-road version of a VW camper van) made short work of it.

We looked around the monastery and a monk told us a story about the fourth Bogd which I found very confusing. Apparently his father had been killing people to put his feet in their stomachs, but fortunately the Dalai Lama was on hand to point out that this wasn’t appropriate behaviour. There was also a Stupa next to the monastery which we climbed. Though it wasn’t really clear what that was actually for, it was a building on the top of a hill which is always fun. Our guide told us the monks had recently held a festival which apparently involved a lot of rice, sweets and vodka which were all over the monastery and stupa making it look more like they’d had a massive house party! She also said the monks had to clear it up now.

We spent the next couple of days driving to the White Lake. At the end of the first day Khishgee asked where we wanted to camp and I jokingly pointed to the top of highest hill in view. Khishgee and Byra took this as a challenge so we all headed off to the top of the mountain in the wonder truck to camp! They decided to put the tents below the top. It seemed like a good idea to be shielded from the wind but did mean we were sleeping at a 20 degree angle, sideways.

Near the White Lake are some extinct volcanos which last erupted about 10,000 years ago but look like they only blew up a few years ago. We climbed to the top of one and looked into the crater at the top. Then we had milky tea with meaty dumplings in while an eagle sat and watched.

We then stayed at the lake for two nights. It was a beautiful setting. We stayed in a family ger which is a large round tent made from wood and felt. It was very cold by the lake, especially at night, but we had a stove which made our ger toasty warm.

While we were there we rode some horses to some nearby caves. I called my horse ‘Boris the Horse’. We had an understanding that if I let him eat grass a lot he’d do what I asked most of the time. Laura enjoyed riding the horses a lot and wants to ride them when we get back, but then she also wants a ger…

We’ve spent the last 4 days in Ulaan Bataar. The capital of Mongolia which no one seems to be able to agree how to spell the name of (in Latin characters anyway). There isn’t too much to do here, our guide book stops at 2 days, so we’ve been to ALL the museums here (apart from the one that doesn’t exist) and seen all the sights within walking distance that aren’t on our tour which starts tonight.

Fortunately there are two english movie channels and our hotel room looks out over a monastery so we’ve been spending the rest of the time on Monk Watch (while watching bad films). Even after 4 days we still haven’t worked out their routine. Sometimes they line up, sometimes they slide down the slope outside the monastery (and look very pleased with themselves) and sometimes they even form a line and walk around the perimeter of their monkdom humming. The rest of the time they spend in the main building or just moseying around outside. We just never know what they’ll do next, or if it’ll be something we haven’t seen yet. Anyway, they are much more entertaining than the films we’ve been watching!

We’ve also discovered a very nice vegetarian restaurant that puts all others to shame! Everything we’ve had there has been really tasty.

From what we’ve seen so far and (via the museums and city) Mongolia has recently (in the 90’s) emerged from a long period of occupation by the Chinese and Russians to from a democracy and is currently enjoying a period of growth in the cities (there is building work going on all around). Mongolia’s population is only a few million and the country is massive! Ulaan Bataar is a pretty small place (about a million people live here) and a lot of people who live here actually live in gers (traditional large round tents used by Mongolian nomads to live in which can supposedly be fairly easily moved – though judging by the size of them I think it’s probably still pretty hard work!) in what seem to be pretty smart shanty towns around the outskirts.

About half the population lives outside the cities as nomads moving their (large!) gers around with their grazing animals so they get fresh pastures. That’s what we’re going to see for the next 10 days along with some pretty spectacular scenery. We’ll also be in the territories of Gobi Bears and Snow Leopards though i doubt we’ll be lucky enough to see either of them. I also doubt there’ll be wifi so there might not be any posts for a while!