July 17th-18th (Day 5-6): Clinging to luxury

After sending off our last blog post we went to hang out with a couple from Montreal we had met at lunch time in the ger camp's restaurant. They had recently purchased a set of 99 sheep ankle bones and showed us some ankle bone games. We played with them and their Mongolian driver for a bit before one of the camp employees (who spoke English well) corrected all the mistakes we were making. The driver had probably tolerated them ''cheating'' at the games the whole time as he didn't want to overcome the linguistic challenges needed to explain the detailed rules.

From Ulaanbaatar to ...

On day 5, we cycled 85 km to Kharkhorin. About midway, when we had stopped for a break, we saw a couple cycle tourers coming from the other direction. It was a middle aged French couple that greeted us like we were long lost family. Over the last 8 months they have cycled from France to Mongolia and are blogging about it.

From Ulaanbaatar to ...

In Kharkhorin we decided to splurge on accommodation by staying in Dreamland: a Japanese themed lodge and ger camp. At first we had a look at a luxury air conditioned ger, but after suffocating on the bug poison we sprayed to calm down the resident flies, we decided to switch to a room in the lodge.

From Ulaanbaatar to ...

By western standards Dreamland is a bit run down. Most depressing is the fact that there are virtually no other guests staying here. Due to low volume, the restaurant, listed as the best in town in the Lonely Planet, has reduced its menu to basic Mongolian food. In a twist of irony, we're hoping to find something better in the neighbouring lower priced ger camp's restaurant. Nevertheless, we are enjoying our spoiled days while we can.

We spent day 6 exploring town and replenishing our fat reserves. We found a great restaurant in town for breakfast. We had the largest meal of the trip, and the staff didn't know we were biking. They must have thought we were total pigs as we ate a loaf of bread with butter and jam, two small omelettes, a large plate of fries, three cups of coffee, and five cups of tea. We then returned within four hours for lunch!

From Ulaanbaatar to ...

Kharkhorin was the capital of Mongolia for a short time around Chinggis Kaan's rule. After about 40 years the capital moved to Beijing. The main attraction in town is the Erdene Zuu Khiid monastery. Although far from its glory days, it remains Mongolia's most important monastery. We enjoyed visiting it and ran into the spanish cyclists there.

Here's our route for day 5 (view it in google earth):


View Larger Map

July 14th-16th (Day 2-4): Enjoying the pavement (mostly)

Elbows are made for scraping. On our second day of biking Krystil fell off her bike while trying to outrun an excited dog. We were told by our travel doctor not to catch rabies. With every dog that chases us, and they love to chase, we fear it is looking for a little tourist to chew on. Our dog avoidance strategies vary. For this one we decided to outrun it since we were going downhill. This worked well until the patch of sand won against Krystil's ability to ride her bike. The good news is that we have not yet had to fight any dogs.

At a roadside ger, we ran into a spanish couple we had met in Ulaanbaatar. They had actually come on the same train from Beijing as us and had dealt with bicycle-induced customs issues with us. We rode past them in the scorching heat, only to later see them pass us in a truck.

After 117 km of biking on day 2 we set up our tent in a field beside the highway. Later in the evening we had a visit from 15 year old boy who wasn't too talkative, but seemed to enjoy sitting with us. After he left, his older brother (probably around his mid-20s) came by to visit and we had a better time 'chatting' with him. Our lonely planet phrasebook got a workout.

On day three of biking we stopped in at a Mongolian ger restaurant beside the highway for a traditional breakfast: sheep's meat with onions and noodles. This was our first real introduction to Mongolian food, and we are both relieved to find that it was delicious. However, we were not too keen on the fermented mare's milk, and the yak butter tea was mediocre. After passing the town of Rashaant, we turned off on a side road for 12 km to a stay in a ger camp at the ruins of Ovgon Khiid monastery. Since we are tourists, we love tourist ger camps. We love the food, the showers and the spacious gers. In the evening we went for a 2km hike to some other ruins.

Today has mostly been a rest day. We slept in until 7:30 and did some bike maintenance before departing. We followed a different road 12km towards the highway (as it joins the highway further west). The road was very sandy and we ended up walking our bikes most of the way. We should have expected it, since it runs right beside some sand dunes. We came upon a family with their car (2wd with bald tires) stuck in the sand. We were surprised they had made it that far. We did our best to help for a short while until a 4x4 (carrying Dutch tourists) came by and pulled them out. After three hours we were near the highway and stopped in another ger camp for lunch. Then it started raining so we decided to get a ger.

We've added some more photos to this album. The new pictures are geocoded (you can see where each photo was taken on a map on the right hand side). Here's our route for the three days (you can also see it in google earth):


View Larger Map

July 13th (Day 1): A good start

Ten days after leaving Vancouver, we finally started cycling! We woke up early and had a good breakfast in the guesthouse and set off on the streets of Ulaabaatar a little after 6am. Starting this early meant we avoided the traffic. Drivers have been giving us a wide berth and we've gotten countless friendly waves and hellos.

From Ulaanbaatar to ...

We got a bit off track in the suburbs of Ulaanbaatar and decided to cut across a residential (ger) area back to the main road. Unfortunately we hit a muddy patch and our bikes and shoes got soiled with some of the most tenacious mud we've ever seen (sorry, no pics).

From Ulaanbaatar to ...

The rest of the road was on some of the nicest tarmac in existence. Quite the contrast with what the rest of the roads will be like in Mongolia. About 82km west of Ulaanbaatar we turned off the main road towards Hustayn Nuruu (national park). We followed this sandy side road for about 5km to Moltsog Els tourist ger camp.

From Ulaanbaatar to ...

Despite getting here at the early hour of 1pm, we both promptly passed out on the comfortable beds. We never did end up going the extra 7km to the actual park. After waking up from our siesta we had dinner in the ger restaurant and then got straight to work entertaining you on this blog and uploading some photos (sorry, Chris made a mistake while geocoding them so they are not geocoded today, when we get a faster internet connection we'll re-upload them with geocoding).

From Ulaanbaatar to ...

All is not heavenly though: now that the sun has set the various bugs have invaded our ger. Hopefully they'll leave us alone when we turn the light off and crawl into bed.

Here's a map of our route today (you can also view it in google earth)

View Larger Map

Nadaam in Ulaanbaatar

We've spent most of our time in Ulaanbaatar getting stuff ready for our trip and enjoying the excellent restaurants. The city itself isn't particularly photogenic. The drivers are really horrendous here. Anywhere else in the world we would be slightly embarrassed running across the road. In Ulaanbaatar if you don't run you'll surely get hit. The locals run across and even Chris 'pushed' (cut off) two women and two children out of his way to finish crossing in fluster of terror!

From Nadaam in Ulaanbaatar

Like the Chinese, Mongolians don't wait in line and have little sense of personal space. At the bank two men came right up to the counter to look over our shoulders. The teller didn't seem to think this was unusual at all. One of them even pointed out where to sign on the paper. We have observed this friendly 'what's going on over here buddy' attitude in several different situations.

On Saturday we joined a tour organized by our guesthouse for the Nadaam festivities. Having every detail worked out for you really was a bit of a novelty for us. It was fun for the day, but certainly not something we'd like to do too often.

From Nadaam in Ulaanbaatar

The festivities themselves were, as expected, very colourful and entertaining. It's a story best told in pictures. We took several hundred photos of which the best 51 are in this album. The people watching was the best part. There were three clear groups present (all in large numbers): western tourists, urban Mongolians, and rural Mongolians.

From Nadaam in Ulaanbaatar

Beijing to Ulaanbaatar on the train

On Monday, one day prior to the train departure, we dropped off our bikes at the Beijing railway station. The process involved an interesting mix of developing world mayhem and bureaucratic formalities. All in all everyone was quite helpful and accommodating. The customs agent we dealt with was particularly kind and even offered Krystil his own chair while we waited for some paper work to be finished. When we left, our bikes were still sitting on a dolly in front of the train station with a sea of thousands of people streaming through. However, we were pretty sure they'd make it to Mongolia without a problem.

We got up early the next morning to catch the train. We were lucky to have managed to book the deluxe sleeper class (especially since this is the week of Nadaam), so we got a cushy ride. We had our own 2 person sleeper compartment which shared a shower/sink with the adjacent compartment. We spent most of our time lazying around, eating in the dining car, and making friends on the train.

From Beijing to Ulaanbaatar

The border was a 5 hour affair starting with visits from Chinese health (another temperature reading!), customs and immigration officials. Next, the bogies needed to be changed since the tracks in Mongolia use the Russian gauge. Finally, after pushing on to the Mongolian side of the border we dealt with Mongolian health (no temperature check, just a form), immigration, and customs authorities. We were finally free to sleep without interruptions around 1 am.

From Beijing to Ulaanbaatar

We woke up the next morning to a view of the Gobi. It looked pretty bleak and we were both glad it wasn't part of our cycle plans. Eventually, as we approached Ulaanbaatar, the scenery became greener.

From Beijing to Ulaanbaatar

About 34 hours after leaving Beijing, we arrived in Ulaanbaatar. Staff from our guesthouse met us at the train station. After waiting for a few minutes, our bicycles appeared at the luggage claim. However, it turned out that the crux of getting our bikes was going to be clearing them through customs. Luckily, our guesthouse employees transformed into bureaucracy navigation superheroes and for the next couple hours ran around trying to get approval to bring them in without paying duty. Although we declared the value of the bikes as being about 1/3 of their true value, this amount was still astoundingly high for the Mongolian authorities. They simply couldn't just take our word that we would take them with us when we left (and would therefore not be subject to import duty). After our helpers went to talk to what seemed to be the head honcho of Mongolian customs (he had the big corner office on the top floor), we were told we'd have to pay the duty as a deposit and get it back when we leave. At this point it was past office hours so we would return the next day to finish the job. We returned alone the next day and seemed to get an empathetic customs agent who eventually decided we would not need to pay the deposit and summoned our customs broker (whose service we had unknowingly retained the previous day) to navigated us up and down the stairs of the building for another hour or so getting the rest of the paper work done. At each step of the process some insignificant sum of money was paid ($0.10-$2.00) and it all appeared legitimate. Somehow, about $5.00 and 10-20 people hours of wasted time later we had our bikes!

From Beijing to Ulaanbaatar

All in all we actually kind of got a kick out of the whole process. Therefore, we decided to have a bit more fun and spent part of the afternoon extending our visas. Though after the customs experience this was downright easy.

Tourists in Beijing

After planning, shopping and packing we at last find ourselves at the start of our trip. We plan to cycle across Mongolia this summer! But first, we are spending a few days in Beijing before taking the train to Ulan Bator.

Upon arriving in Beijing, everybody had their temperature taken three times before clearing customs to look for signs of H1N1. The first screening took place on board the aircraft. We chuckled when everybody clapped after we were all cleared. We then overheard the flight attendant say that on her last flight 60 people were quarantined (or at least held for further screening) around one person who had a fever. The secondary and tertiary temperature checks inside the terminal were more stringent and we saw several people get pulled aside for further scrutiny.

We've had a very warm welcome here. For such a populated city everybody seems polite, friendly, and easygoing. If it wasn't for the horrible air quality, this city would be downright liveable.

We were surprised to find that Blogger seems to be blocked by the Great Chinese Firewall at the moment (but getting around it is not a great challenge for Chris).

Click on the photo below to go to our album with many more pictures from Beijing.

Giant toddler vs cycle tourer