Final Mongolia Blog : Terelj National Park and last afternoon/evening in UB

We drove out of the Hustai Park area toward UB which we had to pass through to get to Terelj which is on the other side. Heading for another night in a ger and trying to see more unknown places. The drive was bumpy and not comfortable as we careened around broken roads and unpaved paths. Reaching the city, we then careened around potholes, as we bumped and grinded through the urban core and then back to the country on the other side so we could careen around other broken roads.
Arriving in Terelj, I knew it would be a different type of treat, very nice lodge where the gers are. Huge rock formations that defy size and weight estimates and long open areas to walk or ride a horse through. After a very tasty lunch, we walked through the hills and found something called Turtle Rock that is quite large, to understand the size look at the guy on horseback in the foreground.


I guess the name is an accurate representation.

Now, your vocabulary word for the day, or maybe just a fun scrabble word to use. It is Ovoo. Wikipedia say this about that... "An ovoo (Mongolian: овоо, heap) is a type of shamanistic cairn found in Mongolia, usually made from rocks or from wood. Ovoos are often found at the top of mountains and in high places, like mountain passes. They serve mainly as religious sites, used in worship of the mountains and the sky as well as in Buddhist ceremonies, but often are also landmarks.When traveling, it is custom to stop and circle an ovoo three times in clockwise direction, in order to have a safer journey. Usually, rocks are picked up from the ground and added to the pile. Also, one may leave offerings in the form of sweets, money, milk, or vodka. If one is in a hurry while travelling and does not have time to stop at an ovoo, honking of the horn while passing by the ovoo will suffice" I guess next time I don't want to go to religious services, maybe God will let me off with just a honk or two.



Then we walked over to the temple in the distance where I rediscovered my train friends from Canada and Australia. They were on a day trip from UB and ended up fairly embarrassed when they rented horses but no with a walking guide. I guess the horses are well trained. They went approx. 200 meters and then refused to take another step. Finally, after much coaxing, the horses turned around and went right back to where they started and the group had no choice but to dismount and leave. That Canadian guy is bad luck, he’s lost a train ticket, couldn’t cash his Canadian traveler’s checks and then horse goes stubborn. Unfortunately, I would meet up with him again and find he brought me some bad luck.

As a side note, every group of survivalist, like the Mongol nomads have measures they use to maximize their benefits from nature. This is something that is used to either burn as fuel or help winterize the ger roof to protect from the cold...

Yes, it's cow dung. I can just hear my brother, Howard, in the background saying, "He who smelt it dealt it!"

After a great dinner, freezing night sleep and breakfast, it was off to my last official stop at the Chinngis Khan statue that was erected in 2009. In the depths of my memory, I remember Ghengis Khan as a conqueror who stormed through Asia and into the mid East, but who is this Chinngis Khan guy? Well, it’s the same dude. Around here, the name is Chinngis so don’t say Ghengis or they don’t know what you’re talking about. And there’s a lot of pride in him. For those of you too disinterested or just lazy, I’ll post a quote from the article referenced below about Khan.
“He was a cruel man but he led our country to greatness. If you look at Lincoln, Hitler and Julius Caesar, it’s kind of the same thing.”
What? How did Lincoln get in this group? Cruel man? Not quite sure what the history classes are like here but someone got a name misplaced.
A NY Times article about the statue and park can be found here… http://www.nytimes.com/2009/08/03/world/asia/03genghis.html
There’s a lot of pride in this statue which is the base for a $50M park they want to build here. The statue and gate cost $4.1M so they are only $46M short of their goal. (Not gonna happen). So I took a few photos to try and make this place memorable and here are my favorites…


Yes, this thing is all stainless steel; no rusting their version of Lady Liberty

This next picture is another one of perspective. Can you make out my guide on the front steps looking back. I hope you understand the enormity of the statue.



One last comment on Chinngis Khan. His goal in “conquering” lands was to also leave a living legacy of himself everywhere he went. Let’s just say, every female was “allowed” to consort with him at his whim and he left a fairly large legacy behind. Close your eyes and take a guess how many offspring there are currently in the world with his unique gene in their gene pool. Ok, so he started around the year 1200 and continued for 25 or so years. From there the branches of the tree spread very wide. So what’s your guess, how many descendants does the Great Khan have? You need to read to the bottom to find out what the number is.

Back in UB, for a goodbye lunch with my guide and driver. They took me to a traditional Mongol restaurant where the lunch choices were like this…


One interesting observation I had was about how much Mongols love their children. They try to make it convenient for them to use the toilet. I’m sure most of you would love to see this item on a toilet seat just waiting for your little child to put their butt on!


I had to wash my hands after taking the photo!

For my last afternoon (and praying that my plane gets me out of there), I decided to go to the famous Black Market which is similar to fake markets around the world with unauthorized product containing brand names and no real quality. There are two like this in Shanghai so it wasn’t a big deal. Many people warned that the pickpockets, bag slashers and other creeps would bother me but maybe I look too much like them so I was left alone all day. It was way less interesting than I had hoped so I focus on people photography to capture the locals in their everyday attire. (Get the joke? Focus on photography? I’m a riot.) Some examples...




After discarding the advice I was given about not walking around outside the black market, I realized I couldn’t find a legit taxi and wasn’t going to take one of the gypsy cabs, so I walked all the way back to my hotel (4 miles?). I dropped my stuff and went to scout for a place to have dinner. On my way down the street, I was following a car that was moving really slow, starting to turn and stopping, speeding up and then slowing down, such that I had to slow down my walking gait. It’s then that Bruce Willis popped in my head and said, “Who’s driving that car, Stevie Wonder?” (From the first Die Hard movie).

A short while later, I met the bad luck Canadian teacher again and we walked a bit and tried a new restaurant before I went off to buy some special items and finally to an Internet center to copy my photo files to an external hard drive. After finishing my business, I paid for the service ($1) with local currency worth $4. The guy gave me back a huge wad of bills which I proceed to count at the register. Of course, he was trying to rip me off and then said here’s the rest of your change. I said, “I appreciate your dishonesty, sorry, but I didn’t bite. I hope you enjoy the virus I just downloaded on that computer I was using. Have a nice day” He was not too happy with me.

The next morning it was off to the airport and I got there with the $3 in change from the internet store and spent that in the coffee shop in the airport leaving all my togrogs in Mongolia.

So the Chinngis Khan update? Here’s National Geographic’s take… http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2003/02/0214_030214_genghis.html
For those who don’t want to read National Geographic, Chinngis Khan is supposed to have 16-17 million direct descendants alive today. Wow! Pretty good work in those years before Viagra was around.

Can you believe I really miss China and can’t wait to get back there? So it’s back to Shanghai where the temperature is a nice, seasonal 75-80 degrees with clouds or rain most days, but I’m not complaining. After a few days of work, I head to Chengdu, China to visit the pandas and climb a mountain sleeping in monasteries along the way. Chengdu is in Sichuan Province and if you’re ever bitten into spicy red peppers in a Chinese food dish by accident, well, this is the place that they originated from and are part of the daily staple in everyone’s life.

Now if I ever want to go back to UB and “enjoy” one of their winters, I know where I might get a job…

Hustai National Park - Day 2 - The hunt for wildlife

This update is all about my time in the park on September 21st. The trees had already mostly drained on their color so there were not going to be any amazing landscape photos, but I was on the hunt for animals, hopefully, large mammals.
We met early and it was cold, (wicked cold as they would say in Boston.) Bundled up we set out in a large van with room for 7 or 8 but our group was just my guide from UB, the biologist guide and a driver for this specific vehicle. Photographers love early and late light where the sun is not directly overhead and causes photos to be washed out. The early and late light provide an environment for much nicer photos. We headed back down the road toward the biologist station intending to observe the horses at their watering area along the river. Before we got there, the Takhis met us to escort us to the river. We saw several harems along the way before parking our vehicle. Just in case the other Takhi were taking the day off and visiting their relatives in a different area, we stopped to take some photos.




From there we proceeded to a hillside where many more Takhis were grazing in the early morning light. As we began walking up the hill in a circuitous route toward them, we heard the bleating of animal in pain. Well, he wasn't in pain from being injured, it was more a pain of need. In the binoculars, we found the source of the noise, it was a large, antlered male Maral Red Deer (actually an elk, but who argues with a biologist? me!) We made the decision to photograph the horses in front of us and then head toward the elk, hoping he would attract a crowd. While I was working on getting the optimal photo, my guide was scanning the area. Now he spotted, a wolf headed our way. Wow! A lot going on in just a few minutes. While I could observe the wolf, he was too far away for anything resembling a photograph.
So this was the end of this Takhi session and we moved in the direction of the wolf and elk. Unfortunately, the wolf was headed away from the elk and since there was only one hunting, we decided he might be too far away to pursue so we moved toward the bull elk that was bugling. Walking along in the vast land, it’s hard to judge distances and as we walked closer, the elk didn’t really seem to get much bigger. Finally, we reached the edge of the small hill we were on and could see the elk fairly far away (500 yards). With no easy way to get there, I agreed to continue and we decided to get to where the elk appeared to be, we needed to climb up the next hill and walk on the ridge line. Sounds easy but I’m a flatland person and we started out in UB at 1,600 meters (mile high). So a good idea became a bit of a struggle up over the rocks and onto the ridge. The views were nice, although a bit hazy. We began moving through the area in the general direction of the bugling elk. Shortly thereafter, we came upon a small group of does and watched them. No photos as they were headed the other way and I’m not interested in photographing the southbound end of the northbound elk except for this guy...

We worked our way around to the side and then found the bull elk waiting for his three does we had just seen. He was in perfect position for me to capture this…

Once they realized we were there, they bolted . Now that we were up on the ridge, I encouraged the group to keep going. Soon we were treated to really loud bugling from what must have been a very large bull. The biologist told me this was the big one. Although he was over the next ridge, we wandered in that direction and watched a few groups of elk running up and over a far hill, we believed in reaction to the first grouped we spooked.
We wandered around a rocky area and saw some elk in a reasonable distance and decided to split up. I went one way and my guide was going to go to the other side once I got in position. When I got there, something other than me spooked the three we had been watching so I rose from my hiding area to see a group of 25 elk rumbling right past me! Amazing sight!



On our way back to the van, I noticed a group of partridges which we surprised, fly away from us but landing in another section. Again, I got in position and this time the guide did spook them into flying and that resulted in this…


Once we got back in the van after this minor 3½ hour stroll through the hills, my guide decided it was time to visit someone so we went into his ger and they proceeded to scarf down cups of fermented milk tea and sad looking bread and rolls. After this break, it was down to a river in another side of the park where we saw very unusual sights like great blue herons and mergansers (ducks) that are very common in Massachusetts so no big deal seeing them.
Then we drove very near a group of black vultures (big and ugly) and focused our attention one individual hoping he would fly so we could see the size of his wingspan. Wish granted…

It was decided to find a way to cross two rivers and after unsuccessfully locating the right spot we stopped for lunch which consisted of two big chicken legs, salad, bread and a Kit Kat bar. After lunch we decided that we needed to cross the river for the best photo ops. The driver and biologist pulled over to one area where the river was narrow and I’m thinking narrow equals deep where wide at least has a chance to be shallower. So these two chuckleheads, take a small boulder and heave it into the middle of the water to determine whether or not we should drive through this area. I’m thinking this is stupid but didn’t say anything to them except “Can me and my camera equipment get out before you try to cross?” (Note to Edmund and Eric: Maybe I’ve wised up after avoiding two near disasters with my cameras.) So the two Einsteins decide not to cross at this point and we drive on to find a better spot. The next place they stopped, looked even worse so when they got out, I leaned over to my guide, Mungunchimeg, and said, “Maybe I should through one of these geniuses into the river and see if it’s deep enough?” Her response was, “I think you are sarcastic.” My thought was, “… and it only took two days for you to figure that out?” So the two Mensa candidates decided not to try and cross (without the benefit of throwing rocks) and we continued until we could get across. So, on the other side, we got out and walked for a few hours along the river yielding some small photographically interesting things like…
As the sun began to sink in the West, we headed back toward the Takhi drinking area but stopped at an old Turkish burial area (in the middle of Mongolia). The area is called Orkon and dates back to 500A.D. and is a graveyard lined with 550 stones supposedly placed there by mourners for the funeral of someone very important. How nice. Well, when my son invents a time machine, you can bet going to the middle of nowhere Mongolia in the year 500 AD will not be on top of my list! In fact, at this moment I wasn’t sure why I was there now!

Now fully focused on our end game which was Takhis, I was a bit concerned that our van made a sudden abrupt stop, but this time not to veer around the crummy roads. We came to a full stop. Well, there was a treat in store. We found a juvenile Steppe Eagle, who was exciting to watch, as all birds of prey are, but too far away to photograph.
As the day was nearing it’s end, I was treated once more to the sight of the beautiful Takhis. There were around the river to give me a nice farewell. Base on the animal count of our guide, we saw over 80 different Takhi or 33% of the park’s population in our little over 24 hours time.



Back to the ger for one more night’s sleep. Should be no problem sleeping after 6 hours of hiking at mile high elevation, now if I could just get more blankets. Did I say it was cold here? Tomorrow, it's on to Terelj National Park on the other side of UB and another ger. Hey, nothing goes to waste here, so guess what's on the dinner table tonight...

Hustai National Park - Ger Life

Around 9 AM my guide came to pick me up. Her name is Mugunchimeg Mir. A delightful young lady who speaks excellent English and is the best guide for photographers in her group. She leads me to a waiting car and it’s off to the countryside. This is my first real experience driving on these horrendous roads so I know I’m in for a numbing treat. What no one told me is that the agency decided to save money and got me a small car with driver rather than the promised SUV. There was nothing I could do but endure the discomfort of bouncing around in the back seat with my legs on one side of the car and my body on the other. The air was crisp and clear and it looked to be a beautiful day. We raced around town like we were late for the altar and then settled on to very rough roads in the countryside so the car was going side to side as the driver tried to avoid the biggest potholes. My head hit the roof only three times, pretty good, huh? Remember, this is the same head that bounced off a pole as I was congratulating myself on my Buddhist temple photos only 15 hours earlier.
In driving out to the Hustai National Park where I would stay for two nights in a ger, I realized that Mongolians all have a serious case of Uromysistisis. If you don’t know what that is, you haven’t been paying attention to Jerry Seinfeld. Check out this clip… http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OG6b7KJ1Ah0 (You will have to cut and paste to watch this.)
Mongolians favorite sport seems to be pulling over everywhere and going to the bathroom out in the great outdoors, right next to the road with cars passing closely. I figured it must be the Uromysitisis affecting them.
So we kind of roll through the grasslands, called steppes, we get lost going over the wrong unmarked hill, as there are no road signs but quickly go back the right way when some four wheelers show up and redirect my driver. While he pulled over to get directions, I emerged from the car to observe something flying around. It turned out to be a buzzard that was looking for a meal…



Finally, after two hours on the road, we pull into Hustai National Park Ger Camp. I’m escorted to my own personal ger. It is really quite comfortable with three beds in a semicircle around a small table and a stove that will be the heat source in the coming evenings. One of the workers comes in and lights my stove so I can relax before lunch. Lunch is a definitely Western affair with normal foods you would find in the Mongolian plains but also featuring things they can make with locally grown products. Cucumbers, tomatoes, carrots and cabbage are in abundance so they are featured in our salads. There were three soups all quite tasty, I tried all. Nothing special otherwise, just basic foods.
It was on to see another ger, where horseback riding would be available plus I would get my first taste of the local tea made with fermented mare’s milk. Yum. On our bouncy path to this location we stopped and picked up my naturalist guide for the next few days who works as a biologist in this park full time. We arrive at the ger of the horse family so let me take a moment and explain ger life. Most people live in two locations a mid-spring through mid-fall area and then a mid-fall to mid-spring area. The summers are spent on the open plains with livestock roaming a fairly large area as these nomads have no boundaries and no one owns any land in the traditional sense, on family history guides claims on property. By mid-Fall, they pack up the entire ger and associated equipment used to raise their livestock and they move to a place on the lee side of the mountains to spend the winter. The move of livestock, gers, personal belongings is a real tough move but people and their animals will survive much better in sheltered areas. Since the ger consists of one big open room, the entire family spends the winter, mostly indoors staring at each other. The family I visited had two children, one seventeen years old and a four year old. If the parents want to “spend time” together in the evening, they just have to out wait the children and stay up. If this were the case for us, we would have had only one child as Susan can’t stay up past 9 PM, but that’s a story for another day.
Here are some photos of the father and son in their “dels”, which are the traditional clothing men wear out in the plains. I’m told there are four types, with one being a ceremonial del. What they were wearing this day was the in-between hot and cold season dels.




Okay, so I tried to ride a horse. Mongolians are famous for their wood saddles that have extremely high peaks on them. Let’s just say, I’m guessing they are more comfortable for women than men as certain equipment fits better on some things.


On the way back, our guide spotted some Mongolian gazelles but the distance was too great to take decent photos. As we worked our way back to camp we came upon my target animal for this whole trip, the takhi. So now it’s takhi story time so you can understand these animals. Mongolia is known as the land of the horse as it has huge distances wide open spaces and no roads. Przewalski's Horse or Takhi is a rare and endangered subspecies of wild horse native to the steppes of central Asia, specifically China and Mongolia. At one time extinct in the wild, it has been reintroduced to its native habitat in Mongolia at the Khustain Nuruu National Park, Takhin Tal Nature Reserve and Khomiin Tal. The native population declined in the 20th century due to a combination of factors, with the wild population in Mongolia dying out in the 1960s. The last herd was sighted in 1967 and the last individual horse in 1969. Expeditions after this failed to locate any horses, and the species was designated "extinct in the wild" for over 30 years. In 1992, sixteen horses were released into the wild in Mongolia, followed by additional animals later on. One of the areas to which they were reintroduced became Khustain Nuruu National Park in 1998. The reintroduced horses successfully reproduced, and the status of the animal was changed from "extinct in the wild" to "endangered" in 2005.
I was in Khustain (or Hustai) Park where the population is 250 horses, the goal for the next day was to see them and since I had the biologist guide with me for the entire day, I was pretty hopeful.
So this is what I found as the light waned and we headed back to our gers for the night…





And to all, a ger night.

Ulan Bator, Mongolia

Having read a lot in my travel guide and on the internet, I had some expectation as to what I would be facing in UB, but as usual, the reality is even wilder than the books can lead you to believe. UB is a city of over one million people in an area framed by mountains on all sides. UB is stuck somewhere in the mid 1970s. Large blocky (Soviet) style apartment buildings, a strange looking language that to my inexperienced eye appears to be Cyrillic (Russian), old beaten up cars, downtrodden looking people, a sense of desperation in the air and I haven’t even left the train station yet!

So here’s my first observation. While cars are driven on the right side of the road like in the U.S., there are no laws or import restrictions on where the steering wheel is located for cars on the road, so the cheapest cars that can be found are brought in. Approximately, 80% of the cars have steering wheels on the right side (curb side), this makes passing on the left very interesting. Most cars are dinged and dented, older vintage and not clean. My guess is a new car doesn’t stay new very long here. The roads are in bad condition forcing drivers to veer around various potholes, drop offs openings, etc. I know a lot of young people in the U.S. (and my family) would love to go off-roading, but here all it requires is owning a vehicle. The main roads are equivalent to off-roading and wait until you see the countryside. The photo below of a manhole is in front of a popular restaurant.



I guess someone needed an extra manhole cover.

So I walked around town trying to get a feel for what’s going on as I had maybe six hours to spend before bedtime and the next day when I'm headed out to the countryside. I walked to the big department store, change some money into Togrogs, the local currency, which is 1,350 per U.S. dollar. I started looking for cashmere which is locally produced but felt the prices are too high, so it’s back out on the streets. Over to the big square, Subkataar Square, where most public demonstrations or celebrations are held to see if there are any photo ops. Not finding any, unless you are into statue photos, I decided to explore by heading onto a back street.

My antenna goes up as I looked around at the people staring at me so I boogied out of there back to the main street. (I later found out that the locals on this street like to gang up on Caucasians and many visitors have lost battles here.)I headed the other way to the famous temple, Gandan Temple, which allows photography for a fee. I took some interesting photos of the temple and the people before exiting to explore more of the town. I was so excited about the photos of the old guy in the street that I began looking at the photos as I was exiting the area and "doink" I smacked my head into a low hanging pole at the exit gate. Talk about your wake up calls!

Here are some samples of these photos:






Back to another popular area looking for a dinner locale and wouldn’t you know it? I met Jerry Seinfeld. No not the real Jerry. I’m walking down the street in UB and I found a Kenny Rogers Roasters. This instantly creates Seinfeld/Kramer flashbacks and brings a smile to my face. (Sorry for those who don’t get it but there’s another one coming in the next blog plus a Bruce Willis moment later.) No, I didn't dine there, either

Taxis are another interesting thing. Taxis charge 750 tog ($.55) per km. If you stand on the street and put your arm out to flag a cab, you may be picked up by any person driving any vehicle that will take you to your destination and charge this rate. There are official taxis but they are tough to find. These unofficial taxis (we used to call them gypsy cabs in NYC) can be anyone with a car so you don’t wait very long.

Otherwise, the streets are filled with small vendor kiosks or stands where they are hawking whatever people will buy, food, fruit, cigarettes (by the each), telephones, newspapers, clothing, books, etc. There is a really large fake market called the Black Market which I planned to visit when I returned in a few days.

The other major annoyance is the continuous cacophony of horns from buses and autos. The traffic was horrible as the roads aren't built to withstand any traffic so it only takes a few vehicles to cause pretty big delays. I was happy to see there were no scooter, mopeds or bicycles which are a big pedestrian pain in Shanghai.

What did I like? Inexpensive food, hotels, guesthouses, cooler temperatures, 260 days of sunshine which makes for a dry cool environment and the city is a mile high which means the air is thinner than most of us are used to.

My last comment for the day before I went to the countryside is about a book I found. Even though I brought a pretty big book with me to read (Rain Gods by James Lee Burke), I felt like there would be a lot of downtime so I looked around for a second book. The book that caught my attention is called, “Dateline Mongolia” and it’s a story about a young U.S. journalism grad that was looking for his first professional position and the only job he could find was as the English language editor of the Mongol Messenger, a UB weekly newspaper. As I have been reading the book, it’s amazing how his experiences in the late 1990s explain a lot about what I have seen and felt about UB. On my return from the countryside, I bought a copy of the Mongol Messenger newspaper and will send the book and the newspaper to the 7 Sisters reading club for their enjoyment when I one of them visits in November.

One lady was happy to see me leave...

Mongolia – Getting there is half the battle

I left for Mongolia with the plan to fly to Beijing, use public transportation to get to my hotel for an overnight and then walk to the train station for the 30 hour train ride to Ulan Bator, Mongolia. Ulan Bator will be referred to as UB from now on.
The flight was no problem; I collected my bags and headed for the express train to downtown Beijing. There was little help in determining which stop to get off, so I guessed (wrong) and proceeded to a subway train to get to my hotel. The subways are very crowded and people have decided that others take up too much space so they just push and shove their way onto the train. (Unlike Japan where there are people who actually shove passengers on, this is an individual choice born of necessity where people shove their way on board.) I allowed myself to be pushed for the first two stops as the train continued to get more crowded. At the third stop, whoever began pushing me was instantly expelled from the train by the force of my backside and very heavy camera bag. (I actually took out two as they fell like bowling pins.) Two stops later, I got off and had to transfer to a 2nd subway. This was even more crowded than the first. It was so jammed walking between the trains that many in the crowd were taking photos of how crowded it was. I finally got to the track, found an Expat who spoke English and confirmed my belief on which stop to exit and boarded this train. Again, the pushing started so a few more bowling pins went flying and I finally got to my correct stop. (My old hockey buddies would have been pretty proud of me, but I didn't do much for East-West relations.)
Happy to be walking, I went where I was directed and found myself facing a 50 stair climb to street level which is not usually an issue but with a 20 lb backpack, having to also hoist my 55 lb duffel made for a fun experience. I was instantly repelled by the rain that settled in forcing me to get my rain-gear on, and climb. At street level, I again made a mistake and proceeded quickly in the wrong direction. The issue was compounded by the unwillingness of taxis to stop for a Westerner with luggage. Finally, I took one of those small gas powered chariots that move people in the bike lanes. Despite having someone explain to the driver where we were going, he had no clue so he kept stopping and asking for directions (when he wasn’t making left turns in front of oncoming traffic). I eventually found the hotel and settled in.
I went out for some last minute shopping, went to sleep and got up early to head for the train. In the AM, I walked to the train station in a downpour and headed for my track. I was there early and chatted with others in line and waited to board the train. The train boarding process was pretty straightforward. You go to your car and then an assistant shows you to your cabin. When I dragged my backpack and full duffle in this cabin for two, I realized there wasn’t enough room left in there for you to change your mind, never mind having a 2nd person you weren’t married to being present. Fortunately, no one else was assigned to my cabin, in fact, in the entire rail-car that would fit 24 people; there were only 3 of us. That was nice but a bad sign that the train would not be too full of the types of characters I figured I might encounter.
The train starts rolling out of Beijing and into the countryside while I’m singing the Arlo Guthrie song, “Riding on the City of New Orleans”. As we go through the countryside I begin to wander around the train looking to see who is around. There were five people from Seattle. I could have guessed that since one of the guys was wearing a Jay Buhner Mariners jersey. Three of the young people were taking a trip as a break from teaching English in South Korea, joined by the brother and mother of the Jay Buhner fan. All four young people were Cougars from Wazzou, that’s Washington State graduates for you East Coast people, who promptly razzed me for having a Duck (Michael) and a Wildcat (Jeffrey) in my family. They also were out until 6 AM in Beijing and floated back to their hotel in time to go over to the station and catch the train. Unfortunately, there weren’t a lot of other interesting people on board. A couple from Alaska who have traveled to almost every country in the world were very fascinating to speak with plus a Canadian teacher on break who was bothered that Americans didn’t need a visa to go to Mongolia but Canadians did. (When I saw him later, he seemed even more bothered that his Canadian traveler’s checks were not honored in any bank in UB. Who travels with traveler’s checks anymore? Don’t they have ATMs in Canada?)The other couple in my rail-car was making a move from London to Adelaide, Australia, where she is from, while the man was a Kiwi. They had a one year old daughter and have also traveled a lot throughout Europe, Asia and the Western Hemisphere, with interesting tales to tell.
One person on board lost their train ticket before we got going. They misplaced it somewhere and here in the 3rd world, paper is everything. A lost ticket is the same as no ticket. If you want to go you can buy another ticket but otherwise, get off. No computer system to look you up by name. But, get this, if you have your ticket number, they can print you another ticket. No, it wasn’t me because I had my ticket and my ticket number. The Canadian teacher was pretty upset but had no choice except to pay again. ($273)
The train itself was a Mongolian train, with Chinese crew for the trip through China and then switching to a Mongolian crew at the border. The attendants were all Mongolian so they stayed with us for the entire trip. Here is what they looked like in their uniforms.



In the portions of China and Mongolia, we passed through some areas of natural beauty and also areas of non-natural blight as depicted in some of the included photos.



This is a ger (pronounced gair, rhymes with hair) like what I will be sleeping in for three nights.


We had a spectacular sunset, which is hopefully captured in the photos below.





Food on board was not appetizing, so I ate what I brought. The Chinese crew spent most of the trip sitting in the dining car, smoking cigarettes and drinking tea. This made the dining car a much less desirable place to be. The other westerners on board, seemingly never left their cabins. The people I chatted with on line waiting for the train were never seen again until the train station in UB.
The train information is very clear that the bathrooms will remain locked during all stops including the three hour stop to change the bogies. It seems there is very little technology in the flushing system. You flush and out of the train it goes!
So as day settled into night, we awaited the 9 PM stop at the border in Erlian, China to go through customs and change the bogies (wheels) on the trains to accommodate different size rails in Mongolia. You have the choice to stay on board and watch or go to the small town area to shop, eat or drink. I stayed. Changing the bogies required the following steps. Push the train to a covered area with the proper equipment to perform the change and onto tracks that have capability to handle both sizes of bogies, separate the rail cars so each one was an individual car with no others attached. Then, there are large pins holding the wheels onto the train structure that are removed, the train is lifted, and the bogies from all the cars are pushed away so the rail car is suspended (jacked up) with no wheels underneath. Then the new bogies are pushed into place, the train is lowered and after some adjustments for the correct position, set on top of the new bogies and the pins for these put in place. This is followed by a recollection of cars into one long group except now we had a Mongolian engine (running on coal) and a Mongolian dining car, sans the Mongolian workers who drink tea and smoke somewhere else.
Here are some photos and links to a video I shot from the train.


This is a video, there are two more on the smugmug site. You may need to start it and then hit pause so the movie downloads and it is not like I'm stuttering.



So we get moving again around midnight and everyone falls asleep, only to be awakened 30 minutes later by the Mongolian border and customs people who now want your passport to allow you to enter the country. Another 30 minute wait, everyone gets their passports back and we begin rolling again and all begin sleeping. I wake up at 6 AM and we’re in the Gobi desert, lots of sand some random buildings and not much else. Eventually, we spot some horses and camels, but no big deal. Back to bed and then off to breakfast in the amazingly clean and smoke free dining car. Almost all of the Westerners show up for breakfast and we are now getting excited about finally reaching our goal.

These were some quick grab shots taken from the train on our way in.



Up next is the day in UB with some interesting findings about life here. Jerry Seinfeld and Bruce Willis make cameo appearances in the upcoming days.

Ready, set, Let's go to Mongolia!

Tomorrow is the first leg of my trip as I'm heading to Beijing to board a train for the short, 30 hour ride to Mongolia. My trip is planned to spend one night in Beijing, one night on the train, one night in Ulan Bator, the capital, then head to the countryside with a driver and English speaking guide and stay in gers (yurts) for 3 nights, before returning for another night in the capital. Today, my tour company told me there is an English speaking biologist in one of the national parks I'm visiting that I can hire for $40/day to show me specific wildlife locations that are good for photography. The main goal is to find the Przewalski's Horse, named after it's discoverer. This horse was extinct in the wild and then successfully reintroduced a few years ago. Hopefully, we will not only find and photograph them but we may find some of the other "local" wildlife. Wish me luck.

So what's happened this week in Shanghai? The weather actually cooled off by maybe 10 degrees. Now don't be shocked but, Monday night, I went out for a run for the first time since I got here. Gasping and wheezing, I made the trip to the Bund approx. 3 miles away and then survived the return trip. This morning, I made another trek there in my sneakers. I found peace and quiet finally in Shanghai by running at 5:30 AM. A very enjoyable run! Work has been hectic as we try to get a lot done before our Holiday season. We have three days off for the upcoming mid-Autumn festival next week and then seven consecutive days off beginning 10/1 for a National Holiday. We compensate for this by working four weekend days in the next three weeks. During that second Holiday, I'm taking my mountain climbing and Panda Bear trip to Chengdu, China. Today was another trip to see the local politicos but this time without excessive heat and cigarette smoke blown at me, I had a nice visit. Can't talk about the details but let's just say there was a lot of what my buddy Dave and I call, Whiffem, as in "What's in it for me?"

So now for the weather forecast for Ulan Bator... Sunny and clear every day (They are known for having 260 sun filled days each year.) The highs will be in the 50s but the lows on Tuesday and Wednesday will be around 25 degrees with 15 degree wind chill factors.

Did I say it was freezing cold there?

Interesting Rainy Weekend

I had no goals for this weekend except to prep for my Mongolia trip which begins on Friday, 9/17. On a rainy Saturday morning, I went to return a towel I bought at a local department store and was instantly transported 25 years backwards. This store can take your credit for sales but returns are heavily controlled so no swiping your credit card and giving a receipt. They write down your credit card number, fill out a form, copy your credit card and then tell you it will take 20 business days for the credit to go through. I objected to having my credit card written down and potentially available for someone to steal the account numbers, but was told this was the only way to make a return.

On my way home as the rain intensity increased, I watched the traffic with increasing curiosity. The moped riders drape themselves in a poncho and look absolutely miserable as the water hits them in the face and pools in the middle near there bodies. I passed one of those intersections where there are no rules, no stop sign, no traffic light, etc. Of course, cars and mopeds rarely obey the rules so it's not unusual. After walking past the intersection, I heard a loud boom. I thought it was one of those overloaded carts that might have toppled. Something like this one I found in Guillin in 2006...



So peaking out between two trucks, I see a moped rider on the ground and a very nice Audi sedan stopped nearby. I waited to see what would happen next. The Audi driver jumped out of his car very concerned and without a look at the person on the ground he raced over to see if there was any mark on his car. (You can't make this stuff up.) Then he and his passenger went over to help the lady on the ground. They never really looked at her, just standing there each holding the ends of the handlebar just waiting for here to remount and leave. The driver continued to stare at the front bumper of his car looking for damage.

Now a word about the accident victim. When she stands up, you can clearly see bandages on her left elbow and left knee. My guess is she has bounced off another car recently. She was very concerned about her right knee which was red but had no blood on it. Finally, after a lot of pointing at her knee she got on her moped and headed back where she was originally coming from. The driver just left the scene and proceeded to almost hit me and cut off two cars at the next corner. On my way to the corner, I passed one of Shanghai's many "Traffic Assistants" who are there to direct traffic in busy intersections and try to keep pedestrians safe from traffic rule breakers. She was sitting on a chair, mid-street, watching the accident scene but not wanting to get involved, so when I passed her I said, "It's okay don't get up."

Sunday was even rainier so I thought it would be good to go out and take some photos of the locals in action in a downpour. To justify my movement outside, I headed for a distant place called NY Deli on a route I have never taken to observe life and as luck would have it a few treats were found along the way. With camera in hand, the pictures will tell most of the story. (Note: As always, you can see all of the photos by clicking on any one of them and going to my Smugmug page)

The first thing I came upon was a marital dispute that seemed to erupt into a hockey fight. I saw this man make a grab for his female caveman style, while holding their child and an umbrella, never giving up his grip on any of the three. The lady tried furiously to shake loose, eventually, starting to take her shirt off because he wouldn't release his grip in the shirt. Those of you who know the ice hockey maneuver of pulling your opponents shirt over their head so they can't use their arms can visualize this easily. She seemed to be trying to remove her shirt to escape the grip. This held my interest for purely journalist reasons, of course. Finally, she slipped his attempt to move his grip to her hair and she ran down the street and out of sight. He still held the umbrella and child and walked in that direction and away from me.







As I walked away, I thought of Howard Cosell announcing a boxing match in the 70s, and screaming "Down goes Frazier", when boxer George Foreman decked Joe Frazier. It's been an incredible life and I'm only 55, but why do I remember all this stuff? In my house, only Marissa has a memory like this. Heck, Jonathan can't remember anything about his childhood, but that's a story for another day.

Then I saw this roadside repair by someone other than AAA. This tire repair job photo also catches a lady who might be giving verbal support but is lacking some support of her own, if you get my drift.



Next, I found this adorable scene with a young boy playing with a kitten by grabbing it's tiny claws under the door opening.



After a 2.5 mile walk, I found the restaurant and dared convention by ordering a Corned Beef Reuben sandwich at the deli. It was excellent! After finishing, I ordered a Chicken Burrito, yes, Burrito, which they are known for, intending to have that for my dinner. These items are around $7 each so very reasonable. The burrito is enormous. No way I eat more than half for dinner. A definite keeper location. On my way home, I decided to go a slightly longer route to see more of Shanghai.

This next guy and I had some fun watching a bus rush through a puddle and splash passersby as they walked in front of him. I enjoyed his enjoyment and tried to capture that.


Then there was this guy who was shopping with his family.



Finally near home, was the guy similar to the one in the photo above with his heavy load on his bicycle.





The funniest event of the day was a very pushy shoeshine guy who wanted to shine the black boarder on my Goretex shoes. He couldn't understand why I had no interest.

Near my home, I found a local grocery store which was a great relief because the nearest store I knew of is several subway stops away. Now it's time to pack for Mongolia so there probably won't be any blog posts until I return.