Mobile Mongolian Market

Our first encounter with Mongolia came in the form of the little man we were sharing our train cabin with. We boarded the trans-mongolian train in siberia at about five am and saw that although our cabin only had one man in the top left bunk, there were bags and boxes and clothes everywhere. In fact, the cabin was full of the most random stuff. There were two large sausages hanging above Christian's head and a big pot of jam at his feet. When the sun rose and people on board started waking up, the picture became clear. We were part of a travelling Mongolian market!

The train was a throng of activity with the traders preparing for the next stop, stock was moved from carriage to carriage, and a lot of money was exchanged with the man in our cabin, and although we couldn't understand the language, it be became clear that our man was something of an authority on board. For this reason we did our best to stay on his good side. We did a lot of smiling and shared some grapes with him. We were even nicer to him after Christian saw the size of the knife he was carrying, and we heard from some Dutch guys that they had been forced to hand over some beer at knife point.





At the first stop all the Mongolian traders hurried off the train to begin selling their wares to the local Russians. It appeared that lots of locals come down to the station specifically when trains to Mongolia are due to arrive, just to pick up some bargains. The Mongolians were selling socks, coats, underwear, and of course jam and sausages, and God knows what else. We later found out that some of these Mongolians actually live on the trains with no fixed home, travelling to Moscow to pick up cheap goods, before selling them at every stop on the way back to Mongolia.

Back on the train and fast approaching the Russia- Mongolia border, there was a mad rush for all the traders to get their goods hidden before we reached customs. We have no idea where all the swag was hidden (Christian saw the attendant on our carriage hiding some in the coal store!), but it all miraculously disappeared from sight. I thought I had been sleeping on a thin mattress but it turned out to be a pile of shawls that a mongol woman wanted back. And so at the border our cabin resembled some normality and we even had a couple of English guys join us.

The border crossing was long and tedious with Russian and Mongolian officials, lots of forms to fill out, and soldiers with sniffer dogs. In the cabin next door, the customs officials uncovered two boxes of meringues and a huge piece of cheese. Supposedly the Mongolian in the cabin was very nervous when the official found and opened the boxes and looked very relieved when they were full of meringues and cheese, he clearly had no idea what had been stashed!

That night I couldn't sleep. Despite the fact I was in a cabin with three English guys and the door was locked, that was no comfort. The Mongol traders had keys to open all the cabin doors and frequently through the night they would open our door, have a look inside before leaving again. It was very unsettling.

We were really happy to get off the mobile market train at Ulaan Bataar (capital of Mongolia), especially when we met our smiley local guide Naki. Mongolia is the least visited country in the world and we were curious to find out why. After a much needed Japanese shower at a local hotel we headed out for a tour of the city. Maybe it was because we had grown used to the dowdiness and grey of Russia cities, but we took an instant liking to Mongolia, despite the freezing temperatures. The people were friendly, gracious and helpful.


Buddhist monks in the temple square



The city of Ulaan Bataar is an interesting mix of traditionalism versus capitalism, and poor versus rich. There are glassy skyscrapers housing international corporations, and these can sit next to run-down ger tents in which a whole family live around a stove. There are flashy four-wheel drives made by European and Japanese manufacturers hogging the roads, whilst monks in traditional Mongolian costume scurry along dirt tracks which should be pavements.

We visited the local monastery and wandered around various temples (a tip for anyone visiting Mongolia, always walk around anywhere clock-wise, it is local custom, and to walk around a holy place anti-clockwise is social suicide). Mongolia is a Buddhist country and in fact the word on the street is that the Delai Lama has his eye on Mongolia for his successor. However, the Chinese are completely opposed to this possibility and when the man himself visited Mongolia recently they closed all of their borders with the country for two days out of protest.

After a day wandering around the city and enjoying a bit of good old-fashioned capitalism at the State Department Store (they even sell ipads!), we headed away from the city into Ghengis Khan territory - the Mongolian countryside. Here we would be living like the Mongolian nomads at a ger camp. It was the highlight of our trip so far so make sure you read our entry.

Christian and Fiona

Location:Mongolia

Largest, deepest, oldest

After ninety hours on the trans-Siberian, we made a prison break in Irkutsk and headed to Lake Baikal. At our chalet near the lake we had the best showers of our lives, and washed away the dirt and discomforts of four days on the train, before taking a tour around the lake.




Lake Baikal is the oldest (over 25 million years old), deepest (average 2442 feet) and largest lake in the world. Amazingly it contains one fifth of the world's fresh water, and 70% of the 1700 plants and animals in the lake cannot be found anywhere else.

The two days at the village of Listvyanka where we stayed could not have been more different from the four days we had spent on the train. There was more open space and fresh air than our eyes and lungs could take in. It was wonderful. We took a lovely walk along the lake where we saw this delightful local collecting water, we went up to the viewpoint, we ate fish that we will never eat again and we watched the sunset while drinking beer and hooch in a gazebo.

















We were sad to say goodbye to Lake Baikal, and the city of Irkutsk where we stayed for a further night, was pretty miserable. One cheerful thing about Irkutsk was the wedding tradition that we observed. Across all of Russia, when a couple marries they have to cross seven bridges together and on one bridge they lock a padlock with their names on it, to signify their unity.



Love locks

Following a very early wake up in Irkutsk, we headed to the station once again to board the trans-Mongolian train, safe in the knowledge that we knew everything there was to know about the trains, how wrong could we be! The Mongolian train had a few surprises in store for us...

If we are completely honest, we were not sad to leave Russia behind, for every nice person we met, we encountered about twenty miserable ones who seemed intent on making our stay difficult. Saying that, they may have reason to be unhappy and if you are interested to read our thoughts on the Russian pysche and where it may have come from, take a look at the blog entry.

Bye bye Russia, cheer up it might never happen!

Christian and Fiona

Location:Lake Baikal, Siberia

The trans-Siberian - a slow moving prison

We had never travelled through time zones on a train before, but on the trans-Siberian railway we went forward five hours and back about forty years. We left Moscow at lunchtime on a Sunday and travelled east to Irkutsk in Siberia, where we arrived on Thursday morning. Although Irkutsk is five hours ahead of Moscow, you wouldn't have guessed on the train because all of the tickets and timetables (as with television and any other national scheduling) are based around Moscow time, so you have to make all your own calculations to realise what the local time is.

Christian and I had read up about the trans-Siberian train on the Internet, we had an info pack supplied by the our travel agency and I had the lonely planet guide, so together with a true british sense of optimism we felt ready for what was awaiting us. We were not! We should have been suitably worried when a group of Russians we met in Moscow were astonished that we had decided to take a train, asking "why the *#~* are you taking the train? You know you can take a flight to Siberia.". We ignored their warnings until we found ourselves on platform two at Vladistovsky station.

The train itself is a solid soviet machine with no frills. Inside is basically the same but with a couple of patterned frills straight from the sixties, by way of carpet and curtains.







And here you will see the bedroom, compact with a retro finish, and my personal space for about ninety hours.

The class system on board

We had bought second class tickets which meant that we shared a small four-berth cabin with two others. Our cabin was about two metres by one and a half meters with bunk beds on either side. There was storage space beneath the two bottom bunks and a small table by the window. It was very basic, the orient express it is not. A first class ticket is the same cabin but for two people. A third class ticket buys you a perch in a carriage similar to a battery hen shed (see the secret video we filmed walking through these carriages). Walking through the third class carriages was a real eye opener and my heart beat slightly faster every time we went through to get to the dining car. There were feet and hands sticking out at you from all angles and suspicious eyes would follow you. From the sullen expressions on the faces of third class passengers you would think that they were being transported against their will, and as a result we referred to third class as hell (i.e. "shall we walk through hell again?")

First night on board

After a solid five hours of reading and gazing out the dirty window into endless trees we wandered up to the dining car, via hell. It was pleasantly spacious compared to our cabin with a bar at one end and six tables set with lace table clothes and vodka glasses. I went to pick up a menu from the bar and had my hand actually smacked by the evil waitress. We took this to mean table service and so took a seat. The hospitality from the waitress continued as we ordered from the menu. Unlike the two French men across from us who pointed at other people's food and held up fingers to indicate how many they wanted, we actually put some effort into speaking Russian. Even with these efforts, we were still met by "nyet" at every request.
Eventually we were able to choose food that she agreed to serve us and when it eventually arrived it was surprisingly tasty.

Later in the bar we met a fellow Brit Dan, and also a huge Russian man named Vladinkee. He was set on getting drunk and keen for us to follow. After toasting Winston Churchill and Roman Obramovich, the two guys (Christian and Dan) were challenged to an arm wrestle with the Russian giant. Since his arm was twice the size of theirs put together they declined the offer until a few drinks later. The vodka glasses shuddered as British arms hit the table, and Vladinkee roared with laughter. After the British were truly defeated by the Russian, we made a swift exit before any more drinking or wrestling was thrust upon us. Christian learnt from this night of vodka drinking, and continued to drink vodka every evening before bed, claiming that it helped him sleep (in fact as I write this entry, Christian is drinking vodka... And it is not even bed time).






After a dreadful nights sleep in my upper bunk we were woken by the evil waitress bringing round a selection of donuts filled with sausages, meat or cabbage. This was unfortunately the staple breakfast on board.

Life on board

Days on the trans-Siberian are pretty laid back and consist of reading, napping, writing and gazing out the window. Highlights that break up the monotony include making a cup of tea, changing your watch to local time, and going to the toilet. Another highlight in the train was when people left our little cabin to be replaced by new people. You never knew who was going to poke their head around the door, greet us with "strasveetye" and then practically sleep next to you for thirty hours in silence until they left with a solitary word "dosveedanye". Trans-Siberian flings!

We weren't completely captive with our prison mates on the trans-Siberian, at certain stops along the way we were able to get out (for good behaviour) and stretch our legs.




We shared our cabin with a couple of polite middle aged men, an ice hockey enthusiast who tried to share his enthusiasm for the sport with christian (unsuccessfully), a computer geek (who gave us a jam donut), a well to do couple, and the most cheerful man in Russia (we suspect he was from somewhere else).

Unsaid rules of the shared cabin are that you and your posessions must not cross the invisible line that separates the left from right side. That line also extends across the table. If you are the last person to bed you should lock the door, and if you are the first awake in the morning you should piss off your cabin mates by opening the blinds, regardless of how early it is and how late they might have gone to bed. Rules on your carriage are enforced by a pair of women called the Provodnistas. They are as scary as they sound and one seemed to take an instant dislike to me, shouting at me in Russian whenever I ventured out of the cabin. From what I could gather I wasn't allowed to use the toilet, wasn't allowed to use the hot water, wasn't allowed to pour water away, and was generally a nuisance.

Outside of Moscow the city thinned out and wooden villages took over. As we travelled further east into Siberia, the towns and villages grew further apart and there were huge expanses of of open grassland or forest.



On the Tuesday we crossed into Asia which looked absolutely no different, on the Wednesday morning we woke up to snow and on Thursday morning we eventually stepped out of the train into Siberia. It was very cold, but boy was it the most welcome cold I had ever stepped out into after four stuffy days in our moving prison. The travel agency we booked through entitled our tour the "trans-Siberian experience", and we couldn't agree more. It would have been false advertising to claim it to be the "trans-siberian pleasure" or the "trans-Siberian adventure", but an experience it certainly was.

We made it!

Christian and Fiona

Location:Moscow - Siberia

Wait me here while I steal your bags

Ok the start of our trip has arrived. Following an early start, a couple of breakfasts and six bottles of champagne (thanks for the upgrade Dave), we arrived in St. Petersburg.




As we stepped off the plane we got our first insight into life here, it was freezing. As we walked through customs and met our taxi driver we got our second insight; everyone was down-right miserable.

Our first hostel was the Nord Hostel. It was clean and warm with reassuringly Soviet wallpaper. Within no time at all we were meeting our local guide who was going to give us a tour. Our guide was Mary, or Fruit loop Mary as we now affectionately refer to her. (on the right):





Mary was very interested in us and our lives in London, and asked us lots of prying questions. In return we discovered she was not very comfortable in the company of people, and instead preferred rats. I smiled a lot and nodded while she talked (manners cost nothing Christian!) while Christian managed to give her the impression he was "conservative" and "a cockney!" She showed us the key sights of the city including the Winter Palace or Hermitage (see below). This was the winter home of Catherine the Great who wanted to emanate the elegance of europe in the architecture of her home, and took elegance to the extreme by never wearing the same dress twice. Christian and I were not going to get such luxury, it was so cold we were going to need to wear very piece of clothing we had very day!



After a very long goodbye with Mary (after which we realised we should have tipped her) we were on our own in this cold dark city. It soon became apparent neither of us had a clue how to get back to the hostel. Using only our own wits, a helpful bunch of Dutch people, another hostel and an iPhone, we found our way home.

Over the next couple of days we really immersed ourselves in Russian culture. We took the Metro into the deepest layers of the earth (see people queuing for this opportunity).


We conducted whole conversations in Russian (with lots of pointing) and Christian even took on a swarthy miserable expression. To test the true misery of the people I began smiling at everyone. I found that people either maintained their state of melancholy or gave me a condescending slight up-turn of the mouth (these people were few and far between, and clearly thought there was something wrong with me). Christian seemed to be testing the people of St Petersburg also, just about every interaction he has had seems to involve gruff words, tufting and even the odd shove.





In the next few days we aim to get a smile out of a Russian, wish us luck! But for now, from Russia with love,

Christian and Fiona

Posted using BlogPress from my iPad

Location:St Petersburg, Russia

Two and a bit days. And I haven't really packed yet...

... still plenty of time :)