Siberia in the winter? Poor choice…?

Mongolian Herders
Originally uploaded by camandkristin

OK, so October isn’t exactly full blown winter, but when you’re in Siberia, it’s close enough. We’ve been in Russia for 4 days now, and have seen snow falling on two of them. Nothing serious, but enough to remind us that winters here come early, and in a serious way. (Cam reminds me that the weather would be the same in Vanderhoof, but I remind him that I don’t live in Vanderhoof). Anyway, we’re too cheap to pay Russian prices for winter wear when the cheapness of Nepal is just around the corner, so our ears and hands will have to freeze for a couple more weeks :) Packing toques and gloves way back in July when the first stop was Africa just didn’t seem to make sense…

Going back- we left Beijing on our final morning with a cab ride to the train station which broke down about 200m from our hotel. Fortunately cabs abound in Beijing and we were able to hop in another one. Unfortunately that cabbie didn’t have change, and we had to leave him without paying our full bill. In fairness to us, I think it’s his job to be prepared for that sort of thing… The train station in Beijing has zero English, but is organized in that Beijing way such that finding our train was easy, and we left on time- remarkably to the minute. We found that our 3rd class ticket had actually bought us a 4 bed compartment with two free meal tickets- and to top it off no one ever joined us so we had the cabin to ourselves for the entire 30 hour journey! So much for mixing with the locals…

Part of the 30 hours was the 5 hour border crossing into Mongolia. It appears that very little happens during that time, with the exception of the changing of the bogies. The rail gauge is different in China than in Mongolia and Russia so the bogies (the under carriage and wheels) have to be swapped. This involves pulling into a large shed, having each car decoupled and lifted individually, the old bogies slid out and new ones slid in. Altogether it takes about two hours which isn’t bad, but still seems like maybe somebody could’ve chatted and agreed on a gauge…?

We arrived at our destination of Ulanbaatar, Mongolia in the early afternoon and stumbled off the train to find some tout willing to take us to a hostel. After spending an hour sitting around at the first place, still without a room, we were fed up and grabbed our bags and headed out. We found a new hostel, and within minutes had ourselves a room, a hot shower, and had arranged a 4 day tour into the countryside. All we had to do was find ourselves 660,000 Togrigs to pay for it. With ATMs that dish out only 80,000 at a time (if you’re lucky) this was a process in and of itself…

Ulanbaatar is Mongolia’s capitol, and home to roughly half of their 2.6 million people. It offers very little in appeal, and we were happy to be spending only a few hours there before heading out on our tour. Normally we’re nervous to sign on to pre-packaged tours, but when you’re trying to take in an entire country in 4 days, and you’ve got a crippling language barrier, it can sometimes be your best choice. Although we’re unable to reconcile the price we paid with the costs of activities in Mongolia, we returned completely satisfied with our experience. We had a wonderful English speaking guide named Solongha (my Anglicized attempt at her name) and a funny driver Umba, who made a great duo in showing us around. Our ultimate goals in Mongolia were to ride a horse, sleep in a ger (yurt), and see some of the stunning countryside. All goals were achieved in spades. Other achievements include: drinking fermented mare’s milk, finding an unopened bottle of Chinggis vodka on the beach, adopting a 2 week old kitten, experiencing our own personal mini concert of traditional Mongolian music, riding a camel across sand dunes, witnessing a Buddhist monk ceremony in the country’s ancient capital, spotting rare wild horses in a gorgeous national park, eating a wide variety of traditional Mongolian food in the local joints, and learning new food storage techniques (raw meat? just hang it on the wall!). Pretty good for four days.

After returning to UB (as the locals call it) we cleaned up and headed back to the train station. This time our cab was involved in an accident just meters from the train station’s parking lot. It was a minor fender bender, and not our cabbies fault, so we grabbed our bags and let him sort it out. This time as we boarded our train it was clear we were not going to have the cabin to ourselves. Two women packing a whole lot of baggage were stuffing themselves into our cabin and, while I took refuge in a cabin down the hall, Cam made a point of carving out our space. I could hear calls of “My wife still needs to fit in here!” from down the way and braced myself for a long 34 hours. Turns out the ladies, Olga and Albina, were wonderful cabin mates and, despite our shared vocabulary of about 3 words, we had many fun conversations. We had read that you shouldn’t refuse offers of food from a Russian and it was clear that even if you wanted to refuse, you weren’t going to be able to with these women. When it came to “yum yums” we were going to be eating what Olga wanted us to eat, which turned out to be quite a lot and involved new treats like horsemeat. Needless to say, we left the train with our own bag of food supplies mostly untouched…

Other than our cabin mates, the trip was pretty uneventful. Unfortunately the first third of the trip was in the dark (having boarded at night), the daylight third was sitting at the Mongolia/Russia border (a crossing that takes a ridiculous 10 hours), and the final third was again back in the dark- so sightseeing was pretty much non-existent. These trains are full of Mongolian traders who are smuggling goods across the border. While it’s supremely obvious I’m sure to all involved, there doesn’t seem to be any real repercussions to it. It’s quite irritating, however, as they run up and down the train trying to stash their goods (mostly clothes) in other people’s compartments. They use tricks like hanging a smuggled jacket in the cabin next door so it looks like it belongs to somebody, or paying off a tourist to shove 10 pairs of socks into his bag. We just greeted them with a “Nyet!” (No!) each time they poked their face into our cabin.

Anyway, we arrived in Irkutsk early in the morning, boarded a tram to head to a hostel, discovered we had boarded it heading the wrong direction, and waited patiently as we did a loop of the city to arrive at our destination. At present we’re sitting on Olkhon Island in the middle of Lake Baikal- the deepest lake in the world which, apparently, holds more fresh water than all the Great Lakes combined. Seems amazing when you consider their footprints- Baikal looks quite small in comparison from the top, but its 1 mile depth makes up for it. Olkhon Island is a 6 hour drive from Irkutsk, followed by a 20 minute ferry journey on Russia’s own Quinsam. We headed here after our first night in Irkutsk as the city itself has little to offer. On the island we are staying at Olga’s Guesthouse- essentially some spare rooms in her home, none the rest of which are occupied. We’ve met about 5 old Russian ladies so far, 4 of whom are named Olga. We’ve also heard recommendations from other travellers all of which, in one way or another, involve an Olga. Anyway- at Olga’s house, our fee includes three meals a day which are basically the highlight of Russia so far (we’re currently in our room waiting to be beckoned for the next one…). Even for Kristin’s refined (read picky) palette, the meals (which have all, so far, included cabbage) are amazing. Dad Woodruff, we can’t help but think of you at each meal- especially the last couple which have centered around omul- a white salmon fresh caught from Baikal.

Other than chilling out at Olga’s (which is really an exceptional place to do just that), we spent a day driving to the northern tip of the island which was great- it’s a beautiful place with gorgeous cliffs and shoreline. It’s also covered in larch trees which, at the moment, are shimmering gold in colour and make the views just that much more spectacular. Olkhon Island is considered one of five global poles of shamanic energy by the Buryat people (the Mongol people living in Siberia). Not sure exactly what that means, but it results in a lot of ribbons tied around trees, and money thrown at their base. For those of us without shamanistic beliefs, it’s still a beautiful place that’s easy to fall in love with. Although a quick glance at a local or an overheard conversation gives it away, we often times have to remind ourselves that we’re in Russia…

Tomorrow we head back to Irkutsk and board our next train at the oh-so-convenient time of 2:30am (am/pm fail when booking that one…) for an 80 hour haul to Moscow (3 full days and 4 nights). We wait with bated breath to see who our cabin companions will be for this one…Here's hoping that they don’t snore…

Until next time,
K and C