Un monde à entreprendre

As one of the greatest mind of our time said one day in the middle of the Luxemburgish spring: « It is cold in here ». This is probably the sentence I repeated the most in our one week stay in Mongolia as the average day and night temperature was around -15 degrees Celsius, with minima at around -25 degrees Celsius and an incredibly strong wind-chill… but we will come back to that later.

Anastasia advised us to take a bus from Oulan Oude instead of a train in order to reach UlanBataar (UB), our next destination. It was half price, and you are supposed to save quite a lot of time when crossing the border. We therefore first took a night train at 10pm to Oulan Oude (we did not pay for the couchette and therefore had to stay awake almost the whole night) and jumped into a bus from that point (around 7am). From there started a looooooooooong drive on an icy road covered with snow. The driver was very rarely driving over 50 km/h and it sometimes felt like running would be faster.

Crossing the border was an adventure on its own. First we got in a line with other cars and trucks that seem to be here forever. An officer from the Russian military came on board and checked our passport for the first time. She obviously did not speak a word of English and tried with the smile of an angry dog to explain to us that we were or were not supposed to do something based on what was written on our visas (our last assumption was that she did not understand why we would leave before our visa was actually expired). Then everyone needed to go in a building and queue to receive the exit stamp from the Russian side. While we were queuing, another officer checked our passport and required your registration paper (every foreigner is supposed to register at the immigration office within 72 hours after his arrival in Russia) that we of course had only available on my iPod. After a few explanations with the officer (and thanks to the help of two very nice ladies), we finally got the stamp! We sat back in the bus, and yet another Russian officer checks your passport for the last time which finally allowed us to cross the border… except for the fact that now we had to do the same formalities on the Mongolian side (plus customs control). I will not mention the whole process again but altogether we probably stayed at the border for 5 hours.

The end of the trip was rather quiet and quite cold (of course). The inside windows of the bus were frozen (literally frozen) during the last hours of the trip and we finally made it to Ulanbataar around 1 am. We were lucky enough to find a cheap guesthouse that we shared with an American guy (another post should follow about him one day) which closed our 26 hours journey to cross the border. After that we stayed almost every night in a duplex lent by Christopher, one of the entrepreneurs we were supposed to meet. Christopher, thanks again for that, it was the perfect place to stay in UB !

The two next days were spent buying our tickets to Beijing, visiting the center of UB and walking around the capital city of this country of 3 million inhabitants. We have seen a couple of temples, a few nice building and a lot of mess. It really felt good to be back in Asia as I really enjoy this organized disorder that characterizes Asian cities. The city is full of pub/ restaurants which seem to have flourished very quickly has the economy developed in the country. I am not sure though that the demand can handle so many pubs, and I’m pretty sure lots of them will close shortly, but that gives you a good idea of how dynamic this city is. We also spent the two last days visiting a couple of museums. I strongly recommend the National Museum of History which would teach a lot about how great this civilization is.

As being in Mongolia would be pointless if not to visit a bit of countryside, we decided to go on a 4 days trip in two National Parks: Gorkhi-Terelj National Parkat first, and then Khoustain National Park (4days/3 nights tour). We arrived in the first park around 10.30 am. We only knew we would ride a horse and sleep with a family in a yoghourt ger for the next two days. That is basically all we could understand from our guide. What we did not know was that the horse ride would be 30 kms round trip and would end up at 8.30 pm and would take around 9 hours. Before we left, both our guide and the horseman with whom we were supposed to ride during this day decided that our pair of trousers plus a pair of long underpants were not enough to stand the cold on the horse. I think I will never be able to thank them enough for laughing at us and making us put the traditional Mongolian coat that they lent us even though when we left we actually thought they were exaggerating.

In Mongolia, no one is embarrassed to put you on a horse, without asking if can handle it. If you can sit on it, and if you are able to shout loudly “Tchouuuuuuuuu!” while whipping the horse, you are good to go! After being bounced for 45 minutes, I decided to assess how my back felt (it was already really painful) and “jumped” down from the horse. Not only my backbone already made me suffer, but my knees were in no condition to even stand up properly. I therefore asked the guy how many kilometers were done at that point and he said 3… I think if it was not for Yann (and for my belief that there was something extraordinary at the end of the 15 kilometers) I would have stopped as I was sure I would not be able to stand for next 2 weeks. But I decided to hold on and continue on a looooooong loooooooooooong way to the statue we were supposed to see. We crossed frozen rivers, went through forests, trotted as much as we (both the horse and I) could to reach our destination. The sun already almost went done and we were very tired as horse riding seems to use so muscles an auditor usually does not use so much. The wind started to increase slightly and we started to feel a little bit cold. This is when we realized that no car would show up in the middle of nowhere and that we had to ride back to the ger.

From that point onward started the coldest/most painful experience of my life. As the sun set, the temperature decreased in no time, and the wind blew stronger. Coldness in that case is biting you everywhere it can. We could barely feel our heels or our fingers. Our nose and our cheeks would irremediably freeze and our knees felt like stone. I had to put my balaclava which resulted in being blind as the steam I produced was instantly becoming ice on my glasses. As the night felt down, I had to let the guide lead my horse as I could not see a single thing and my horse was too exhausted to follow. For the 2 remaining hours I was therefore focusing on trying to warm up my body and move my back in every direction I could in order to be able to move the next morning. When we finally arrived to the ger, I think we (Yann and I) both agreed that we were never that cold in our whole life and that we never felt pain in so many parts of our body at the same time… To conclude, that was a tough day, but I would do it again, as the ride was nice, and I think that one needs to experience that feeling at least once in his life (plus, my back did not hurt so much the next day ;-)).

We spent the next day hiking around, climbing up and down snowy hills from morning to evening… Nothing special, except for the fact that the landscapes were beautiful as you can see on the pictures.

An interesting fact though… when we left for our morning session, a cow was attached in front of the ger. When we came back, we found the same cow in spare parts both inside and outside the ger. It was full of blood, but I was overly impressed by how fast the whole process took (roughly 3 hours to kill it and cut it in small pieces). I never had meat that fresh in my mouth (because of course part of this cow was our lunch), and this was probably the best meat we had since we left. We really had a great couple of days with the family. The mother is a really good cook, even though communication was difficult as she did not speak a word of English. We had a lot of fun with the 2 years old girl (Ano) who became Yann’s best friend, and the father, our horse guide, is a very kind strong man (who fixed my back in 3 seconds). He offered us a couple of beers one evening… which did not surprised me and was actually very nice. What was really surprising was that Ano also had a couple of beers. There was no way to stop her talking after that!

After the second night with the family, our guide took us to the second National Park, which is very famous for its wild horses. We did see a family of these wild horses, and I took like a thousand pictures for my little sister Clarisse (I was more interested in how they taste like…). After a long night of rest, and a few vodka cups with our guide, we drove to hike a bit in a place Mongolians call the little Gobi desert. Unfortunately our guide was also our driver and did not really stop drinking the whole night/morning. That made him both very talkative and also made him focused more on us than on the road which was both very funny since we were in the middle of nowhere, but also quite scary as we knew we would have at some point to go on actual roads. We therefore took our time hiking, hoping he would get sober. We then made him stop in order to climb a hill that looked very close by but was actually very far away. The fields are so wide in this country that you actually do not see the actual distances anymore until you have to walk them. Once again, we reached a very impressive viewpoint, and I do not have words to describe the panel of colors we have seen that day.

Fortunately, the driver asked Yann to drive home… while offering me vodka. I think that it was the first time in my life I had a couple of vodka shots before breakfast at 11 am… but thanks to Yann we made it safely to UB.

I guess we are done with Mongolia… and we now head to Beijing, China !