Ger camp visit

After arriving into Ulan-Baatar Station at 6am we were immediately whisked away for our overnight stay at the Ger Camp.  Beware - very picture-heavy post!

Stephen had some trouble with the door to our ger, where we stayed for the night.

We visited a local nomad family who still live in their traditional lifestyle in the Terelj National Park (although with a lot of tourist visitors, one assumes).  The ger is their home, and they move it around 6-12 times a year to allow their animals to graze nearby - they usually only move about 25-30km away.  Apparently nowadays they do a lot of moving by car, rather than horse-drawn cart.  The ger is the round tent; those buildings next to it are housing for their livestock (cows, sheep, goats, and one horse). 

Apparently two or three families usually live together (friends or relatives), so that they can work together to share the load on putting up the gers, herding the animals and all of the other tasks.  All gers face south so that the sun wakes them up in the morning.

The ger is a single room, with a wood-burning stove in the middle with a metal chimney and two poles to keep up the roof.  The beds are on either side (everyone uses single beds).  That's the elaborately painted red wooden bed on the left-hand side of the photo.

Stephen's Mum tried on the Mongolian national costume (which a lot of people in the city were wearing around for seemingly no tourist-related reason).  Apparently it weighs a ton as it has sheep skins sewn to the inside to keep them warm in the -40 degree temperatures. 

After the visit to the local nomad family, we hung around in our ger for a while, which actually looked very similar to the nomads' ger.

Building a ger is pretty simple, it seems.  You have a lattice around the outside, and wooden poles radiate out from a central roof circle to make up the roof.  The ger is lined with felt, and they add more felt layers to keep in more heat as it cools down - 2 felt layers in summer and 5 or 6 in winter.

Stephen and I climed a hill next to our ger camp to check out the surroundings - the place was beautiful.  Clear blue sky and mostly empty dirt with small bits of grass around and only a few trees.  That's our ger camp you can see at the bottom of the hill.

Stephen is a true man of the wilderness, mobile phone in hand.

In the afternoon, we went on a 4 hour ride on some Mongolian horses, which are smaller than normal horses.  Regardless of their size, we were still in a lot of pain the next day - too much time in the saddle for sacks-of-potatoes like us!  Despite this, the ride was pretty cool - the landscape was beautiful!

We rode to a meditation centre/buddhist monastery, which was beautiful.  These are Buddhist prayer wheels - each one has a verse inscribed on it, and turning the wheel clockwise 3 times is equivalent to reading the verse.  People walk around the building turning each prayer wheel as part of their worship.

Perhaps we were too quick to judge...

... the trains.  It looks like the quality of your carriage is pretty random, and based on whether you get an old or a new carriage.  From the looks of it, tourists usually get clustered in the one (new) carriage, so perhaps we just got very very unlucky with our train from Moscow to Irkutsk. 

The trip from Irkutsk to Ulan-Baatar wasn't too bad - only 33 hours long and starting at 10pm rather than past midnight.  Unfortunately, our entire daylight time was spent sitting at the border stations waiting for various passport control and customs people of both counties, and the scenic parts of the trip (around Lake Baikal and coming into Mongolia) were all under cover of night, which was a bit of a bummer.

Here's a few photos.

Somewhere while we were sleeping, the back of the train was detatched and we ended up as the last carriage.  This is the view out of the back of the train, driving through Russia (close to the Mongolian border).

The inside of our new deluxe carriage - the seat backs folded down to reveal your mattress, and there were compartments in the little section above the seat back for your stuff.  It even had a TV (although there was never anything showing.)

Our little red carriage waiting all by its lonesome for a train to come and take it across the border.  We were the only carriage continuing on from the Russian border station to Mongolia - so we were towed across the border all by ourselves, and then attached to the back of a Sukh-Baator to Ulan-Baator train.  In case you're wondering, Russian Passport Control and Customs wasn't bad at all - they hardly paid any attention to us.  (We were missing a couple of days registration and were concerned, but it wasn't a problem.)  The Lonely Planet book had said that they might raise issues with our electronics and make us pay tax on them, but it didn't happen - no problems at all on either side of the border :)

At least we had some company on the Russian border station - there was an entire train full of tanks next to us!  (Stephen covertly took this photo.)  Does anyone know what kind of tanks these are? 

Irkutsk and Listvyanka

Our train took us to Irkutsk, which is a small city near Lake Baikal (getting towards the east of the country).  We had a night in a hotel to rest and shower, and we hit up the hotel restaurant for a real meal, which turned into a bit of a feast (after 4 days of instant noodles, we got a bit menu-crazy and ordered more than we could eat).  The next morning we were up early for the bus to Listvyanka.


Listvyanka is a little town which is actually on Lake Baikal (as opposed to Irkutsk which is about 40km away).  Lake Baikal is the deepest lake in the world - with an average depth of 750m.  It's a freshwater lake - Wikipedia tells us that it holds 20% of the world's surface fresh water in it. Those are mountains on the other side.

The actual town was pretty nice - it's nice to visit smaller towns after the big cities.  It was pretty cold, but we were amazed after a couple of hours when it started SNOWING!  The people in the homestay/B&B probably thought we were nuts, because we immediately bundled on all of our warm clothes and ran outside into the snowstorm.  The funniest part was that the rain, snow and high winds didn't stop the markets - people just kept going.  So we did too :)  One of the best things we discovered was shashlik - basically shish kebabs (pork), which we bought from a market stall and ate in the snow.  We also discovered potato pies which are basically just mashed potato inside pastry - they're delicious, and we've bought some more in hopes that we can heat them up and eat them on the next train.

The town was full of wooden buildings, which are apparently a big drawcard of eastern Siberia.  They look very pretty, especially with the red and yellow autumn trees.

In the morning we woke to discovered that it had continued to snow overnight, so after breakfast Stephen and I ran out and threw some snowballs at each other.  We also built a snowman :)

From here, we're heading south - we catch the train tonight, and we'll be on it for 2 nights and 1 day, arriving Tuesday morning in Ulaan-Baatar.  I'm a bit concerned about leaving Russia - apparently customs and immigration can be pretty difficult and tough, and there's also the matter of getting off the train to wait for 8+ hours in no-man's land in 0 degree temperatures.  Hopefully we make it through without any problems.

4 days is a long time...

... when you're stuck in a tiny little compartment on a train with no shower.  

We were discussing what I should say in this blog post, and the short version is, don't take the train, or break the journey up - 4 days is enough to give anyone serious cabin fever. 

The "scenic" Trans-Siberian wasn't really as scenic as advertised - pretty much the whole trip looked like this:

 

With the occasional bit that looked like this:

So not really that much to look at.  For 4 days.

It's a bit hard to convey how small the cabin was - we're sitting on the bottom bunks and you can just see the top ones above our heads.  That's tasty tasty 2 minute noodles that we're eating - the promised food that you could buy on the stations never materialised, with the station vendors only selling the same stuff you could buy in a supermarket - pretty much 2 minute noodles.  The lack of fresh food was pretty grating - I guess we're a bit spoiled, but living off 2 minute noodles and cup-a-soup was driving me crazy pretty fast.

 

We were fairly lucky, having the other bunk in our 4 bed cabin unused for the first day and a bit.  At lunchtime on the second day, a very nice Russian businessman who spoke really good English joined the cabin, and it was pretty cool speaking to him - he told us a lot about the area and its history, and we taught him how to play Uno.  At breakfast time on the third day, he got off and was replaced by another Russian guy who spoke no English and wasn't so clean and well-dressed.  Through some picture-drawing, we deduced that he was a policeman, on a fishing trip from his town south of Moscow to a town near Vladivostok in the far east of the country.  He taught Stephen how to drink vodka (apparently you must drink 3 shots in a row)... for breakfast, which was pretty funny.  The unfortunate part was that he snored - louder than the train - it was like sleeping next to a freeway full of semi-trailers.  And to add insult to injury, he slept snored from around 3pm-10pm, then he went in and out of the cabin for the next 5 hours (noise, banging, plastic bags rustling, doors opening and lights), and then he went back to sleep from 3am until lunchtime (more snoring).  So the last couple of days were pretty awful.

 

Shower facilities.  The toilet paper on the train ran out after the second day - good thing we bought our own.

The most amusing - and possibly most telling - part of talking to the Russian travellers was that they couldn't understand why we were taking the train.  "Why aren't you flying?"  I think they concluded that we couldn't afford it. 
 

The long and short of it all is that the train was bearable to start with but got quickly worse the longer you were on it.  If you're set on taking the Trans-Siberian, our recommendation is that you break the journey after 2 days (which will drive you only mildly crazy), and have a night in a bed, some real food, some privacy, and a shower, before returning to the train and continuing on.

Last day in Moscow

I wanted to post up a few photos from our last day in Moscow which I didn't get a chance to post before we were off on our 87 hour train ordeal.

We visited the Kremlin, which is and has always been the seat of government power in Russia - it's changed hands a number of times from the Tsars to the Communists to today's democracy.

While we were there, we also saw the Tsar Bell, which is the biggest bell in the world - but it never rang, because it cracked while it was still being made.  It was pretty big. (For Mum and Dad - I remember this from your photos of Russia!)

We finished off the day with some traditional Russian food, which we ate in a restaurant which was packed with locals (as well as a few tourists), just off Red Square.  Clearly Russia has embraced its new ideals :)  

Onwards to Irkutsk!

Just a quick note to say that tonight we'll be hopping on the train for our 4 day non-stop journey from Moscow to Irkutsk.  It will be interesting - BYO entertainment, and you can get off at occasional stops for 10 minutes to wander around or buy food, but you have to be quick in case the train leaves without you.  No showers.  


We get on the train at midnight tonight (Monday) and we arrive in Irkutsk at around 8pm Friday.  

I doubt there'll be internet on the train, so the blog will be quiet until then at least - hopefully there's some in Irkutsk!  

Moscow Metro Stations

One of the big surprises for me has been the beauty of the Metro stations in Moscow.  From an engineering standpoint the system is amazing enough - 7 million people on an average weekday and no more than 3 minutes between trains - but most stations are beautifully designed with sculptures, mosaics and chandeliers as well.  So this afternoon we spent our 26 roubles (around 90c Australian) and rode around on the Metro checking out the various stations.  

A huge statue in the entrance to our local metro station, Partizanskaya.  The thing I find really cool about the Russian statues is that they show everyone holding the weapons and defending the country - even the women.  When you think about it, Australian/American/British pictures, statues and art pretty much always shows the men with the weapons and the women holding food or children.  It's nice to see women getting an equal footing here.


Supposedly the stations were created to be "The People's Palaces" - the idea being to beautify the places that the everyday people travelled with art (glorifying the state of course).  I guess it's a bit of a strange state because they were built during Communism, so it wasn't exactly a choice of the people to build them, and a lot of people died during the construction.  But they're very beautiful nevertheless.

Being the UX nerd that I am, I have to comment on this line progress display from inside the metro carriage - the stations that have already passed have a red light and the station that you are currently travelling to shows the red light flashing.  Very good way of visualising where you are and what's coming up, and the transfer stations.  (A problem, however, is that they only include the Cyrillic alphabet, which makes it hard for people who don't read that to translate to the guidebook's Anglo alphabet version.)

Statues and Spacecraft in Moscow

They seem to have a bit of a thing for statues in Moscow.


We headed out today to the Art Muzeon Sculpture Gallery, which is apparently where the old Soviet-era statues live nowadays.  It was pretty cool to walk around and see the leaders and the more propaganda-style statues as well.

There wasn't an English translation, but we think this was showing the deposed elite on the ground with the workers triumphant above.

A defaced statue of Stalin (someone chopped his nose off).  That wall in the background is a memorial to the millions of people that he killed either outright or in the Gulags.  Each rock is carved with a face.

A statue of Lenin, with an old Soviet insignia in the background.  

Peter the Great Statue - we saw this from a distance and were wondering what the hell it was.  It's huge - 96m tall - twice the height of the Statue of Liberty.  Pretty damn cool.

Wandering through Gorky Park (a small amusement park), we found this space shuttle and freaked out - it looked real!  Looking at it closely, it had wheels, insulations, electronics... we couldn't work out why a space shuttle would be in a theme park.  We found out when we got back to the hotel that it was a Buran Test Shuttle - an earlier prototype which was subjected to stress and heat tests, and then retired to the amusement park for people to play on - apparently it's been turned into a simulator now.  Those crazy Russians :)  

Russian Food

We've been eating pretty authentic while we've been here.  To be honest, we weren't given much of a choice - our first night we had those strange salty pies with sweet pastry, and it's continued on from there.  Most times we've been the only non-Russian speakers in the place, pointing and smiling trying to order - it's been pretty exciting :)

A cafe here means something different to what it means in Australia.  It's the kind of place where you'll get a full meal out of a bain-marie - from what's on display, you choose a meat, a side and a salad, and they weigh your plate after adding each one and charge you based on the amount of each that you're eating.  It's kind of strange at first, but you get used to it, and I'm quite a fan of the concept now.  The only trick is to make sure that they weigh your plate first - we found that some of them were trying to rip us off by including the weight of the plate as part of the weight of your meat, so your meal ends up costing twice as much as it should.  

The salads have ranged from your standard Greek salad in the more touristy place to a "Russian salad" made of tomato, cucumber, egg, potato and carrot drenched in sour cream, to a beetroot salad which was pretty much just beetroot (which isn't as sweet as in Australia) with egg and sour cream.  For sides, we've generally eaten potatoes, which have been absolutely delicious although incredibly unhealthy - drenched in oil.  For meats, there have been strange rissole-type things, shish kebabs, and tasty schniztel.  One time I chose something that looked like a mound of potatoes, which was delicious until I found the herring hidden underneath.  :)

One of the things that we've had a tough time with so far in Russia has been finding a supermarket - we need to stock up on snacks and dinners for the upcoming 4 day train trip, so we've been on the prowl.  We found a lot of corner store type places, but everything there is hidden behind the counter so without any Russian language skills, it's hard to get what you want.  Today we journeyed out to what the Lonely Planet website recommended was a good supermarket, only to find that it was tiny - pretty much what you'd find in a convenience store in Australia, with more fresh food.  We were a bit disappointed, but we bought what was there, and thought that maybe in Russia people don't have American-style supermarkets - maybe they just buy from convenience stores and fresh food markets.  We couldn't give up though, and we ended up stalking reverse-following the trail of people near our hotel who were coming from somewhere with bags full of shopping.  We walked through the entire 3-level shopping centre with no luck, before seeing someone come out of a tiny little door outside the shopping centre that looked like it led to a bathroom - lo and behold, once we entered, it turned out to be pretty much a giant Woolworths, selling everything!  Needless to say, we're heading back tomorrow to stock up on the rest of the stuff that we couldn't get at the bizarre tiny supermarket on the other side of town.  The best part was that 0.5L of beer (Baltika - good local beer) cost us 20R - about 60c Australian.  Amazing :)  

Rumour is that while we're on the 4 day train trip, we can jump off at the stops and buy potatoes, pies and other snack food from people on the train station - I'm really hoping that's right, because I'm not looking forward to 4 days of 2 minute noodles.  

My First of the Big Three

Most people think that Stephen is a fairly normal person - I'm here to inform you that he's absolutely not.  Stephen has a minor obsession with looking at the embalmed corpses of dead Communist leaders.  (No, seriously, apparently Communist leaders routinely get embalmed so people can file past and look at their corpses, for the greater good.  Bizarre, I know.)  He's previously seen Lenin in Moscow and Ho Chi Minh in Vietnam, and he's excited about this trip as it will allow him to complete the trinity by seeing Mao in Beijing.  But today, we were in Moscow, and he was excited that his Mum and I would get to see our first of the Big Three Dead Communist Leaders, Lenin.

I'm getting pretty good at reading the Cyrillic alphabet, so I can inform you that that reads "Lenin".  It's the entrance to his tomb, where his dead body sits in a suit on a bed of red velvet, looking so strange that you wonder if it's really plastic or not.  The security to get in is incredibly tight - you have to hand your bag in, go through a metal detector, and then pass about 15 armed military guards who stand in the middle of the path and stare at you.  So no photos.


But hey, I saw a dead guy.  And Stephen's getting more excited about Mao.  That's all that counts, right? :P

In Soviet Russia, train drives you!

We took the midnight train from St Petersburg to Moscow, arriving in Moscow at around 8am.  The beds were surprisingly comfortable (more comfortable than some other sleepers I've been in), and incredibly luxurious after the camp bed I was sleeping on in St Petersburg.  I had the best sleep I've had since we got here :)


We had a private transfer booked from the train station to our hotel, which turned out to be a guy in his VW Passat - a pretty nice car to be picking some randoms up from a train station in!  I was imagining the same thing happening in Australia but throwing the bags into the back of the Camry Stationwagon or the VT Commodore next to the Esky and the sub.  Not quite the same...


Moscow hasn't been quite as nice as St Petersburg so far.  In its defence, we're staying a long way out in a hotel that feels like a cruise ship, in the Olympic Village (but a quick metro ride away), and it's been grey and rainy for most of the day, and nothing ever looks awesome after you hop off at train at 8am with no shower.  But the whole city has a different feel to me - more foreboding, and more of a soulless big city rather than the character that St Petersburg had.  

St Basil's Cathedral in Red Square - the inside was much smaller than we were expecting as the building is actually a whole group of different buildings masquerading as a single one.  

Day 3 in St Petersburg

On our final day in St Petersburg, we visited the Hermitage (Winter Palace) which has now been turned into an art gallery.  I was actually pretty disappointed with it - I thought it would have been better off left as a palace, showing the interiors in a "how this was used" state with furniture etc.  


In the afternoon we visited the Peter and Paul Fortress and wandered around the grounds.  

It was the first part of St Petersburg that was built, and it's on a little island across the water.

They've still got the big cannons sitting around.  This one looks decidedly modern though.

The view from the fortress back across the bay - the Hermitage and St Isaac's visible.  


Sitting at the train station waiting for our train to Moscow was a bit of an experience - the surrounding people smelled like they hadn't showered in a while, and the speakers were blaring some highly patriotic, grandiose triumphant military music - I imagine it might be a bit imposing if you arrived by train.


Overall St Petersburg was a beautiful city - very European.  I'd highly recommend it to anyone as a pretty easy city to visit, despite the Cyrillic - it had good vibes and was pretty laid back.  Just don't arrive by rail :P

Packing up in St Petersburg

It's our final day in St Petersburg, so I thought I'd better quickly throw the rest of the photos up before the train to Moscow tonight - we leave at midnight and get into Moscow at 8am.  

Yesterday we took the Hydrofoil across the Gulf of Finland to the Peterhof Palace.  Hydrofoils are pretty cool - I'd never seen one before, but the idea is awesome and it was pretty fast :)

The palace and ground were beautiful - it was the Summer Palace built to Peter the Great's designs and inspired by Versailles, and it's full of beautiful statues and gardens with fountains everywhere.  Apparently during World War II (which Russians call "The Great Patriotic War"), the Germans occupied it - some of the statues were hidden but most of them were destroyed, so most things have been rebuilt.  

There's that gold obsession again.  They should really do something about that.

This fountain had a bench next to it that looked like a nice place to sit for some quiet reflection and contemplation... but when you went near it, it sprayed water at you.  Tricksy hobbitses!

There were some beautiful red squirrels running around as well - one of them even climbed up Stephen's Mum's leg!  We Aussies are still entranced by them - they're so cute :)  


Today we're hitting up the Hermitage Museum which is in the Winter Palace building - I'm not so keen on art, but I'm hoping that the building will be cool enough to make up for it.  And then on to the train station - we're a bit concerned by some of the reports in the guidebook of police, especially at train stations, asking to see passports and then demanding bribes to give them back.  The idea of police being the bad guys and not the people that will help you if you get stuck doesn't sit very well with me.  Apparently this sort of thing has declined recently though, so I'm hoping we won't have any problems in our wait at the train station tonight.  


And after that, on to Moscow!