Warriors and Pandas

We continued travelling by train after Beijing but its not the Trans Siberian anymore so its officially not exciting – which allowed us to get some sleep.

A couple of brief stops in bustling, smoggy cities allowed us to tick off the Terracotta Warriors and some pandas on our way south.

We both want to come back as pandas. The most difficult part of their day is when they have to roll over to get at the food they were sleeping on.

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John Prescott. (on the left. ha ha)

Beijing

We loved Bejing and stayed a few days longer than we thought we would.

We were there for the final couple of days of the week long 60th birthday (since becoming communist China) celebrations. So there were thousands more Chinese tourists there than normal and its normally pretty crowded anyway – it is China.

Generally they find it hilarious to see foreigners wandering around and many try to sneak a photo of you while you’re not looking or just come and grab you by the arm and drag you into their group photo. We felt somewhere in between rock star and freak.

Apart from one windy day, Beijing was covered in smog but footage of the main 60th parade the week before, being shown on giant screens in Tianamen square, had perfect blue skies. Apparently they can conjure up blue sky at will by firing special stuff into the sky that makes the smog rain down, then sending planes up with big fans to blow the rest away. Only in China.

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To quote one American president, the Great Wall “sure is a great wall”. It’s a good way to do some hill walking across the peaks of some amazing mountains using a convenient foot path laid out a few thousand years ago. The trick is to buy just the right amount of postcards to stop the souvenir touts from following you.

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We saw “Diabolic Love Machine” on tour from Germany after a tip off from Robert (you know, from the Trans SIberian 2 blog)

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The forbidden city was all a bit much after a few beers with Diabolic Love Machine.

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Olympic things happened here.

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Food pic #12. Our first Chinese food. Wow it was tasty but we ordered a little bit too much.

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Lots of different ‘food’ is available on sticks at the night market. We skipped the scorpion, snake and silk worm and tried the banana fritters instead.

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Food pic #13: Banana fritters (with no banana).

Trans Siberian 3

The final leg of the Trans Siberian train was a two day journey taking us out of Mongolia, into China and onto Beijing.

It had perhaps the most varied landscape of the whole train journey – crossing the Gobi Desert, before passing through North Chinese farmland and mountains with distant views of the great wall.

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Beijing might be the end of the Trans Siberian but we’ve got lots more trains to come before we reach Hong Kong. Woo.

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Food pic #11: “Big Bon” pot noodle. Our staple train food.

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Swapping fat Russian/Mongolian bogies for skinny Chinese ones.

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Our first class cabin actually had a shower on this train! It didn’t work but we didn’t mention that to all the 2nd class passengers we were gloating to.

Mongolia

We arrived into Ulaanbaatar and spent the afternoon sight seeing and failing to find the black market which is supposed to be amazing. We found a rubbish market right next to it and bought Iain a new wallet and some long johns in preparation for our 3 day trip to the countryside.

Our trip to the countryside was brilliant and we wish we could have spent more time seeing the different landscapes of Mongolia. We stayed with a lovely old woman in her Ger for two nights, with her 20 cows, 2 goats and 3 sheep outside. We herded animals by moonlight, chopped wood and tried their food – a little insight into life of the Mongolian farmer, mixed in with the comforts of some fellow backpackers, English speaking guide and vodka.

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Our friendly driver, Onga who taught us how to play a new card game and ankle bones.

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Copious amounts of vodka and games of pig by the roaring stove kept the cold away.

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Food pic #9: pastries, dried yoghurt (tastes like hard cheese), yak’s milk butter and a cup of milky salty Mongolian tea.

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Horse riding for us meant going where the horses wanted to go, which was often nowhere.

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Iain with the world’s biggest statue of a man on a horse – Chinngis Chinngis Chinngis Khan, “Man of the Millenium” (we’re standing on the horses head)

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Getting away from it all.

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Food pic#10. Various bits of the inside of a goat including ‘paunch’, lower intestine and other tasty (if slightly chewy) bits.

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Our guide, Boggi, explains what our host, Tseme, is serving us but we think “Both inside and outside meat” loses something in translation.

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Next week’s “inside and outside meat”.

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Sawing wood for the fire while Onga looks for his fags.

Trans Siberian 2

Leaving Olkhon Island, we headed off for our second leg of the Trans Siberian that would take us out of Russia and into Mongolia.

We had a bit of a sour end to our time in Russia as Iain got pick pocketed on a tram in Irkutsk. Not too much lost, just left with a bad impression of the city, which we’ll remember every time we play Risk.

We had the indignity of downgrading from Lux wagon to second class and shared a 4 berth cabin, which is still very comfortable really. We were lucky to have good room mates, Katja and Robert from Dresden, who had also come travelling with their Yahtzee dice. It was thoroughly needed as crossing the border was an arduous task, 4 hours of sitting on the platform while the train carriages were slowly taken away one by one until only ours was left. Then 3 hours wait on the Mongolian side. Although we had the hilarity of a man nearly missing his train going the other way and executing a proper action film style jump onto the moving train.

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2nd class

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Yahtzee!

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Endlessly waiting

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Check out what this Glaswegian managed to sniff out at the border.

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Food pic #8: first taste of Mongolian food, “beef “ that didn’t taste like beef.

Lake Baikal

We arrived in Irkutsk at 5am to be greeted by local Russian lads keen to ply us with vodka and practice their English in the local cafe. They’d been up all night drinking but we’d just woken up and all we wanted was a shower after 4 nights on the train. We managed to persuade them that 1 shot each was enough and headed off to find a bus to Olkhon Island.

Olkhon Island is the biggest island on Lake Baikal, the world’s deepest fresh-water lake. It’s an exciting six hour minibus ride away from Irkutsk. The tarmac stops half way making for a bumpy ride and the bus slowly filled up with drunken villagers who managed to smell worse than us. Lake Baikal was well worth the trip though, the scenery is outstanding and it is so hard to believe that it is a lake and not the sea.

We spent four days here walking around, appreciating the views over the lake to the mountainous mainland and visiting the important spiritual sights, which seem to include every rock on the island.

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Nikita’s homestead was a great place to stay particularly as it is run by an ex USSR table tennis champion, so ping pong a plenty. It was a good back packer meeting place and we made a few friends including Peter and Hannah, who are losing 7-3 and 2-0 in the table tennis and chess tournaments respectively. Also, a friendly member of staff , Dimitry, who seemed to be running several businesses on the side – including keeping the tourists plied with beer, while telling us stories about Olkhon Island and life in Russia.

Away from the backpackers the local village was an interesting place with several villagers each owning a cow that wondered around grazing on the unpaved streets and being chased by the stray dogs that howled every night. A highlight was being invited to a local ‘concert’. We sat through a few Russian speeches and poetry recitals before any music got under way. When it did, we were treated to a seemingly unending succession of old villagers singing god knows what, quite badly – all good fun.

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We were fed well at Nikita’s, including this lunch in the woods.

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The food was good and included at least 3 portions of Omul a day. Omul is a tasty white fish found only in Lake Baikal.

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Food Pic #6. Omul Soup. A lot tastier than it looks.

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Food Pic #7. Omul on a plate.

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For Sarah’s librarian friends: the local library

Trans Siberian 1

Leaving Moscow, we started our first and longest leg of the Trans Siberian railway – a 5185 km, 75 hour ride to Irkutsk.

The journey took us through European Russia, over the Urals into Asian Russia and eventually Siberia.

What to eat and drink was obviously our main priority for this trip of a life time so we managed to almost miss the train while running round the local streets trying to find a bottle of vodka. We didn’t know the Russians don’t sell vodka near their stations – it’s the only place you can’t find it.

On the train, food choices were either an over-priced and empty restaurant car, Babushkas (Russian Grannies) selling their wares on the platform at each stop or any of our own supplies topped up with free boiling water from our carriage attendant. We tried to be adventurous with the Babushka food but Iain didn’t really like the cabbage doughnuts and caviar flavoured crisps so we survived mainly on our own supplies - a diet of purple porridge with nice cups of earl grey tea and lemon.

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Food Pic #5. Purple porridge with a nice cup of Earl Grey.

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We both loved the days spent on the train with the only decisions being whether to keep looking out the window as Russia flew (or trundled) past, read a book or maybe have a little sleep. The views out the window were pretty consistent – vast expanses of grassland or birch forest spotted with haystacks, pretty wooden houses and ugly concrete towns.

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But despite mainly looking out the window at birch trees for 3 days, we were a bit miffed when we had to get off. Although that might have had something to do with it being 5 in the morning.

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Our main companions and neighbours on the train were a friendly pair of Finnish gents, escaping from their wives for a trip to China.

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Our cosy Lux wagon cabin.

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It was Iain’s birthday on the train. This nice Russian man gave us a lock-in at the restaurant car after we bought his under the counter Chinese vodka. (he also found and returned Iain’s cardigan the next day)

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Iain didn’t think much of the purple porridge.