Hellooooooo! Sorry for the delay with this one, I had some battles with gmail in China and then Turkmenistan… This was written about three weeks ago so it’s not where I am right now (Thailand!), nevertheless this issue covers some serious geographical ground, enjoy!

The Next Steppe…↗

I am writing this from a hostel bar in the old capital of China, Nanjing!

The last week has been incredible, some very novel experiences mixed in with my first dose of solo-travel!

I left you on the train towards Hohhot, the last frontier in China before Mongol comes in. It was very fitting to see the Great Wall and then go far beyond that into the heartland of the Mongol empire.

We spent just the one night in Hohhot, a growing city with a very distinct Mongolian influence. The accents were far different, the temperature much colder and the food much worse…

It was time to move from Inner Mongolia to actual Mongolia! We caught a smooth Air China flight into Chinggis Khan International Airport in Ulaanbaatar and hopped on a shuttle bus into the city.

That is, if you count a near 4 hour journey as a little hop. As we were soon to find out, the traffic in UB is atrocious, we were told that the city was made for about a 1/10 of the current population and a metro system was stuck behind red-tape meaning the only thing you could do was sit in it.

Not to mind though, a little rest was much appreciated, so upon reaching the hotel we thought we’d do a little lap of the surrounding area and soak in some sights. Unfortunately, we were soaked ourselves by some sudden rain and sandstorm, bringing a big chill across with it and cutting our UB explore short. Not to mind though, a nice Mongolian dinner would warm us up.

Hands down (apart from some scorpion and spider) the worst meal we had eaten on our trip. If you are ever in UB, do not eat at Modern Nomads, it’s grim. We may as well have been eating in a barber shop, Josh could have made a wig with the number of hairs in his food and my beef noodles seemed to become more and more like stone the more I ate. Yikes… Luckily UB has a lot of Korean influence for some reason and so Korean food and shops came with it. We stopped by a CU store after to buy some dinner replacements and supplies for our trip into the Steppe.

We met our guide and driver for the next few days early the next morning and met our other voyagers: One Japanese lad in a similar spot in life to us and a Korean son with his two parents. Everyone was great fun and the journey would have gone smoothly if it weren’t for the sinkhole size potholes scattered across the roads.

After a brief lunch stop we reached our destination, Karakorum, the old capital and centre of the Mongol empire. The city was ‘founded’ by Ghengis Khan who basically said he wanted something there but the real work was done generations later by his offspring and interestingly the place had Mosques, Churches, Buddhist and Taoist temples and a synagogue. Due to the sheer size of the Mongol empire, all sorts of people were based there and the Mongols themselves were relatively neutral when it came to religion (apart from shamanism) so the city must have been a real melting pot back in its day.

Our first stop was to learn some Mongol calligraphy, I’m not sure if you have ever seen the Mongol language written down in the non-cyrillic way but it is crazy, basically a sideways arabic. This is ‘Marcus’ as written by a supposed master calligrapher. (This is meant to be read vertically, I can’t figure out how to rotate images in gmail lol)

After that we saw some odd stone monument thing, I couldn’t really hear what our guide was saying because it was way too windy so I looked at the views instead. We then retired to our first Ger camp (rhymes with bear). After dinner and a spot of football and some B-Ball with the group and another Mongolian guide (who went to the University of Michigan!) and then it was time for a very hyped up ‘concert’.

This concert turned out to be what I would guess was a 6 year old, a 14 year old and a 65 year old. A rather odd collective of the Mongolian diaspora. Nonetheless, we did witness some throat singing, which was impressive but the coolest thing was the 14 year old going ham on his violin type thing and making a very scarily accurate horse ’neigh’.

To wrap up the evening we decided we wanted to head towards the old city walls in the hopes that at midnight we might be able to meet the ghost of Genghis himself. However, just before heading out we were told two disturbing pieces of news by our guide. A - She believed heavily in ghosts and was convinced that Mickey Mouse was after her child and thought was following her around and B - there were very likely wolves in-between us and the wall…

I was honestly more concerned by Mickey Mouse, especially after a jump scare in the Ger by Josh but after venturing out about two metres from our camp we decided to live to see another day.

The next day we headed into the buddhist temple that had been built on top of the old capital, to be honest for the supposed centre of the great Mongol empire it was a little underwhelming and I was more interested in seeing whether or not Khartoum had any coffee shops.

After a little dressing up session we headed towards what our guide called a ‘reverse-oasis’ that is a spot of desert in the middle of the steppe. It was very odd, suddenly there was a gigantic sandpit equipped with dunes and all just surrounded by grassland. It was very hot at this point and I was starting to regret lugging around all of the sweaters I had in my bag specifically just for this leg of the trip but oh well better safe than sorry.

We hopped up on our two-humped camels and began a little loop of the oasis, it was actually kind of soothing for the first half of it but then as soon as we hit the dunes the camels started to hop around a little and managed to seek out and step on the few sharp looking shrubs causing a reflexive chain reaction throughout the legs to the humps to me.

After the camels we said goodbye to our new Korean friends and headed towards some random lake where our driver beefed some locals with his music and then got into a shouting match which I think may have been the reason we were only at the lake for literally one minute…

We retired to a new Ger camp hosted by a nomadic family where we unwinded a little by going for a light stroll and doing some clambering on the rocks.

After a hearty meal which Josh helped to prepare we must have had leaky beers as we sunk quite a few along with our guide and driver, trying to learn some Mongol slang ‘yo wen bro’ ‘How are you (bro part needed)’.

The next morning we headed back to the reality of UB.

It was suggested somewhere along the journey back to go to the hot springs that same afternoon and, although it was already boiling, that sounded like a good way to help even out our backs from the lack of mattresses in the Ger.

Unfortunately Josh wasn’t feeling too well (from the cold passed on by the train women from me) so I went to the baths with my new Japanese friend who I very quickly got acquainted with as it turned out the baths and saunas were fully naked. In all honesty once I overcame the hurdle of dropping my protective towel it was actually super chill, outside the saunas there were Mongol warrior looking people seeming to have business meetings but being fully naked sitting around the bar which was quite an odd sight.

(this was a sauna in the style of a Ger!)

After a few cycles of the sauna, ice bath and beers it was time to meet Josh for some dinner before heading out to the best music bar of the trip. Fat Cat Jazz Club Ulaanbaatar is hands down the place to go when in UB. The energy, atmosphere and drinks were fantastic but the music was on another level, really talented jazz improv and was a great way to finish off our first tour.

The second tour kicked off the next morning and turned out to be not so much of a tour and more of a carpool karaoke driver who pretty much immediately gave us the aux as we headed along the outskirts of UB to knock off some final sightseeing.

After climbing up to meet a rather large Genghis and very nearly getting a trip-ending injury from some rogue bouldering at turtle rock, we came back to UB and ‘splashed’ out on the Shangri-La restaurant as a fitting end to our last night together. I’ve now realised as I didn’t talk about the first couple of weeks of our trip we went to the Shangri-La town over in Yunnan province so we decided we could justify eating at the Shangri-La UB for the final dinner.

And just like that the next morning Josh departed and I was left with a rather nice lie-in and breakfast. I then lugged my bags over to the other side of UB where I was spending the night in a hostel close to the train station.

A very odd group of people in that hostel, somebody who tried to explain the inequality he was facing from living in Ecuador (I wasn’t doubting it) but then showing me how he’d been to every single Ecuadorian World Cup game for the last 4 world cups including all of the finals… Turns out he was an ‘up and coming’ YouTuber but basically just screamed into his phone and only made Youtube Shorts.

I think he must have decided to make some videos later that night as I was rudely awoken in the early hours with some Spanish screaming from the next room. My roommate was a Russian who lived right on the banks of lake baikal but was trying to get a Mongolian Citizenship and so had been living in the very same bed in the hostel for the last 3 months, yikes.

My alarm went off early the next morning and I started my walk towards the station. I very quickly realised that I was going to be cutting it pretty fine if I kept walking as it was around 40 minutes to the station (yes that was the closest hostel to the station) and the train left in about 45 minutes. If the trains were anything like they were in China I would have surely missed it with the passport and baggage checks.

I decided to try my luck with UB’s buses. Big mistake.

I got on a bus which had the same Cyrillic character as it said online, the one that goes to the station. The first two stops were right on track and I got too greedy as the third stop zoomed onto the ring road and well out of the way of the station, putting me about 30 mins walk out with 20 minutes until the train goes. Normally that would be somewhat ok but with a bunch of heavy bags it was looking pretty rough.

But we did it! A full on sprint meant I got there with time to spare for a little photo before the train pulled away.

I dont know what it is with me and train roommates. I was in the second-class sleeper which meant a room of 4 beds, as I got in to my cabin there was already somebody supposedly asleep but wearing the thickest coat and scarf known to man. The moment I sat down he let out the most atrocious cough/sneeze/fart all at the same time and then proceeded to keep on coughing and sneezing his way through the Gobi desert. Foks sake.

Luckily I think I still had some immunity from my previous run in with a cold and so, as of writing this now, I think I have made it through the journey unscathed (touch wood).

After setting myself up and trying to say hello to a very unresponsive and downright rude bunkmate I decided to try and look for the food car. I kid you not I walked the length of the train (which was very long) about 3 times and couldn’t see anything. I asked some passerbys and they just pointed the exact way I came from. I was stumped.

After a few hours on the rails we pulled into a Mongolian town in the middle of nowhere and our train suddenly turned into a steam engine with the amount of smoke billowing out from passengers’ cigarettes. Fortunately, a 15 minute break here meant I had time to dash to the shop I saw on the other side of the station. It was a bit of a risky maneuver but I secured some pot noodles, Oreos and a sprite. Banging.

I hadn’t realised just how much I’d missed spicy food and within the first few mouthfuls of the noodles I felt very happy indeed. The rest of that day I alternated between trying to nap, read and learn Chinese, none of which were successful for more than a couple of minutes.

At around 7pm we pulled into a place called Zamin Uud. It’s a Mongolian border town where we stopped for about 2 hours which I was pretty happy about because I could escape my roommate and also head to a restaurant I saw outside the window. Except I couldn’t. All passengers had to stay in their cabins for Mongolian border control which took sooooo long. The train finally jolted into motion a little past 9pm but little did I know the night was far from over…

About 10 minutes later after crossing into China we pulled into the Chinese border town, Erenhot.

We were told to pack everything up and head into the border control building where we had to pass into China in airport style with customs and all.

Just as I was approaching the border control agent I suddenly realised that I had never checked whether or not the 30-day visa free stay I was planning on using resets that quickly as I had used up 28 days, been out for around a week, and then was planning on staying another 2 or so weeks in China. I also didn’t have all of my accommodation booked which China were pretty serious about before. My agent was a G tho, a little diffusing of the situation with my limited mandarin and I was all through and back into China. Time to get some good sleep as we headed towards Beijing.

Nope!

The whole train needed to be thoroughly checked and we were told to keep tight in the waiting room. 30 minutes turned into 1 hour and 1 hour very quickly turned into 3… By the point they finally let us back on, half of the waiting hall was drunk on beers from the vending machine and the other half were doing some form of Tai Chi. So much for a sleeper train. By the time we were back in our cabins it was close to 3am.

I would have instantly conked out but alas, cough cough (literally). I’m not judging but actually I am, this guy went to the toilet at least 5 times in the night and would do a whole throat clearing each time he got up from his bed. At around 6am he disappeared or at least finally shut up so I got some much needed sleep.

After asking around the previous night in the waiting room, I discovered that a Chinese dining car had been attached to our train during the inspection and so when I awoke from my top ten restful sleeps I headed there only to find out that they had run out of coffee and any sort of breakfast items so vinegar fish it was.

We finally started pulling into Beijing in the afternoon and it felt like being back home, I didn’t realise quite how much I liked China until I was out of it but coming back into Beijing everything felt so familiar. I headed straight for the metro and finally got an Alipay metro code like the locals, allowing me to get to the hostel in no time.

Just as I was getting into the lift up to the hostel I heard the first British accent in a long time and got to speaking to a lad who was an exchange student over in China from the university of Edinburgh. He spoke decent Chinese and as he didn’t have anything going on till later in the evening, came to the Summer Palace with me.

After a little walk around at the palace I was invited to meet the rest of his exchange gang at a nearby restaurant which then quickly turned into a bar with a little 3am dumpling afters to finish off the night, what a cracking return to Beijing it was!

That was last night and alas I had to wake up early this morning to catch my train to Nanjing, three more hours to go now!

In the next post it’s all about the South of China & Hong Kong!

Thank you for reading :)

Thought↗

How on earth do people stay consistent? It’s like I have a sudden motivational spurt and then nothing for a while…

Album of the week↗

Everything is Wrong - Moby (1995)↗

I think the first bit of Moby I heard was through A$AP Rocky’s A$AP Forever which included a really cool piano riff which I then realised was actually a sample from Moby’s Porcelain on his ‘Play’ album. While ‘Play’ is a great album and has lots of iconic tracks I think Everything is Wrong goes much deeper sonically and has a far greater diversity of textures across the album. This time I don’t think listening in one go is necessary but if you do listen, turn that shi upppppp. I honestly don’t think I have a favourite for this album, they are all so unique and sound great but a standout track has got to be ‘God Moving Over The Face Of The Waters’, a very atmospheric track.

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