Thursday 30 June 2011

Our interesting journey over the border (on the way to Irkutsk, Russia - 21-22/06)

Waiting our train like often...:

On our journey from Mongolia to Russia we found ourselves suddenly in the
middle of the "clothes smuggling process" with George. Everything started
already when waiting for the train. It did not happen often that a Mongolian
person spoke to us just like that. This man just came up to us when he saw
that we take the same train like himself. He introduced him-self as George
and spoke quite good English. We talked a little bit till the train arrived.
Somehow we ended up in the same cabin with him and another young woman (even
so our ticket stated another cabin but the Russian train attendant told us
to go there). The train departed and the man started to unpack his two bags.
He had trousers, t-shirts, shorts, beauty products, etc all from China...
Then he always disappeared with this stuff till finally he had just some
clothes left. First we thought he is selling his stuff in the train but
afterwards we knew that he is hiding the stuff somewhere to get over the
border without paying any taxes. He asked us to help him but we refused to
not have problems on the already difficult border crossing into Russia. He
did not take "No!" as an answer and tried several more times. "Diana, you
need to help me!" he was winding. Then he put his stuff on our beds or near
our bags and we were pushing the stuff back. It was a funny but strange
situation. Finally when he had no more options he decided to unpack all the
clothes from the plastic bags and to put them in his bag. When the border
control came he said he is travelling to Irkutsk as a tourist which was not
true because he told he is just going to the border town in Russia. But he
was lucky because the border control believed him.
The young woman was smuggling as-well with another older man. She seemed to
be in training ;-) as she was still nervous when she was controlled.
After observing George hiding his stuff from the departure on (19h20) and
then taking hours getting everything back we have to say it is a full time
job ;-). At 2am he finally left the train and asked Jeremie to help carry
some bags ;-). We realized as-well that the train attendants were helping
the smugglers too for a little tips, we suppose.
You can spot one of the smugglers climbing in train with his goods:
View of the Baikal lake for 3 hours:

Fight over ticket for the soon going train (Darkhan, Mongolia - 21/06)

The train outside is waiting 30 minutes but 5 minutes are lasting and people
are fighting to get a ticket...
After our experience with our ticket, it shows how lazy train station
employees are: at least, they could open one other booth, no!?!

Potato Salad and Buuz (Darkhan, Mongolia - 21/06)

Our Meal for three days!!
Since we did not have a proper Mongolian dictionairy it was always very difficult to order meals in restaurants. Mostly we sticked to the meals which were easy to pronounce and read on the menu like buuz, big raviolis with sheep and onion inside. But sometimes we ended up to eat them nearly every day because we could not identify the other meals of the restaurant.

Kharagiin Temple (Darkhan, Mongolia - 21/06)

Diana Cafe (Darkhan, Mongolia - 20/06)

Buddha is watching over the city (Darkhan, Mongolia - 20/06)

1 Day to get a train ticket...(Darkhan, Mongolia - 19-20/06)

Sunday, we ask for buying international ticket, but it is not the good
booth, we have to wait later for an other one to open. Later, this one is
open, we queue and the officer just says no and write some Mongolian on our
piece of paper (formulating our prepared request in Mongolian)...
Fortunately, we find somebody to translate: we cannot buy international
ticket today, we have to wait tomorrow, 8 o'clock...
Monday 8:30, We ask again for our tickets to the same lady with our prepared
note and she is offering another train that the one described in the note...
we show her in the paper what we want, she writes it again on the same paper
and show us....ok...
Next, we have to get some money, the ATM at the train station are empty and
it's the same in the city... we finally findone able to give us some
money!!
We come back at 9:30, the booth is closed and people are telling us to come
back at 14:00... But the opening hours are 8:00-12:00 and some people are
waiting in front of the closed booth... then we waited...
Finally, the same lady opens the booth again and we are ready this time!!!
She just switches on an other computer which was in the same place yesterday
and processes our request: the tickets are ready 45 minutes later with
mistakes in the passport number!!! Fortunately, in 5 minutes she printed a
new version we corrected ourselves (she could not read our alphabet..).

That's pity, it's closed, no drinks for tonight...(Darkhan, Mongolia - 19/06)

Russian space rocket proud-ness spread over Mongolia? (Darkhan, Mongolia - 19/06)

Tuesday 28 June 2011

Bus ride back to city (on the way to Erdenet, Mongolia - 17/06)

We were so not in a hurry to get our over packed van back to Erdenet!!
But we got lucky and we had a nice pink bus with real seats where each one
of us had a seat for himself!!
We spend the night in the bus over the steppes and under the rain. We were
sometimes stuck in mud but we were a team of a bus, a van and a 4WD to help
each other on the way.
We only had a flat tyre, quickly fixed by the team. I was the light operator
with my Petzl head light; they only had tiny leds from their lighter...

Hey Grandpa, you ride us home!! (Khatgal, Mongolia - 16/06)

Naadam Festival in advance (Khatgal, Mongolia - 16/06)

The Famous Naadam Festival is usually scheduled in July and we were lucky to
have a special one today!!
 Some young race horses kissing:
While their riders are playing and posing:
Wrestlers are getting ready:
Some rituals before the fights:
 The winner of the first horse race:
Gathering the racers for ceremony:
The final fight:
Once this fight was finished, everybody left straight away...