One Good Eye

The carpark of the station was total bedlam, with everyone trying to avoid the young Tajik lads who “find” parking spots and then demand tribute for having found or blocked off a spot.  I saddled up with our two backpacks and we headed off to board the train.

We were able to have a good look around the Yekaterinburg train station, which is built in Stalinist style and has great examples of Socialist Realist art in it’s large waiting room.    There is the usual “Defence of Stalingrad” painting, the ubiquitous burly blonde haired men and comely women pulling in a bumper harvest and perhaps the most interesting a painting that depicts the shooting down of Francis Gary Powers, a U2 spy-plane pilot, shot down over Yekaterinburg in May 1960.

We also managed to finally get the classic “Front of the Train” shot, after numerous failed attempts

We boarded our train, which we would only spend 29 hours on.  Again, our carriage was pretty much brand new, and totally empty.  So this will be a short post..

There are hardly any stops on the way to Moscow, so we were relegated to eating in the dining car, where the cost of food is an indirect relationship to the tastiness, portion size and quality.  We had one meal here and then stuck to eating nuts, dried fruits and more bloody noodles in a bowl.

Like I said, it was a pretty uneventful journey, eating, sleeping, reading and then repeat.  We did watch most of the dining car staff sitting around watching Daniel Steele movies, dubbed into Russian.  We also saw beautiful forest, villages with quaint wooden houses, and some fire affected areas.

The train is a great way to travel, very relaxing, but as we head further north, it gets exponentially more civilised.  Other passengers even know how to use a toilet correctly and everything.

We got into Moscow, on time and unmolested at 9:30am, the following day.

Ah, Yekaterinburg, you feel so European, people here are happier and the hotel we are staying at, the Checkhov, is by far and away the best hotel we have stayed at on our entire journey.

The Checkhov has all you need, free wi-fi, a comfy bed, quality TV, strong shower pressure, hot dogs for breakfast, friendly staff and a boutique hotel feel.  To top it off a great 24 hour Italian restaurant is over the road, handy for late night train arrivals.

This morning we met our guide, Olga and we were promptly taken to a Volkswagen van, ushered into the back and promptly on our way to the village of Koptelovo, where we would see a performance of singing, eat a traditional Russian lunch and visit some traditional Siberian Izba houses.

Our luck with the weather had run out at this stage and the heavens opened up, and remained open for pretty much the rest of the day.  Given that our rain gear consists of a bunch of emergency ponchos, which are little more than large plastic shopping bags, with holes for heads and arms, plus the free raincoats given to us by our Beijing based tour company, this was not good news.

Yekaterinburg is on the border of Europe and Asia.  The food is European, the people look and act more European, but the driving is firmly rooted in Asia.  It’s pouring with rain, do we moderate our driving in any way?  No!  It’s raining harder and we are now driving on a dirt forest road, do we continue to tailgate and flick our lights off and on?  Totally!  Visibility is down to about 5 metres due to heavy rain and wind, do we continue to overtake on a two lane road?  Absolutely!

Upon arrival at the village we saw the village spring, where a church had been built over the top of it, making the spring holy.  It contained the clearest and cleanest water I think I have ever seen, second only to Lake Baical.

We then visited the traditional Izba house, which was also ver interesting, we learned about all of the work that the women had to do, making rugs, cooking porridge, fetching and carrying water, chopping wood, bearing children, making beer, cooking, washing, cleaning and numerous other tasks that explain why many Russian women were as tall as they are wide, especially in olden times.  I’m pretty sure that the men had it tough as well, felling trees, plowing fields, fighting off wolves with their bare hands and having to go outside to work in the Russian winters.  Unfortunately no one lived in the house anymore, it is now a museum.

After this we were met by a horse and cart and a very cute foal that was still so young it was following it’s mother around.  For the slower learners, the mother, it’s called the mare was pulling the cart.  All of this would have been fine and dandy, had it not taken place in an icy cold torrential downpour.  Cheap Chinese made raincoats don’t cope too well in a torrential downpour, and the heatwave here is well and truly over.  Bythe time we got to the museum, we were soaked to the skin, miserable and cold.

We were a mere 6 Russian folk songs away from a few shots of vodka and some hearty Russian fare.  During the songfest our guide would turn to us and ask “Can you guess the meaning”?  ”Everyones happy they have exceeded their wheat harvesting quota and will not be put in a GULAG” was my best guess, but it was wrong.  One of the songs outlined a young flaxen haired maiden who was so taken by the sight of a strapping young man that she could not decided to kiss him or eat nuts, either way, said maan would have walked away a happy customer.

Finally, after a traditional dance number where we all had to get involved in surrounding and punching an old woman, it was time for lunch.

Lunch, was fabulous, cold egg and bacon salad, real mayonnaise, fresh baked bread, salad, dumplings, vegetable soup and shot after shot of Kaptelovo.  Kaptelovo is a rose coloured spirit, made in Koptelovo village, strong enough to give you a warm glowing warming glow in the pit of your stomach, yet surprisingly smooth and damn tasty.  So good I bought 3 litres of the stuff, that was proudly delivered in two used soft drink bottles.  After drying off, being stuffed full of food and walking away slightly loaded, I was ready for the olde timey farmy equipment museum, which was coming up after lunch.

We saw farm equipment, a traditional blacksmiths shop and numerous other exhibits.  The highlight of our afternoon was playing with scythes and pretending to be the grim reaper, re-enacting the famous salmon mousse incident.  After this we braved more tailgating, speeding and generally eratic driving to make it back to Yekaterinburg for a bit of a look see at the city.

Once we were back the rain cleared and we basked in beautiful warm sunlight.  We watched as old Communist era trams went up and down the main street, we heard stories about the secret space and arms factories that used to be all over the city and we were also told that most of the workers were forbidden to travel outside the city, lest they fall into the hands of the CIA.  It was all sounding very interesting and then we went to the Stone museum.  I wont write much, but suffice to say it was one room full of rocks from all over the Ural Mountains an a few other countries.  I was happy to whip through in five minutes, Tanya is much too polite, yes it was as boring as it sounds.

After this, we went to the far more interesting Church on the Blood, which was built on the site where the Bolsheviks executed Czar Nicholas II, and his entire family.  The entire Romanov family are now Saints in Russian Othodoxy.

After this, it was around 9:30pm, still daylight, but we were totally shagged, so we ate at the Italian place near the hotel, again.

What can I say about the train, it’s cleaan, quiet, it doesn’t smell, the people working on it are friendly, none of the passengers stink or have odd habits, I basically have no material.

After what I call a bears breakfast, of almonds and dried fruit, we lay back on our comfy beds, chat, read and occasionally look out the window at quaint Russian villages, with quaint wooden houses, all in a quaint forest setting. The scenery ranges from pretty to dead boring, sometimes it’s forest, sometimes it’s farmland, sometimes it’s something that looks like prison camps, occasionally it’s army barracks with hundreds of mothballed Soviet era tanks and other vehicles. Once Tanya saw an army truck towing a tank.

One highlight of the day was finding chicken and chips on the station. The chips were cold, but my godfathers the chicken was melt in your mouth divine and certainly made a good lunch

One lowlight was buying bowls of instant noodles and noticing the chicken joint on the way back to the carriage.

Our afternoon consisted of reading and sleeping. We did venture down to the dining car, which is expensive and pretty ordinary. I had chips and meatballs, Tans had pork and chips.

The only spot of bother is timezones. Everything runs on Moscow time, but it’s a bit confusing, as our itinerary is all in local time. Tans spent half the night awake thinking we’d missed our stop, as it turns out we still have around 10 more hours to go, as I write this it’s 12:30pm, Moscow time.

We have also seen some evidence of forest fires, and some bog fires that are still smoldering away.

Tonight we arrive in Ekatirinburg, the city where the Romanovs were executed by the Bolsheviks and a city that has only been open to foreigners for the last 20 years.

Thank god that we were only staying one night in Soviet splendor. Any more time here and I would have had to order a door from room service to slip between my wire camp bed and saggy mattress.

We breakfasted in a restaurant at the hotel, bedecked in deep red wallpaper and lots of soft core porn. Above our table was a framed portrait of a woman who looked like she was putting her hot pink tights back on after a severe ravishing at the hands of some vikings. Hands and torn rags were strategically placed, there was no money shot, but it was all a bit distracting at 8:30am in the morning. Soft porn, like alcohol needs to begin at midday at the earliest.

Breakfast, we have had no luck with breakfast in hotels and the Angara did not disappoint. There was a hot section that consisted of large white sausages floating in suspect looking water, luke warm pre-fried eggs and a pot of porridge. We both opted for porridge. The porridge had been sitting for a while and needed to be diluted, as I poured my “milk” on I noticed it looked a little lumpy, perhaps a bit thick, I figured it was just full cream milk. What I had done was pour sour milk, a Russian “delicacy” onto my porridge, this combined with butter and sugar tasted “interesting” to say the least, I managed to get it down, but worse was to come.

In the cold section there were cakes, from a distance they looked pretty appetising, especially a big white number with what looked like cream cheese icing. Naturally this caught Tanya’s eye and she proudly deposited two enormous slabs of said cake on our table. One bite was all it took to realise that the “icing” was in fact sour cream and the “cake” was in fact cake, but mostly made from cottage cheese. It’s probably the most disgusting thing I’ve had in my mouth, and I’ve eaten fresh mutton blood sausage.

We went out for another walk in Irkutsk and had a look at the insides of the churches we had seen last night. We walked some more and then had lunch at Cinema Donatella where we were prepared with our Russian phrasebook and some restauranty phrases, but the menu was all in English and the food decidedly western. After the breakfast debacle, we needed something familiar in the stomach, I had a burger, Tan’s a club sandwich.

We ran into another tourist, an Australian who is about one day behind us on the Trans-Siberian, staying one night with us at Olga’s. He proudly informed us that he had been arrested in Listvyanka for, wait for it, throwing a rock at a police car. The story goes that he was walking home from the pub and the same car kept cruising up and down the highway, possibly on patrol, so he decides to throw a rock at it. Soon after he was cuffed, put in the divvy van with five officers of the Russian constabulary and driven halfway to Irkutsk, which is an hour and a half drive. At the halfway point they stopped, let him out of the van and stood around wondering what they should do with him. Olga, for fear of having to halt her upstairs building works and second inside toilet construction, probably rang the tour company pronto, as the Russian cops slapped the cuffs on him in Olga’s front yard. For whatever reason, the cops apparently decided to turnaround after 45 minutes of driving and 10 minutes of deliberation in the forest and headed back to Listvyanka. I suspect someone with the tour company had gotten in touch with the Listvyanka police or said Australian bloke has paid a large “fine” in the forest and avoided a beating, a long walk back to Listvyanka or both. The story seems a little flaky in places, but whatever the case, I am convinced, somewhere, someone is out of pocket for a few thousand Roubles. I pointed out to this guy that he was lucky to get off scott free, without having to pay a large bribe or take a beating from the cops. He claims that when he was pulled out of the van in the forest in the dead of night, he was not scared, he also maintains that if they had of touched him, he could have fought them and later brought them all up on charges of “police brutality”. Some people live in fairy land. I personally would have been shitting myself. This guy is also 32 years of age, so should know better.

After our lunch, we went for a bit of a stroll and sat in the park opposite the Angara hotel. This is a truly beautiful park and I was reminded of my mother’s love of flowers and love of repeating “absolutely beautiful” in the presence of pretty flowers. We found a nice bench, under a shady tree and just sat and enjoyed the sunshine. About 30 minutes in it was getting a bit boring, but no fear, the good citizens of Irkutsk put on a spectacle for us. A young man and woman, I dare not use the word lady, enter the park, clearly fighting. We can tell, as her harpy like voice can be heard a good 300 metres away, as can the slaps as she connects with her man friends face. After this she rips off her dress (we have photos) and throws it away, but her man friend covered her up, encouraged her to get dressed and got a punch in the face for his chivalrous efforts. This continued for around another 45 minutes, it would seem to calm, the man went off to buy the woman a coke, this seemed to ark her up again, I would have chosen something with a lot less caffeine, as the slapping, kicking and general abusive screaming continued for another 15 minutes. Eventually the man walked away, the woman giving chase, by this time, it was clear there would be no more rending of garments, so we also went back to the hotel to have some pizza for dinner and gather our things for tonights train journey.

We boarded the train at 7:20pm, Irkutsk time. We were in a brand new carriage, so new, it had that brand new carriage smell. This carriage was like nothing we have experienced before, it has such modern comforts as a sewerage tank, meaning you can have your number two’s whilst the train is stopped at a station, but it also means you can no longer shout GERONIMO!!!!! as you watch last nights dinner leap to certain doom on the track and sleepers flashing past below. The beds, whilst a little narrow are firm and comfortable, with scrupulously clean linen. The Provodnitsa’s are also nice, and even smile, which is contrary to pretty much what everyone else, the guidebook and our own experience tells us. The Russian Provodnitsas even clean the toilets regularly in stark contrast to our Chinese and Mongolian carriage attendants. Given that we are begining a 50 hour two night train epic, we are both pretty happy with our accommodations.

It would have been about 7 degrees as I trudged down to the beach in my boardies and T-Shirt. I was reminded of some eloquent prose from the movie Point Breaak, something along the lines of “your balls, your balls are THIS big”, if anyone else is familiar with possibly the late Patrick Swayze’s best work on film, it was said during the party scene at Bohdi’s house near the beginning of the movie, before Johnny Utah’s cover had been blown. However, I am getting sidetracked, at 8am in the morning the sun had not risen above the mountain and there was no sun on the lake. I was thinking “man, after a swim in that my balls will be the size of raisins”.

Other people must have sensed the bravery / stupidity of my actions as a few cars tooted and flicked their lights at me as I walked down the lonely windswept highway for my morning swim.

Once at the beach, I moved quickly. I stripped off my T-shirt, dropped my towel, weighted them both down with rocks, as a bit of a stiff and chilly breeze had sprung up. I left my glasses in an easy to find position and sprinted into the water. This time I think I managed about 10 seconds, before it began to feel like I was being stabbed by 1,000 knives and I developed a severe icecream headache. I opened my eyes underwater, no stinging and I could see for a long long way off into the distance where the density of water turned into a solid blue green. I got out, toweled off, got dressed and headed up the road for a double espresso, but the cafe didn’t open until 9am.

On the walk back home I got a lot of odd looks from Russian mums, rugged up in trench coats and scarves, walking similarly bundled up children to school. It was 7 degrees, which I would have thought would be t-shirt weather when your winter is minus 40, but apparently not.

For breakfast we ate porridge, great slabs of french toast and rhubarb and orange marmalade. After about 1,000 cups of tea and a few slices of toast, the feeling and warmth had returned to my body.

After breakfast we packed and to our horror discovered that one of Tanya’s socks had gone missing during our laundry run. I approached Olga, who had just helped her surly husband and surlier son put up some scaffolding. I held up the sock and siad in my clearest, slowest and loudest English “one sock, or two sock”. She immediately reacted as if I had accused her of stealing the sock “vone sock, vone only, vone sock” she repeated with louder and louder volume. At this I simply walked back into our room and continued packing, we did find the errant sock, it never made it to the washing, why she wouldn’t tell us this on return of our washing I will never know, I’ll just stand by my theory that Communism sucks the initiative out of people and leave it at that.

Our driver turned up, the only reason we knew this was because we happened to notice the car pull up, he never left the vehicle or made his presence known, there wasn’t even a toot of the horn. I loaded all of our things in the car, no help from the driver and we were off to pick up Steve and Carol, who were also heading back to Irkutsk.

During the drive, we discovered that Steve, is the world authority on Toby Jugs. I’m sure you’ll all be interested to know that Toby Jugs are jugs, that contain a full likeness from head to foot of a person. Steve has a museum in Chicago that houses over 7,000 examples of Toby Jugs, fascinating.

Upon arrival in Irkutsk, we checked into the Angara hotel, a relic of Soviet times and planning. It’s not quite a dump, but it is clinging onto it’s 3 star rating like grim death. It’s clean, relatively secure, the beds are adult size, but way too soft. Will I ever get a decent bed on this trip! These beds are so soft, that I reckon there is a 5cm gap between my arse and the floor laying in the prone position.

We were greeted by the manager of the tour company, who looked strangely like the lead singer of the Scorpions, he got us checked into the hotel, obviously this would have been too difficult for us to do, he told us we would have a city tour at 6:00pm and then disappeared.

We dropped our bags, did some black market RMB to Roubles exchange with Steve and then went to find some lunch. We chose Cafe Mamchka, which was like an old fashioned Coles cafeteria, set inside a funky space that increased it’s level of coolness exponentially, by playing Jazz. The food was good and cheap, after this both of us were pretty shagged after 2 nights in childrens beds, so we went back to the hotel for a bit of kip.

At 6pm sharp, Tatiana was waiting for us in the lobby. We followed her over to the Church of the Assumption, in a square where the Bolsheviks blew up another church in 1920, in order to use the bricks for new buildings. The Church got it’s own back, it was too well constructed and it had to be blown up twice, turning the bricks to dust and raising the level of the square by around 1 metre. All new buildings are level with the square and all old buildings are below the level. All of a sudden Mr Scorpions appeared with our train tickets and much like a drug deal, we were handed our tickets to Ekaterinburg and Moscow, the final two legs of our journey. I wasn’t keen to be carrying these tickets around with me, if you lose them, you have to pay full fare, no tickets are re-issued on the Trans-Siberian.

The tour continued with Siberiorg (Siberiorg, a Siberian, cyborg) monotone delivery for the next 2 hours. I’ve never seen a persons face hold the same expression for so long. We saw the Irkutsk Circus, which has animals, acrobats and a shitload of the ugliest and hardest looking prostitutes I have ever seen. Why they would stake out a circus? A family venue, I’ll never know. Maybe husbands deposit their families at the circus and then spend the next 30 minutes looking for “parking”.

We also saw the office of the Trains-Siberian, a statue of the founder, two girls in short short skirts and high heels trying to ride a bactrian camel, the Irkutsk whitehouse, Karl Marx st and a couple of traditional Siberian wooden houses thrown in for good measure.

After this I was keen to go back to the circus, but Tans said we should eat. We had dinner on Karl Marx st in a place called Snowflake. No one spoke English, menu all in Cyrilic, no other foreigners in the joint, we knew we were in the right place.

We managed to find the word for main course and I have almost learned the Cyrilic alphabet so I could tell that Cteak, is actually Steak. For Tan’s, we gave up and just started throwing the names around of Russian culinary warhorses, like Chicken Kiev and Beef Stroganof. Beef Strog, was a bingo and as we had struggled with the menu for a good 20 – 30 minutes, they gave us (well me) two glasses of Gluvine for our trouble, gratis.

Our meals arrived and my Cteak turned out to be pork, the strog was great and we also tucked into a pretty impressive Greek salad, washed down by two Czec beers. All this great service, good food and an excellent venue for the low low price of 1400 Roubles, a steal at $AUD 50.

It was around 10pm when we wandered back to the hotel,still twilight, the street lights beginning to flick on. We attempted to watch Life of Brian on the laptop, but after 1 hour with my arse barely 5cm’s off the floor, we drifted off to sleep.

I woke up at 2am chilled to the bone with a full bladder and managed to throw on some clothes and run to the toilet, in the nick of time. Happily someone else with an out of control fire hose for a penis and the concentration span of a newt had left me an El Banana de Chocolate. I blame mister Mongolian Police, it seemed he lived in the toilet for pretty much the entire journey.

We were both cold as the only blankets available for our use looked like they had not been washed since Perastroika and they released so much dust into the cabin after a mere jab with an index finger that we decided that we’d rather remain cold, then catch fleas or whatever else may have been living in said blankets.

Just after both getting comfortable, there was a knock at our door and we were told by the Providnitsa of limitied altitude and patience, that Irkutsk would be coming up in five minutes. Both of us were still in our PJs, but managed to get it together and pack in eleven minutes flat, and then waited a further 30 minutes until we pulled into Irkutsk. Had we agreed to smuggle the polar fleeces, she probably would have greeted us with a cup of tea.

Much like the Russian welcome we received on the Irkutsk platform, the weather was also grey and cold. It turned out that the Americans next door, Steve and Carol, would also be sharing a car with us to Listvyanka, These guys are well into their 70s and still going strong, but there are quite a lot of stairs in the Irkutsk train station and it came down to me, already carrying two backpacks to help them down the stairs with their things, whilst our Russian guides stood by and watched. Unbelievable!

Once outside we were all deposited into a van with darkened windows, loud Russian techno music and a driver that was surliness epitomised. After being asked to turn down the music, he simply switched it off with an angry flick of the wrist and we rode the rest of the way with zero conversation between us and the Russians. However it was great talking chatting with Steve and Carol. Steve is a competitive swimmer in the Masters Games and spends his time traveling and swimming all over the world. We also heard about the womens 100 metres that is totally dominated by a 94 year old Japanese woman, that needs a zimmer frame on dry land, but is a super-fish, a thorpedo once in the water.

We dropped Steve and Carol at a quaint looking hotel and continued on to our homestay.

We stopped about 500 metres down the road, we’d arrived at Olga’s house in Listvyanka. Olga’s house is a cute 300 year old traditional wooden Siberian cottage, with a 3 year old, half finished upstairs and two new rooms out the front. We ate a breakfast of what I will call fat arse pikelets with slabs of cheese and homemade rhubarb and orange marmalade. Olga seemed very nice and hospitable, but we were to learn later that this persona only appeared when the guides were visiting.

Now, traditional wooden Siberian houses, have traditional outside plumbing and toilets. The traditional way of washing is in the banya, which is basically a small wooden room, much like a sauna where you dump tubs of hot water over yourself and wash. After some discussion, we finally made it clear that there was going to be no Tanya in a banya, because saunas, spas or anything else hot can cause “issues” with the baby. Happily through the money they are making from tourists, they have managed to put in a shower that we could both use. I was not allowed to banya on the first night, as it would obviously eat too much into their profit margin.

Tanya, Lena our guide and I trooped down the road to the Lake Baical Museum. Incidentally, the museum, had just been visited by James Cameron that very morning, but we missed him. We looked at rocks, stuffed animals, old diving suits and the MIR 1 submarine used in the opening scenes of Titanic. Lake Biacal, 1.6 kilometres deep, 40 kilometres wide and holding 20% of the entire worlds fresh water was the reason we had come to Listvyanka.

The museum also held live lake creatures and we saw Sturgeon, Omul, shrimps, numerous other fish and two cute Lake Baical seals. After this we stopped in at a cozy cafe for lunch, where I had a plate of fried omul, with potatoes and Tans had beef goulash with potatoes. The meals were great and as it was chucking it down with rain and only 7 degrees it was a nice place to sit. Owing to the weather, we spent about 2 hours using the Internet place next door.

The weather had begun to clear, and we went for a walk to the end of the main road in Listvyanka, around 1.5 kms. I washed my face in the lake, apparently adding 12 years to my life. We had a brief look around the market, which sold a variety of tat, shasliks and smoked fish.

We figured a good way of breaking the ice would be to appear at around tea time with a bottle of vodka, but it seemed that Olga was not into it. Tanya said hello in Russian to Olga’s adult son and was rudely ignored. However dinner was great, we had mutton dumpling soup, coleslaw and bread. After this we showered and went to bed, where it would seem, we were sleeping on children’s beds with mattresses that were probably still second hand during the Stalinist era.

Our homestay had turned out to be more like a half arsed B&B, with crappy beds, worse plumbing, but great food. Usually I am happy to suck up all of the discomforts for a bit of warm foreign hospitality, but in this case there was no warm hospitality at Olga’s.

At around 9pm, the entire family buggered off to parts unknown and we both had showers. The shower was like a relic from the Soviet space program, plastic, incredibly lighweight and not bolted down or fixed in place. During my shower I could feel it moving and had visions of it tipping over, trapping me inside, while a bunch of angry Russians yelled at me for wrecking their first bathroom renovation. I made it out of the shower, which moved when I got out and I also managed to avoid the handbasin, also not fixed in place and got into my child sized bed and fell into a fitful sleep.

Today we were determined to strip back the layers of Irish Pubs and American chain “family” restaurants and see if we could get to the core of Ulaanbataar.

We began with a mediocre breakfast at the Bayangol hotel, they had a bunch of bain-maries full of some pretty unappetising fare, happily there was a choose your own omelet station and plenty of tea with lemon.

We left the hotel around 11:00am and headed off for the Ulaanbataar square. Ulaanbataar is a pretty scruffy place and feels a bit wild for a major city of one million people. There are cars, usually large 4×4′s driving all over the road, horseman in town to do a little business, yuppies, business people, quaint little Mongolian Nannas in traditional dress and scummy backpackers like ourselves. We had been told to visit the National Museum, but instead decided to go for a bit of a wander and see where that found us.

Up behind the square we chanced upon a very stately looking building that is the Mongolian National Academy of Sciences, which houses IT, Mathematics, Physics and other sciences studied at the University. From here we ended up strolling to the embassy district and popped into a great antique shop that had everything from accordions to flintlock rifles and everything in between. We also walked through what I think is Ulaanbataars and possibly the worlds only park dedicated to Plastica Integrafolia, plastic flowers and yellow polystyrene mushrooms!!!

After a spot of administration and money changing at the bank, it was time for lunch. Just as we were about to go into a likely looking place we ran into a friendly Mongolian chap who could speak English and after telling him that all we wanted to eat was REAL Mongolian food, in a place that real live Mongolians would be seen in, he told us that unfortunately most of Ulaanbataar’s restaurants were in fact western or consisted of Mongolian food that was so dumbed down it may as well of been western. After a brief chat he directed us to a place about 200 metres down the road, which served the Mongolian national dish of mutton dumpling soup and had mutton pies called Khuushurs. Service was slow, we were the only foreigners sat in amongst a lot of chain smoking Mongolians and no one spoke English. It seemed we were in the right place.

Once our meals came we were not disappointed, we were each served with a huge bowl of mutton dumplings in soup, totally devoid of any vegetables except a whisper of shallots. After the soup came the Khuushurs, which were like flattened meat pies filled with mutton and mutton fat; absolutely delicious. Some enterprising Mongolian needs to set up a van or a cart selling Khuushurs out the front of the many Irish pubs, they’d be a great after drinking snack for the long stumble home.

After lunch, we headed off to the ominously named State Department Store, on the way we chatted with some kids selling Shaslicks in the middle of a street that appeared to be not only a full on main road choked with the latest in offroad technology, but also a bustling market selling sunglasses, icecream, cigarettes and calls on mobile telephone cafes.

The State Department Store is in complete contrast to the streets of Ulaanbataar. Six floors of western capitalism, the latest fashions from Milan, electronics, TVs and gadgets from Japan and a very tacky, but reasonably priced souvenir shop, where one can pick up a full leather Ghengis armour ensemble, bows, arrows, goat skin stubby coolers and a big bag of knuckles, which was our chosen Mongolian souvenir. We also loaded up on food and snacks for the upcoming train journey and thought that a gunman had let off a shot inside the store, but no matter one of the tyres on a stock trolley had simply exploded. Many people hit the deck and the poor girl weighing our fruit was in tears and pretty shaken. We were all OK.

After picking up our laundry and a quick beer in the Grand Khan Irish Pub, no visit to Ulaanbataar is complete without a beer in this joint, we went back to the hotel for a re-pack and headed over to the Tumen Ekh traditional Mongolian show, put on by one of the best national song and dance ensembles in Mongolia, as hapless western tourists we can neither confirm or deny this claim.

We waited amongst a throng of Japanese pensioners from 5:20pm to 6:10pm, when the doors opened 10 minutes late it was like being in the middle of a UN food drop at a refugee camp. We all surged forward, I took a few little pointy Japanese elbows to the midsection, enough was enough so in my loudest, deepest and most western voice I yelled “JUST STOP PUSHING” which made everyone shut up and stop for about 1 minute while their guide tried to explain why they were all going in first. Of course we were having none of it, and our pushing in skills are honed to a razor sharp edge after a year or so in China, we managed to push our way in and end up with some pretty decent seats, although all of the best seats had been taken by the Japanese pensioners. May I suggest a separate entrance for tour groups, or an earlier arrival time.

Usually, in my experience “cultural” shows and tour groups spell disaster, but this was actually pretty good and I would highly recommend it to anyone visiting Ulaanbataar. They had great dancing, most if it all horse themed, there was music, also horse themed and the number one drawcard for me, throat singing. Personally I think throat singing is amazing, but Tan’s just could not stop silently shaking with laughter during each of the throat singing numbers. According to her it was the “weirdness” of it, and I have to say it is a pretty weird sound, but I think, also an amazing skill. Plus the show had a totally hot contortionist, this alone is worth the price of admission.

With around 45 minutes to spare we popped in for a Nomad burger, a mutton patty cooked on the barbie and served with special sauce, lettuce, cheese, pickles and onions on a sesame seed bun, it was pretty damn good. For those of you paying attention you’ll have noticed that we have pretty much given up finding Mongolian food in Ulaanbataar. Someone needs to capitalise on this and setup Yakdonalds, before our favorite hangover cure arrives in the capital.

We boarded the train with the help of our guide and new friend Oogi and sped off into the darkness of the Steppe, bound for Siberia.

Today was a day of transit from Elstai back to Ulaanbataar. They tell me that Ulaanbataar means “Red Heroes”, but thats just propaganda. During Soviet times the city was the world centre for the cruel production of “Oil of Ulan”, that saw the small fury Ulans wiped out from the steppe and the name changed to “Oil of Olay” once communism fell and western scientists were able to figure out a way to chemically synthesise the formula.

During the drive back we had another quick stop at the Ghengis statue so that Tans didn’t miss out. There were about 10 – 15 cars, that I suppose are in the SUV category that were on a test drive from Irkutsk to Ulaanbataar all parked in the Ghengis statue car park. Having saw that, we then bounced along the East Highway arriving into Ulaanbataar at around lunchtime, the highway is one of the countries main thoroughfares and feels no different to offroad. We saw a couple of Yaks grazing in a field

We went for a look around the city, we saw the main square where a monument to Ghengis was erected in 2006, the 800 year anniversary of the Mongol Empire. We then drove up to a hill overlooking the city, where the grimness of Soviet urban planning is in full view. Atop the hill there is a monument to Soviet and Mongolian Heroes of the revolution, including Mongolia’s first cosmonaut, who blasted into space in 1981. There was also another eagle in the carpark that could be held. The money shot when holding eagles is to get them to expand their wings, to do this you need to roll your arm and put them off balance, unfortunately this saw said eagle fall off of a persons arm and onto the ground below, when a big gust of wind picked it up. We have some great photos of Tans holding it, we figure that the money goes to the birds care and feeding.

Eager to finally sample some Mongolian food we were directed to the Silk Road cafe, but were met with crushing disappointing. Tans had a nice lamb fillet, I had a huge pork steak, the only thing even close to Mongolian were the people working in the restaurant. However, if you are after a good feed, friendly and efficient service, then Silk Road fits the bill nicely, but if you are after an experience and would like to be the only foreigner lost in a menu of incomprehensible cyrilic, experiencing the anticipation of what may arrive after a bout of menu lottery, then this is not the place.

After lunch we had a bit of a rest and then went to the Gandan Temple for a bit of a look. Mongolians follow Tibetan Buddhism, inside the temple is a 10 metre high Buddha and many other high Lamas, the temple was built in 1911 and managed to survive Mongolia’s brief time as a kingdom and then over 70 years of brutal Soviet repression, where the inside of the temple was used as a stable.

We moved to another temple next door where around 20 – 30 Buddhist monks were chanting. This was a general blessing of people and horses who were tethered out the front. this blessing happens 3 times per year and we were very privileged to see it

After this we dropped our smalls into the Metro Laundry, I do hope they can get the horse sweat out of my pants and I also hope that we can find it again tomorrow morning and retrieve our clothes.

After a brief rest we ventured out to dinner and ended up at the Altai Mongolian Grill on the recommendation of locals. This turned out to be the culinary equivalent of a frontal lobotomy, there we sat, next to a ger under garishly bright lights as we ate a Mongolian BBQ, that I could get in Sydney or Melbourne. We both had mutton, mutton fat, noodles, onions, garlic and Khan sauce. Food wise it was pretty good, but it was more like a Mongolian food Disneyland, and again not what we were looking for.

Walking to and from the Altai grill we saw the Grand Khan Irish Pub, it is a bloody nice looking establishment, I may pop in there for a Budweiser and a cheeseburger for lunch.  The joys of Globalisation.