Mongolia illustrated

Maybe the stories from this tour are too long to write and should be told instead, or maybe the landscapes of this beautiful country can't really be described so for this one, I'll let the photos do most of the talking.

Day 1 :Firsts

First Ovoo : a pile of rocks at the top of mountain necks to bring luck, safe travels, health and prosperity. The custom is to walk around it 3 times clockwise and deposit 3 rocks as you go. The pieces of clothes, in 5 colours which symbolise : Blue for the sky, yellow for buddhism, red for fire, white for milk and green for grass. If Mongolia had to be summed up in 5 words, it would be those.

First Mongolian archetype : For our first lunch, we stopped by this lake where a herd of horses were having a refreshing dip. Then came their herder on his tiny little horse with wooden saddle and all. We had arrived.

First Mongolian landscape : Granite mountains in the background with tranquil lake in the foreground.

First touristic site : A rock monastery which was mostly destroyed in Soviet times. Also our first encounter with the big blue sky.

First Ger : We slept in quite a few gers, the traditional nomadic dwelling but this one was the best decorated one by far. We even had a Mona Lisa carpet hanging on one side. There are many rules associated with Gers and we innocently trampled all over them. We tried though.

First Ger camp : Earth, sky and us, that's it.

Day 2 : camels and Nadam horses

Most Mongolian water comes from the ground and these wells are all over the place.

A few moments after this photos was taken, an enormous hailstorm came over us. We all huddled inside the car and Boogii, our irreplaceable guide jumped into the back of the van and cooked us one of her many delicious meal from there.

Our first camel in the landscape around sunset.

We stopped by a Ger camp to ask for the best road to our destination. The hailstorm caused many rivers to form along our way which made travel difficult. The Horses in this photo are Nadam Horses which will be raced by young children during Mongolia's biggest yearly festival.

Day 3 : The white stuppa

A family assembling a new ger. It takes about 1 1/2 hours to get the whole thing together. Not quite as quick as our little tent but not too bad really.

Boogii, our guide at a site called "the White Stuppa". A series of undulating cliffs which were quite stunning and the site of many archeological expeditions as it contains dinosaur bones.

Mongolian cities are nothing to be proud of. We passed through a few to get supplies and they are all uglier than each other. Still, I liked that girl's slightly surreal waitress uniform in these drab surroundings.

Sunset for our first camping night.

Day 4 : Ice canyon

No Chrises were injured in the taking of this photograph. On the other hand, there was a lot of awkward slipping around going on trying to navigate this ice canyon formed over winter in between two mountains.

Our crew of 6 safely off the ice.

Another lunch spot which makes our cartoony blue van look very tiny.

Antoine and Corinne, two frenchies hanging around our Ger camp in the Gobi desert with background of camels and sand dunes.

Day 5 : camels in the Gobi

The five mercenaries.

Juju on the ridge.

Chris for Lacoste.

Rippled Sand dunes

Another pretty good sunset.

Day 6 : Flaming cliffs

"Flaming cliffs". One could say that it is not unlike the Australian outback.

There are about 2 road signs in all of Mongolia and that is one of them.

Our Ger camp in the distance. We were able to watch a World cup game from here. You can't stop progress.

Moon and star.

Day 7 : Crossing the river...or not

Lunchtime, before the day took a turn for the worst.

You could say that we had a slight problem crossing this river.

Looking out to the van from the safety of the shore, waiting for help.

Help came in the form of many men and steel cables connected to a truck which eventually managed to winch our drenched van and belongings back to shore.

After an eventful day, we were rewarded with another beautiful camping spot and sunset. We all drank a fair amount of vodka that night to drown our nerves which is much better than a drowned car.

Day 8 : A rainbow

Chris being happy which is always a pleasure to see and happens often in nature.

Back in greener countryside, we were greeted with the most beautiful rainbow I have ever seen and to top it, you could actually see the whole arc just above our car. Lucky travels from now on.

A river we didn't cross.

Sunset

Day 9 : Horses and waterfalls

Mongolian horses are really small but they are nervous little creatures. Mine was especially small and had trouble keeping up. I think I was too big for him but he tried and did lots of trotting. We even managed to gallop a little. Chris galloped like the wind.

We went to this waterfall on our horses. The man in the photo is our horseriding guide, he taught me to say "Tchu Tchu" which was meant to make my horse go faster. Sometimes, it worked.

A rather suggestive lunch.

Antoine the Nissart (we went to the same high school) and Chris went riding some more in the afternoon while Corinne and I did some yoga surrounded by baby yaks and little girls.

This dish has an unpronounceable name but tasted mighty delicious. the pieces of goat meet are cooked surrounded by hot stones. We ate it all and anyway, we didn't have a choice or we would have been in trouble. We did get into a little bit of trouble because we couldn't suck our bones clean Mongolian style but we tried.

Day 10 : Karakorum

Baby something in our Ger camp. At first we thought they were baby yaks but they are most likely goats.

Another river we didn't cross, taking a long detour instead.

Buddhist monastery in Karakorum where we offended the tour guide because we were too tired from driving for hours to listen to her (slightly boring) explanations...

Final camping spot, not bad.

Day 11 : The wild horses and back to U.B.

On the way back to Ulan-Bator, we stopped by a National Park which preserves Peschwary horses (or something like that). They are wild and never come in contact with humans. They are born white and turn sand coloured when they grow up. We were quite lucky to spot a few.

Afterwards, we drove back to U.B. and all had a wonderful Korean feast together to top off a really truly wonderful experience.

I hope this made you want to visit Mongolia, it's worth the detour!

Travel map

The travel map is now up to date and if we have achieved anything on this trip, it has to be kilometers!

Beijing, China

From Xi'an, we had a delightful train trip to Beijing. The trains are so comfortable that we managed to sleep soundly until 10am, a few hours before arriving at our destination. It took a bit of walking around to get to our hostel but our efforts were rewarded by being greeted by our friends Marcin and Rose. Maybe our warm welcome had something to do with the 2 kilo box of muslim sweets I carried from Xi'an to share with them.

We split our time between finding a few things for the rest of the trip and touristing around the city. We started by visiting the "Forbidden city" which was really beautiful and impressive. It is much bigger than we all expected and certainly demonstrates the unlimited extravagance of the empire. From the front gate, one enters enormous open spaces surrounded on all sides by grand and elegant structures burnt and rebuilt many times over the years. As we progressed through the layers, the open spaces became smaller and the density of buildings greater. The constant crowds of tourists (mainly chinese) accentuate this change of scale.

We then contrasted our experience by visiting the Olympic site where we were able to see the "birds nest" and "watercube" in the flesh, so-to-speak. As always, it was interesting seeing these building in real life after so much coverage and hype. I'm not going to lie, we were a bit underwhelmed by the "watercube". Its best angle is from the corner where the bulging of the bubbles is quite striking but in terms of elevation, it is quite flat and the cleaning of the bubbles in such a polluted environment seems to not have been totally resolved. The most disappointing aspect were the entries into the building which seemed very under-designed and badly considered.



The birds nest was more impressive although we wondered about the proportion of structural elements versus purely decorative. We didn't go inside as it was quite expensive. We then tried to find the CCTV building but we only had a vague idea of where to find it and were unsuccessful. We were also very hungry which didn't encourage our determination very much. We eventually managed to find it on our last day and found it quite impressive. Unfortunately, the whole site is currently surrounded by fences which made it impossible to see more than glimpses of the adjoining building which burnt last year over Chinese New Year.

We also visited the Imperial Summer Palace which would have been surrounded by lush countryside once upon a time but is now in the suburbs of Beijing. We could only imagine the tranquility and serenity of this beautiful palace overlooking an gigantic lake as we were surrounded by thousands of other tourists wearing matching caps and following the soothing sound of a guide yelling through a loud-speaker. Nevertheless, nothing was too big or too much for the emperor so a huge lake dug by hand and a marble boat were to be expected.



The next day, we had an early start and headed out to see the Great Wall of China. We hiked along a 10km long section between Jinshaling and Simatai. Getting there was a bit of a mission, especially since we were "hoodwinked" by a sneaky be-atch who followed us around all morning trying to get our money one way or another. We didn't let her and eventually got there. The walk itself was not very long but in some sections, the steps were so steep that I had to use my hands and feet to climb up. Of course, it was worth the effort. The Great Wall is spectacular and at every twist and turn, it follows the ridge like a great big snake. We congratulated ourselves for our efforts by having Peking Duck that evening in a great little restaurant where an expert Peking Duck cutter artfully placed each little tender slice on a plate for us and covered it with thin crispy skin. Yum!



We spent our very last day running around, doing some errands before heading to Mongolia. Marcin and Rose had to go to the Embassy and we all met up for a final dinner afterwards. We went to our favourite restaurant, right next to our hostel and ordered all of our favourite dishes. Unfortunately, they didn't have "Hoodwinks the type to roast Yang Bang" so we had to content ourselves with "Hoodwinks the type to rip the muttons chop". We decided not to order the "Grandmother vegetable burns the pigs intestines" or "explodes the stomach" although it was tempting. If you have no idea what I am talking about, then it is time you go and read a Chinese Menu because I assure you I am not making this up!



On this note, we headed to the train station very early in the morning and were off to Mongolia. Stay tuned for more adventures!

Xi'An, China

After leaving Shanghai, we spent a few days in Xi'an. It was not quite the dusty array of bazaars and lamb kebabs we had created in our imagination but we enjoyed this bustling metropolis of 8 million nevertheless. To be fair, it did have a lovely muslim quarter where we spent a lot of time revelling in our favourite past-time : eating. The food there was quite different to other areas of China and we had a great selection of breads, lamb and ramadan type sweets. In the gaps between meals, we did manage to visit a few sights with the obvious highlight being the Terracota army.



They are a reccurent theme all over the city but it didn't quite compare with seeing the real thing. Convinced that he would pursue his conquests into the After-life, the emperor got himself a whole army to guard his imperial tomb which, to this day, is considered too dangerous to excavate due to the complex traps built into it. In 3 main pits, still being excavated, stand entire battalions of soldiers of various ranks, horses and chariots. Most figures were badly damaged over time either by being pillaged or because of the rammed earth tunnels in which they stood collapsing and crushing them. What stands in front of us is the dedicated work of archaelogists over the last 30 years and there is a lot more to come if you can wait. The sheer number of them is striking but not as much as the fact that every single one is different. Their faces, hair-dos, postures, attire, weapons all differ in one way or another and the intricacy of the detailing is fascinating. Our army of tourists, loaded and ready to shoot dozens of photos didn't look like much in front of the Emperor's.