Made in China

For those of you who think that pictures are delicious food for the eyes be warned that this entry will be nothing but a dry bready word-fest. We are without digital camera now which means that I must attempt to describe the last days to you using only the power of words. Illiterate readers are advised to look away now.

We spent 3 long long weeks in Ulaan Baatar and Thomas assures me that it was quite like the plot of "In Bruges" starring Colin Farrell. I have not seen the film myself but if it is anything like those three weeks then it is boring and would drive you to madness. The city itself is not really that big but we were waiting to receive some bike parts so we could continue on our journey, and we became very familiar with its layout. The highlights were our visit to "THE BLACK MARKET"(much less sinister and illegal than it suggests), and my being ejected from the holiest place in Mongolia for refusing to pay. The latter wasn't as barefaced as it sounds, they were only charging foreigners and they pestered me for a while before stopping and then a guy physically tried to get me out so I left. It was the Gandan Monastery which is the centre of Buddhism in Mongolia.
The former was very enjoyable as you are expected to barter the price of anything you buy. As it turns out Thomas and I are not very good at it but we tried our best. I was reminded of the scene in the Life of Brian, so poor were our efforts.
We spent some evenings sharpening our strokes at a table tennis hall which might give you an idea of how much we exhausted the city of its entertainment offerings.
After what seemed like months of waiting we finally got moving out of UB on the 14th of July 2009(now to become an annual celebration for me and Thomas), and with our visas for Mongolia expiring on the 18th we had very little time to get to and take on the Gobi Desert. To cut a long story extrememly short we realised that it was not possible in such a short time and took the train in order to arrive at the border in time. The sand was at times 5 or 6 inches deep and we agreed that at least a week would be required for such a feat.

That brings us now to China where we are currently. The town on the Chinese side of the border was huge despite it appearing tiny on our map, which gave us an indication of the scale. The greatest relief about arriving in China was that the roads were good again. Really good. After weeks of corrigated sand we were back on tarmac. The scenery didn't really change for 3 or 4 days as we were still technically in the desert but the sandy arid plains slowly gave way to grass and hills, and yesterday rocky mountains. We have found the Chinese to be very friendly and funny so far and they seem to love cyclists. The strangest thing would have to be the 字母表(alphabet). We rarely have a clue of what is going on but it is a nice change from the cyrillic alphabet which we have been reading for the last 2 months.

Yesterday we visited a cafe for breakfast and were presented with an entire chicken carved into several pieces. When I say entire I am not kidding. Talons, the head, indistinguishable organs, it was all there. Thomas tried to gnaw into the head to get the brain but was unsuccessful in his endeavour as the cranium was too hard. He initially thought that the comb of the head was a fin and that some of the meat was actually fish.

Something else to note about China is that this very blog is censored by the Great (fire)Wall of China and due to the immensely political nature of it I can see why. Thankfully I have used some ingenuity to avoid such barriers and update the manifesto.

We are sitting in an internet cafe in Datong surrounded by gaming youngsters. The city is also huge, but barely looks it on our map. Only London would be bigger in the UK. Directly after this we are heading to see some Grottoes on the Silk Road and our route will take us to Beijing via the coast at the Gulf of China.
I hope that without pictures it was not too dull and I will update again in the next 10 days or so.

Bye Bye

Wrestling

Comments on technique are welcome.

NOW-HERE

Mongols





Rock formation at Ikh Tamir.


The gift.


Thomas' second time on a horse.




Which one do we take?


This post comes to you direct from the capital of Mongolia: Ulaan Baatar. Since the last post we have discovered the remotest countryside of Mongolia and also faced some hardships.

We left Erdenet with optimism and excitement at going into the countryside. We were looking forward to experiencing rural Mongolia and we were not disappointed. From Erdenet we headed west to Bulgan and then via some very small towns to Tsetserleg followed by Kharkhorin and on to Ulaan Baatar.

Over these days we were invited into many Gers and ate a lot of Mongolian food. We mostly found ourselves in the Gers as a result of having to ask for directions. Navigation became difficult once we left the main roads and we hadn't realised just how difficult it might be. Once the main roads were a distant memory we found ourselves on dirt tracks, winding sandy lanes or grass. The difficulty was really that there are no road signs in the country and the tracks have a tendency to suddenly fork into two equal tracks heading in completely opposite directions. Sometimes there were 7 or 8 tracks all running virtually parallel, and woe is you if you are happily riding along before realising that the other 6 tracks are bearing left while yours slowly, but clearly, heads right. That wasn't such a problem for us though as we were able to flex our Mongolian muscle a lot in asking the way, obviously followed by our standard questions about animals fattening up (It works really well). We basically encountered one small village a day where we could stock up on water and food.
In one Ger which we particularly liked we were again challenged to some wrestling. After sizing up the opponents we decided that we could take it on and that none of them seemed to be national wrestling champions. The video footage can be found here, and hopefully it will give you some idea of how we pass our time in this country. After the wrestling they started talking excitedly and took us to the pen for baby goats. One of the guys took out a goat and handed it to us and we took some some photographs and laughed with them, but after a while it became clear that they were offering the goat to us as a gift. We wondered if we could strap a live goat to the back of one of the bikes but we had to decline their offer. Afterwards we dicussed what we would have done with it. We would have had to slaughter it and eat it but we agreed that the two of us slaughtering a goat would have been a bloodbath with our unskilled hands. Barbaric.

Then things turned against us...

After reasonably good luck for 5000km we got several punctures in the space of a few hours. It wasn't that the roads had gotten any worse just that we were very very very unlucky. The punctures forced us to use all of our spare inner tubes and they still kept on coming. We tried repairing them but our repair kits weren't up to the job. In the end we had to tie a knot in the inner tube in order to get us to the next town. The emergency repair held for 50km or so and then we had to do it again, but this one only lasted 15km. It seemed that every time we stopped to repair a storm came and we got thoroughly soaked. We started to worry that we wouldn't be able to get Ulaan Baatar because the inner tubes which we use are very difficult to find in this part of the world. As a last resort we stuffed the tyre full of grass, which in bicycle terms is the equivalent of morse code as a form of communication. Funny though it sounds we were at an all time low and collecting grass in a bag to stuff into a tyre was possibly one of the most surreal experiences I have had.
In addition to that we had our wallet stolen in Tsetserleg which put us in a tricky situation still 450km from the capital. Then as we lay bloody on the floor fate took a final kick to the face in that the camera stopped working.
That evening we were very low. We didn't sleep very well.

We are pleased to say that most things are okay now. We flagged down a bus from Kharkhorin and made it to Ulaan Baatar in one piece. We have been here now for two days and on the first night we went to a club where they tried to massively rip us off. The waiter was keen to seat us when we arrived and told us that only some drinks were available. The expensive ones. We decided to order a beer and he came back with a bill for the drinks with an extra charge of 5000Tugrigs each for, he said, "Tax". We told him that we wouldn't pay and he wouldn't leave us until we paid it. I kicked up enough of a fuss for him to give it up and he accepted cash for the beers. There is a lot to be said for being incredibly awkward in these situations.

The next night, last night, we went back to the same club because the atmosphere was pretty good. The staff there joked with us about tax which was in some ways funny but also a tacit confession of their attempt to con us. I was invited up to deejay by a guy we had met the previous night. I played for half an hour or so to a mostly empty club, but the waiters danced and revelled and then we left as it was getting late.

That takes us to the present day.
Oh and I forgot to mention that Thomas fell off a horse. Most amusing.