Since we last messaged you, we've spent 56 hours on trains (over 3 journeys), and also 14 hours on buses, and loads extra on lovely regional transport. But, we now find ourselves here, in Irkutsk, besides the worlds largest freshwater lake, at a timezone 8 hours in front of the UK!

Our time in Perm, with Guzal and Max, was amazing and easy. After the Banya experience, we went to the Opera for both of our first times, and found that we acually knew a song in it! The Opera was called Rigoletto, (Lauren does a terrific version of thу 'famous song' that goes something like 'lalala poop today, lalala poop tomorrow'). We also went to visit the 'magnificent' Kungur ice caves, which turned out to be an hour walk through a bunch of dark, damp places, in the cold, after a 2 hour bus ride to get there. Pretty crap really.

But, moving on, we crossed the famous Urals (which are no more than hills really) into Asia! It would have been more exciting if we'd have been able to see the continent marker, but we were asleep. We had a night then in Novosibirsk, where we partied with super chilled Katya and her housemates. The next day we went up to Tomsk, ONLY 5 hours away by bus (pretty much next door for Russia), where we were stayed with Nikita and his wife Marina for a couple of days. Tomsk was really pretty, not at all hindered by the first big snowfall of our trip. We dutifully made our first snowman, maybe a whole 12 inches high, and spent the days playing in the snow amongst Russians who were pissed off the snow has arrived. It got to about -10 while we were there, and it looked like it was gonna get really cold, but that threat thankfully didnt materialize. Lauren was given a secret present from Marina (which turned out to be jewellry she had made) for her birthday before we left.

We went back to Novosibirsk, where L got a spontaneous haircut while socializing in Katyas kitchen. She even got a long awaited dreadlocks, and is defo going for that traveler style!

Next stop was Krasnoyarsk, where we stayed for a couple of nights in an old soviet hotel (the cheapest thing we could find) to give us some lone time for L's birthday (we'll put a pic up of the 'party'!). The hotel was a bit like a prison, and the beds probably were exactly the same ones used when Communism fell in the country. We chilled out a bit here, and had some amazing stolovaya (russian canteen) meals, before climbing a mountain at a nearby ski resort. The weather was warming, and the snow was so slushy walking up, definitely not the weather for L's new fur birthday hat. The views at the top were amazing though, and we ventured onto a risky icy ridge to get some pretty amazing views.

We moved on then to Irkutsk. the train journey here was a load more interesting, playing games and drinking vodka with a couple of young russian soldiers who spoke no english. Communicating with them did the usual trick of having half our train carriage gather to listen, and we found some people who spoke english, and amongst them even some current world champion aerobic gymnasts!

We're now at Arsenay's place, and we're headed off to Baikal's biggest island tomorrow, Olkon, for some time 'at one with nature' for a few days, where we will hopefully be staying in something away from the traditional smog of Russian cities. We leave Russia in a week, and hopefully our Mongolian visa will be ready before we go...

Missing you all loads!

H+L

xxxxx

written by  harripix on November 17, 2010 from Irkutsk, Russia
from the travel blog: harripix's Travel Blog
Send a Compliment

---

comment on this...

A Pre-warning before reading this... it may be long because I may get too over excited and tell you stupid details you don't need to know. I've fell a month behind writing my diary so this is our only records now apart from memories and of course I'm writing it and not Harri. Please switch on the kettle now.

So I'll start with Olkhon Island on Lake Baikal- out nearly deserted paradise. We arrived after a normal russian bus journey with a flat tyre, a dead engine and towed by the bus in front. We were then swept into the nearest babuska's house where we spent 3 days trying to speak russian! Olkhon Island was such a good break from the Russian cities we'd visited along the way and it was fantastic to be able to breath again :) except for the frozen snot. We also met our first big group of travelers at Nikita's a local hostel. We even met a couple who went to Brum uni and studied Physics- but a little older than us. We toured round the Island in an old Russian mini bus that I swear defied gravity and I fell out of my seat and rolled across the floor. It was definitely the coldest weather we had experienced- I had only my eyes showing and thought they were going to freeze. I found some natural sponge.. but its now stinking out my bag!

Back in Irkutsk we picked up our Mongolian Visas without any problems – very happy. We met up with a few people we met on the Island and a local girl we met on the train. She showed us a bit around the city and took us to try local Buryati food. Late at night we caught a train to Ulan Ude and slept.

Ulan Ude is west meets east. The town wasn’t too different from most cities we’d seen but the people were changing and the gers had started to pop up everywhere. We stayed in the outskirts with our cser Vlad, who lived in a classic wooden russian house… with no running water and an outside toilet. I forgot to mention we had an outside toilet ( or hole in the floor) for our time on Olkhan too- its an interesting experience going to toilet at – 25 ° , things freezes very quickly. We didn’t do too much in Ulan Ude as it was too cold so spent our time doing the essentials, food, internet, coffee, museum.

We were up at 6 to catch our bus to Ulaan Bataar in Mongolia, annoyingly not one bus would stop for us, so we ended up walking/ jogging for 40 mins to get there. I’ve found out I don’t deal well with jogging at -25 at the side of a polluted road. Anyways.. we made it :).
The bus was quite comfy but all the windows were frozen on the insides for the whole day so we made a peep hole to see the beautiful landscapes we were passing. 14 hours later we arrived in the capital, met some other travelers and got to our hostel, golden gobi. This hostel is pretty cool, lots of vodka and musical instruments. We are now planning our tour around Mongolia we just need to find other people who are crazy as us to spend a few weeks here.

Also mum don’t worry about korea. We had a email from EPIK and they said it wont effect us.. the media blows things up a lot more…

Lots of frozen love.

p.p.s i forgot that we saw a truck dragging two dead carcasses horse/cow... only in russia.

written by  harripix on November 25, 2010 from Ulaanbaatar, Mongolia
from the travel blog: harripix's Travel Blog
Send a Compliment

---

comment on this...

Hello everyone, I hope you're all well. I'm just thawing out in front of the computer, its -25C by day here atm so walking outside is inadvisable (and yeeeeees I know it got cold in Europe recently, but its gonna be -35C tonight so I have no sympathy).

Since we last messaged you an awful lot has happened, so I'll try and stick to the best bits. We spent a few days in UB, recovering from our time in Russia with a lot of vodka and cheap cheap restaurant food (about 1.50GBP a meal). It was amazing the first few days in this hostel, the Golden Gobi, as there were so many people around we didn't really leave the building for 3 days. We celebrated Mongolian independence day here, and we were treated to free mongolian dumplings and vodka by the hostel, and ended up in a night club at the end of the day regretting drinking such a cheap bottle. The best, and most prestigious vodka here is called simply 'Chingis Khan' after everyone's favorite all conquering Mongol, you might know as Genghis. In fact, he still pretty much dominates everything, he has a huge statue in the main square, and the best beers and hotels (and most pubs) are named after him.

We had 6 days in UB, where we've gone to a cool puzzle museum (aka the international intellectual museum) where we broke our no buying things rule, but lauren's already lost the instructions for her horse and we cant reconstruct it now! We also stocked up on extra warm gear at the black market (which is essentially a massive ice rink where you have to push everyone you walk past). Also, we visited our first temple of the trip, with, what I'm sure we're gonna get sick of, a massive Buddha in the middle. Religion was pretty much outlawed under communist rule here, so most temples in the country are reconstructed after they were destroyed in the 1930s by Stalin.

Luckily, a couple of guys (Mark, Australia and Philip, Germany) turned up in the hostel and wanted to do a tour with us. To save money, we just hired a jeep and a driver (the amazing wrestler Erkha, with all the English and Russian we needed: go, eat, finish etc), which cost us $20 each a day including all petrol. The jeep is more of a soviet version of the VW combi, uses a litre of petrol every 5km, had crap suspension and we managed to break a door, but it did more than the job for us.

Every night on the trip we stayed with locals, as hotels don't really exist away from the capital. Mostly, we stayed in gers, which is like a big teepee with a stove in the middle. The first day we visited a national park with a reintroduced breed of horse, apparently the last remaining wild horse (it has two more chromosomes than other horses, oooohh). It was a bit like a safari, with our guide for the hour with her binoculars searching for them (oh look horses), but we saw the alpha horse getting on its back legs to teach a lesser horse something. After some expert driving through snow drifts we arrived far into the country where we did some horse trekking. I was thrown off the horse in the first 10 mins, but as I had so many layers on I pretty much bounced off the floor. We explored a frozen waterfall, and carried on plodding along on these small horses, they ignored our constant 'choo' and only sped up when our guide would come in to give them a whip.

Here we were introduced to the heart of Mongolian ger cuisine, meat on a bone. It turns out that all everyone eats in the country is boiled meat, with at least 50% fat content, and maybe a bit of pasta or rice. After 2 weeks on this diet, without any fruit/veg/variation I've decided that this isn't the diet for me. Unsurprisingly we didn't meet any Mongol vegetarians.

After the horse riding we headed south, and on the way to sand dunes in the Gobi desert we visited a market where it was possible to buy flatpack gers, with all the 'traditional' ornamentation a mongolian would need! At the dunes we had some birthday drinks for Mark, the typical 'drink a big shot of vodka, pass it on' game . There we rode some two humped camels, and climbed some hefty dunes (about 200m high), which in the cold felt impossible as every deep breath you took was like breathing ice. After walking the camels over a frozen river on the way back, (which cracked at footstep they took), we had a camel race. Camel racing is probably the most uncomfortable thing I've ever done, for the record.

Almost all the 'roads' we traveled on were just paths in the desert that other jeeps had took before, sealed roads are a luxury here, so on many days it would take us all day to travel a very bumpy 300km. Everywhere around us would always be empty, except for occasional herds of animals.

The next few days we visited Yolun Am, which is very famous for the amount of dinosaur fossils found there. The setting and the wind were amazing, but we didn't find any dinosaurs. We also stayed by a couple of cool rocky mountains in the middle of nowhere with some nomads. It turns out, when the sun goes down and all the animals are safely nearby the ger, one great way of entertaining yourself is to grab a big bag of ankle bones and play one of many great games. We were shown how to play a flicking game, and a catching game, but I'm sure that they would have shown us even more if our yawns weren't so exaggerated!

The final port of call was Terelj national park nearby to UB, where we stayed with some Kazaks who are originally from Kazakhstan. What made them so cool is that they use eagles to hunt. We got to hold one, it was amazing to feel the extreme power of its claws through a felt glove, and then the Kazaks set up a demo of how they use it. With a fox's hyde they pulled along they got it to swoop down from above, but it ended up attacking the guy pulling along the bit of fur. It was pretty absurd, and they did their best to impress us, but as our feet were so cold we just wanted to go inside! We finished that day in the best way for any Mongolian tour by visiting a humongous statue of Chingis and heading back to UB.

We're now looking forward to China, its 5C in Beijing by day, a crazy 30C warmer than here so we're looking forward to getting out our t-shirts!

If you've made it this far through the message, congratulations! Check out the photos, theres some pretty cool ones up.

Lots of love to everyone

xxxxxxxxxxxx

written by  harripix on December 13, 2010 from Nalayh, Mongolia
from the travel blog: harripix's Travel Blog
Send a Compliment

---

comment on this...