Congratulations

…to Bryan Chapman for summiting Mt. Everest at 6:35am on May 23rd.

Total stud.

Leg Room, Carcasses & Paul Simon

As time is running out and my days are limited I’m going to play super-fast catch up here for the past twelve days. Translation: more pictures…fewer words. I last left off from Nowhere, Mongolia having hitched a ride with the Swiss Motorbike Gang…

60 Minutes Mongolia

Wednesday May 19^th: I nearly cried when the boys of With East In Mind rode out of our dingy guesthouse parking lot towards Ulaanbaatar at 8am without me. I was back all alone with a long way to travel and nothing but my thumb to get there, so I walked to the edge of town and set up shop.

Three hours later I landed a ride in the back of a northbound jeep. I never got to the bottom of who exactly the big wig sitting shotgun was, but he was clearly someone of power. He was short, bald, well fed, and did most of the talking. Accompanying him in the back were two aging press agents and one young cameraman from Mongolian TV 7. One of the elder gentlemen could not have looked more like Mike Wallace. I mean the flowing hair, the tan, the sh*t-eating grin. Christ, he was beautiful.

The pieces really came together during a detour to a nearby mountain top for the obligatory Ghenggis Khan vodka break. While milling around I flipped open my camera to pan the scenery. When baldy saw this he rushed over and essentially slapped my camera closed before I could lay a lens on him. With serious suspicion (and broken English) he demanded answers to who I was. After a bit he warmed to the fact I was nothing more than a harmless American tourist and gleefully rubbed a handful of nearby snow in my face. We posed for pictures and downed vodka. God I hope they email me those pics.

Back in the jeep and an hour later the big wig instructed our driver to stop when we passed a nearby monastery. The place was locked down like Fort Knox, but at baldy’s direction the head monk was summoned and we were granted a guided tour. Great experience, call it the fruits of hitch hiking. Upon emerging from the five hundred year old monastery we were greeted by the following:

(Got sandstorm?)

We eventually arrived at Kharkhorin (good luck with that pronunciation) where I found a crash pad, and to my surprise and joy a dozen twenty to thirty year old German archeologists about to celebrate their final night in Mongolia found me. The beer flowed and I accompanied them to a traditional Mongolian BBQ on the banks of a local river where I enjoyed the most barbaric meal of my life and indulged in more than a couple snorts of snuff. But hey, when you’ve hitch hiked all day and you’re standing around a fire on a riverbank in a beautiful secluded valley in central Mongolia having just eaten every piece of meat, fat, muscle, ligament, and cartilage from a goat’s leg, and the local herdsman extends a tiny bottle of snuff towards you…you obviously take a pop or two.

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The Last Leg

May 20^th & 21^st were recovery days. For forty-eight hours I held up inside an adequate hotel, extracted tiny pieces of Gobi dust from the depths of my ears, wrote, and rested. On the 22^nd I stepped over a flat cat, made my way to the local container market, and purchased a lift to Ulaanbaatar. The seven hour journey to Mongolia’s capital city was typical fare. The van was designed for eight yet we squeezed fifteen passengers in. Good times. I did come to two very important conclusions though. First, Mongolians are not shy about sing-alongs during long distance travel. Second, Mongolians enjoy the most beautiful native music of all the Asian countries I’ve visited.

Arriving into capital cities or any major metropolis is always a unique experience, and I’ve found the response usually follows one of two tracks. Either you’re entering a country via a major city in which case the city becomes your first impression of a nation and its people (e.g. Yangon, Hanoi, Mumbai, Shanghai). The response here is usually one of immediate bewilderment followed shortly thereafter by a strong desire to flee. The other response scenario involves arriving into a city after a long distance haul (e.g. Jakarta, Singapore, Bangkok, Kathmandu, Almaty), in which case the civilized and concrete urban center becomes a welcome oasis of indulgences and comforts (i.e. cheeseburgers, running water, high-speed internet). My arrival into Ulaanbaatar undoubtedly fell into the latter bucket.

Around 9pm, just as the sky was darkening, my van dropped me off at an obscure bus stop on the outskirts of town. I had no map of the city, no sense of direction, and no destination. If I found myself in the same situation back in October I probably would have freaked a bit, but instead I took a breath and got Zen. After struggling to communicate with three sleazy hotel clerks I was finally able to determine the direction of the city center. I hailed a taxi and eventually landed at the city’s pseudo-grand dame hotel: the Khrushchev-era Hotel Ulaanbaatar. After paying through the teeth to use their business center and print out the 20 pages of the Lonely Planet Ulaanbaatar PDF I had sitting in my inbox, I was finally equipped with a map and information. At midnight, with a huge smile on my face, I finally got off the not-so-safe streets and into a comfy dorm room (comfy dorm room – oxymoron?) at the UB Guesthouse. The long overland haul from Novosibirsk was over.

(No Dead Cat Bounce here.)

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UB Sunday Funday

I’ve learned that most tourists loath Ulaanbaatar (‘UB” for short), but this blocky-Soviet jungle is rapidly becoming one of my favorite cities in Asia. It’s far from a typical Asian city, and if not for the large presence of Mongolians on the street you’d think you were somewhere in the west. UB does possess a certain charm, but it radiates more from its bright inhabitants than from its drab architecture. I drank my first real taste of UB on Sunday May 23^rd.

Having traded emails with Markus #1 I met the Swiss Boys in the city’s main square at 1pm sharp on a beautiful and sunny Sunday afternoon. After handshakes and a few laughs we quickly retreated to the nearby Grand Khaan Irish Pub and set in for a long one. By 1:45pm I was staring at a most beautiful image: an American cheeseburger & fries, my first since Southeast Asia.

Like a cartoon runaway snowball our Funday Train gather speed and picked up passengers. With an eccentric collection of expats in tow we migrated to a nearby brew pub where Lady Gaga’s entire videography played on the largest plasma TV I’ve ever seen. Am I in Mongolia or California? The day’s crawl was a grand one: brew pub to Korean restaurant to Irish pub to local expat hangout Strings, where a tall American shocked the local crowd by dancing around a bottle of Ghenggis Khan larger placed on the floor. Great times.

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An Evening with Tony Stark

The evening of Monday May 24^th marked a milestone in my journey; my emergence from the Pop Culture Black Hole Vacuum I’d been living in for four months now since Avatar in Bangkok. For $2.90usd I sat front and center for the 8:50pm showing of Iron Man II. I may end up seeing it again before I leave as I missed the final fifteen minutes with an emergency trip to the bathroom (too much info?).

(Sam Jackson: Best enjoyed subtitled in Mongolian.)

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A: Leg Room, Carcasses & Paul Simon Q: What are five words never before joined in the history of man?

Sitting in UB with almost three weeks to kill before departing Beijing for home I found myself faced with an extra week to kill (not a bad problem to have). Way tired of making decisions for myself I decided to do what 90% of the travelers in UB do, and join a tour. So on the morning of Tuesday May 25^th I put on my tourist hat. For the next six days/five nights I’d be instructed where to sleep, when to eat, and what to look at. Perfect.

My company would include a male driver, a female guide (complete with a 60% mastery of English), a German, a Frenchman, and a Swiss couple. I was a bit worried about unpleasant flashbacks to my thirty-hour Tour de Suffering experience when I stepped into the familiar Russian Furgon van that morning, but the endless legroom suppressed any outburst.

Six days & five nights in a nutshell:

• We traveled nearly 1,500km, only 700km of which were on pavement. If I never drive another dirt road in Mongolia it’ll be too soon.
• I saw somewhere between 100-150 animal carcasses in various stages of decay. With springtime only just beginning to yield the necessary grass to fatten up the endless and skinny herds of cattle, horse, goat, sheep, yak, and camel that grzae the Mongolian steppe, the landscape is literally dotted with the rotting bodies of those not strong enough to make it into summer.
• We slept in four separate authentic gers (pronounced gears) at four different locations throughout central Mongolia. I took over duties of building and maintaining the fire in each one.
• After three days without running water I bathed nude in the still-frozen White Lake.
• We stood together in amazement as the sky was bright enough at 10:15pm to read a book.
• I stood alone in amazement the following morning as the sky was bright enough at 4:35am to read a book.
• Paul Simon’s Graceland and Little Feat’s Dixie Chicken got time on the iPod. I wondered if Little Feat had ever been played in Mongolia before. I’m gonna say no.
• We collectively grew tired of eating animal meat for breakfast.
• After a friendship developed, our driver proudly claimed to know three Americans: George W. Bush, Michael Jackson, and Stephen O’Neil. That’s some pretty money company if you ask me.
• We enjoyed not a single vehicular breakdown.
• I drank nearly ten pots of Mongolian tea: water + milk + salt. Salt?

Our final evening justifies more than a bullet. We spent Saturday May 29^th at the sand dunes of Mongol Els, also known as Small Gobi. Following a great horse ride at the White Lake, the four men expressed great interest in one final ride. So as the sun sank over the nearby sand dunes, as if scripted out of a movie, a lone Mongolian horseman/cowboy rode into our camp driving something like a dozen semi-wild steeds. Four horses were saddled with razor thin traditional Mongolian riding saddles and the five of us set off west. No picture or film could capture the feeling the four of us felt as we whipped our horses into a gallop towards the rolling dunes. The light, not to mention our guide, could not have been more perfect. When we reached the foot of a large dune we dismounted and the cowboy tied our horses together. Then, without warning, he broke into a sprint up the dune face and we all followed after. When at the top he began drawing elaborate horse and camel pictures in the fine sand with his finger. When this was over he proceeded to engage each of us in an impromptu wrestling match. At 4’6” he could have been the strongest sixty year old man in Mongolia.

The view from the top completed every Mongolian fantasy the four of us had, and the looks on our faces said as much. On our return, half a km from camp, the five of us lined our horses up together and in unison broke into a run to the finish line with leather whips cracking and commands of “CHOO! CHOO!” filling the air. After many thanks were exchanged the horseman rode off into the sunset in a cloud of dust. It was surreal and beautiful. It was travel perfection, and we all shared the sentiment.

(4:47am – Looking east)

(4:47am – Looking west)

With East In Mind

The weather outside the morning after my late arrival into Bayankhongor was brutally ugly. Mongolia receives something like 270 days of sunshine a year, but on my seventh day I still hadn’t counted a single decent one yet. Precisely when I needed a break for the soul, I got clouds and drizzle. After doing a load of wash in the sink, I made my way to the container market with two objectives in mind. First get a handle on my transportation options out of town, and then find a pair of black leather Mongolian boots that fit. I felt after the previous leg I’d earned the right to wear them. I found the boots and I found a van heading to Arvaikheer at 2pm. The idea of getting back in another Furgon so soon went down as smoothly as a warm glass of nails, but I reasoned the faster I got to the warm center of the country the sooner life and my spirits would turn around. The van was said to leave at 2pm and I still had to run back to the hotel, pack, grab money, and pay for my boots. It was 1:15.

I hustled back to the hotel and was about to walk into the lobby when a most beautiful sight caught my attention across the street: two giant enduro motorbikes complete with all the trimmings. I sprinted after them like a chubby kid to a Mr. Ice Cream truck and bombarded them with questions. The two bikers and two drivers of the accompanying SUV had just rolled into town and were looking for a hotel. I told them the Hotel Seoul was the best in town (which means nothing) and ran off to address my list. Back in my room however I caught myself and took a seat on the bed’s edge. I started talking out loud and something like the following dribbled out: four guys your own age from Switzerland riding motorbikes around the world just arrived into town and you’re going to get back in another van and leave? What are you insane? With that I downshifted myself comfortably into 1^st gear and lazily made my way toward the market. I wasn’t going anywhere that day.

With my new used boots in hand I walked back into the hotel an hour later and enjoyed proper introductions with Markus, Markus, Markus, and Peter, four friends from Switzerland riding east around the globe to New York over a six month period. As you can imagine I immediately developed a serious man crush on this friendly group of fellows. With their world map laid out on my bed they walked me through their journey thus far: Switzerland à Austria à Hungary à Ukraine à Russia à Kazakhstan à Russia à Mongolia. They will continue east to Russia and ship the vehicles across the Pacific to Alaska, Canada, or Seattle before eventually making their way to New York City in late August.

We spent the remainder of the afternoon and earlier evening knocking back bottles of Mongolian lager, trading stories from the road, and laughing aggressively. They talked about the corrupt police in Ukraine and the beautiful women of Barnaul, Russia, and I of riding a bike through India and the beautiful women of Tomsk. It was safe to say we hit it off and then some. As our dinner in the VIP room of the town’s best restaurant (which means nothing) was coming to a close the boys presented me an offer. It technically was an offer, but what they had no possible way of knowing was that their offer was perhaps the single greatest wish I could have asked for in Mongolia.

If on my first day in Mongolia you asked me what my ultimate dream day would consist of I promise you I would have said something about riding a motorbike across the steppe under a blue sky with great friends. With Markus and Markus able to transport my backpack in their customized two-seater Landcruiser, the group extended me an offer to join them and ride on the back of Peter’s 700lb African Twin Honda the 230km to Arvaikheer. I smiled, laughed, and said absolutely.

Day 250

I don’t know if it was the excitement of what lay ahead or the four glasses of Mongolian sink water I drank, but I was wide awake and alert at 4:30am the morning of Tuesday May 18^th. Up until that day I hadn’t shot a lot of what I considered to be compelling footage. The weather had been grim, the landscape hadn’t been photogenic, and I wasn’t accumulating much in the way of strong material. As I lay in bed that morning I thought through how I wanted to shoot and document the epic day ahead. At 6:30am I walked out of the hotel to get some still shots of the vehicles and as if Mother Nature herself was in on my fantasy day, there was not a single cloud in the sky. Everything was coming together perfectly.

Peter and Markus had been riding bikes for twenty years and had recently taken their Hondas to Morocco and back. I would not be wearing a helmet but it was risk I was prepared to take. By 10:30am we had left Bayankhongor behind and were riding through landscape that was changing before our eyes. Disappearing were the rocky arid deserts the five of us had crossed until now, welcomingly replaced by slightly greener landscapes. Blue skies and beautiful empty space, this was finally the Mongolian dream we had all come for.

Face and hair blasted by warm air and skin cooking under the strong sun, my feeling from the back of Peter’s bike was nothing short of pure exhilaration and bliss. I kept thinking about all the little things that had to happen just right for this moment to exist, and I couldn’t help but think that someone or something out there was helping to pull the strings and orchestrate this dream come true. A manventure day for the ages. I’ll let the pictures speak for themselves.

(7:14am: Morning glory.)

(9:51am: Markus was the recipient of the Wesley Hays Award for being the most photographed and filmed man of the day (of all the photos I’ve taken in my life, Wes is somehow featured in 60% of them).

(10:31am: I crossed the river dry from shotgun of the Landcruiser.)

(11:05am: When a Furgon van threw up a dust trail in the distance I could only smile at my vehicle upgrade.)

(11:49am: When the paper and GPS maps both fail, you resort to the old fashion method of knocking on a local’s door and asking for directions.)

(12:14pm: When the GPS says turn left, you turn left.)

(1:54pm: When it’s time for lunch you find a scenic spot and pull over.)

(3:41pm: You never know who you’ll meet on the road. Frenchman Hubert had been riding a sidecar around the world for six years. He has four left.)

(5:24pm: One more for the collection.)

(5:35pm: A great relief for all, the paved road to Ulaanbaatar.)

To the generous and legendary boys of With East In Mind.

Thank you for the gift.

See you in New York.

Godspeed.

http://www.witheastinmind.ch/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=45&Itemid=2

Wisdom of Mongolia

About the only thing I recall from CLAS #140 (Introduction to Ancient Literature) at Middlebury College are the words: Wisdom through suffering.

While most of you relaxed on the couch, golf links, or West Village bar stool last Saturday and Sunday, I suffered the longest, most uncomfortable, and most miserable stretch of travel this long journey has seen. Given the harsh, windy, and demoralizing winter-like conditions of western Mongolia I decided to make a run for it to (hopefully) warmer and greener southern and central pastures. I concluded there was nothing of worthwhile interest to see, let alone visit, in the wild west of this country, so I decided to bite the bullet and sign on for one final long distance ride from hell.

The guidebook said the journey from the city of Khovd to Altai was 14 hours and another 10 from Altai to Bayankhongor, and I intended to do the whole piece in one forgettable day. With the help of a friendly English speaking Mongolian named Tgort, 3x boxing champ of Khovd city fyi, I was able to locate a vehicle heading to Ulaanbaatar (via Altai and Bayankhongor) and settle on an agreeable price. With the cash transaction complete, I was now pregnant and committed to spending the next day of my life inside a Russian made Furgon van.

On an ugly grey overcast Mongolian afternoon I stood by mortified as the number of our would-be passengers grew out of control with each wave of new arrivals. I’ll cut to it. In a van designed to accommodate eleven people we departed with nineteen adults and two children.

At first I found myself, as the tallest passenger, sitting alone with shotgun all to myself. This won’t be so bad. My hopes were soon dashed at the petrol station where we picked up three more passengers, all of whom landed in shotgun with me. Twenty-two deep, giving new meaning to the term ‘fully loaded.’

Within an hour we had our first breakdown. We would have at least a dozen more, no exaggeration necessary. When it was time to squeeze back in my world was rocked when the driver and his crew reshuffled me to the backseat so I could rest my legs in the well next to the door. They ultimately did me a favor but I didn’t see it that way at the time. So for the duration of our journey the seating configuration looked something like this:

• 6 was quite possibly the ugliest six year old Mongolian child ever conceived. He had a full buzz cut save the 2” bangs dangling over his forehead. His mouth reminded me of a squid’s. I think I counted four teeth. He grabbed at everything and had no problem invading other people’s space. He was either the dumbest six year old alive or something wasn’t working properly upstairs. Clearly I didn’t care for him.
• 7 was the mother of 6 and shared her son’s ghastly facial features. We didn’t exactly hit it off.
• 8 and 9 took turns alternating who sat on whose lap. Both grown men mind you.
• 10 was a young chubby Chinese girl.
• 12 was a sweet old Russian woman married to 11, a pleasant old Kazakh man with a warm face and great mustache.
• 13 had a face like one of the villains from Dick Tracy and slept often.
• 14 had a crew cut and mug that reminded me of Johnny Unitas. He wore traditional Mongolian boots and a robe. I liked him from the start.
• 15 was an attractive and pleasant middle aged woman who looked out of place and probably belonged on the plane to UB.
• 16 (guy in first photo holding guitar) was nice. He shared my distain for 6, and we hit it off.
• I sat 17. Naturally.
• The driver (22) and his vodka swilling cronies (18-21) occupied the front seat.

The suffering in the back seat began almost immediately. There was the leg pain. My second row faced backwards so 7, 9, 16 and I fought a quiet battle for leg room supremacy. I eventually wore down the others and took home the victory. There was the hip pain. There was the side window cold air pain. There was the front window cold air pain. It was the kind of setup where 16 and I both had our right arms draped over 15. It was absolute insanity. I felt like a piece of meat in a crowded cattle car. When one person shifted their body significantly it kind of set off a chain reaction of subsequent shifts. I pulled out my camera only twice, due to the difficulty of contorting enough to free both hands. Smushed into the cold metal door, with cold air blowing directly in my face every time the window was opened I’m convinced I had the most uncomfortable seat of the lot.

Eventually my passport found its way around the van along with a sample of my foreign currency collection. Both won me some points. Dreading the rapidly approaching night, I started to really fantasize about walking out of Dulles airport and drawing that first breath of warm American air. I thought about the words a good friend recently emailed me: “Enjoy the moment when the customs agent says, ‘welcome home.” I was able to handle the overwhelming discomfort and boredom by focusing on the reality that the light at the end of the tunnel was growing brighter by the day.

Around 10pm, with all but the last hints of daylight gone from the horizon, a commotion of noise erupted from the last row. The van immediately stopped and I opened the door, spilling us into the desert as usual. Within seconds 2 was vomiting to my left, 8 vomiting to my right, and 12 peeing directly in front. It was all horrible. And then we piled ourselves back into the van yet again.

We broke down at a mountain pass sometime after midnight, with heavy snow falling from the sky whitening the desert landscape. I was pretty happy when 18, who controlled my front window cold air pain, threw up from too much vodka. Finally after enduring a mostly sleepless night we stopped next to a ger (known in the west as a yurt) around 4am. I didn’t know what was going on but I followed the driver and his cronies into the ger as I figured it’d be warmer than the parked van. My first experience inside a Mongolian ger was memorable. Seated directly in front of the centrally located stove, I watched intently as two women prepared our breakfast. The visuals were rich, colorful, and unforgettable: a woman clutching a slab of red meat in her hand, while the other washed our soon-to-be-used dirty serving bowls in dirty water with her dirty hands. One woman inserting dried cow dung into the stove then using that same unwashed hand to handle and dice the meat. One woman breast feeding a newborn. The finished product, a mixture of meat, pasta, and potatoes, was gold.

When we emerged from the ger forty minutes later the lunar landscape was bright with an eerie dawn mist. I had survived the night. Back in the van we continued on for some while and I caught some Zzzzzz. Around 7am the van stopped again at a cluster of gers, the Mongolian truck stop equivalent. We spent the next four hours here as our driver & co. worked sporadically with the local grease monkey to replace an engine part. During this stop I ate the same meat, pasta, potato meal from several hours earlier, and must have put down at least two pots of tea.

By 11am we were back in business and back in the van to cover the final 200km to Bayankhongor. By 1pm we were stopped dead in our tracks again, this time waiting for nearly three hours in the windy and cold northern Gobi for a mechanic to arrive with a special tool needed to fix the engine. That was perhaps the hardest stretch. The waiting. Waiting and not knowing what the hell was going to happen or how long it was going to take. For all I knew we’d be spending the night in the desert. I seriously considered abandoning the van and trying my luck hitching to Bayankhongor with the occasional passing vehicle. The tool finally arrived and we were back underway by 4pm. As night began to fall on my second day in the van, I had to do everything in my power to suppress a full blown freak out. I was about to reach a breaking point. It was everything: the endless desert, the pain in my tail bone, the waiting game for our next interruption. When the driver said 30km I found hope, but out here 30km can take an hour or five.

By 9pm, driving through yet another snowy whiteout, the van lodged itself stuck on a muddy slope. I simply couldn’t believe it. After ten cold minutes of waiting as the driver and his crew tried unsuccessfully to extract us, every able male body (even old Johnny U) climbed out of the van and lined up in the rear. With a huge battle cry the driver gunned the engine as we pushed through the mud, snow coming down in buckets. We were out.

Some minutes later I heard the sweetest sound: the beeping of cell phones indicating that service was available and civilization was near. With that I turned around to see the lights on Bayankhongor off in the horizon. Finally! By 10pm I was in a taxi heading to the Hotel Seoul and having a very strong “What am I doing with my life?” moment, but it was over. The suffering had ended.

Departure from Khovd: 4pm Saturday

Arrival to Bayankhongor: 10pm Sunday

Total distance: 800km

Total time: 30 hours

I’ll never complain again about a long distance flight, drive, or delay after the hell that was May 15^th and 16^th.

Wisdom through suffering.

http://maps.google.com/maps/ms?ie=UTF8&hl=en&msa=0&ll=44.087585,157.148438&spn=107.597219,0&z=2&msid=113857108228539669434.00048719f21923d9fc96d

From Inside a Mongolian Bathhouse

I just can’t get enough buuz. You remember buuz? Those delicious meat filled dumplings, that are pronounced like ‘booze.’ Buuz for breakfast, buuz for lunch, buuz for dinner. Any time of day is a good time for buuz. Eating buuz in a shipping container outfitted as a cantina is especially enjoyable. With a worsening hangover from the Olgii-Khovd Vodka Express I knew only one thing could help: buuz.

As I walked across the street to the nearby café I thought how strange it was that Kevin Costner had made an appearance in my dream the night before. I hadn’t thought about KC or seen his face since a Turkish Airlines billboard in Bangkok airport in January. Where am I going with this? After ordering my buuz and taking a seat, the female handling the TV remote finally settled on a dubbed version of…wait for it…Dances With Wolves! Very strange.

After lunch I set off to investigate town and change money. A few odd observations:

• I’ve never walked over so many animal bones in my life. It’s frankly fantastic. It’s like going back in time. I particularly enjoy stepping over leg bones with hooves still attached to the ends. Animal bones & infrastructure: The haves and have not’s of Mongolia.
• It’s great to be back in the land of little children that scream “helloooooooooow” at you as you walk down the street. I haven’t had that pleasure since India. Mongolia scores huge points with that one.
• I’ve visited three banks thus far to change money and each time I’m blown away by the security measures. There simply aren’t any. No thick glass separating customer from teller. No eye in the sky camera. No metal bars on the windows. No secure cash registers. I simply walk in, hand over a note, and the nice person reaches into a drawer and counts out 140,000 togrog. I guess it says something positive about the people if theft is so little a concern.
• Towering over a tiny woman in front of me in line I couldn’t help but notice the balance figure scribbled in pencil at the bottom of her account book: 644,000 togrog. Roughly $450usd. The camera slung over my shoulder cost slightly more than her entire life’s savings. A humbling moment.

Back at the hotel and in need of a decent shower I was shattered to find the place didn’t have hot water. I had read that in most major towns there is a bathhouse, which serves as the only means of washing for most people. I had hours of daylight left so I set off to investigate, a little reconnaissance work before going all in. What I found was a decrepit building serving up scolding hot showers for a U.S. buck. Done & done. So armed with my camera, a towel, flip flops, and soap I walked out of my hotel…

(…passed the statue…)

(…passed the outhouse…)

(…passed the sidecar…)

(…passed the windowless building…)

(…passed the girls playing volleyball…)

(…passed the Nice Shop…)

(…to the building with two curious kids in front…)

…and down a long hallway to my very own Mongolian shower sauna. Quite an experience.

Would you?

Sure, Have Another Why Don’t You

Today is my 10^th day in Mongolia and the first decent opportunity to kick my feet up and comfortably write…and there is much to write.

Day 244 – Wednesday May 12^th

I walked out of my concrete Soviet relic hotel at 8:30am into a bitterly cold and windy western Mongolian morning in the desert city of Olgii. It was the day to leave town and begin the long and arduous overland journey to the capital city of Ulaanbaatar, some 1,700km to the east. I knew nothing of what to expect, but had a pretty good idea that whatever it was wouldn’t be fast and wouldn’t be comfortable.

The lack of infrastructure in Mongolia drives everything (no pun intended) and must be addressed upfront. The complete lack of paved roads and any type of rail network, both with few exceptions, dictates that any journey will be slow, long, and dirty. The movement of people across Mongolia is facilitated by four options: 11-seat Russian-made Furgon minivan, Toyota Landcruiser-style jeep, motorbike, or horse (I’m working on checking off the final horse box). There are two main parallel ‘highways’ that traverse the country from west to east, one across the north and one across the south. And by highway I mean nothing more than a loosely defined and shifting dirt track through sand, desert, or steppe. These two main routes connect the capital cities of the country’s nineteen aimags (provinces), and are regularly served by the above mentioned means of movement.

There are no comprehensive public or privately run transportation outfits (the Greyhound of MGL doesn’t exist), so the network of travel is wildly fragmented and inefficient. ‘Wildly fragmented and inefficient’…wow, well that pretty much sums up Asian travel in four words. To get from Point A to Point B there are two options. A). Hire a private car or jeep and travel when and where you desire. The going rate converts to roughly $0.35usd/km, so given the fact this country is more than twice the size of Texas a private vehicle can be very expensive if traveling solo. Assemble five backpackers however and it suddenly becomes quite economical to hire a jeep and tour Mongolia, as many tourists do in the peak months of July and August. B). Do what the overwhelming majority of Mongolia’s three million strong population do and cram into a grey and aging Furgon van or jeep and wait. Wait until the vehicle is filled with double the number of passengers designed for, then wait some more until the driver feels like departing. So back to Wednesday morning…

I made my way to the market which doubles as the transit depot. There is nothing like a good market in Asia to open your eyes, but after a while you kind of get marketed out. A Mongolian market is kind of different. To start with every market I’ve visited follows the same design layout: a maze-like assemblage of between fifty and a hundred shipping containers. They’re not markets, they’re container markets. So right off the bat things just look raw, steely, and rusty. Next, every market will inevitably contain the wildly-out-of-place open air billiards hall which doubles as an office place for the scores of men who eke out a living betting on their daily pool skills. At this late point in the game few visuals, if any, still shock me. I’ve seen just about everything imaginable in Asia, but I stopped dead in my tracks the first time I saw one in Olgii. It’s just so fantastically out of place. The market’s lone pit toilet also sent me reeling.

By 9am I’d located a jeep heading to Khovd, 211km to the south, and was told departure was 2pm. I had my ride, so thus began the waiting game. When we finally rolled out of the dusty market at 3:30pm there were two passengers in the front and four in the back. Seven people including our aviator sunglass wearing thirty-one year old driver, in a car designed for five. We quickly made our way to the petrol station on the edge of town where the waiting game began all over again. When we finally hit the road out of town at 4:30pm I had witnessed a seventy year old sunglass wearing grandmother squat and take a pee in plain view out the front window, and we had picked up our eighth passenger. Lesson 1: Mongolia will require patience. Lesson 2: Mongolia will be uncomfortable. Just as the city pavement ended and gave way to dirt I recall eyeing a severed and rotting cattle head lying just off the road, and despite my discomfort I smiled at the realization beginning to take shape that this country was going to be unlike any Asia I’d seen before. How right I was.

Within an hour our back left tire blew. The tire change only took ten minutes, but it took fifteen for the male members of our two car caravan to down three liters of Mongolian beer. And the communal cup from which we all drank? Try the unscrewed plastic cover casing to our jeep’s interior overhead light. I certainly took note too as both drivers from both cars joined in the imbibing. With the tire fixed we took off for some gorgeous late afternoon four-wheeling past half frozen lakes and snow covered mountains. When we reached the crest of a particularly high pass, with the sun low over the horizon, both cars pulled over and out came the bottles…the vodka bottles. And that’s bottles with an ‘s’. With the wind howling and the temperature rapidly sinking, we waited around for thirty minutes while a group of eight men polished off four bottles of Mongolian vodka. Granted the local stuff here doesn’t have anywhere near the kick of the lethal Ruski fire water, but four bottles is four bottles any way you cut it. Lesson 3: Mongolians drink…a lot.

I obviously take serious issue with excessive drinking and driving, but I took slight comfort in the belief that if drinking on these deserted roads was as common place as it appeared these full time drivers clearly had lots of practice and had probably done this a time or two or three or a thousand.

Back on the road with a healthy buzz to boot, our car turned to song. First our driver sang something in Kazakh, then the Mongolians sang something in Mongolian, then the Japanese tourist sang something in Japanese, then the American sang A Boy Named Sue…

Well my daddy left home when I was two and didn’t leave much for ma and me, just this old guitar and an empty bottle of booze…now I don’t blame him that he run and hide but the meanest thing that he ever did was before he left he went and named me Sue…

With darkness all around outside, the sassy middle aged woman sitting in the front poured her soul into a beautiful Mongolian song that went on for five minutes. Not a word was spoken in the car, just her voice. The jeep’s headlights dancing wildly over the bumpy road ahead, a stranger sitting on my lap, vodka buzz upstairs, and words being sung that had no meaning combined to create a truly extraordinary travel moment. No film could capture the feeling.

After two more random house visits and two more bottles of vodka we finally rolled into the black empty streets of Khovd. I don’t recall much from the very end, but it must have been comedy since I woke up with a splitting headache in a double room across from a sleeping Japanese fellow. Lesson 4: Expected the unexpected.

Welcome to Mongolia.

…What I Learned In Russia Today (Part II)

Well this is not so much about What I Learned in Russia as it is What I Did in Russia. And what exactly that ‘did’ is, was quite a bit over the last six wild days. I’ve had some epic stretches over here, but these last six event packed days could go toe to toe with any others. So back to the beginning and a cold, dark, walk home…

I’m on a (Siberian) Night Traaain…Ready to Crash & Burnnn…

I walked out of the internet café in Tomsk, Russia after having just posted WILIRT: I. For the previous two hours I’d completely lost myself in the world wide web; catching up on emails, posting a blog, Googling “Time Square Bomb,” snooping around Facebook, and ultimately detaching myself from my geographic reality. When I finally emerged from the basement café at 2am on the morning of May 6^th, the streets of Tomsk were empty, dark, and quiet. My brisk walk back to the Hotel Sputnik lasted but ten minutes, but it perfectly captured the ever present feeling that permeated my entire experience in Russia – a feeling of complete surrealism. One second I’m reading about Frank’s engagement to Paula and my mind drifts back home, and the next I’m crossing deserted trolley tracks under a black Russian sky in Siberia. I found myself constantly reminding myself that my body was in Russia, and each time I did the feeling got more and more surreal. You’re eating ice cream, in Russia…you’re on a train, in Russia…you’re walking through a forest, in Russia…you’re brushing your teeth in a river, in Russia. But back to the meat and potatoes…

I slept like a log that evening and awoke the following morning to a cloudy and grey Russian sky. Perfect. I had an overnight train that evening departing at 7pm and a dreary day hibernating inside and mapping out Mongolia was just what I needed. So I did just that. Over two hours and three pots of tea I read the entire Mongolia guide and sketched a rough itinerary. When Sputnik finally kicked me to the curb at 2pm I found reprieve in a warm and inviting Russian version of Clyde’s restaurant. I slid into a comfy booth with three hours to kill and proceeded to down an order of herring, a chicken burrito, and two rounds of Standard Mark vodka. Seriously though, what is one expected to do? The menu order goes: salad, soup, vodka, meat, fish…

(Mongolia in a nutshell)

At 7:03pm sharp the overnight train to Barnaul lurched out of the station. Russian trains are punctual to the point where conductors will apparently sit idle just outside the station until their scheduled arrival time, sometimes for hours. Russian trains are obscenely expensive by Asian comparison. I balked several days earlier at the price tag of a 2^nd class, four person compartment for $60usd and opted instead for the familiar 54-person 3^rd class carriage.

I’ve now over-nighted on trains in Thailand, Vietnam, India, China, and Kazakhstan and Russian trains are by far the most sanitary and orderly. Every surface shines like it was buffed last week (vs. KZ – last year, Thailand – last decade, India – last century). Few pleasantries were exchanged with my fellow travelers, which was fine by me since all I wanted to do was pop my ear plugs in and watch Siberia roll by outside from the comfort of my top bunk. After the sun set, with help from some Bruce S. and M. Knopfler, I drifted off into the most peaceful sleep with warming thoughts of coming home and the final homestretch popping in my head.

The Siberian Express arrived into Barnaul at precisely 10:10am the next morning, some fifteen hours and seven minutes after departure. Russians, unlike their Kazakh neighbors, have bought into the brainy idea of locating their main bus terminals adjacent to their main train terminals (wow, what a novel idea Kazakhstan), so within an hour I was comfortably seated in a south bound bus and glued to the window watching a truly remarkable transformation take place outside. The uninspiring flat land of Russia was giving way to something remarkably beautiful. Something I like to call…

Rusgolia – The Country In Between

The Altai Republic is the southern wedge of Russia that borders Kazakhstan, China, and Mongolia. A clear departure from Russia but certainly not Mongolia yet, Rusgolia might as well be its own country. The first change you immediately notice in Altai is its stunning geography, a stark contrast from the Russia to its north. With mountain lakes, rushing rivers, snowcapped peaks and dramatic canyons, Altai has it all. If located in America it would proudly stand shoulder to shoulder with the likes of Glacier, Yellowstone, or Yosemite. The second change you notice are the faces. Gone are the stereotypical hard Russian facial features (think Putin or any dark visor-wearing MiG pilot from Top Gun, Iron Eagle, or Red Dawn), replaced instead by the dark central Asian mug closer to Kazakh or Mongol. The third defining difference is the building structures. Absent is any trace of the Soviet era cement housing blocks that dot Novosibirsk or Tomsk or Barnaul, replaced instead by all things timber. The two lane road that bisects Altai runs about 500km in length, and along its length I recall seeing not a single manmade structure built from anything other than Siberian timber. Incredible but moving on…

I spent the night of May 7^th in the forgettable town of Gorno Altaisk, a required stop to register my visa in the tiny Altai Republic capital. The sunny morning of May 8^th I purchased two things: a bus ticket south and my third most favorite clothing acquisition in Asia (coming soon to a bachelor party near you…). By noon the bus wheels were rolling and I found myself in a familiar place, glued to the window with camera in hand.

When the wheels stopped rolling around 4pm in the forgotten town of Onguday I was beside myself with joy. I’d just ridden through some of the most spectacular and unexpected scenery of Asia under a sunny blue sky, and was now being dumped at the foot of Lenin’s statue in a wooden town that looked like a film set from Deadwood. I located the lone hotel in town and after some teeth pulling was able to extract a room key and visa registration slip. With that I set off on foot into the golden afternoon light with the sole intent of getting lost. In short time it donned on me that I’d entered a place of pure Old West fantasy. From the decaying and modest timber structures to the billows of smoke rising from them, and from the scent of burning firewood heavy in the air to the sight of hand-drawn water wells, I honest to God thought I’d been transported back in time some hundred and fifty years. Save for a few telephone poles, there were vistas that contained not a single trace of the 20^th century. Never in my life have I seen anything like it. It was total magic. Dude ranch – out. Altai Republic – in.

Like Brett Favre out of Retirement…

May 9^th was an epic day for reasons other than being Unity Day in the Russian Federation. The 65^th anniversary marking the end of WWII was cause for great fanfare in Russia. Every town from Tomsk to Gorno proudly displayed banners and signs marking the upcoming anniversary. Tiny Onguday was no different and pomp & pageantry had overtaken the streets by 10am.

I had a pretty good idea that I’d have to resort to it eventually in order to reach southern Altai. I crossed Australia and New Zealand by it and did it so many times in the Caribbean I stopped keeping track after #400 (true story), so with a bit of experience under my belt and the familiar excitement that anything can happen in my step…I walked out to the two-lane M52 highway, propped up my bag, stuck out my hand, and began hitch hiking yet again. Now before the parents in the audience throw a tantrum let it be known that hitch hiking is common practice in these here parts. In fact it’s a simple business transaction. You wave down a car, the driver names a price (or doesn’t), you accept (or don’t), and away you go.

Hitch hiking is a lot like riding a motorbike in that the adventure and excitement shifts from occurring in Point A and Point B, to getting from Point A to Point B. I’ve found there are true few travel moments as exhilarating as when after standing on the roadside for hours on end a speeding car finally slows down and pulls to a stop at your feet. And it’s from those proverbial fork-in-the-road moments (Do I get in or do I not?), that the stuff of travel fiction is born.

I’d been walking in circles and kicking rocks for an hour overlooking Onguday. Half a dozen cars had passed without as much as a tapping of the brakes. It was a little after noon and I had good reason to feel optimistic given the short distance to travel (100km) and the many daylight hours remaining. From my position I could see any car approaching from at least two kilometers away, so when the occasional vehicle did crest that far ridge I made ready. I’ve been utilizing the same technique for nearly a decade now: as the oncoming target nears I bring my waving right hand together with my left to form a prayer sign at the last moment. If it doesn’t score a sympathetic lift it always illicit a smile. I pulled this exact move when a large SUV flew at warp speed. Back to the horizon my eyes went. A minute later however the same SUV slowly crept past me going the opposite direction and pulled a quick U-turn. Jackpot!

When the passenger side window lowered I smiled and said “Ya nye gavaru pa Ruski. Ya iz America. Tourista. Aktash?” “That’s OK, you don’t need to speak Russian,” came the reply from the back seat in clear English. With that I found myself sitting shotgun in a fully packed Nissan SUV heading south with five early-twentysomething university students from Tomsk. All spoke clear English and we hit it off immediately. I explained my journey through Asia and they explained their work abroad experience in Alabama!?! As we gunned our way over the Chike-Taman Pass with Russian music blasting and laughs being traded, I knew something great was taking shape.

The five friends had driven ten hours from Tomsk to meet one of their parents at a camping site just north of my intended destination. After a few detours including a roadside lunch break, we eventually rolled into camp. Camp sat just off the road next to a picturesque and gushing river on the valley floor, flanked by towering mountain walls on either side. The campsite contained some thirty middle-age Russian adults, a dozen SUVs, dozens of tents, and a volleyball net. It was upscale Russian camping at its finest. I followed sheepishly behind the others as we walked into camp and were warmly embraced by the aging crowd. About that time Andre, the driver and youngest of the group, turned to me and said “You are thinking what to do next, yes?” I said yes and he extended the invitation to stay the night in camp. Russian hospitality, gotta love it.

“But I’ll likely freeze to death tonight in there…”

The afternoon and evening played out beautifully. We hiked up an adjacent mountain slope and enjoyed tea on its summit. We tossed around the frisbee, kicked around the football, and set up two tents. Despite helping erect them, I had no intentions of actually sleeping in them. I planned to ultimately sleep in the car as the combination of my paper thin sleeping bag and overnight Siberian temperatures would almost certainly guarantee I expired before dawn. Around 7pm the rain began to fall and we all huddled underneath the circus-like tent and ate a dinner of seasoned rice and cauliflower. Before long a guitar appeared and the surreal brilliance of the whole affair reached on a new high.

After dark the older generation retreated to their tents and out came the case of Russian beer I’d noticed in the back of Andre’s car. Sitting round the campfire with the heavens pouring down and a Russian girl strumming Bob Dylan, layered under four shirts, two pair of pants, three pair of socks, my jacket and wool hat, I closed my eyes and enjoyed one of those remember-this-feeling moments. Surreal and then some. By the time the brew dried up it was after midnight and every article of damp clothing on me smelled of burning wood. I expressed my intent to sleep in the car from fear of my inadequate sleeping bag, but everyone was adamant I’d be significantly warmer in the four person tent. I finally acquiesced and after running through the rain to retrieve my bag from the car I ducked into a four person tent alongside a river in Siberia next to three Russians. They lied. It was cold.

At dawn the following morning, May 10^th, I awoke to silence. No rain. I emerged from the tent to find camp already buzzing with activity and blue skies in every direction. I threw up my arms in a great stretch and yelled “Rusgoliaaaaaa!” to everyone’s delight. My destination that day was my final stop in Russia, the desolate outpost town of Kosh Agach, several hundred kilometers to the south. After helping pack their car and just before goodbyes, Andre’s older sister Ingrid informed me that their father could give me a lift halfway to Kosh Agach. Gold! Two lifts, one nights lodging, and an epic story to boot…may have been my best hitch ever.

(Q: How many Russian can you fit atop a tiny rock?)

(SBO slept here. It was cold.)

With their campsite completely packed away, the band of weekend camping nomads pulled back onto M52 heading southbound in a caravan of SUVs. I sat giddily in shotgun of Andre’s father’s Pathfinder and we exchanged not a word. The scenery along the bottom half of the Altai Republic proved to be the most dramatic. Blue skies framed picturesque snowcapped peaks and vast steppes filled with wild horses. After an hour the caravan pulled over at a turn off in the road next to a decaying village. From here I was on my own, so I walked to the far side of town and set up my pack. Once situated I began to reflect. Given the prior day’s events, the dramatic surroundings, and my current predicament I will always fondly recall standing by that roadside in Nowhere, Russia waiting for a lift as one of the most unbelievably surreal moments of not only this journey but my life. Impossible to describe the feeling.

A bit after 1pm I scored a final lift all the way to Kosh Agach from Alexi, a friendly Russian father of two who enjoyed dance music and driving fast on familiar roads. I had previously read that the final stretch of M52 into Kosh Agach was like “arriving at the end of the Earth.” Usually such travel descriptions fall short of delivering, but this one did justice. As the kilometers rapidly ticked off the mountain scenery gave way to an arid, rocky, high desert landscape devoid of vegetation. Forget the Earth, I’d landed on Mars. When Kosh Agach finally rose out of the horizon like a desert oasis, I was overcome by a warm feeling of accomplishment and security. I’d done it. I’d passed through Russia unscathed and in the process written another chapter filled with great and unexpected memories.

Alexi dropped me at the only hotel in town and we shook hands. I say hotel but the Hotel Tranzit was more like a neglected and dilapidated off-campus college frat house. The floors sagged and the wallpaper peeled. The owner and his family were incredibly friendly, but his hotel will go down as one of the grossest in my Asian rolodex. I took a hot (thank God) shower and set off on foot to eat and explore this most peculiar Wild West town. More Kazakh influenced than Russian and more Muslim than Catholic, Kosh Agach truly felt like the end of the Earth. I can honestly say that in no other single location in Asia have I felt further from home than in Kosh Agach. By early evening I made my way to the southern edge of town, to the place where the timber shacks end and the empty steppe begins. I stood there for a long while looking south at the mountains and the gateway to my last chapter: Mongolia.

(Kosh Agach rising in the distance)

(Five star Hotel Tranzit)

(Lenin: Every towns got one…)

Mongolia: In Through the Backdoor

By 9am on Tuesday morning May 11^th I’d secured my transportation in the local market from Kosh Agach to the Mongolian city of Olgii, in an Asian version of a beat-up CJ7 for 400 rubles ($13usd). I had all my Russian paper work in order and felt confident the border crossing would go down smoothly. The rarely used western entrance into Mongolia was a border crossing I’d dreamt of since watching Boorman and McGregor ride through the roughly 30km of No Man’s Land that separates Russia from Mongolia. I just always thought it’d be incredible to stamp out of Russia and ride down a desolate road that calls no country home.

The paved road to the Russian border took about an hour to cross as the jeep didn’t go over 40kmph. I know this because despite the jeep’s broken speedometer our pace was all too reminiscent of my speed across India. Seated in the middle back seat with camera in lap, I enjoyed a near perfect vantage point to film as much of our two border crossings as possible without asking for trouble. Russian immigration went as smooth as I could have hoped and after an hour we were back in the car waiting at a gate to be released into the buffer zone.

(The proud owner of a certain yellow Defender 90 would have been proud)

The moment we left Russia proper I giant smile landed on my face. I was out! With that the cheery Mongolian sitting shotgun turned and yelled “Welcome to Mongolia!” into my lens. It was perfect. After twenty minutes of riding on smooth, paved asphalt we arrived at a guard house, where on the other side the asphalt instantly disintegrated into a muddy dirt track. Without missing a beat our driver gunned the jeep and my courtship with the legendary tracks of Mongolia officially commenced.

Passing through Mongolian immigration was like ordering drive thru at Roy’s. I walked in one door, filled out nine simple boxes on an immigration card, handed it to someone standing behind a nearby podium, received a stamp in my passport, and walked out another door. Total cost: $0.00usd. Total time: 5 minutes. May Mongolia be a beacon to the nations of the world…

Back in the jeep our first stop was a tiny nearby shack, just before the dirt track snaked back into oblivion. Inside I enjoyed one of my best plates of food of Asia; a steaming pile of mutton filled dumplings called buuz, a classic staple in Kazakhstan and central Asia. So incredibly good.

The three hour ride to the city of Olgii was pure enjoyment. The dirt tracks weaving this way and that in the shifting rocky desert was exactly what I’d pictured. On the horizon the occasional cloud of racing sand marked an oncoming vehicle. When two tracker trailers come into view kicking up a minor sandstorm of dust, I remember thinking how much the scene resembled the opening of Star Wars as the jawa’s transport vehicle inched across the dunes.

We eventually arrived in Olgii and the friendly guys dropped me off at one of the three lodging options in town. I quickly found a bank and exchanged a B. Franklin note I’d been holding expressly for the occasion. With a hundred and forty three thousand Mongolian togrog in my wallet I found perhaps my last clean bed for awhile and some very entertained hotel staff.

(Somewhere between Russia and Mongolia)

(Got Gold?)

(Get Buuz?)

(‘Highway’ to Olgii)

Well that’s it people. Six wild days and six unforgettable resting places: an overnight Russian train car, Finding Nemo bed sheets in Gorno, ultra basic accommodations in Onguday, a riverside tent in Chibit, a dilapidated crash pad in Kosh Agach, and finally a red-carpeted Soviet hotel room in Olgii, Mongolia. Certainly a week to remember, and as today marks four weeks to go I intend to make it a month to remember…

So what did I ultimately learn in Russia?

Attractive legs reside in attractive university towns, and seldom elsewhere.

Hard earned paperwork ultimately finds its way to the garbage bin.

A Trans-Siberian railroad journey would certainly be a clean one.

The Old West is alive and well in central Altai.

The end of the Earth can be found at a place called Kosh Agach.

Russians aren’t so scary after all.

Dear Mother Russia,

Thank you for the memories & thank you for not killing me.

From Russia With Love,

SBO

What I Learned In Russia Today (Part I)…

(Composed in the air en route to Russia – 11:00am May 3^rd)

It’s Technically All Downhill

My bags fully packed and four hours till departure, I sat on my bed across from Marc and Eddie. It was one of those bittersweet moments where the inevitable goodbye hangs in the air. We spoke of the week we had had and the pleasure of each other’s company. Eddie asked where my remaining time would take me. “Novosibirsk south into western Mongolia, east to Ulaanbaatar, then south again to Beijing. I guess it’s technically all downhill from here,” I replied. We laughed at the downhill part and as the words hung in the air I kind of grinned. It was in fact true. From Novo it’s all downhill, it’s all south. In fact it’s all Eastbound and Down (Kenny Powers should join me on this final stretch). With that I stood up and the goodbyes commenced. A handshake to Eddie and a hug to Marc. We wished each other happy, prosperous, and long lives. I raised my camera and walked out of room #50. 

Only twice in my life have I intentionally spent the night on an airport terminal bench, and if I ever have to do it again I hope it’s as comfortable as last night in Kazakhstan’s Astana International Airport. Around 1 o’clock I brushed my teeth, chained my bag to my bench, and set the alarm for 7am. As that pretty much brings me up to present, allow me to ramble…

As anyone who knows me well can attest, I’m a pretty sentimental guy. I tell people I love them when sober and suffer the occasional off-season allergy attack right at the moment when close friend walk down the aisle. It also means I get retrospective more often than I probably should. Standing in line on the sunny morning tarmac not two hours, about to take my final step on Kazakh soil, I felt for the first time that this great journey was nearing its conclusion. Even as the hourglass got bottom heavy with countries, I always knew there’d be central Asia and Mongolia to round things out. And now, with exactly thirty-eight day remaining, there is but one giant swathe of Asia to cross. And I truly feel like I’m running down the home stretch, like I’m running down hill. This feeling stems in no small part from the fact that I am literally on the home stretch, but more so from the personal reflections I find myself routinely having on the war chest of experiences accumulated in such a short chunk of life. What’s nine months? In the grand scheme of things nine months is nothing; a hockey season, a pregnancy. But when I reflect back on all that’s transpired, the twists & turns, the highs & lows, the let downs & surprises, I realize I’ve already far exceeded any expectations and fulfilled all aspirations. That’s a feeling which means everything that happens in Russia and Mongolia is nothing more than extra gravy.

It hit me while savoring my final moment on the Kazakh tarmac this morning. It hit me while I repeated the same action and felt the same emotion as on a Vietnamese, Thai, and Nepalese tarmac months earlier. Each time it’s the same…one final toe on the ground to savor the place you come to know…one final breath of foreign air to celebrate the laughter you shared. Then you duck your head into the cabin to start the whole process over again in a new place with new land, new air, and new people.

What ultimately hit me was the comfort that regardless how these next 38 days play out in numbers 13 and 14 I’m already going to be smiling for years to come at how it went down over the first 234 in numbers 1 thru 12.

 

(Remember kids.) 

(So long KZ…)

 (…Greetings RU)

……………………

  

(Composed on the ground in Tomsk – 9:00pm May 4^rd)

The Great Discovery of the Russian Leg

DISCLAIMER: I’m throwing the word Russian around here in the most general of terms. My observations thus far on the world’s largest country are through the perspective of a provincial Siberian city. You might as well substitute the word Tomsk for Russia, or else it’s like reading a single page of War & Peace and waxing on about the entire novel….or spending 72 hours in Daytona and slamming the whole of America. That said…

Russian women are beautiful.

Russian women have attractive faces.

Russian women have remarkably long legs.

Russian women adhere to a strict uniform of knee-high boots, heels, thigh-high mini-skirts & tight jeans.

If the women of Russia were nuclear warheads the Cold War would have been lost decades ago.

I was undoubtedly a tourist today. I walked out of the Hotel Sputnik (true story) into a brilliant blue, albeit chilly, late Tuesday morning with nothing but a jacket, sunglasses, and camera (not even pants). With a map in one pocket and my crib notes of basic Russian tongue in the other, I set off on foot to see what this little country was all about. What I found quickly and unexpectedly put me on my ass. The women. Not since a weekend in New York or a late Sunday afternoon on the Purple Patio have I witnessed such an overwhelming collection of leggy bombshells. And they’re everywhere! I equate my experience today to taking a Russian male to America and dropping him on Franklin Street in Chapel Hill without any warning of what he might find.

I was cautiously expecting good things from the city of Tomsk based on Lonely Planet’s write up, which is why I grabbed an immediate five hour bus after landing in dreary industrial Novosibirsk. The log cabin-style wooden homes, numerous cathedrals, and meandering Tom River do give Tomsk a warm and inviting appeal, but so far the star attraction has been the plethora of bangs-sporting beauties that seem to float down every street and alleyway. All embellishment aside, every fifth or sixth Russian female strutting these streets wears high-heel boots and flashes a good 6” of skin above the knee cap. And their faces…stunning. From the neck up they all look like the tall blonde baddie from the original Beverly Hills Cop II. Axel Foley would indeed enjoy himself here.

Around 7pm I made my way to the train station where I proudly managed to purchase a ticket to Barnaul. I sat down to decipher my purchase when in walked an early twenties 6’1” knockout rocking jet black short hair, boots, and a black mini skirt not more than a foot long (I know because I measured). In a day of discoveries, she was Tut’s Tomb. I was pleasantly overwhelmed but completely perplexed. All the flesh wouldn’t be so surprising if not for two things: 1). The fact there are no leaves on the trees and chunks of ice still float down the Tom River. Spring is just beginning to rear its head, yet it’s still cold. The trees haven’t begun to bud, the grass is still brown, and a jacket is mandatory. Yet despite this the femme fatales of Tomsk, bless their red little Russian hearts, don’t seem to mind. You know who else doesn’t seem to mind? Me. 2). The fact I’m in western Siberia in the largest country in the world. I mean this isn’t Moscow or St. Petersburg or some European Russian town. This is Siberia. What are the chances of hitting this kind of pay dirt on my first day out? Either Tomsk is an anomaly or Russia might just have the hottest population on Earth.

Either way I look forward to getting to the bottom of this leggy mystery.

(Mickey Rourke?)

……………………

 

(Composed on the ground in Tomsk – 8:00pm May 5^rd)

!Viva La Puebla! 

Russia scared me from the first moment I laid eyes on it. Breaking through the clouds, the grimness of industrial Novosibirsk from 3,000ft put the fear of God in me. What had I really gotten myself into here? I remember thinking how different I felt flying into Shanghai. I felt a physical superiority to the Chinese which put me at ease from the start. Russia was different though. These people drank vodka, endured endless winter, carried knives, and trained Ivan Drago. The stern immigration officer who boarded and inspected our plane, along with three drug dogs that sniffed my carry on, didn’t help my pulse. So I took a breath and set off to tackle my slightly intimidating To Do list:

• Day 1: Clear immigration, locate bus station, endure five hour bus to Tomsk, secure lodging, and shower. Check, check, check, check, check (twice).
• Day 2: Register visa, secure currency, purchase onward train ticket, secure onward lodging, explore city. Check, check, check, check, check.  
• Day 3: Observe & engage Cold War foe, enjoy authentic Russian meal, solve leggy mystery…

Observe & engage Cold War foe…

• There is a stark contrast on the streets between what I’ll call New Russia and the Soviet Hangover. You have the designer sunglass, spandex legging, and makeup wearing youth on one side, and the hardened faced, conservatively dressed, aging ex-Soviet population on the other. Did I say stark? Stark.

 

• They like their paperwork. I’ve had to stay in two separate hotels already and between registration at both and payment receipts I may have to invest in a Trapper Keeper. 
• The crone at the bottle shop apparently doesn’t celebrate Cinco de Mayo and didn’t think it humorous when I substituted Yo soy Americano, no hablao Ruski for Ya iz America, ya nyet gavaryu pa Ruski. (Christ, I’m like tri-lingual and stuff). I’m yet to find humor or a smile in the older generation.  

Enjoy authentic Russian meal…

I found a gem of a restaurant and after fumbling with the menu scored a huge food victory:

• “Herring under a fur coat” – herring, boiled potato, carrot, beet, egg, onion, lettuce
• Borsch – beef soup with sour cream
• Pelmeni – ravioli dumplings with pork and mushroom

Solve leggy mystery…

I’m not at the bottom of this yet but its clear Tomsk suffers from the Vermont Syndrome. Despite being a tad early and a tad too cold to sensibly embrace spring, you just do because they’ve been trapped inside an Arctic winter since October. As the southeast Asian motto goes…”Russia and Vermont…same same…but different.”

Are the mini-skirts, boots, and heels just a Tuesday thing or is there some sort of promotion? Are the legs bused in daily from some nearby camp or do they live here? Is the rest of Russia like this? Since I can’t ask questions in their native tongue, I did what D. Rose would do and set out first to document this phenomenon. I found a vantage point and set up my lens, like a sniper in bell tower. Some might call it perverted, but I like to call it filmmaking with an eye for talent.

Oh my, what will I learn tomorrow in a 3^rd class overnight Russian train car?

Siberia Bound

Tonight I board an 8pm flight to the Kazakhstan capital of Astana where I’ll find a comfy bench  and spend the night before my Monday morning flight to Novosibirsk, Russia.

To Russia…

I’m going to be perfectly honest and say that Russia intimidates the hell out of me in a way no other country has. I expect those I interact with to be remarkably unforgiving of my lack of communication skills, and as a result I expect more hardship (financially and stress related) than in any other country I’ve visited.

My time in Russia will be brief. Following my arrival into Novosibirsk I intend to travel south into the Altai Republic before acquiring the necessary paperwork to cross into western Mongolia. Russia will be far and away the most expensive country of my journey and as such I intend to travel through it expeditiously. Given my research thus far I’m optimistic that an exit into Mongolia is feasible as early as the 10^th of May. From there it’s through the empty expanse of western Mongolia to the central capital of Ulaanbaatar, before hitching a train to Beijing. I have no doubt this final leg will be nothing short of mind blowing.

http://maps.google.com/maps/ms?ie=UTF8&hl=en&msa=0&ll=26.588527,104.414063&spn=102.639217,228.339844&z=3&msid=113857108228539669434.000485982fcb6c6e75418

A very short Russian visit indeed, but a necessary one sure to be riddled with adversity, blood red carpets, & the occasional vodka toast. Final Exam Week begins tomorrow. I think I’m ready. I hope I’m ready. Russia, here goes…

Central Asia

This is it. This is the region. This is the place. From Turkey to Tehran to Turkmenistan. This is the future and I can say without hesitation I shall return to central Asia. From my brief time in Kazakhstan and through lengthy conversations with Marc and now Eddie (another traveler over-landing from Europe to Pakistan) I’ve come to realize that central Asia truly is the ticket.

The travelers you come across are a different breed than those of Southeast Asia or the subcontinent. They’re older, more sophisticated, and in search of something entirely unique from their travels. But hell let’s face it, you have to be wired just a tad different from the rest to choose Turkmenistan as your holiday destination. But in reality most travelers to the region aren’t here for a cushy and packaged adventure holiday. They’re here as part of something greater, be it a solo overland journey from Europe or a month long tour of headline grabbing countries that would fall into the ‘evil’ bucket in the eyes of the West. Any way you cut it these are my kind of people and my kind of travelers: the well organized, calculating risk taker eager to explore the tough to access and remote corners of exotic central Asia. This region and those that visit it fit me like a glove.

Tonight is my second to last night in central Asia. When it’s all said and done I will have spent eighteen wonderful days in southern Kazakhstan and will be truly sad to leave. The people, the land, the culture, and the hospitality have far exceeded my expectations, yet I leave knowing I’ve only just scratched the surface of central Asia’s brilliance. If time allowed I’d be crossing into Uzbekistan and Tajikistan with Marc Fletcher just as sure as the sun will rise tomorrow.

Central Asia is a whole other project for a whole other time, yet the spark of interest will always trace back to my introduction and the glorious nation of Kazakhstan. I can’t emphasize enough what an absolute pleasure it’s been to experience the people of this fine nation and to develop the meaningful relationships I have with the likeminded travelers who are drawn to it.

Take my word, nothing will disappoint you about a visit to the Glooorious Naaation of Kazakhstan.