Horse Riding in Terelj National Park

UB Guest House organised a trip to Terelj National Park for us where we would stay 2 nights in a Ger camp with a Mongolian family and go horse riding during the day. The Ger camp was about 1.5 hours from Ulan Bator and towards the end of the journey the roads were non existent.

Our Ger Camp

The first day we went for a 3 hour hike up the mountain near where we were staying. The sun was setting as we were on our way down so we got the opportunity to take some photos of the Mongolian landscape.

Sunset in Terelj

We were staying with a Mongolian family who live in a ger in Terelj all year. We are all of our meals with them and kept our Ger heated and Ghana (14 year old boy) took us horse riding. We were surprised to see that they had a large TV and a computer in their Ger. We  had all assumed because they lived in a ger they would not have a TV or a computer. Not only that but every evening after dinner Ghana played counter strike and mortal kombat on the computer.<

TV in a tent

On our second day we went horse riding to "Turtle Rock" which as you can probably guess is a rock that looks like a turtle. This reminded me of some of the attractions at the Craggy Island fair in Father Ted. Ghana was only 14 but he was skilled at horse riding, he didn't use a saddle and had a big stick that he used to control his horse and ours too. He only had a few words of English but he still managed to communicate with us quite well using hand gestures and laughing.

Ghana our Mongolian Guide

At one point he was explaining that my horse was very good at jumping so we convinced him to show us so I switched horses with him for a few minutes. I didn't actually ride his horse as it didn't have a saddle but I stood and watched :)

Ghana doing some tricks

We were horse riding for about one hour when Martins horse decided he needed a rest and he just sat down without warning. Ghana said he the horse was tired and switched Martin to his horse.

Martin is too heavy for his horse...

We had been warned by the staff at UB Guest House that it was going to be very cold so we had our fur hats, gloves and not for walking boots. I wore almost all of the clothes that I had took with me on the trip and it worked, I wasn't cold. I couldn't move very well but I wasn't cold.

Horse Riding in Mongolia

There were lots of dogs around the camp who were always trying to get into our tent as they new it was warm. 

Dogs sleeping outside our Ger

Ghana told me that they were not dogs but infact wolves. Well he said "not dog, wolf" a few times and then showed me the dogs teeth.

Not Dog, Wolf.

 Here is a picture from our last night in the Ger with Ghana and his parents.

Group Picture

 

Ulan Bator and the blackmarket

For the train journey from Irkutsk to Ulan Bator we were sharing with two Mongolians, a business man and a student. We spend most of our time talking, listening to music and reading. They were very interested in our trip and what we had planned. They were also very helpful with advice on Ulan Bator and what we should and shouldn't do. They were very worried that we were arriving in UB and that we didn't know anyone there and didn't have any accommodation booked. The guy said he would take us to the guest house that we were planning on staying at and he also offered to meet us the following day to bring us to the black market to buy warm clothes. They were very worried that we were not well prepared for the cold!


It was -37 when we arrived in Ulan Bator and the coldest temperature I had experienced so far on the trip.  Luckily the owner of the hostel we were planning on staying at was on the platform waiting to see if there were any tourists on the train so she took us directly to the hostel by car.


Soon after we arrived at the hostel we were joined by 4 swedish guys (Oskar, Dr. Albin, Robin, Jakob) and a dutch girl (Kim).

New friends in Ulan Bator

We decided to walk to a monastery that was nearby, but by the time we got there we were all freezing even though we were well dressed.

Early morning outside the monestary

We went back to the hostel pretty quickly and put on all of our clothes and headed for the black market to buy some warm clothes. We were planning on camping for 2 nights in a ger tent in the national park so we would need warm clothes for that.


The hostel owner suggested we take a taxi to and from the black Market. He wrote two notes for us explained where we wanted to go and how much we were willing to pay to get there and said to get driver to agree before we got into the car. The price was 2,500 Tugrigs which is €1.25. We couldn't see any taxis on the street or in traffic but eventually a car stopped for us. Turns out they don't really have taxis as we know them instead random people will stop and you pay them as you would a real taxi. There were 5 of us but that didn't seem to bother him so he took us to the market.

Entrance to the blackmarket

At the black market we bought some fur hats and gloves. They sold everything you could think of at the market from camels to puma runners to socks.

The BlackMarket in Ulan Bator

We were looking for boots also and eventually we found some things that looked like outer socks. Lots of people are the market stalls were wearing them so we decided to buy them. The stall owner was very excited and happy when we were buying them and tried his best to speak to us with his limited English.

Fur hats, gloves and boots.

We were the only tourists at the market but once we started wearing the boots we became very popular. As we walked around people were smiling at us and saying hello and telling their friends to look at us. Anyone who had English spoke to us and most asked about the boots. Eventually we realised that we were doing some funny by wearing these boots but we didn't understand what. We left the market after about 3 hours and walked for about 10 minutes before getting a "taxi". The hostel owner had advised us to do this as he said the taxis around the market would try to rip us off.

The smiling and staring continued as we walked down the street. At one point some guy stopped in traffic let his window down and said "they are not for walking boots", started laughing and drove away.

Stupid tourists and their not for walking boots

When we got back to the hostel the staff there thought our boots were very funny and confirmed that they are not meant for walking, instead you wear them if you are going to be standing in one place for a long period of time, such as if you were manning a stall at a market.....

Leaving Olkhon and lake baikal almost frozen

We left Olkhon on Friday morning, as it was bright out we could see some of the island as we traveled to the ferry. We got there early, well maybe not as we didnt know what time the ferry was leaving at but we had to wait for about 30 minutes before we got on the ferry.

It wasn't too bad as we were entertained by some locals who were trying to take a boat from the lake. They had their boat trailer in the water and the boat mounted on it but they could not get the trailer out of the lake. The edge of the lake was frozen but not strong enough to hold the weird of their van so they had the boat trailer tied to the van by a long rope. The van appeared to have two speeds, full speed or stop. So he'd go full speed and the boat trailer would crash into the ice at the edge of the lake but it wouldn't get to the shore. This continued until the boat engine fell into the lake. I didn't take any photos as I figured they wouldn't be too happy about that.

Martin and I were saying to each other that they should get two planks of wood and use them as ramps to get the wheels of the trailer out of the ice. Eventually someone of them thought similar and arrived with two planks of wood but rather then use them as ramps he used them as wedges and tried to lift the trailer using them. It looked quite funny but after a few attempts it did work. Once the boat was out they celebrated with Vodka and then came over to start the ferry and take us to the mainland.

View from the boat of the frozen lake

The lake had frozen considerably over the past few days so I took a short video of the ice breaking as we traveled across the lake but I can't upload it because of this proxy..

More frozen lake

Shaman Rock on Olkhon

Olkhon is the third-largest lake-bound island in the world. We were staying in Khuzhir, a small village on the western coast. They don't have running water but they do have electricity which they only got in recent years....

Khuzhir on Olkhon Island

There were no tours and the mountain bike hire guy was on holidays so we had to walk everywhere. This meant we were restricted in what we could do. Khuzhir is closed to Shaman rock so we went in that direction. We soon discovered that we had a pack of dogs following us. They were quite friendly and kept us company for the day.

One of the dogs

 More dogs

We climbed up Shaman rock, well Martin did, I gave up after about 20 minutes and took some pictures instead. If you look closely at the following picture you can see martin at the summit.

Shaman Rock on Olkhon Island

After about 4 hours we went back to the village to see if we could find a Starbucks, surprisingly they didn't have one but they had a coffee shop which like everything else was closed for winter.

Cafe on Olkhon Island is closed for Winter

We inquired about Internet access and wifi also but it turns out that was closed for Winter too. We thought it was very funny so when I decided to start a blog I thought it was a suitable name. Finally here is one of my favorite photos from Olkhon island.

View of Lake Baikal

I'm writing this post from China where youtube, blogger, facebook and so on are all blocked. I'm using a proxy to access them but its painfully slow so I'm only using small versions of the photos as the upload is very very very very slow via the proxy.

A guided tour without a tour guide

Here is how the conversation went when we were checking into the guesthouse on Olkhon Island.

Martin - Do you have any rooms available?
Guest House - Yes
...
...
...
Me - Are there any other tourists here?
Guest House - Yesterday 11 guests, today just you.
...
...
...
Guest House - Would you like to go on excursions?
Martin - Yes
Me - What are the excursions?
Guest House - There is one excursion, a guided tour of the island. You go in a bus around the island with a guide and you visit scenic areas and have a picnic before you return in the evening.
Me & Martin - Sounds good we'll do it.
Guest House -  there is no tour guide in winter
Me - thats OK we'll still do it
Guest House - I book it for you for tomorrow?
Me & Martin - Yes


We went to our room. 5 minutes later there is a knock on the door and the lady comes in to explain that there is no excursion as there is too much snow.

Olkhon Island and gold teeth

The guy in the hostel arranged for us to be collected on Wednesday morning to go to Olkhon Island and said that we could return on Friday. He said his brother was the bus driver. It was a six hour bus journey in a mini bus. The mini bus was full and as usual we were the only tourists who spoke English. There was ice in the inside of the windows so we couldn't see out the side windows.

View from the bus

About 2 hours into it the mini bus started struggling. Eventually we stopped at a roadside restaurant and the guys started working on fixing the mini bus. The got it fixed but now the accelerator was  controlled by a belt that was coming out from under the dashboard, they had also re-arranged the seats in the mini bus so some guy could help the driver with the new modified accelerator. The quality of the roads soon deteriorated and so did visibility.

No more roads

We made it to the ferry with some time to spare. I spent the first part of the journey sitting in a small room on the ferry but then decided to go up on deck. It was snowing heavily and a Russian guy who appeared to have something to do with the ferry was talking to us. He didn't have any English and didn't seem to get that we couldn't understand him. He kept talking, we kept laughing. This continued for the duration of the ferry trip. He had more visible gold teeth than he had real teeth.

Russian guy on the ferry

We got to Olkhon Island safely and there were 2 mini buses waiting for us.

View of Olkhon as we arrived

We didn't have any accomodation booked but we knew of a guest house so we told the mini bus guys to bring us there. Well we didn't actually tell them, we got on the bus and after a half hour of driving they started talking to us in Russian so we said "Nikatas" which is the name of the place that we were expecting to stay. Eventually they stopped the bus and told us to get off and we were at the guest house...

Listvyanka and a picnic on a frozen beach

The plan was to spend 1 night in Irkutsk then go to Olkhon Island but the guy in the hostel said we couldn't go. I never quite figured out why as his English wasn't great but he said we could go on the Wednesday. We decided to take a bus to Listvyanka which is a small village on the shore of lake baikal. The common trend with this trip of no one speaking English and it being very cold continued in Listvyanka. There were some guys working on some ice sculptures which were pretty impressive. We asked them to we take their picture and they didn't seem to mind.

Ice Sculptures

Listvyanka is quite a scenic village with some great views of lake baikal. It felt a bit strange to be walking along a frozen beach in the extreme cold.

Listvyanka

We walked through the village and followed the road up a hill. About half way up we decided to turn back as we didn't know where we were going and also Martin couldn't take the cold anymore. There were 3 people walking in front of us and once we turned around they started shouting at us in Russian (another common theme of this trip). At first we didn't think they were talking to us but then the were running after us and calling us. So we stopped and explained we didn't speak Russian and couldn't understand them. Eventually we figured out that they didn't want us to turn back and that we should follow them and that we would be able to take pictures. They were doing hand gestures to explain that we could take good photos if we went to some cliff. So we decided to follow them.

Walking around Listvyanka

One of them explained that she was from the Ukraine and that she was a train conductor on the train from Moscow to Ulan Bator. She did this by making train noises and gestures and saying the word conductor. We talked with them as best we could and followed them to another beach with a cliff and great views of the lake.

Lake Baikal

Once we got there we took some photos and they took photos and got us to take photos of them. Then they took out a blanket and put it on the frozen beach. They had a picnic basket with them, bread, meat, cheese, salad, a flash of tea, cups, plates, vodka and so on. Within a few minutes they had given us tea, vodka and bread with ham and cheese. We didn't have much choice in the matter, it was impossible to say no.

Food and drink on the beach

After more photos and more eating/drinking we explained that we had to go as we were too cold. We thanked them and took their picture before we left.

Our Ukrainian friends having a picnic on a frozen beach

hostel in Irkutsk

The hostel in Irkutsk wasn't really a hostel it was more like a weird student house. The people who lived the (students) had put bunk beds in their rooms and they slept on the sofa. Well one guy would sleep on the sofa and the other guy would stay up all night studying or using the computer. We were the only guests there for the duration of our stay. They were very easy going, internet was free as was laundry which was good. Their bathroom was a little weird also, see the picture below. Do you notice something is missing?

 The lock on their bathroom door was weird also, weird because you locked it you couldn't get it open. But it was OK as they had a helpful note stuck to the wall to help you get out....

Irkutsk

The 4 days on the train passed pretty quickly and gave us time to relax, catch up on sleep, eat, talk and read. The scenery as we passed through siberia was great especially as everything was covered in snow. Although much of the time it was dark or foggy so visibility was not always great. We arrived in Irkutsk at 5am, it was -25 and it was a bit of a shock after spending 4 days on the train with 2 or 3 minutes stops every so often.

A sign showing the temperature outside the train station

The landscape, the people, the cars, the trams, everything was different than what I had encountered so far on the trip. Here are some pictures from my first day in Irkutsk.

The street outside the train station.

The train station in Irkutsk is on the opposite side of the river to the city center so we had to take a tram to get to the hostel. We had booked the hostel online and chose it as it was centrally located and did not charge for laundry, Internet access or linen.

The tram that we took to our hostel in Irkutsk

Irkutsk has a mixture of old style buildings and modern buildings. Some of the old wooden buildings are quite weird...

Some of the old wooden building in Irkutsk

Buying more Russian train tickets...

The first leg of the trans-siberian trip was from Moscow to Irkutsk. Martin and I decided to travel together for this part of the trip so we went to the station to buy our train tickets the day before we wanted to leave. This time around we know the train number that we wanted and the time it was leaving so using the guide book I wrote instructions in Russian. Things were a little more serious this time around as the train ticket was going to cost around €250 as we were buying a 2nd class ticket for  a 4 day day train trip. We couldn't afford any mistakes.


We queued for about 20 minutes at the station and eventually got served. As expected the lady at the ticket desk did not have any English. She understood my Russian note and took our passports and then showed us the amount we had to pay on a calculator. The people in the queue behind us were very interested in what we were doing and were looking over my shoulder most of the time. We found this a bit frustrating when we were counting our money to pay. Everything appeared to go well with the ticket purchase and she returned out passports and was stapling out tickets together. At this point Martin commented on how he was relieved that it had went so well. About 10 seconds later the ticket lady started talking to us in Russian and making hand gestures that looked like she was sleeping. We said that we didn't understand but she just repeated it again and again. The the person next in the queue started trying talking to us in Russian, she was trying to explain it to use as well but in a more friendly tone. Then the next person in the queue started too and eventually there were 5 people talking in Russian to us and the ticket lady shouting at us. This went on for about 30 seconds although he seemed like much longer, eventually some lady who was in another queue shouted over at us that they were telling us that they had included the price of our bed linen in our ticket so we would not have to pay for it on the train. We said OK and the ticket lady gave us our tickets. We checked them using the guidebook ticket reference and everything was in order.


Our train was at 11pm so we had a look around the station and the tracks so we'd know where we had to go the following day. We found the marker that indicates the start of the trans-siberian railway.

The start of the Trans Siberian Railway

Red Square and St Basil's Cathedral in Moscow

I was not expecting so many Christmas decorations and Christmas lights in Moscow. Here are some pictures of St Basils Cathedral and Red Square in Moscow.

St Basil's Cathedral

Red Square

Ice Rink on Red Square

Red Square with St Basil's Cathedral in the background.

Buying a Russian train ticket when no one speaks English and you don't speak Russian

Originally my intention was to travel by 2nd class train but after talking to other people in the hostel I decided to buy a third class ticket for the overnight trip from St Petersburg to Moscow. I went to the station and bought the ticket myself which is quite difficult to do in Russia as none of the staff at the ticket counters speak English and they are not exactly friendly or helpful.


With the help of a guide book and the hostel staff I was able to write in Russian the type of ticket that I wanted. I went to the station, queued, said in russian that I didn't understand Russian and handed in the page. It all worked fine, she wrote down the amount so I knew how much it and once I agreed and I gave my passport and that was it.

Ordering a Russian train ticket

The guidebook explained how to read a Russian train ticket so I was able to confirm that everything was correct with the ticket. Take a look at the ticket below and you'll see why you needed a guide to read the ticket.

My Russian train ticket