A week with the Kazakhs

From Olgii

$1000 per family. What Kazakhstan is embarking upon is more akin to culture trade than people trade, but regardless, people have a price.

As we descended into the much-anticipated town of Olgii, we entered the capital of the Bayan-Olgii province in far western Mongolia. We were to discover here that the Mongolian we had diligently learnt over the last 6 weeks would cease to be useful.This enclave is 90% Kazakh (also the primary language), predominantly Muslim and allegedly neglected in public funding. We heard that those in Ulaanbaatar will jokingly ask their friends visiting this region when they are going to return to Mongolia.

Mongolian Wrap-Up

Total distance: 1765km

Distance on unsealed roads (of varying quality): 1276km

Nights spent camping: 20

Maximum number of consecutive days camping: 8

Days spent cycling: 31

Maxmum number of consecutive cycle days: 11

Rest days on the road: 8

Average distance per day: 57km

Longest day: 99.7km

Shortest day: 23km (deliberate half rest day)

Maximum speed: 54.2kph (downhill following dogchase)

Most difficult section: Several contenders, see below for details

Longest downhill: 45km after Solongotiyn davaa pass

Largest altitutide displacement in one day: 2060m (1500m to 2560m to 1500m)

Push It! Ulaangom to Olgii

No, not an 80s pop classic, but rather the theme of our last Mongolian leg through the high country of Uvs aimag and into the Kazakh-dominated Bayan-Olgii. Leaving the luxuries of Ulaangom – internet cafes, restaurants, electricity – was harder than we expected. But with a reconstructed rack-fork combination and 37km of tarmac at our disposal, we had every reason to be positive.

On a Dark Desert Highway

From On a dark desert highway

Though we had arrived in Mongolia at a time when the nights were still frozen, the path in front of us now shimmered with heat and there was definitely no cool wind in my hair. We were pushing hard over corrugations and sandy stretches to reach our imagined oasis of a hotel on the shores of a large salt lake – Hyargas Nuur - some 5 days after our last solid bed.

GAStronomy - A campstove cooking tour: Mongolia

What follows is our impression of Mongolian cuisine and recipes for two Traditional Mongolian dishes we cooked by campstove: Banshtai shul (Boiled meat dumplings) and Binh (unleavened bread/pancakes).

Mongolian cuisine

Claiming that Mongolia is a land of gastronomical delights would warrant the odd rebuttal. However, it is possible to find considerable pleasure in a well-cooked traditional Mongolian meal. Whether long stretches of unsealed road cycling confounds this pleasure is debatable.

Forkin Hell!

In retrospect, 1000km on rough corrugated roads was asking for a mechanical issue, especially given the additional 20kg of water and 10kg of food we were taking at some points.Several days ago Ali’s front fork decided enough was enough. One of the eyelets holding the rack to the fork sheared off. Unfortunately, we were in a desert, out of mobile reception and 150km from any decent township. The temporary solution was off-loading the front panniers as much as possible (difficult given said water and food requirements) and using some very heavy duty cable ties to hold things together (thanks Dave).

How to Stealth Camp in Mongolia

What is stealth camping?

Given Mongolia’s vast emptiness and dearth of B&Bs the cycle tourist will need a comfortable tent. When the light starts dimming and legs begin to tire you’ll know it is time to hike out to a secluded site and set up for the night. Going unnoticed from the road to an isolated, safe location, pitching the temporary home and spending the night is Stealth Camping.

Conversation with a Herder

(in which our frequent interactions with nomadic herders, or malchin, by our tent or roadside are coalesced into an one-act play)

Scene 1 (takes place outside vestibule of tent pitched by sand dune on edge of desert)

Herder approaches on motorbike.

Andrew: Sain bainuu! (Are you well?)

Herder: Sain ta sain bainuu? (Fine thanks, and you?)

Andrew: Sain bainaa. (I'm fine) Mal sureg targan tavtaiyuu? (I hope your animals are fattening up nicely?)

Herder smiles and nods heartily.

Herder: So what brings you to this fine but expansive country? (Herder’s responses will henceforth be written in English, for the sake of expediency)

Ali: Bid Avstrali ulsaas irsen! (We're from Australia!)

Herder: (taking the non-sequitur in his stride) Avstri? (Austria?)

Andrew & Ali nod and make agreeing sounds.

The Old Man and the Steppe

What follows is an insight into the little things that we notice atop our bikes. This is for those whom crave some descriptive words inspired by the view from a Surly Long Haul Trucker bicycle traversing Mongolia. And an excuse to post a bunch of great scenery photos.

City life:

We have just reached the first real ‘city’ for 1000km – Ulaangom, the capital of Uvs aimag (province). The luxuries of running water (luke warm between 8-9pm), electricity and our own hotel room are almost too much for us after 9 consecutive nights of camping. This place has pubs, internet cafes and cows walking down the main street – generally enough happening that we aren’t the only show in town. We are relishing the lack of attention. The few dusty towns we pass through have little more than a main street, a few shops and eating places and a few rows of hashas (fenced yards with one or two gers, maybe a jeep or motorbike and a dog).

and on the ninth day they emerge...

Spending one hour in the heat with a swarm of inquisitive boys as we waited for the Narambulag well to open (only 15 min ago!) is not the most difficult thing we've done over the last isolated 490km, but it comes close.
we've just hit a patch of mobile reception following 350km of barren desert. there have only been a few casaualties; the birdlife of hyargus nuur lake who were subjected to some skinny dipping; the 65 litres of water we devoured after sourcing it from wells, rivers and mpuntain springs & ali's front fork  which succumb to several hundred km of corrugated roads.
we've heard the next 200km is some of most difficult, but now that we've stocked up on chocolate, we say bring it.  

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Out of Office Reply

Ali and Andrew will be out of mobile reception for the next 300km.

Since you were roused by the blog delights of gastric lining within traditional khuushuur pancakes we have been subjected to a mixed bag of Mongolian sweets. We summitted a 2600m peak, enjoyed a speedy 45km of downhill, turned into 55km of nasty headwind on the valley floor upon a path which soon degenerated into what would be best described as beach. All this with stunning campsites and a puncture.

We are currently waiting out several days of dust storms outside our hotel room (winds at least 36kph), and a gastroenteritis storm inside Andrew's entrails (nausea waves at least 30minutely).

Cycling Summary
Tariat to Mountain Stealth Camp* (7km from Tsahir) 57km
Mountain Stealth Camp (7km from Tsahir) to Forest Stealth Camp (15km after summit) 53km
Forest Stealth Camp (15km after summit) to Desert Stealth Camp (5km after Ih Uul) 56km
Desert Stealth Camp (5km after Ih Uul) to Tosontsengel  40km (Total in Mongolia 888km)

*'How to play let's find a Stealth Camp' blog piece to feature in the coming weeks.

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Open letter to the Peoples Republic of Mongolia

Dearest Mongolia,

First and foremost, we would like to offer our thanks to you for hosting us over the first 888km of our westward cycle through your vast and timeless interior. After experiencing a good portion of your fine lands, we felt it necessary to draft a letter of our compliments and suggestions. In addition, please accept this as a response to U.Baatar's letter in last week's Post which we felt was utterly misleading.

We are both very grateful for the stunning accommodations. Our tent has felt much at home upon mountain sides overlooking winding rivers and snow capped mountains. You have been very generous with the overnight temperatures and allowed us to enjoy the odd lazy campsite morning. Our arms really don't appreciate the 1km of off-road bike pushing required to reach such secluded spots, yet we realize you do this to make them that little bit more rewarding.

The enjoyment we get from said camp sites, however, is often influenced by the roads we ride on to get there. It seems someone has put a good million tones or so of sand over a large portion of your tracks. Maybe it was some of the male 'youth' from the village of Tsenher. They were an awfully unsociable and annoying lot and would probably do a thing like that. We trust you will move it back to one of the nearby sand dunes as it makes for very difficult cycling.

The local people you have recruited to work on your lands are an interesting and friendly bunch. We applaud your HR department. The nomadic herders who stop by to visit on horseback are very softly spoken, patient and reserved, even when faced with our stumbling attempts at their native tongue. The multitudes of strong and resourceful women who also herd, prepare food and staff most of the eating and produce establishments that we visit, are good humoured as we endlessly point and vocalize our requests in monosyllabic Mongolian.

If it is at all possible, could you arrange for the winds on some days to head eastwards? This would be preferable to the quite unrelenting westerlies we have been meeting face-to-face, so to speak, on a daily basis. Obviously it would be unreasonable to request an easterly wind everyday, but we feel it only fair to mix it up a little. Only two days ago a fierce westerly brute of a gust almost upended our tent before we could even have our morning cup of coffee. As Alison had prepared some pancakes for breakfast, which then acquired a layer of your finest sand, you can surely appreciate our sense of disgruntlement.

Given the lakes of broken glass scattered across your paths we would like to suggest a move to plastic vodka bottles. This would save both the numerous drunks from unnecessary rotator cuff strains and us from unnecessary puncture repairs.

Finally, to your landscape architects and animal handlers we say thank you. The quirky yaks compliment the high-altitude snowy steppe, the clear snaking rivers are a delight to cycle along and the dogs are responding to our harsh Mongolian cries of 'yavj oh' (go away).

We look forward to your response.

Kind regards,

Dr Andrew Neal and Dr Alison Jarman

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waiter, there's villi in my khuushuur!

In a moment of beautiful synchrony, my knowledge of anatomy and random ordering from a foreign menu came together. We realised belatedly that the khuushuur (meat pancake) we had ordered - the more expensive one mind you - contained makh. Literally 'meat', but more generally meaning sheep bits - all of them. Strangely enough the intestines and liver were ok. It was the globules of fat I couldn't quite stomach.

This use of all parts of the animal is not only not wasteful but has also been credited with preventing scurvy in Mongolians (not sure what level of evidence that is). Eating more fat is apparently more manly, and also necessary to survive the long winters.

We have been accepting of pretty much all dishes put before us, grateful for some decent protein-and-carbon sustenance in a country so recently struck by dzud. Imagine our joy when informed by our guesthouse host that a whole sheep had been brought in from the country. We were very lucky, as this dish was only prepared maybe 4 times a year: sheep intestines (?khonii giiz).

The smell of mutton in the ger was overpowering all afternoon, only drowned out by the smoke billowing from the stove when it was stoked. When the rubbery offerings were extracted from the pan, the assorted family and extras tucked in with an almost primal glee. After some hesitant staring, so did we. The taste was strong and fresh, with textures ranging from squidgy to impenetrable.

Anatomy identified in bowl: vertebra, pericardium, liver, lungs/bronchus, intestine (large and small).

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Yak attack

Following 160km of battling through roadwork-affected tracks, headwinds (again, this is becoming quite the theme), two river-crossings and a snow-fall (while at 2100m) we finally made it to Tariat.
By this time today we thought we'd be nestled in a tourist ger camp on the banks of a frozen lake complete with hot showers. Unfortunately such luxurious accommodations don't open until 1st June (when official tourist season commences). Instead however, we were found wandering in the main street by Tunga, an English teacher come guesthouse operator who has welcomed us into her ger.

Random Road Ruminations

• Spring is fickle. This week, Restaurant Mongolia is featuring a set menu of dust storms, snow falls, sub-zero wind chills and nose-peeling sunshine. Restaurant Mongolia reserves the right to dictate the order and quantity of dishes. Bon appetit.
• Gravel is bad, but sand is worse.
• 60kg of bicycle is difficult to push.
• Dogs hate bikes.
• Dogs, over short distances, can run very, very fast.
• 8 colourful bags being carted across the steppe on bicycles is an easy way to induce curious smiles and enthusiastic two handed waves from families in trucks relocating gers to the countryside
• It is part of Mongolian etiquette not to whistle in a ger, as it attracts the wind.
• Andrew mistakenly whistles in gers.
• Despite the honeymoon tailwind, wind is not your friend. It takes great pleasure in reducing your average speed to a crawl...
  
  
  

A dog of a day

As far as cycling days go, this wasn't the best. When the day starts with an eviction from our hotel at the ungodly hour of 9am, we should learn to read the omens. Despite an excellent bowl of breakfast banshtai shol (meat and vegetable soup with meat dumplings) at one of the zoogin gazars (dining room) in the main street, we were chased out of town by a pair of dogs. Then came the 50km of erratic headwinds. And dust clouds that crossed the road and temporarily blinded us, first from our left, then from our right...

The adventure begins - first 3 days alone on the steppe

On a lunch break, under a wide blue sky dotted with cotton-ball clouds, about 150km from Ulaanbaatar is not the place you'd expect to see a familiar face. As we munched on rye bread and tuna, a cyclist in full race-kit rounded the roadside rubble and headed towards us. Surprisingly incongruous, but we recognized Degi from a roadside meeting 2 days earlier.

Ulaanbaatar Scavenger Hunt - 10days in UB

If our time in Ulaanbaatar was a scavenger hunt, our submitted sheet would read something like this:

Equipment provided upon beginning scavenger hunt

• Mongolian-English phrasebook dated 1995

• Mongolian Lonely Planet 2008 Edition (poorly researched with grossly inaccurate maps and telephone numbers)

• No working knowledge of Cyrillic script

• Copy of UB Post (English Newspaper)

• Smartphone with optus SIM card (global roaming not operational)

• Internet access

• $30 USD. 0 Mongolian Tugrug

There’s a ger in there…

We were a little apprehensive at first, despite the uniformly excellent couchsurfing recommendations. All we knew of the ger districts around Ulaanbaatar was that they were not places to be wandering around at night (mostly due to dogs rather than people). Our comfortable urban lifestyle had us in its clutches, but we figured all those surfers couldn’t be wrong. Most of our worries slipped away when we first met the smiling Begz, who met us on his own bicycle in Sukhbaatar Square, the centre point of the city. A ride eerily reminiscent of our first ride to Will’s place in South Korea followed: us nervously wobbling behind our new host as they confidently led us through increasingly rubbly roads and unpredictable traffic to god-knows-where on the outskirts of the city...

Ups and Downs in Ulaanbaatar (Days 1-3)

Driven. Impulsive. Erratic. The DSM-IV would say quite confidently that Ulaanbaatar is having a manic relapse. Of course that implies that Ulaanbaatar (The Red Hero City) has a whiff of bipolar about her. 

Clear blue skies with bright sunshine snap into snowfalls with wind chills of -10deg C. Horns blast as cars, trucks and buses wrestle angrily for road space. Cyrillic stands proud across shop fronts while Louis Vuitton graces the main square. Concrete apartments blocks with Soviet stylings in all their distressed, fraying glory line the streets. Homeless, orphaned and unemployed wander. Yet kilometers away, organized ger camps with pit-toilets and no running water house healthy, happy kids living and eating traditionally*. Finding our feet in this labile city would be a nice challenge...