continued from russia: start here.
the next leg on our trans-siberian journey was an extremely warm and slow bus ride to mongolia! the bus was much cheaper than the train. i sat beside a girl who spoke perfect english who was from yakutsk, a republic in the far north of eastern siberia – she told me all about her homeland! traveling up there would be an epic trip – the road is called the “road of bones” because so many people die en route. anyway, a few of mongolia’s superlatives: coldest capital city in the world (but it gets pretty darn hot in the summer); lowest population density of any country in the world; fastest growing economy in the world last year (mining, mining, mining). a fascinating place! the real mongolia is out in the steppes, where nomads herd yaks and drink their fermented milk in their yurts. but because we didn’t really plan things out as well as we could have and didn’t have tons of time, we spent most of our time in the capital city, ulaanbaatar.
the night we arrived, there was a huge party in the street around a massive television screen because a mongolian was about to win a very rare olympic gold in judo!! but then he lost to a russian. the crowd dissipated rather fast. mongolians don’t really like the russians, partly because they used to have an ancient tibetan-like vertically written script of their language, but the soviets forced them to start using cyrillic. unlike russia, where we went for two weeks without meeting another western tourist, ulaanbaatar was hosting a very large quantity of tourists, mostly of the dreadlocked, spiritual pilgrimage type. indeed, literally most of them were israeli. we spent an enjoyable entire day looking for a place to do laundry (the sink in our hostel wasn’t an option as there was one sink for the 80 people staying there = craziness). we also went to a mongolian “cultural” show, which was actually one of the most entertaining things imaginable! they did a bunch of dancing, some contortionism, and what everyone comes to mongolia to hear – throat singing! we found a huge buddhist temple with lots of pigeons and prayer wheels and a three-story high buddha. we also went to the movie theater for some mindless indulgence that i craved all year as i was studying microbiology – it was the new batman and everyone cheered whenever batman saved the day and it was amazing! ate lots of meat soup and thick noodles.
we ended up staying an extra day in mongolia because the trains to china were sold out, so we decided to make our way to a national park outside the city called terelj. we were too cheap to go any way other than public bus, but were getting all kinds of conflicting information in mongolian about which bus was the right one, so we chose one at random and hoped it would get us close. it kinda got us sorta in the right direction! because we didn’t have any idea we’d be going there we had no idea what to expect, but it was very beautiful, with jagged rocks jutting up out of the steppe! we eventually found a huge rock that resembles a turtle and hiked for a few hours to a buddhist monastery on top of a mountain, and i had a terrible fever and barely made it, but thanks to maria we survived! we found the correct bus for the two hour ride back to ulaanbaatar, and it ended up being quite a memorable time. all seats were taken so we had to stand – no problem. but every minute or two the bus would stop to pick up another four passengers, or 12. it became unbelievably crowded, with three or four people in each seat and literally about 100 people squeezed into the isle. i was standing at the front, right between the driver and the gear shifter that he had to grab every 15 seconds. memorable!
next stop: china!