Tomsk, by Platskart

Platskart is the third class of Russian trans, a significant difference in cost from second. It's a great chance to meet Russian people, and get utterly rat-arsed with them. On the left hand side of the train are booths made up of four bunk beds, whilst the right holds tiers of two which can be converted into tables. There is no shower, two toilets per carriage and little chance to change ones clothes. To cap it all off, Russia is a massive country...

...after two days on platskart, we arrived in Tomsk with Leah & Kara, two Americans we met in Irkutsk. even though our preliminary investigations into finding a bed were met with naught but failure, we figured that in a city, we might be able to find somewhere to sleep and that nectar of the long distance platskart traveler, a hot shower...alas, it was not to be. Seemingly every hotel within our budget was completely booked up. We learned later that Mariah Carey was to be performing in Tomsk, consequently filling up the beds with flouncy appreciators of insipid soul, and giving me an actual concrete reason to dislike her.

In despair, exhaustion and clouds of B.O, we decided the only course of action was to go to the pub. Luckily for us, this establishment closed at 3am, so we could drink our woes away, stay up all night and get a train to somewhere else first thing in the morning...beer of course changes everything...adrift and sleepy, after three hours of expensive procrastinating, the idea struck that maybe we should try to find a bed in whatever mystery city we ended up in, so off we went to an internet cafe.

Laden with rucksacks, clearly exhausted, sweaty and consulting our guide book, we hardly looked inconspicuous. It was then that we encountered a group of students who spoke really good English, offering to help us...it seems that ordinary Russians rent out apartments to people at roughly the same cost as our budget, and our mysterious benefactors were ringing round the city, each with an identical I-phone...finally, one of them named Artor found one, and escorted us to his car...what I know about cars could be measured in millilitres, but it was clear even to me that his vehicle didn't come cheap.

Off we cruised in this financial impossibility for any other twenty year old student I've ever met, round the streets of Tomsk to the sounds of Russian hip-hop. Finally, we arrived in a residential area that at first glance looked a bit ropey.
"Stay in the car!" commanded Artor to the girls. "Don't open the door! Come with me." he said to me, so we stood outside, waiting for the man we'd be renting from.

At this point, the street gradually went on to display a variety of souls, possessed, if one were to make assumptions, of dubious character...it also occurred to me that what we were doing was actually pretty dangerous - here we were, getting into the car of a stranger, in a strange country, exhausted, vulnerable...where exactly does he get his money from? Who is waiting for us in this apartment? How can we trust anyone? Images of Lilya 4 ever flashed through my mind, and nor was I alone in my paranoia. The girls, securely in the car were having similar suspicions...sharing them with each other didn't lighten our mood.

"No good," said Artor, "let's go."
"Where are we going?"
He chuckled "To my grandmothers'."
I doubt any of us believed him. Yeah, your "grandmothers."
"Is it safe?"
He chuckled again "Yes, it's very safe."

Ten minutes later, scared out of our wits by our own imaginations, we met his grandmother, who provided us with tea, biscuits, that all-important shower and bade us goodnight. We sat round the table, nursing our cuppas, scarcely believing what had just happened. Indeed, if a gang of grizzly cossacks armed with knives had turned up, demanding our passports & cash, we wouldn't have been surprised. We finally succumbed to sleep, hoping that the next day, things would start to become a bit more normal...

...they didn't, but in a bizarre way, they made more sense. Artor came round for us in the morning, telling us we were going on an excursion...so off we went to his fathers pharmaceutical company...after a hearty breakfast in the company canteen, we found ourselves in blue lab coats, wearing hair-nets and plastic bags on our feet, wandering around a colossal pill factory, just as bewildered as we were the night before, but nowhere near as terrified...the next day was spent riding a seemingly endless wave of Artors hospitality, which he wouldn't accept anything for...he took us to an abandoned chemical factory now used as a paintball arena, the edge of a city cordoned off by barbed wire and soldiers which was a "secret" in Communist times, the oldest part of Tomsk, and our first student party for a long time...of course, all his friends have identical I-phones...

We doubt we'll see him again, as he didn't divulge his email address, and he can't actually leave Russia, on account of his not having a passport because he doesn't want to join the military, but we're deeply grateful (and a little shamefaced at our paranoia) that he gave us some of the most memorable experiences of the trip.

Stranded in Siberia

Due to a lack of internet facilities and epic train journeys, alas we have neglected our blog...rest assured, we are still alive.

Mongolia, as Hayley said below, is difficult to sum up in words, and maybe even in pictures. How one can convey a 360 degree emptiness from a single picture is beyond me, and certainly beyond our current capabilities. Lucky folks back in the UK will be subjected to countless photos of hills & goats.

We've been in Russia for about a week now. Our itinerary has taken something of a beating, and we'll probably be back home much sooner than we planned...

So far, the image of Russia as a grey labyrinth of uncompromising slabs populated by uncooperative grumpy people has proved erroneous. We've experienced the legendary Russian hospitality (which I hadn't heard of until reading Lonely Planet Russia) in unbelievable quantities. Today, we are still reeling from one of the most memorable experiences of the whole trip, but, off the cuff as this entry is, I can't really do it justice without sitting down first and thinking about what to write...stay tuned for an upcoming tale of homelessness, emotional turmoil, shrieking paranoia and industrial pharmaceuticals...

Journey to Mongolia in Pictures

Beijing Train Station

Beijing - Ulaan Baatar - Moscow



A 30 hour journey from Beijing at 7:45am arriving in Ulaan Baatar at 1:00pm the next day.

China

Our first glimps of Mongolia when the sun came up was through a big sandstorm.

Ulaan Baatar

Of course we took hundreds of pictures out the window over those thirty hours and this is just a few as it takes so long to upload them. I'll try to put some up of our trip out of Ulaan Baatar soon, maybe one from each day.

The longest train journey so far, border crossing & Ulaanbaatar

China has been by turns, infuriating and rewarding. That which I love about Chinese people stems from what annoys me the most about them. They really don’t seem to give a damn about anyone or thing. Their honest approach to human existence, in all its belching, farting, gobbing, pissing and shitting glory is what makes them likeable. I look forward to reacquainting myself.

We set off at a ridiculous time in the morning, bidding adieu to Beijing and China, surrounded by traders wheeling boxes onto a Moscow bound train, stopping at Ulaanbaatar, the Mongolian capital.

Our traveling companions for the thirty hour journey were two Mongolians – Dr Dashtsevel, a large and grizzled yet tidy and gentle professor of East Asian Studies, and Mina, a young lady with excellent English, who appeared to be a member of the emerging middle classes, kitted out with the usual trappings and spangly accessories. Both clearly veterans of the Beijing to Ulaanbaatar route, they wasted no time in getting some kip.

Not surprisingly, over such a long journey, the landscape underwent gradual but drastic changes – Beijing petered out into jagged yellow sandstone, segued into smooth rolling hills, dotted with lonely mining communities, patches of snow bizarrely juxtaposed with sand, then miles and miles of unbroken Gobi steppe, the train tracks a single line drawn over an otherwise blank sheet of wilderness.

We arrived at the border station of Erlian a little before nine, beginning the arduous five hour customs procedure. I figured earlier that my misplaced departure card wasn’t going to make the authorities too happy. Our shiny buttoned soldier-boy inspector politely commanded me to open my baggage, barking “why?!” even before I’d done so. Of course, my massive rucksack was buried in a tight spot within another tight spot. Once he saw that an actual inspection of my bag would be too much effort, he satisfied himself with an officious grope of my pyjamas, proving a few things I have long suspected of bureaucrats.

That formality aside, our cabin mates decided to have a duty-free spending spree, whilst we ended up getting locked on the train after a quick mission for a bottle-opener. The good part of that was having the cabin to ourselves and watching the carriage bogies being changed – Russia and Mongolia use slightly wider tracks than the rest of the world, so the carriages have to be hoisted up on big jacks whilst the right sized wheel sections are attached. The bad part of that was that the conductor locked the toilet for three hours.

The morning brought us insight into Mongolian eating customs. Mina’s sister had met the train at a station we slept through, with a bag of boiled mutton – considerably tastier than it sounds. Dr Dashstevel produced a knife and carved, saying in a responsible fatherly manner that all of it must be eaten, whilst Mina discarded her mobile in favour of gnawing a bone clean. This intensely meaty breakfast was washed down with a few swigs of scotch. As if she hadn’t been generous enough, Mina gave us each a note of Mongolian currency, folded into an origami shirt, apparently a kind of wealth-charm.

What we read of Ulaanbaatar as being an ugly Soviet style grid of blocks probably over-prepared us for what we found – the city isn’t half as unattractive as expected, nor anywhere near as polluted as Shanghai. It’s small, rough round the edges, noisy as any capital, but laid back, lazy even. Just what we need right now.

We’re staying at Khongor guest house for a few days in the hope of meeting some people to join us on an expedition into the wilderness outside Ulaanbaatar. Obviously, there’s no internet facilities. See you in a week.

That was China

OMFG, we're going to Mongolia tomorrow. How on earth did that happen? Let me set the scene...

We arrived in Beijing yesterday, weary after a hard-sleeper train from Pingyao. Pressing on through the suddenly hideous weather, we realised that our hostel was in the arse end of nowhere. No matter, thought we, there are things that must be done. After dropping off our bags, we were back in the thick of it, searching for tickets out of China.

We're learning a lot on this trip. Yesterday, we discovered that you can't buy international train tickets from the train station. We also learned that a slightly misheard direction can cost you dearly in terms of expediency. After a fools errand to the other side of the city and back again, we discovered the place we needed...with a closed sign dangling from it's recently locked doors.

So, Hayley indulged in some retail therapy, and then we got drunk on fifty pence beers whilst Take That's Greatest Hits drawled on in an otherwise pleasant bar.

Morning comes, and once again, we fling ourselves into the madness of Beijing, ready to buy our tickets...one thing our trusty LP guides didn't tell us is that there's only two trains a week between Beijing & Ulan-bator...faced with a week of procrastinating in a massive and potentially expensive city (the decision was pondered over a five quid coffee each), we opted for the impulse border crossing. Bye-bye Beijing.

No Great Wall or Peking Duck, but at least we managed to see the Forbidden City, and description-defyingly-awesome it was at that. Photos to arrive upon discovery of a more cooperative computer.

Pingyao

A thriving merchant town once upon a time, Pingyao achieved further economic clout by establishing China's first banking system. Then in the 20th century it slipped into poverty, probably due to the colossal social upheaval of China becoming a republic, and shortly afterwards, a peoples republic. Consequently, Pingyao lacked the funds to modernise, and has pretty much by accident become an astoundingly preserved ancient city, and a World Heritage site.


Comparisons to kung-fu movies have been made too often in the short time we've been here. To say that Pingyao feels real is absurd, because it is real. Even though the bulk of the city's' income clearly comes from tourism, it isn't crass and Starbucksified in the way that Shanghai's old town was. There is a small-town feeling here - everybody seems to know everybody else. Of course, like many small towns, it's also a little bit strange.


Former capitals like Nanjing and Xian, or Kyoto and Kamakura in Japan, are sure of their positions as important historical sites. Pingyao however seems, whilst confident, unsure of what to do with its' status as a living relic. Museums and places of interest are rough and tumble affairs, hastily thrown together and roped off. Moreover, the relentless symmetry of the place makes one old building much like another. The really interesting sights are the streets, romantic, Ming China, but of course these are crowded with souvenir stalls, hawking essentially the same things, and packs of tourists rallying around invariably shrill-voiced guides roaring through loudspeakers.


Tonight, we dive back into modernity, on a sleeper train to Beijing, a city we won't be doing justice to. Three days isn't enough time to traverse a place roughly the size of Belgium.

Photos

Please look back down at added photos... I'm trying to enter them in a chronological order, it's only now that we have discovered a brilliant computer, that will allow us to do see our blog and upload photos! Yay!