The 1000 Day Holiday

The last 36 hours have been spent in a train from Ulaanbaatar, Mongolia to Irkutsk, Russia.

3 of us shared a cabin. An aussie tour guide, a Mongolian woman and I.

We arrived at the border ~4am. This means the toilet is locked from then until it departs at 3.30pm. The toilet on the platform was open from 6am.. not too bad so far.

9am arrives, which begins with us being locked into the carriage for 4 hours for Immigration processing, and customs checks. And since we’re still in station, the toilet is still locked.

The process involves customs searching the entire carriage. Checking underfloor spaces, inside heaters, in the roof, everything.

Before they arrived in our cabin, the Mongolian woman had arranged with the guide to put a pair of boots with his stuff. All fine and good, since they could converse in Russian.
She had a heap of new clothes, jeans, and around 30 pairs of socks. Which she was putting inside each other, taking the tags off everything then strategically placing the items around the cabin.
Once the customs agent came to our cabin he went through everything. The Mongolian woman on the trains get searched extra thoroughly, as ‘cheap Chinese warm socks’ (that doesn’t make much sense) obviously have a lot more value in Russia if they bother to smuggle them with such quantity! And since we were in the cabin with her. We get the twice over too.

Our packs get searched, and what do I find under my pack? another pair of boots! The customs guy starts shouting something in Russian loudly at me.. so I just kept saying yes, yes, yes….

In the end she ended up loosing a few pairs of jeans and top but she managed to keep some of the socks. Bummer that she forgot a pair of socks and her passport!

So for helping the Cheap Chinese/Mongolian Sock Smuggling trade I got a really crap pair of warm socks that had a hole after their first wear. And a really spongy apple that she gave me before the customs guys arrived..   And she thought I could be bought for cheap.. HUH!

I’ve just got back to Ulan Battor after 14 days in the Mongolian wilderness nothingness. Me, 2 Germanish: Holger & Torsten. Jasmina the Bulgarish. And Byrah our Mongolian driver who I suspect is the 2000-2005 “RussianVan Enduro-Rally Mongolian National Champion”.

Highlights:

• Collecting Poo for the fire : There are certain qualities you look for!
• Having 2 showers in 14 days
• Seeing a tree after 4 days
• Buying a Boney M tape for the driver to compliment his Abba one.
• Getting spat on by my friendly 2 hump camel
• Hiding a “camel toe” in the van as a gift for my tour mates
• Overtaking another vehicle after 7 days.
• Finding a replacement travel hula hoop in a small town in the middle of nowhere.
• Buying wood so we dont have to collect poo, then disoverin said wood smells like really bad poo when burnt
• Waking up to a white Mongolia, snow everywhere!
• All 4 of us getting food poisoning, with the toilet being 400m away across snow.
• Catching the driver watching FREAKY German $#!t on my chest style porn in his ger(yurt).
• Eating mutton everything. Even the boiled water tasted like mutton.
• Smelling like mutton.
• Spreading the chili sauce religion o my fellow travellers.
• Getting everyone saying “why not!” to answer any proposal.
• Getting my Mongolian mule horse to as fast as walking pace
• Picking up a Mongolian Woman hitching in the middle of nowhere, but carrying a nice handbag. She did wave goodbye to a goat herder then proceeding to teach her Yaniv (card game) and her beating Holger.
• German Holger used to play a Supergroove song in his covers band
• Being Polish as much as possible, using derivatives of polish in speech (being polite)
• While partying the way back to UB (3 bottles of vodka), one of us stood on my bag, breaking my cameras LCD. DOH

And a few silly statistics from the trip:

• 30 Bottles of Vodka
• 10L Beer
• 5 bottles of wine
• Meals provided that didn’t contain mutton: 1
• Total KM’s Driven: ??2500 to b verified
• KM’s driven on Asphalt: ~45

Disclaimer: This post is powered by mutton dumplings that I had for breakfast!

We didn’t have satellite tv, or crazy german porn. So what else to do when it gets cold and dark but drink!