the Mongolian Express A Gap Adventure to Europe

William taylor

Every traveller has a dream destination. Mine had always been the Great Wall of China and travelling on the Trans Siberian Express. While surfing the internet, hoping to connect the two, I blundered onto a web page that outlined tour companies that offered exactly that.

When I clicked on one of the links, to my surprise, it was a tour company of our very own, that offered the soughtfor tour, several times each year; GAP Adventure Tours, with head offices in Calgary.

It is a 21-day adventure, called The Mongolian Express. It departs out of Beijing, on The Mongolian Express train system, to Ulan Bator, and from there, via the Trans Siberian Express, to Irkutsk, Ekaterinburg, Moscow and St. Petersburg, with many station stops along the way. The next tour reverses the order.

Along the adventure trails, I kept jottings in a small book, which I shared with family and friends from internet cafes, when available. It was, for me, an adventure of a lifetime. I would like to share a few of the highlights from my jottings.

March 24, 2011. I rushed to the Winnipeg airport, directly from an RTAM meeting for the long haul to Beijing via Chicago and Frankfurt.

March 26, 2011. 7:00 a.m. and I seem to have missed a day or two and lots of sleep. Neverthless, I am in Beijing! The Beijing airport is immense, new and impressive. Where are all the hordes of this one billion, plus, nation. Our flight is the only group in this cavernous structure. It took 10 minutes to clear customs and go forth into an array af immaculately dressed, white-gloved, young military personnel. The cost of a taxi to the city centre was at least $60. If there was another way, there was no way I was going to pay that. That can buy a lot of rice, folks! I asked a young soldier and he said there were busses going to the centre for only 16 Yuan. I wasn't the only frugal person in China. Even the bus driver wore white gloves.

The expressway to the centre was bounded by immaculate-tended greenery; pussy willows, flowers, green grass and trees and no snow! What a pleasant reception to Beijing! Wide avenues, imposing buildings. Where are the throngs I had expected; the streets seem deserted. This country has prefected commercialism. There are shops, restaurants and cafes everywhere.

March 26, 2011. As I strolled the neighbourhoods adjacent to our hotel, I noticed the small cafes and a myriad of small closet-sized eateries and shops full of people eating from very large bowls, steaming hot! When in Rome! At lunchtime, I observed, I ordered, I enjoyed; a huge full bowl of steaming hot noodles, vegetables and chunks of meat (don't ask), plus a side tray of small dishes of brightly coloured, pickled vegetables. An icy cold, 700 ml bottle soothed jet lag immediately. Who needs to know what day it is, anyway? All this delicious meal for about $4.00.

This is the cleanest city I’ve ever visited. An army of uniformed workers keeping the streets, boulevards immaculate. I dropped a Kleenex one day and suffered a sprung spine and a guilty conscience on the split second swoop up; I had been noticed.

All signs are in Chinese and English. Even on their efficient underground, one can hear the stops repeated in English and a London-style tube sign on the doors of the carriages, 'Mind the Gap'!

March 27, 28 (internet dates). Well, I've found the people. Thousands of Chinese tour groups fill Tienanmen Square, a square the size of Winnipeg, it seems. Mao's tomb is closed for some reason. I can see Mao's giant portrait, which is repainted every year, for the past 25 years, by the same artist, on the wall over the entrance to the Forbidden City. He keeps a watchful eye on his people. Everyone passes strict airport-like security gates to enter the Tienanmen Square. So don't take your guns to town, son!

A group of giggling young school kids ran up to us and stood staring and smiling. At their teacher's prompting, they chorused out, "Good morning.” This, we discovered, had exhausted their English vocabulary, but they were thrilled that they could 'speak English'; not one of us could respond, in kind, in Chinese!

We crossed the entrance bridge into the moated and walled world of the former emperors of China. Who knew it would take half of the day just to walk through it? If I had lost the guide, I would still be there, roaming the maze of passageways, winding through magnificent temples, gardens and palaces. How large is it? At one time, it housed the emperor, servants, his ministers of state, the royal family and 20,000 concubines! An exhausting place in more ways than one.

March 29, 2011: 6:00 am In a tour van (we are seven) on the way to welcome a new dawn from the ramparts of the Great Wall of China. We did arrive at the site in time to get the dazzling effects of a gorgeous sunrise. Thankfully, I didn’t take my camera. Most watch it through a camera lens. Of course, we arrived before the cable cars opened, that carry tourists up the hill to one of the entrances at the top of the many-turreted wall. Gasping, not at the beauty, but at the 997 steps it took to get up the grand staircase, to the ramparts. There are many landing stages to catch the view and your breath, which I had trouble finding. It's all been said before. To encapsulate, stunning.

March 30, 2011. Our training begins! We boarded the Mongolian Express at Beijing's central railway station, for a 35-hour, cross-Mongolia journey, to their capital, Ulan Bator.

As in Europe, the train carriages have three classes of sleeping compartments. The second-class carriages have 4-berth (bunks) to a compartment. Compartments line only one side of the carriage, with a long carpeted corridor running the full length. There are two toilets, one at each end. There is an attendant (more on that later), each passenger is his own porter. A package with sheets, pillowcase and one towel, to be strictly accounted for, is handed out upon entering the carriages. Four well-fed tourists are at close quarters, believe me. Forget modesty and privacy; hopefully there is no snorer in the cell when the compartment door is closed for the night. Our group of six, plus the leader, shared two compartments for the eight nights we would be hotelling on the trains. Berths and carriages are on your ticket, at purchase time. We had a happy, congenial, fun time on those trains.

March 31, 2011. We are in Mongolia! All day, mile after mile, hour after hour, a treeless and flat expanse of desert-like landscape devoid, pretty much, of any vegetation. I can see the sandy soil is dotted with tufts of grass and I often see small herds of tiny antelopes. I spotted lots of shaggy, small horses wandering at will. How did corpulent Genghis Khan ever ride off to victory on one of these? I am tall and am certain my feet would be on the ground, ready to help one of the unfortunates bear me across the desert. I do see microwave towers and lots of well-maintained fences, belying the wasteland impression.

April 2, 2011. Ulan Bator, the Mongol capital. We are in Mongolia, the land of quaint but happy yak herders, supping on fermented mare's milk and cavorting merrily outside their yurts with their wild ponies. That from the romantic stories of Highroads to Reading, of our oneroomed school days. Later, I was glad I'd kept that bit of lore to myself! It is a very modern city of 1 million, in a country of only 2 1/2 million. The 1 million sq km country is not over crowded. The city sure is. It is bursting at the seams. Fuelled by a wealth of minerals and petroleum, the streets are clogged with bumper-to-bumper shiny new cars. An interesting side note: there is an evenly-divided number of right and left-hand drives, depending from where they are bought; right-hand from Japan, left-hand from China and elsewhere. It is sunny and crisp, but no snow. Ulan Bator is on the 47th parallel of latitude. Green grass, lots of trees and many, many small, twittering birds. The city is framed by a picturesque backdrop of low mountains.

The shopped-lined streets are packed with slim, handsome, well-dressed and mostly young, people, who all seem to be texting on their cellphones! Sales spill out onto stalls on the street. This is a fun, happy city and it's booming. I notice a lot of Gucci, Hermes and Tag Heuer displays in department store windows, right up there with endless arrays of beautiful cashmere clothing.

During the years of the Soviet occupation, the unique Mongolian script was dropped in favour of the Russian Cyrillic alphabet. Many of the Buddhist temples were either destroyed or closed; in a nation of 70% followers of Tibetan Buddhism. Well, the magnificent are back and so is their script, but only in the schools and on government publications. All signage is in Mongolian and English.

The new golden-domed parliament building, both modern and majestic, dominates the central city square. A huge statue of Genghis Khan (whose hero-worship the Russian had forbidden) adorns the grand staircase leading up to the main entrance.

Not one yak in sight!

April 3, 4, 2011. We travelled 35 km out of the capital, to the colossus built to honour the national hero at the site of his birth. Of course, we had stopped at one of the

prayer mounds, along the highway, to offer up our humble petitions as we circled the mound three times, tossing the obligatory three small stones--not easy in a desert.

This 2004 colossal monument, topped with a 150 foothigh glittering stainless steel statue of Genghis Khan mounted on his steed dominates the skyline. The immense site is gated with an arch bearing the statues of his generals and is surrounded by his war camp of 200 yurts; a museum and interpretive centre is in the structure beneath the statue. An elevator whisks visitors up to the observation deck, which surrounds the horse's hoofs. It is as amazing as the pyramids of Giza.

We spent one night in a genuine yurt camp. There were even real yaks to fulfil my romantic dreams. I was impressed by the very spacious and beautifully carved interiors of the yurts. The yurts were furnished with four large, authentically hand crafted, brilliant beds and a large open family space whose centre was taken up by the low, portable wood-burning (dung-burning) stove. There were three of us per yurt. There was no snow in this hilly valley. The nights did get down to -2C (T-shirt weather on Canadian playgrounds) and the stove had to be fed regularly. This job was assigned to me by Australian and Dutch yurtmates, as I carry farmer's blood in my veins. I didn't let the old farm down. In fact, I didn't let the farmer (me) down very much during that stove-tending night. William the Stoker.

April 5, 6, 2011. The Trans Siberian to the Siberian megalopolis, Irkutsk, a huge, very attractive city.

The following day, we travelled to Lake Baikal, for a two-day tour and home visit. There were two of us per private home. The Dutch lad and I lucked out. Though our hostess couldn't speak English, she cooked spectacularly in Russian. We feasted on every known Russian delight. She looked nonplussed when we couldn’t get enough potatoes. There had been long, rice-filled days preceding our Russian stay. There is open water on Lake Baikal.

Aprl 9, 2011. Two days and two nights, while our electrified train crosses the Siberian boreal forests; clones of our northern Manitoba one. It’s a long tramp from Irkutsk to Ekaterinburg on the Ural Mountain gateway to Europe. I must digress, for a moment, to the compartmental life on the train. Each carriage has a harridan attendant; to be fair, we encountered one jovial and kind one on the St. Petersburg Express. In Soviet-style military uniforms, she rules the carriage. Her sceptre of power, the very large key that locks the toilets. At her whim, usually on the stroke of a full bladder, these are firmly and magisterially locked by the petty tyrant. No amount of cross-legged pleading will thaw her resolve. This I know. Old soviet Russia lives on in many facets of Russian society. A lesson to be learned by Via Rail? Every carriage, whether in Mongolia or Russia, has a very large samovar of boiling hot water at the end of the corridor, available 24/7 for tea, instant coffee or the ubiquitous noodle pots; all of these may be purchased on board at all stops. On the Mongolian Express, they were heated with charcoal. All the Russian trains are electric.

At all Russian stops, babushkas (grandmothers) sell delicious and very inexpensive ($3-$4) packaged snacks: boiled potatoes, blinis, perogies, pickles, meat patties and excellent homemade breads. There are also kiosks that sell just about everything.

April 11, 2011. Ekaterinburg , Russia, gateway to Europe. The site of the murder of Tsar Nicholas II and all the royal family. This is a beautiful city of 1.6 million. The communists had closed or destroyed most of Russia's churches. The golden domes are gleaming now throughout all of Russia. Ekaterinburg has a palace for visiting presidents (Medvedev at present). A newly-constructed seven golden-domed Orthodox Cathedral honouring the seven members of the royal, now sainted family, stands on the site of their murder. It is truly magnificent April 12, 13, 2011. Moscow, unfortunately, for a first impression, covered with snow and more falling, mixed with cold rain and sleet. Red Square looks particularly despondent. It seems to match the moods and service of the shopkeepers. They have a lot to learn from China on Business 101.

No one who had ever visited, during the grim USSR days, would recognize the commercialized capital, nor their largest department store, GUM. Unless you are weighted down with golden roubles, skip the first few, upper-class floors of exclusive shops and head to their top-notch, “People's-era” cafeteria. After 75 years of mind-numbing dictatorship, I suppose one should be more charitable. However, the dour, grim service in all the shops I entered seems to be an inherited leftover from the people's paradise. This massive city has been cleaned up and all its marvellous buildings, statues, fountains and parks as well as the renowed subway system, are in mint condition,

The Tsars didn't like Moscow, either. So, Peter the Great built his eponymous capital on the Gulf of Finland.