As it always happens to me, we were not going to Mongolia. We wanted to see Chara sands. But we could not find any companions: all people said it must be too hard and suggested Mongolia instead. And there were lots of people willing to go to Mongolia, but they all have disappeared before the start. We started alone.
We felt quite OK with it, but just to be on the safe side, Mikha has found another team from Khabarovsk with whom we had to cross Gobi desert. It was certainly a good idea. Well, you can go to Gobi with just one car if you want so, but then you have to be ready for more than anything because you have to be ready just for anything even with two cars.
Nothing has changed in our team since last year except for the car color. It's been the same SsangYong Korando, year 2004, 2.9TD, automatic transmission, Goodrich 31.7" wheels with one ComeUp 9.5i winch, no locks and even, as we have discovered later, almost no working transfer gear :) Julia Makoushina, the 1st pilot and the photographer; Mikhail Chaikin, the 2nd pilot, the navigator and the mechanic and Irina Makoushina, the younger navigator and just passenger.
We had to start at 7 am of July 16, but in fact we've done somewhere after 8. The road was quite easy, so we reached Abakan in the evening, passed a very beautiful road in Sayan Mountains in the dark and soon after the midnight we stopped to sleep quite close to Kyzyl. The only thing that happened this day was that I had forgotten my camera (though I fully charged it and put the charger into my backpack). It was not a good idea to go to Mongolia without a camera, so I decided to buy a new one as a birthday present for myself. The choice in Abakan was not so broad, and the rates were much higher than at EBay, but nonetheless, I bought a new Panasonic FZ200 and I'm quite happy with it.
We spent the night not far from Kyzyl at a nice small stream although its banks were not easy for washing faces. I was playing with the new camera and took lots of different pictures of the stream with different effects :)
We approached the Mongolian Consulate in Kyzyl right at 9 am of July 17. The Consulate is a small building, and there is the only small room for all the people where the only clerk works with the whole queue. Either we were so outstanding from the crowd of Tuvinians or there was another reason, but while I was finishing the applications outside, the clerk has called us through the window. After that we only had to visit a local bank to pay 3300 rubles per person, bring the receipt to the Consulate, wait for about half an hour and get our passports back with Mongolian visas in them. We could go, it all took not more than an hour.
However, I didn't want to miss the Center of Asia. It was my second time in Kyzyl; however, I have never seen the Center of Asia monument, so we first visited it, took some pictures, bought some beer and food and headed to Mongolia.
Paved roads have ended after Kyzyl, but we approached the border around 4 or 5 pm, and it didn't take long to cross it. We were the only car at the checkpoint. Our guards just looked briefly at our staff, and Mongolians were even lazier. They just asked us to give a lift to a woman with a child to Ulangoom, and when we agreed, they just stamped our papers and let us go.
We had to wait for a while for the woman and the child, but after that we were driving quite fast as the road was good enough. In Ulangoom, we first went to Chinggis restaurant. Mikha asked if we can pay by Russian because the banks were already closed. He understood they won't accept rubles, so we found an ATM in Haan bank (there was another one across the road, but it's good we didn't notice it: as we found out later, only Haan bank ATMs work well with Russian cards; all others think, grunt, crack and then report a failed transaction). So, Mikha got 80000 tugriks with 100 rubles commission (Sberbank card), and we got back to Chinggis.
The people in the restaurant could more or less speak other languages, and the English menu made sense. They did not have salads and soups at the moment, so we started with lamb with onions and varied it with lamb with eggs. We always preferred drinking Jalam Khar which always got over when we ordered it. They add a bowl of rice per person (sometimes they omitted Irina, but there was still enough food, so no one was hungry). All in all, I can only recommend this place — at least those two lamb dishes and an egg salad we ordered the other day were great.
I also have to add that they most probably have not understood Mikha when he first asked about Russian rubles. The other Russian-speaking group was clearly told that they can pay in rubles, and the restaurant also accepts cards although we could not make use of any of my three cards there. Generally speaking, this happens often in Mongolia, and the reason is not in the cards, but in that the terminals mainly display messages in English and they have dial-up connections to banks. So, the terminal calls the bank, receives a timeout message and reports it. The Mongols then don't understand the error message and give you the card back saying it does not work. Apparently this happens to all of you cards because the phone line in the bank either does not work at all or is busy with someone more lucky than you.
After the dinner, we went to Ubs Nuur to stay overnight and it was probably our best day in Mongolia during this trip — in terms of relaxation and having rest. I cleaned all Mongolian dust from inside the car, Mikha and Irina collected some firewood and we spent the evening by the fire looking at the lake (almost the sea) and drinking beer. The weather was absolutely fine.
The weather was fine in the morning as well (a rare thing in this trip), so we were swimming and bathing until we got totally happy. Then we went to Chinggis for a lunch. It was my birthday, July 18. We met some people from Krasnoyarsk who said they represent some sort of a church here and organize summer camps for Mongolian children.
We ate enough lamb with onions and filled our 20-liter can with water in the kitchen, then bought some beer and other useful food and eventually headed towards Gobi. First we took a wrong road, but soon managed to find one we needed. We had to go to Khovd, but we planned to be there tomorrow staying overnight at some lake. By the way, the church people also we going to Khovd.
We stayed at Khara-Us-Nuur which is a popular lake name in Mongolia. Mikha could not get any fish from the lake, but there were lots of small yellow shrimps that tried to get into our bowls when we were washing them.
Next day, July 19, started with that we almost lost our back number plate from the car. This also happens quite often in Mongolia. We entered Khovd by lunch time, and the rain has caught us there and did not leave us almost until the end of the trip. From all I remembered from my previous visit to Khovd I could only recognize the theater, and we went to a restaurant across the road from it. The first people we saw there were the church people we've met in Ulangoom — they were having lunch with their Mongolian colleagues and discussed something. The Mongolians gladly helped us to select meat dishes from the Mongolian menu (we haven't yet known the useful words like "makh", "khoniny makh" etc.) So, we ate some wonderful lamb again and some salads selected by guess (and they were pretty delicious).
We drove in circles for a while trying to leave Khovd, visited a local airport (that didn't help anyway) and eventually found a road to Durgen lake and Altai city. The road sometimes went along Genghis Khan's wall, but I didn't see it anyway. Mikha said that they went to the wall intentionally and that the wall is very small in fact... I've seen a small wall, but didn't think that was Genghis Khan's one.
The plants were funny, the landscapes were beautiful.
We passed some buildings, and people from there were flourishing arms, so we had to get back to them. They asked: "Chandman?" We said yes, we were going that way. They showed another direction and explained by gestures that there is no way to Chandman where we were going to drive, but the right direction is the other way. The road was very strange and unclear, and we followed it thinking what could happen if we had not returned to those people.
At a moment, Mikha decided to take a shortcut, and we approached the mountains quickly, but the road started going up and down through the canyons and disappeared all of a sudden. We were at the edge of a relatively deep canyon with quite steep walls, and the choice was very easy: either to the canyon or back. Mikha said he sees the way down, but I didn't like the idea. Anyway, I remembered that I'm way too much afraid of sideway movements, so I pulled Irina out of the car and let so confident Mikha go down alone. When he started I saw that it is dangerous enough, but the car already could not get back, so there was the only way left. Mikha was going down step by step, we were walking together with Irina, and I tried not to think where should we spend the night (provided the rain was about to start) in case the car overturns. Fortunately it got off cheaply, and Mikha went out of the canyon right to meet a local shepherd watching us.
There were some more smaller canyons, but we were much more worrying about the weather — there was a storm and rain over Durgen lake.
However, it was getting dark, so we had no choice. We stopped where we felt it's enough to drive and went to sleep.
It was raining on July 20 again, so we had to leave Durgen lake very fast. The lake certainly must be beautiful with the good weather: there are nice dunes right on the coast, and even the coast where we stayed was pretty nice (though very flat, so it was hard enough to holeup for important things :)). Well, it was not on the cards to spend some good time at Durgen lake. We packed the staff and headed to Altai. The landscapes were great again.
The first village on our way was Hohmort where we wanted to buy some food and eat in a cafe. Two schoolgirls in the shop where we were buying food spoke English relatively well. They got into the car and directed us to a cafe, tsainy gazaar (I later realized that there is tsainy gazaar to eat quickly and zoogiyn gazaar to eat and drink normally). The gazaar was closed, and while we were thinking what else to buy to eat in the car, the girls discussed something else and eventually invited us to their house. We certainly could not refuse it. It was way too attractive to visit a Mongolian house and to eat "real" Mongolian food, so we certainly agreed.
As it usually is in Mongolian and other villages, the shop where we met the girls was in their yard, so we crossed the yard, passed a three-leg dog and a motorbike and entered the house (a simple cast iron radiator served as a porch). I noticed a wash stand (a plastic can + a basin with a bucket) in the mud room; however, we were not suggested to use it and somehow were too shy to ask... Anyway, they invited us to the living room, suggested the best seats and started bringing food to the table: there was aruul, lots of various buns, orom and something else.
I must tell that I found the word "aruul" in the Internet, and while in Mongolia, I could not understand what IT was and moreover, IT was always different: here IT was rather hard and salty like Asian cheese, so we decided it was cheese. Later we were given IT again, but it was closer to cottage cheese and sweeter, like a cottage cheese pancake that was not baked but dried, so I eventually suggested it was cottage cheese. The Internet confirmed the latter version.
I don't even remember the word "orom", but I found it by description. There was a plate with something... It looked and tasted a little bit like undermelt butter. But the girls explained in English that it is not butter, but milk that was boiled for a very long time. So, Internet allowed me to decide it was orom (although it seems that it has a dried "brother" uryum, and a Russian ear hardly could notice the difference between these two Mongolian words :)). It was delicious enough, and regarding aruul, I liked it more when it was close to cottage cheese than to salty cheese :) Well, if you want more details, try to google those words and the recipes :)
Many of the buns turned to be not really buns, but things made of this same aruul. They also brought Russian candies and Mikha brought spice cakes and honeycombs which we had for a friend of Mikha, but we filed to find that friend in Ulangoom :)
After they took a look at the honeycomb, the oldest woman took it and gave a piece to every family member. We left them some more indeed :)
After that, the girls asked if we would like "meat" or "...". "..." meant that they were hesitating and shrugging their shoulders and then tried to explain as "Mongolian traditional..." All in all, we found out that it was meat as well, but it might be called differently in Mongolian. I asked what sort of animal it was, and there was a rug on the wall with a couple of embroidered mountain goats, so I pointed at them and asked if the animals were like these. They said that the animals had the same horns, so we decided that this "not meat, but Mongolian traditional" was lamb. We certainly wanted something traditional, so the mother went to the cellar in the other room (the other room was full of medals and cups, and we asked what were they for and were said it was "for horses") and pulled a baggie. Soon after that, with the whole family in the kitchen, it started to sizzle, and we were tasting aruul, orom and other staff.
Meanwhile, the father came home, sat on a bed and started asking questions. First he asked how old I was and then said that he wanted to buy my car, and then — that it was a joke.
Soon after that they brought plates with rice and roasted lamb with onions. We decided that Mongols don't spend too much time to cook meal: they just chop the lamb and roast it together with the onions so that they are ready at the same time. This was served a bit more high-tony in restaurants and this was what they gave us not in a more homemade manner.
They passed us the plates with two hands, even to Irina, which is the sign of respect in the East, and they first gave the food to us and only after that the father received his serving. I was confused a bit, but then I thought that probably a guest in Mongolian culture is the most important person in the house.
When we tried to give them money for the lunch they were almost huffed. I think only the fact that we were foreigners excused us :)
So, we spent some wonderful time in Hohmort, made some friends and can only recommend this nice village with its hospitable people.
And we recommended it to a German family we met very soon in a small Unimog-like MAN truck. They were part of some complex expedition through Russia, Mongolia and ex-USSR: Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Uzbekistan... They said that there was some mud before Bayan Ul, so we'd rather press the accelerator pedal there (but we didn't see this mud) and that besides that, the road to Altai was OK, and we could follow their traces in case of problems. They asked if there were real dunes at Durgen lake, and we confirmed.
The road really was quite muddy but not hard.
As usually, we went through picturesque villages and landscapes.
It was no later than 6 pm when we arrived to Altai, filled the fuel tank and started looking for a restaurant for dinner. We searched the entire city, but all the restaurants were already closed. Maybe it was a bit more than 6 pm :) Driving here and there around the city, we met a small red off-roader from Krasnoyarsk. First we tried to talk right on the road, but then decided to park somewhere.
They were a couple of guys, a girl and her daughter around 5, so me and Irina first started talking to the girls and didn't hear what the guys were talking about. Then I found out that they were not only the beginners in such trips, but came here without any maps heading to Gobi. Mikha shared our maps with them, and I let them use my phone to send messages home (theirs did not roam), after which we decided to stay this night together. We drove some 500 meters to the steppe and pitched a camp on a bank of a dry brook.
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