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Khatgal, Mongolia
50° 27' N 100° 10' E
Sep 10, 2006 04:38
Distance 567km

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Other entries in Khatgal

Taxi Mayhem, Fancy Lunch, Choijen Lama, Waiting

Text written in: English

I had been dreading my long long ride in the shared jeep through the Mongolian countryside.  I was tired and it took lots of thought to prepare myself for  the stress.  I had no idea that it would be an adventure just to secure a ride to Moron a provincial capital in north central Mongolian with a population of 30,000 people. The Oracle  had described it as a rough wild west sort of town, and suggested not to visit the market or really go anywhere by yourself when it was dark.

I said a few solemn mantras for energy and hailed a gypsy cab at 7:30 in the morning right outside Bolad's Hostel.  The second car stopped to give me a ride.  It was 7km  to the Dragon Bus station.  When I got there to the two young men wanted too much money so I still gave them a little more than fare and then walked around and asked a few people where I could get a ride to Moron.  To be understood I had it written on a piece of paper in Cyrillic letters. I got a few confused looks and some people shook their  heads.  I went inside the small ticket office even though I know it only had tickets for a daily bus to Erdenet.  Mongolia doesn't really have roads outside the capitol so the only way to get somewhere on public transport is by shared Russian 4WD vans or the Russian made equivalent to a jeep. It takes a long time to get anywhere completely off road and to even break even the drivers have to stuff as much cargo and people as possible when they make one of these off road journies.

I resolved that I could always come back and hop a ride to Erdenet on the bus and try to make Moron from there, but next on my agenda was a 12km taxi ride to Ulan Baators Black market.  It was the largest market I had ever seen  it was crazy thick with people.  My taxi cab driver didn't understand me at all, but I was able to point him along till we made it.  See my bags he dropped me off at the parking lot full of long distance jeeps. My guidebook had indicated that such a long distance jeep would be leaving sometime in the morning, and it  was already getting later than that. When I got to the parking lot it was kind of empty and pathetic and it seemed like people were just showing up.  Many of the jeeps didn't have a destination placarded on the front, so I was left to ask around some more.  From their indications they kept pointing to empty parking spaces.  So I found a nice place to sit and waited for about an hour.  The market was just starting to go full form.  I was a bit nervous to be in the market area with all my luggage as it was ground zero for crime and theft.  But it was early and the swarms of people weren't hanging around my parking lot.

I watched cars and cargo vans pull in like a crazy swarm of ants on an anthill.  There was a police officer, a big serious guy with a uniform that could have been worked into Star Wars. He randomly seemed to point his traffic stick at cars for more scrutiny and fines. I wondered if he was on the take or an honest cop.  I would have loved to take pictures of all of this but it just wasn't smart to flash that kind of wealth around.

After an hour more long distance vans had shown up so I started asking around again, when a man found me.  He was a little too nice and a little too helpful. He offered to get me all the way to the Khovgul Nuhr which should have been my indication that he was full of shit. I figured I could at least end up in Moron., which is pronounced More-Own. He said he was leaving at 5:00 in the evening and we negotiated a price for a few minutes, the haggling went in his favor and I paid about 30% more than the Mongolian price.

With 5 hours to kill I took my luggage back to my hostel.  It was looking to be a warm day. My hostel mates thought I was nuts to even take one of those jeeps, many of the tourists were getting together in groups of 4 or 5 to charter a jeep into the countryside.  That really didn't go with my goals and of course tourist season was over and the remnants were packing and escaping the Mongol winter. The winter was something of legendary cold and was talked about even in UIan Ude. Yes it was rated worse than Siberia in their minds.  Even more I was headed to the coldest and wettest place in the country and there were jokes in the hostel that I was going to have to ride my horse to death and then cut it open like they did in the Empire Strikes Back. I was well prepared I had a full set of winter clothing a tent and a sleeping bag rated down to -10C. I also had sandals but wasn't worried because Mongolia is still a relatively dry place.

I ended up joining a young British chap for lunch, the place was a buffet and for $6.40 we ate like kings and I felt like a hero after so many meet dumplings and hotdogs and loads of crap food in general.  I certainly wasn't traveling for fine cuisine, but my body was happy with the richness of the food.  Right outside the restaurant was the Choijan Lama temple. I had made a try at it before but it was closed for the weekend.  This time it was open.  It was certainly a bit run down and looked like it could use a fresh injection of cash to fix it up. Choijan is a word for honored and this particular lama was the Bogd Kahn's brother.  The temple dated from about 1900 and was set up like a genuine Buddhist temple.  After my time in Ulan Ude I certainly felt pretty comfortable walking around.  The place was pretty marginal as a place of worship, but it was certainly full of culture. It also had the remains of the Choijan Lama in the back.  It was a nice way to round out the afternoon.  I went back to the hostel and took it easy for a couple of hours.  At that point everyone was wondering why I was still around and I told them about my lackluster bargaining skills.  I also bought a little bit of food.  The crazy Frenchman had eaten some of my necessary provisions the night before.  I would also find out months later that they left me about 20 short tape recordings on my digital voice recorder. I never did figure out how they got a hold of it.

I wanted to be punctual because I was afraid of being left behind.  That was certainly a mistake.  The drivers liked waiting around in a parking lot for another passenger. So from 5:00 to 10:00 in the evening I waited in the back of the van.  There was a family for some of that time and some mild attempts at communication.  At 5:00 there was a flurry of activity at the jeep stand and loaded to the gills jeeps started pulling away.  I was a little worried because my jeep wasn't loaded to the gills.  I think that's how smart Mongolians do it, they just go to a jeep that is nearly full because that means its about to leave.  Somewhere in the middle I made a toilet trip and was shown where to find it by a teen girl who was waiting with her family to leave.  It was a little strange to have a teen girl escort me to the toilet but really I didn't want to walk around lost in the bowls of the infamous black market because that was a good way to get robbed.

After a few hours waiting the family jumped ship to a different van. The teen girl gave me her picture and her telephone number. More passengers came and waited and then left and it seemed like some sort of game that I didn't know the rules of.  Around 8:00 most of the jeeps had left and I was wondering if mine was going to or whether they were going to send me away and have me come back the next day.  Finally when they did leave the sun had set and even then they messed around driving around the parking lot and lost two more passengers. We left the market and I was glad that there wasn't any lap sitting going on but I was worried that the jeep wasn't completely full. We drove around UB for about 30 minutes through some Ger Suburbs which were not really lit and had dirt roads. We picked up a few passengers and some more cargo.  We waited for about 20 minutes and then left and I was happy that we were actually leaving town.  It was 11:00.  We then stopped at a food restaurant and a then a convenience type store.  I wasn't hungry for food, but with time flipping by decided to buy some more snacks. It was midnight when we drove off into the country side.

I quickly fell asleep but woke up a couple of hours later when we left the roads leading to the capitol and started the vast off road portion of the trip.  I was expecting it to be a thrill but I had no idea just how bouncy an off road journey could get.  It was constantly a series of speeding up and slowing down to navigate the jeep trail.  It had absolutely no improvements, no ditches or anything.  It was just a long slow series of bouncing at least twice a minute the bouncing would take your butt off the seat of the jeep.  Mind you that you are also packed up tight against strangers and I was glad it was a group who believed in bathing. There were about 12 of us and enough cargo that sometimes it fell down amongst us.  There was everything from sacks of flour to picture frames.  Everything arriving in Mongolian towns had to go on one of these jeep journeys. I was just happy to be going somewhere little did I know that just a ride through the countryside could be something of adventure.