The Mongolian Empire hit its heyday in the 13th and 14th century. It was the largest contiguous land empire in history and spread from central Europe to the Sea of Japan, Siberia India Indochina Iran and Levant and Arabia. Genghis Kahn united various Mongolian tribes and was the ruler of all Mongols in 1206. Since that time Mongolia has shrunk and present-day Mongolia is part of Outer Mongolia: Inner Mongolia lies within China. The attendants on the Mongolia bound train were noticeably more Oriental. One of the problems on all the trains was that the toilets were locked at least 10 minutes before any city or lengthy stop. Of course no one told you when this would happen and it caused quite a bit of distress when you were caught out. I think the only English words the attendant knew were “10 minutes.” The water supply was a tiny pipe with a handle which turned on a narrow stream of water descending onto the floor. The trick was to catch it en route. When we left Russia the military and others went through our luggage and compartments mainly to find any illegal passengers. Because we had to change trains the shunting at the border went on for several hours and then the Russian personnel took our Passports for an interminable time and eventually returned them with the appropriate stamp to say that we had left Russia and the visa was in order. We then approached the Mongolian border with a rerun of searching the luggage and compartments and entailed a wait for two hours. On this occasion passports were also taken and a dog was used to sniff out drugs. Then we had another four hour wait for a Mongolian engine. We progressed to Ulan Bator where we were grateful to attend to our bodily functions as the train toilets were locked again. When we vacated our compartment it was locked by the attendant. On arrival our new tour guide welcomed us to the coldest capital of the world.
It has a population of 1.37 million.He told us that Genghis Kahn had 4 official wives, an unknown number concubines, but there were many, and it is estimated he has 40 million descendants today. Russia and Mongolia helped to rid China of the Japanese in World War II. Mongolia is one and a half million square kilometers in size which is 3 times the size of France. There is a general shortage of water making agriculture a challenge in certain areas. The Gobhi desert is suited to the two humped camel which can survive without water for up to 45 days.
We were then taken to our night’s accommodation which was a ger. This is a round well insulated canvas tent of substantial proportions with many modern-day appliances including television used by the nomadic tribes. It is heated by a central wood and coal burning stove and is warm unless the stove goes out. This was our experience and we had to start the fire on several occasions during the night. We visited a family in a functioning ger. They apparently move four times a year searching for new pastures for their 30 animals which included horses cattle dogs and hens. The mother proudly told us she has family of eight, obviously created before they got their television set. We visited a remote Buddhist temple where the solitary monk admitted to killing 35 of his relatives as he did not inherit what he thought was his right. When he came to his senses he begged for forgiveness and his atonement was to become a monk. He also turned wheels for us to help with good deeds. We were introduced to the ‘ankle bone game’ whereby the vertebrae of sheep are thrown to get a score depending which surface showed up with the first past the post winning.
On our return to Ulan Bator we visited various Buddhist temples which were very interesting. Then we noticed a crowd gathering in the central area of the town. We wondered if they had arranged to meet us but in fact it was the visit of the Dalai Lama. He addressed the thousand or so crowd in the square briefly as the temperature was the coldest day for 20 years at -30C and promised a fuller speech indoors the next day. The tour included a visit to the natural history Museum, Parliament Square and the outside of the Houses of Parliament and we were impressed at the architecture of the nearby financial district with high rise glass buildings .
Overall I was not enthralled with Mongolia but my 26 year old traveling companion was which may reflect the age difference.