How to Get Lost

We knew this was going to be rough. We knew this was going to be long. It wasn’t as bad as we thought it might be, but it was still long.

We took Train 364 (formerly 264) from Ulan Ude to Ulaan Baatar. (The train itself runs Irkutsk to UB.) As we would find out, the whole train doesn’t go to Mongolia — only the cars that contain passengers going to Mongolia. We found this out when we got to the Naushki station, on the Russian/Mongilian border.

The Russians started shunting our car around. I think this was mostly to kill time. Why else would they continually back up, go forward, back up, go forward, and so forth for about an hour? Incidentally, Russian cars (as Amy and I decided) are not built for the harsh conditions of operation in Russia. They’re built to withstand the abuse from the engineers. I thought they were going to shake the whole car apart!

We finally ended up, alone, completely separate from the rest of the train:

As we would also decide later, this was because our car was the only one going to Mongolia. The other cars were part of the train that terminated at Naushki, and would return to Irkutsk with new passengers.

And so began our wait. And wait we did. It would be a few hours before we saw anyone official-like board our train. At first, it was just someone to check our passports and make sure they were in order. That was a quick check. It was easily two more hours past that before the real officials came out. (When they did, soliders closed down the platform — you couldn’t go out there until you were supposed to be out there.) While we waited, we amused ourselves by watching a pile driver:

Yes, we were that bored.

With the final forms filled out (the exit customs form) and our passports, stamped, we resumed our waiting.

Six hours after we got there, we finally left, a single car towed by a lonely diesel locomotive out to Sukhbaatar, 21 kilometres inside the Mongolian border.

To wait some more.

After a couple of hours, the Mongolians started to let us in. This involved three forms (entry/exit form, health form, and customs form). After the health form was signed, we got scammed into US$10 health insurance. I’ve heard this is bogus, but we were too tired to care at that point. In between the official stamping of passports, we received a barrage of people who wanted to exchange our rubles for togrogs — which we’d already done in Naushki. They kept at is, the same people asking many times, despite us saying (more and more loudly every time) that we have none!

Finally, passports stamped (using their hands as the table for stamping, despite one being in the cabin), we finally left Sukhbaatar for Ulaan Baatar.

Total crossing time: 10 hours. Ish.

Luckily, mostly done during the day. The other way, I gather it’s mostly at night. Ugh!

Okay, quick update…

So CWR doesn’t exist coast-to-coast. After we left Ekaterinburg, we went to jointed rail. CWR exists in patches along the line, but the most of it is the ol’ clickety-clack variety.

Lots more freight trains, too.

Russian engines are huge, but have the wimpiest horns you ever heard! Sounds like those little steam whistles on old-fashioned popcorn makers.

On May 19, we boarded train 264 from Ulan Ude in Russia to Ulaan Baatar.

We had read that the border crossing would be an intolerable 10 hour process, typically performed in the middle of the night. To my surprise and delight (if one can be delighted at sitting on a rail car for 10 hours without moving), we cleared Naushki in only 6 hours and made it to Sukhbaatar with a decent amount of daylight.

As Geoff already posted, sitting in the car could be painful at times… for him. I was perfectly cool, comfortable, and able to knit. So I did. I knit about half of a shawl. And it kept me pretty darn happy. In retrospect, I’m grateful for the mild weather and the train windows that actually opened! You think I’m joking, but we’ve had some fairly uncomfortable train journeys that could have been vastly improved with a bit of a breeze.

Well, we’ve reached the end of our time here in Russia. Tomorrow morning, early, we’re off to Mongolia. And a 10+ hour border-crossing, so we’re told. It’s simultaneously a horror story and a quest of patience, so it seems.

After we arrived last night, literally 10 minutes into being in our new hotel room, the phone rang. It was “Helga from St. Petersburg”. Being more than just a little out of it, I assumed Helga was our tour operator, and was arranging our tour for tomorrow. She said she would be in the hotel, and we could meet her in the “cafeteria” (more like a bar with food). This was great since she had our train tickets to Ulaan Baatar, and would give us the details for our tour to the Datsun — the Buddhist template near Ulan Ude.

We walked into the cafe (as it’s referred to) about 20 minutes later only to find, much to our deep surprise, Helga — the woman we’d met in St. Petersburg whom we’d tried very desperately to avoid. (Helga had originally asked for all the details of our trip so she could tag along with us, not wanting to do the trip alone. We weren’t particularly happy about that, since we’d spent so much time and effort planning to this as a duo — not a trio.) This was not the surprise I’d wanted.

Since Helga had some of the information we needed, we opted to talk with her until she left for her homestay, some distance from the Hotel Geser. Why did she have all this information? She ran into the tour guide we were using, and had signed up for the same tour to the Datsun.

The trip out today was quite nice, actually. Ulan Ude is in a steppe valley, which is wide, expansive, and fairly flat. It’s dominated more by dacha (small cottages). Otherwise, short grasses and free-roaming animals (cows, goats, horses) which are “owned” by the local buryat inhabitants. The region we’re in is named for them: Buryatia. They’re an offshoot of Mongolian society, who’ve decided not to be nomadic and settle permanently.

The result of the Mongolian influence in this area brings the Buddhism, which is what we’d planned to see today. Ivolginsky Datsun dates back only to 1947, when Stalin (of all people!) allowed limited religious practices for recognized minorities, such as the buryats.

On the 30 km drive out to the Datsun, our guide Ilyena (I believe that was her name) attempted to explain the history of Ulan Ude, the general environment around us, and the basics of Buddhism. All of which Helga continually interrupted with questions — some decent, but mostly inane. And annoying, since Ilyena was continually put off her speech, and found it difficult to continue. Thankfully, Amy and I have a good understanding of Buddhism, and had read much about the area through our guidebooks.

The Datsun itself is quite interesting. Because it was built only a little over a half century ago (and even then, the main temple burned down just before it initially was to open), most of the buildings are reminiscent of Soviet construction: big and stolid. Yet there is still a blending with Buddhist stylings, with all the statuary and stupas one would expect to find. Though here, they’re made of concrete and not wood or stone. The insides of the temples, though still Buddhist, borrow concepts from Russian churches (such as windows and high ceilings), a result of Russian influences on the Buryats when they tried to settle in the area.

There were few other tourists there than ourselves, so we had a fairly easy time getting around. Although Ivolginsky Datsun is the centre for Russian buddhism, it’s not heavily visited at all times. There are strong ties here with both Mongolia (which is a very powerful buddhist centre, so I’ve learned) and, of course, Tibet.

On the way back, we got to ask Ilyena a few questions. Well, to be most specific, Amy and I got to ask a few questions — Helga wouldn’t let up. To the point where she was outright challenging Ilyena about the differences between hardships under Soviet rule versus Helga’s post-war upbringing in the late 1940s – early 1950s. It was enough for me to bite my tongue — hard — and not suggest that Helga put a cork in it. It’s enough to ask questions, but an entirely different thing to disrespect your hosts by suggesting their troubles in life are trivial.

We finally ditched Helga, and picked up our train tickets for tomorrow, and went off to explore the rest of Ulan Ude. Admittedly, there isn’t much else to see in this city, save for two museums that aren’t easy to get to. Across the road from our end-point was a nice opera theatre that looked almost like it had been plucked out from Spain. Next door to that was the Mongolian Embassy.

Down the road (to the south) was the GUM department store and market — of which there wasn’t much. However, there were delectable blinni — which are crepe-like panckages filled with (in our case) cheese and ham. The pedestrian mall took us down to a recently-renovated church, before we walked back towards our hotel, and the world’s largest Lenin head.

Why is the world’s largest Lenin head in Ulan Ude? Got me. I can see it from this computer. It’s HUGE. It’s at least two storeys tall. The body, if there were one, would tower over Ulan Ude. Vlad-zilla!

We’re preparing for tomorrow’s trip. Not just with supplies (food and water), but also mentally. Mongolians like to smuggle things across the border, and we need to be prepared for the possibility that they might try to muscle their way into our compartment — which we bought all the seats in to prevent us getting caught with smugglers.

Either way, the next time you hear from us, we’ll be in another country.