Because it all started like this (Beijing):
and ended up like this (Riga):
So it had to be A M A Z I N G!
One month of being on the road, 10958 km done, 12 cities visited, 7 countries crossed, 3 days trekking on the Baikal Lake done as well as two days of horse riding in Mongolia. And it is only a little part of what I experienced 😉
We started our transsiberian travel with a bus full of Chinese and Mongolian people travelling from Beijing to Erlian (border with Mongolia). It was the cheapest way to get to Mongolia thus we decided to take this night sleeping bus which was very comfortable especially for little Momo who is as thin as my finger (as it is visible on the picture below lol). Our first place we wanted to visit was of course Mongolia! So, we were heading to Ulan Batar where we planned to spend one week with our host that we found on couchsurfing.
What about Mongolia?
Apart from the fact that it is an extremely wild with full of nature country, I was quite surprised when I got off the train in Ulan Batar and right away I saw a huge billboard advertising Polish chocolate (Wawel)! But, not only this. In every shop in Mongolia there are plenty of Polish products like sour cucumbers, mushrooms, tea and sweets. I told it to our host and he explained me that there was one Mongolian guy who was studying in Poland and he loved Polish things (pikle,korniszony etc.), so he started importing this to Mongolia and that’s how it began and how Mongolian people love Polish food 🙂 I have to say that it is one of the factors why I felt like home in Mongolia <3
But, Mongolia is not only Polish products …. It is especially about wilderness and uniqueness that you experience even in Ulan Batar. Why this capital is so unique? Have a look!
Ulan Batar is the capital which has a very significant amplitudes. In winter it can be -40 while in summer +35. Even when we were there in may, during the day the temperature was not that high (about 15), but during the night it went down to about 2 degrees. What’s more, it is a very small capital with only about one million inhabitants, even there you can see jurtas (traditional Mongolian houses) where people live normally.
Ulan Bator actually does not have a good night life. We got to know that all bars close at midnight and in the evening we did not see a lot of people on the main streets but … the atmosphere and natural beauty of this city compensate everything 😉
In the train from Zamyn-Uud to Ulan Batar we met a few foreigners and afterwards we all met up in Ulan Batar.
Mongolian people are very very patriotic and they all love Chinggis Khan (of course!). Mostly all of them eat meat in every dish that they eat. I met a few vegetarians travelling to Mongolia and frankly speaking I don’t know how they survived there, but indeed they survived. One day we made breakfast for our host, unfortunately he didn’t like it too much because there was no meat 🙁 At least he was honest with us 😉
Woogie (our host) has a summer house about 30km from Ulan Batar so one day he took us to his place where me met as well his friend, uncle and aunt. While being there we tried Mongolian soup, we hiked a bit but the most, we were just chilling after a great previous night in Ulan Batar 😀 Woogie’s aunt was preparing soup for us while her husband was showing us photos of their whole family. It is nice to know some Russian while you are in Mongolia, even a few simple words (that’s how I could communicate with Woogie’s family).
Finally, as we previously planned, we decided to do some horse riding in Mongolia. In order to do that, we took a 3 hour bus ride to Terelj National Park where we could easily find some horses and sleep in jurtas. However, at the end of the day we decided to sleep in our own jurta that you can see on the picture below 😉 As it comes to horse riding, we found a beautiful Mongolian ‚horsewoman’ who, in her traditional clothes, was a guide for us. I was a bit surprised with the size of Mongolian horses. As this country is so famous for these animals I thought they would be quite big but nope, the horses appeared to be small.
Lastly, during my stay in Mongolia I made the fastest decision in my life… we got tattooosssss done by best tattoo maker in Ulan Bator who was a friend of Woogie. Crazy chicas 😉
The end of the first part of my Transsiberian travel 🙂
I love reading this!
But you have to finish writing about this trip because you will have too much to catch up with once you start hiking in Peru !