Mission accomplished!

Yes that’s me, paddling in the Pacific. Never satisfied, I hopped on a boat for a tour of Vladivostok’s amazing natural harbour which positively bristles with some very serious looking ships – and got a bit further east in the process……you know, just to make sure……

Made it!

Vladivostok! What more romantic sounding name could you have!

And in case you are harbouring a suspicion that really I am sitting at my desk at home in Shropshire and making it all up, here is irrefutable evidence that I have actually done it…….

PS despite expert instructions from both my brother and his wife on screenshots, well you’re getting good old fashioned photos. Nothing wrong with good old fashioned photos is there!!!

This is such a civilised way to travel My longings for Mongolia gradually becoming assimilated into a love of the country and pleasure of having been there with time to relax and acknowledge it as part of my life – instead of being parachuted back into my “real” life with no chance to let go in my own time.

That last day in Ulan Bator gave me a chance to experience the art and culture of Mongolia through visiting a couple of museums – I am no fan of museums normally but I loved these, the Mongolilan artistic heritage is rich and gorgeous with fabulous fabrics and costumes, wonderful paintings and statues – lots of Buddhist art where I enjoyed seeing many of the effigies and figures I am used to seeing in Tibetan monasteries with a Mongolian twist – squarer, Mongolian faces – reminds me of our English religious art where we depict Jesus as fair when we all know he was an Arab – and horses! Of course! And, delightfully, many of the wrathful deities and fierce protectors in Mongolia are not barefoot like their Tibetan brothers – they wear glorious boots!

There was a new moon for this new leg of my journey and I got out of the train for the last stops in Mongolia to linger one more time on Mongolian soil.

And now I look forward with growing excitement to arriving in Vladivostok early tomorrow morning.

Olga has donned a navy blue overall and is cleaning the carriage including mopping our floor. I’m now sharing with a family – mum and 2 teenage girls with me, dad along the corridor. We are beyond Siberia now. This is so far across the world! Siberia always sounds llike the far reaches of where you’d ever go and I’m beyond that now!

Still lush, still trees, still carpets of wild flowers. Small wooden towns and villages, a metalled road in view most of the time – this corridor with the railway line is more inhabited, to the north its empty land til you get to the artic. Easy to imagine bears prowling round the forests.

On the train, last leg of journey to Vldiovostok. Travelling 2nd class and surrounded by Russians – in marked contrast to every leg of the journey so far where my carriage companions have been foreigners – on the last one I felt positively hemmed in by Americans.

This carriage is a different design again, they all vary slightly – this one has the less delightful design of toilet – and my carriage attendant, Olga, is nothing like as assiduous in her cleaning duties as some! Ah well, I’m made of stern stuff and wet wipes may be unenvironmental but they make it all do-able.

I’m sharing with a large Russian woman (opposite, bottom bunk) who has done nothing but eat and sleep all afternoon and evening, and a young woman above. I can see the attraction of the top bunk, she’s in her own little private cacoon with her stuff around her and a good storage space off her bunk which goes above the corridor. Good for privacy and security. Very clever design – Scottish Caledonian take note.

Olga is relaxed and friendly, she has loose wavy hair and a slightly dishevilled look instead of the usual tight bun, tights and pristine trim uniform. She worried how I would communicate with my fellow travellers without a translation app. She chivvies me not to go too far when we all pile out at stations.

And Siberia? Very lush after Mongolia, long waving grass, lush river with trees and scrub in the early morning mist, larch and birch trees, sparse forest with open meadows , rolling landscape. My guidebook tells me I’ve slept through the most scenic part of the whole route. I don’t care. I’m happy. We’re running late. Doesn’t mean we go any faster!

Grabbing a quick fix of wifi in Ulan-Ude between trains. Goodness I do miss Mongolia but it’s good to be back in Russia and so glad to have more time here. I’m so enjoying Russia! And getting the hang of how to communicate with people – who are so helpful.

My compartment companion on the train was a MAN. It was OK but I had to freeze him out – he wanted to talk presumably to while away a long boring train journey. He kept fiddling with his phone and telling me where we were, how fast we were going, etc etc. He made a disparaging comment about Mongolia which made me feel very protective but I didn’t challenge him – he just didn’t get it and I wanted him to shut up so I could just drink in my last look at Mongolia.

Waking up on the outskirts of Ulan-Ude he excitedly took pics of a falling down soviet era block muttering about soviet legacy and this is Russia. I said I’m sure you have stuff like that in switzerland – he said not so much – I said well Russia has lovely stuff too. He only saw what he wanted to see.

Delighted to report this Chinese train a massive improvement on the last one – none of the plush trappings but CLEAN and the loo quite acceptable. Can it really just be due to the fact that the attendants were women this time????

Bye bye to my Chinese train – on the right

PS I claim no credit for the title of this post – my brother’s idea! Thank you little bro’!

Sad to be going. Love this country. Waiting for taxi to station……Vladivostok here I come……

Back in the big city, bidding a fond farewell to my fellow travellers who are now homeward bound while I gear myself up for the next leg of my journey – Vladivostok.

Its good to have the extra day here before moving on and a chance to visit a couple of museums, art galleries, that sort of thing. Never be tempted to think of Mongolia as a poor backward country – its art and history are stunning and distinctive and they are rightly proud of their culture and traditions. Everything is big and solid and square and beautifully presented. Very few beggars. Pretty clean. People live in gers because they want to not because they are poor and most have a car (and a house) sitting outside.

But goodness I love this country. I came for the landscape and the horse culture and have been overwhelmed by it.

What will I take with me? Standing outside my ger gazing up at the stars……..seeing a shooting star…….the flowers – a totally unexpected delight – whole mountainsides of wild flowers of every shape and colour and herbs, smelling gorgeous.

Oh yes. And the boots. Mongolians and their gorgeous boots! They dance in them, ride horses in them, soldiers do their soldierly drills in them, singers sing in them, Nadaam visitors hang out in them, monks pray in them, you sport them with your Sunday best, your every day clothes just for the hell of it and absolutely whenever you want to impress……..they are softish leather, shaped like a long riding boot and may be different colours, may be combinations of different leathers in patterns, may have simple or fancy stitching or may be elegantly plain or stylish. Some of the women can carry off wearing them with stilleto heels. They are fab and I am sternly keeping myself OUT of shoe shops!

Yes that’s our ger camp – isn’t it fab!

This morning I have galloped across the Mongolian plain, surrounded by mountains and forests as far as the eye can see, under the huge sky, on a tough little Mongolian horse and it was heaven.

In fact this place is heaven – our gers sit on a great flat grassy area among hills and forest, its a delightful camp, they come and light a fire in your ger in the morning, its hard to put across just how lovely the gers are, both to look at and to be inside (there will be pictures I promise maybe the Russian internet will be more amenable, fingers crossed). The furniture is painted, colourful and cheerful, there are lovely fabric drapes round the bed, chairs and cushions, and you can just sit outside and drink in the view. Its magic!

On arrival last night I walked up a nearby hill and it was good to be alone, high above our camp just revelling in being here. There were scrapings on the ground made by wild boars rooting with their tusks.

On the way here we did the tourist thing and stopped at the massive Ghengis Khan statue – typical Mongolia – if they want to make a monumet they don’t do it in a centre of population where people can pass by every day and with buses and trains to get you there, they stick it, huge and imposing, out in the landscape. Its common to see huge statues of wild animals atop a hill at the entrance to a national park and at one place we stopped at, just outside a town, their big monument to Mongolia was a 20 minute walk up a hill.

Around the Ghengis Khan statue is now a bustle but its jobs and prosperity for people and its beautifully done, a place you could hang out for the day. There was a museum which was, incongruously, all set up to cater for people taking selfies with the exhibits (statues of Ghengis Khan, mock ups of gers and life as a nomad or a soldier, etc) so if you stopped to actually look at something you were shoved out of the way by people wanting to have their picture taken in front of it. Nobody (but me) actually looked AT anything.

We’re off again today, can’t wait – 2 more nights of wonderful huge landscapes (and no wifi).

To give you an idea, Mongolia has the lowest population density in the world with just over one person per square kilometre (UK  has just under 400). Total population is about 3 million, over half of whom live  in Ulan Bataar.

UB was a moveable capital til less than 250 years ago, now its just a big city, people flocked here 30 or so years ago in search of all the usual things but many of them still live in gers in the suburbs, or have a house with a ger next to it. At heart every Mongolian is a nomad and at weekends likes nothing better than to take his ger off into the wilds and hunt wild boar and barbecue it. They are not profligate – they well respect the environment and wildlife and are not actually supposed to hunt but its who they are!

Nearly all the animals we see are healthy and well cared for except, very sadly, one of the national parks we visited where, for some reason there were also far too many carcasses lying around and horses excluded from the herd, nothing but skin and bone, soon to be carcasses themselves.

Ger suburb of Ulan Bator

So, today was it – the Nadaam festival – and we watched the most joyful celebration of a nation’s culture I have ever seen. The stadium was packed, there were bands and dancers and march pasts of people representing every aspect of Mongolia from past to present with camels and yaks and horses galore, in fact the horse is absolutely central to Mongolian culture and the horse is what was so exuberantly shown off today..

It was wonderful and equally wonderful was milling around outside the stadium before and after, among the performers lining up ready in all their glorious traditional costumes, families out for the day, many wearing all sorts of variations of local dress, hundreds of food stalls all packed, stalls selling all the usual stuff you get at a festival, horses in among the crowds, everyone happy and excited to be there.

In fact happy crowds has been a delightful feature of this whole trip from the street party atmosphere in Moscow in the build up to the World Cup to Ulan Ude with the cultural show there and enjoying everybody milling round in the square to here in Ulan Bataar with the various Nadaam events we’ve been to and the big square where people love to gather and enjoy the statues and music and just hanging about enjoying life.

Another happy gathering the other day found us out in the desert in one of the remotest places on earth, no wifi, the only electricity there was generated on site with solar power and what do we do of an evening? Crowded round a television and cheered our boys through to the world cup semi final!!!!