KHAAAAN (s) !

So, what might lie beyond Russia for the intrepid Vegemite Ambassador I hear you ask? Well, ponder no more astute reader, saddles were packed and it was all aboard the Trans-Siberian express to Mongolia for the trip of a lifetime. Over five days, over 7000 kilometres and over six time zones, crossing vast tracts of Siberian forest, Ural mountains and Mongolian steppes aboard a rickety old Soviet train that delivered enough locomotive excitement to ensure all accompanying five nights are devoid of sleep.

The Trans-Siberian is a meandering beast, rolling through the deep bowels of Russia and into the endless tundra that made Russian gulags so formidable. Of particular note was passing the magnificent lake Baikal in Irkutsk at the crack of dawn and watching the sun peer through the mist and clouds on the lake and hills around. The hills then eventually give way to the grass and become the wild and rugged borders of Mongolia. As I wrote about this on the train, looking out into this vast nothingness I was overcome with feelings of being VERY far away from home stronger than ever before.

Life on the train is a communal affair; you become sleep deprived comrades in arms with those in your carriage as you all find your way adapting to life on the rails. Social life begins at the mission critical samovar water kettle on the carriage; the font of life for all the packet noodles you invariably bring. Many good friends were made en route to the Samovar as well as the odd boisterous Siberian or Mongolian child who knows that hanging out with foreigners can yield weird and impressive snacks. The social life inevitably escalates with the discovery of the canteen wagon (which is really just a glorified vodka dispenser) and the one litre beer cans that are brought on board en masse at each 30 minute stop. Needless to say, when the trip comes to an end, it is quite sad to say goodbye to your fellow passengers with whom you have forged a strange connection in REM sleep hardship. There is even an admiration and spot in your heart for the formidable, surly train woman for your carriage. 

I should really elaborate a bit more on this train woman … whilst in train employee mode she keeps things in order, ensures the toilets are locked when you need them the most and has an uncanny knack for bursting in and vacuuming your cabin floor when you are naked and getting dressed. However, when the train stops at a station these women throw away their train employee pretense and attempt to sell clothes, toys, curtains, knick knacks, doo-dads, whatever out the train windows to the screaming consumers below that shove up against the train like a concert crowd. Every Siberian passenger on the train does this type of collective selling too, basically converting the great Trans-Siberian Express into the world’s longest moving discount bargain store.

Upon arriving into Ulan Bator and getting those land legs back (it takes a while!) you receive a bright welcome to the Asian side of the continent; taxi drivers yell a lot and people stare at you. A young boy crashed his bike into the back of me and a Buddhist monk blessed me at the traffic lights and then immediately proceeded to throw uncooked rice over me before one last praying gesture. It was to be my first official drive by rice’ing. 

In Mongolia they have a saying, “Every woman is beautiful, every man is drunk and every car is a taxi”. The latter part is especially apt; every car IS a potential taxi, even if it no longer resembles a complete automobile but more a moving hunk of scrap metal guaranteed to convert you to a believer in SOME greater power by the end of the journey. The buses and their Schumacher wannabe drivers (who like to ventilate their stomachs a lot) are even more rousing, offering a journey that will excite and exhilarate in every aspect. This includes the on-board entertainment which either consists of endless cheesy 80’s pop on repeat or a collection of bizarre Mongolian movies containing endless gore and brutality for the ample stunned children aboard.

Ulan Bator is the capital of Mongolia though not really what you would call a stunning city to the eye. But, it does have a kick ass Genghis Khan statue, awesome Mongol warrior pedestrian traffic lights and one of the few Buddhist monasteries that wasn’t trashed by daft communists. In the monastery you can easily experience RPWSI (Repetitive Prayer Wheel Strain Injury) from having to spin several hundred prayer wheels as you walk the all-important clockwise direction around the massive Buddha in the main temple. It’s particularly hard work on your right arm being a Buddhist.

The real heart and soul of Mongolia however lies in the vast open expanses. Fleeing the urban crawl of Ulan Bator for the country side. The opportunity was afforded to stay with a Mongolian family in their Ger, smack bang in the middle of nowhere and surrounded by constantly farting animal herds. No language was shared making for a cultural experiment that will never be forgotten. They were a lovely family and had three little children which were incredibly cute and very interested in the weird foreign types gracing their floor, especially those fancy digital cameras.

A visit like this to a Mongolian family in the country side for a vegan would basically be a death sentence; these people live in an Atkin’s diet heaven. In fact, the five Mongolian “food groups” summarise the cuisine nicely: there is the white group which is the milk food, the yellow group which is the butter and oil food, the red group which is the meat food, the green group which is the grass and herb food and the black group which is the water and alcohol food. This forms the spiritual chain of earth-water-plant-animal-food-human, with particular emphasis on the animal to food step.

At the Ger (and indeed each Ger visited) guests are offered endless platters of cheese, cheese biscuits and ultra-dried cheese, all with a slightly tangible “off” taste. On top of this mountain of cheesy goodness will be some fresh cream and sometimes some yoghurt. You can rinse this lot down with some fresh sheep milk or some very special Mongolian tea; which is warm cow milk with some salt AND (if you’re lucky!) some random bits of meat floating in it. If you are not bloated of dairy food yet you might then get to share some fermented horse milk which is truly one of the great acquired tastes of this Earth. If you want to simulate it you could probably do so by adding some Vodka to some milk and then chuck in some vinegar for good measure.

Meat is next on the agenda and it’s no holds barred in this department. The welcome meal was a hearty boiled sheep brain stew and the next day family slaughtered, skinned and carved a goat. From this the vast majority of the innards were thrown into a huge iron wok of water to form a great big ol’ goat guts stew. As a side dish, and a delicacy reserved for the guest of the house, the kidneys and liver were wrapped in udder fat and flame grilled. Top this off with some intestines filled with blood to make sausages. This is all uncharted territory. It was absolutely a real honour to eat with them this way but the whole process is admittedly overwhelming for the faint of stomach or heart. Particularly as the remaining cuts of meat will be hanging in the Ger next to you, along with the goat head, as a morbid reminder each time you go to sleep of what you’ve eaten.

If that’s not weird enough for you yet, I found a list of other typical Mongolian delicacies fortunately missed out on such as: udder soup, boiled cattle head and shanks, singed off skin salad, jelly of sheep head meat, bone broth, spleen ham, testicle dumplings, elk lip, dish of spinal cord, steamed tongue, jaw meat and scabby mouth soup, retina and nasal cartilage salad, baked oesophagus, fried camel hump and the ever popular hot camel toe which is sure to evoke a different picture in the mind to what would be served. 

Oh and you can’t forget to break the animals bones as you eat them as it releases the soul of the animal. If you can’t break them with your hands then you can smash them after dinner with a hammer or axe as after dinner exercise. Have no fear though, even the bones you can’t break such as the knuckles get cleaned and used as dice in games and as a way to divine the future. Truly no part of the animal goes to waste here.

These folk live in a really spectacular landscape; the Gobi desert and grassy rolling plains dotted with Gers and herds of animals. The air is clear and every sunset / sunrise seems to be more majestic than the last. Life here is hard, but hearty. The people have an incredibly strong dependence on their Gers that the poem below explains better than I could ever hope to do.

Ode to the Ger The finest felt made of wool from a thousand sheep,
lattice walls and poles made of willow branches
like extended bows of a hundred warriors,
when the typhoon blows it does not shake,
when a storm pours it gets even stronger,
when the snow falls the air inside stays warm,
and soft furs are piled up for comfort,
the Khuur musician plays a fine melody,
and the dancers delight next to burning fire,
the smoke of the night raises to the air
and disappears into the dark of the night,
it casts a lonely shadow in the moonlight
and though the kings decorate their palaces with carving,
they’d never equal my truly great and comfortable Ger
in the fresh wind and on the young grass
within the mist prevailing in the land of the north.

The Mongolian herdsman are naturally excellent horse riders and wear elegant, rugged robes of the plains matched with surprisingly random hats. You see, it’s tradition for fellow Mongols to swap hats with each other when they meet – but this has now extended to travellers from other lands, so it’s quite funny to see a herdsman kicking it in a bad-ass fedora, beret or even a sombrero.

Horse riding is also one of the main sports at the Naadam festival, which is the Mongolian Olympic games equivalent. It also includes wrestling, standing archery and horseback archery as well. These are “real men” sports, other crap that involves kicking little balls and the like have no place here.

As much as one might want to learn some Mongolian language to smooth travels, it’s practically impossible for English speakers. I am not too bad at languages and I can’t even pronounce “thanks” and I doubt I ever will be able to either. The ancient Mongolian script is really exquisite though and the calligraphy is very artistic, it doesn’t even look like language.

There have been some excellent introductions to “Engrish” here too. If you are not sure what it is, Engrish is the attempts by east Asian people to write in English without knowing the language. Whilst brave, the results are often quite tragic, in fact I am going to wrap up the blog post with a taste of it. This is from a tourist brochure promoting a musical show …

“The performance will be the unforgettable time. A climax of the dear tourists who are going to visit from around the world in order to introduce with richer Mongolian history and nadition. You will see the following perform by us:

- Horse head fiddle that seems the wide territory for you
- The contortion that moves creamy just like a motivation without articulation
- Tsama that shows and means to remove the trouble of people moreover to soothe the nymph for all people

These all interested performances are for tourists on our side so we hope that you will pass one night with us when you were seeing the cultural gascinating performances, unforgettable lots of things, when you were introducing with some of the clothes, living hood and tradition of some ethnics.”

They had me at "the unforgettable time".