A furgon ride
My 2007 visit to Mongolia was somewhat accidental: By early July, Uudraa decided that she would have to fly home at the end of the month in order to help with her family's business, and in mid-August - I had worked for two weeks at a construction site in Grafenwöhr, Bavaria - I decided that my funds were sufficient for following her. That is, I had enough money for a plane ticket to Beijing and back, plus the visas and the expenses for overland travelling between Beijing and Mörön. I was a bit lucky that plane tickets (with Emirates, after all) were still available at a very reasonable price. Everything worked extremely well, and four days after setting out from Berlin I reached UB at the very end of August.
Uudraa and I had taken the same route - sleeper bus to Ereen, UAZ 469 across the border, train to UB - on our two other visits to Mongolia, and the route taken on my first visit to Mongolia had also been quite similar, so the ease of getting to Ulaanbaatar was not really surprising. I was, however, somewhat surprised just how much I liked being back in Mongolia. What you hear about the country when you are in Germany usually centers around crashing helicopters and incompetent politicians, or family problems. But when you are there, you see that life goes on, that the centre of Ulaanbaatar is actually experiencing a construction boom, that the power and cell phone networks are being expanded in the countryside. Or maybe it was just the feeling that Mongolia is still Mongolia, that the sky is still blue. Or it was the sight of those admirable Mongolian women that made me so euphoric. In any case, the chaos at the Mongolian border checkpoint, the train journey to UB, even the guy with the golden tooth at UB station who tried to make one of the telephone ladies cheat on me (in Mongolian) and then asked me to take his taxi (in English), they all kind of warmed my heart. Also, it was cool to understand at least some of what was being said around me.
Ever since my first trip to Mongolia in 2002, I have been a big fan of riding the furgon. I think the moment that got me in was when the driver just left the paved road to Kharkhorin. He simply turned right and then followed a dirt track, but seemingly without lowering speed. I guess the fascination wears off quickly when you have to use one outside of your vacation, but so far this has not happened to me. I never could really sleep on that 16-20 hour, 685 km rides to Mörön, but I still love it.
The furgon I took this time had the usual 15-odd passengers on board, plus two drivers. I sat in the back, but I know from experience that sitting in the backward-looking row behind the driver is not much of a problem to me either. The passengers were mostly regular people, one drunk with a small daughter, one drunk without, a woman from Buryatia with an about 13-year old daughter. Before departure, some friends of the single drunk passed vodka around in the removed lens of the interior light (they put the lens back afterwards). On the way, the drunk with daughter kept on telling that the very small woman next to me was Öndör Gongor's daughter, that the Buryat woman was his Dondogdulam, that I was his friend etc. The other drunk was a bit of a troublemaker, but fortunately sat far enough from me to not cause me any problems. During the night, however, he did bother the Buryat woman a bit, and then got into a small quarrel with the other drunk. I couldn't help admiring the two girls, how the Buryat girl always cared for her mother, and the other girl kept her father from fighting with the other drunk. The Buryat girl was utterly excited when we drove through the Khanuin gol the next morning, some 150 km before Mörön.
In Rashaant, about 90 km from our destination, the driver would pick up two more passengers with very cute, roughly three-ear old, red-cheeked twin daughters, plus some more baggage. By now, Mörön was only two and a half hours or so away, and after we had crossed the Selenge river about an hour later, people began distributing sweets and samar. A last short stop was caused by one of the girls from Rashaant getting sick from the samar, and then we already crossed the last small pass before Mörön, shortly thereafter passed the marker for the sum border, a big plastic deer with an ovoo, and then rode into town. I was tired and shaken after the bumpy ride, but convinced once more that the furgon leg is the best part of travelling to Mörön on the cheap.
Uudraa and I had taken the same route - sleeper bus to Ereen, UAZ 469 across the border, train to UB - on our two other visits to Mongolia, and the route taken on my first visit to Mongolia had also been quite similar, so the ease of getting to Ulaanbaatar was not really surprising. I was, however, somewhat surprised just how much I liked being back in Mongolia. What you hear about the country when you are in Germany usually centers around crashing helicopters and incompetent politicians, or family problems. But when you are there, you see that life goes on, that the centre of Ulaanbaatar is actually experiencing a construction boom, that the power and cell phone networks are being expanded in the countryside. Or maybe it was just the feeling that Mongolia is still Mongolia, that the sky is still blue. Or it was the sight of those admirable Mongolian women that made me so euphoric. In any case, the chaos at the Mongolian border checkpoint, the train journey to UB, even the guy with the golden tooth at UB station who tried to make one of the telephone ladies cheat on me (in Mongolian) and then asked me to take his taxi (in English), they all kind of warmed my heart. Also, it was cool to understand at least some of what was being said around me.
Ever since my first trip to Mongolia in 2002, I have been a big fan of riding the furgon. I think the moment that got me in was when the driver just left the paved road to Kharkhorin. He simply turned right and then followed a dirt track, but seemingly without lowering speed. I guess the fascination wears off quickly when you have to use one outside of your vacation, but so far this has not happened to me. I never could really sleep on that 16-20 hour, 685 km rides to Mörön, but I still love it.
The furgon I took this time had the usual 15-odd passengers on board, plus two drivers. I sat in the back, but I know from experience that sitting in the backward-looking row behind the driver is not much of a problem to me either. The passengers were mostly regular people, one drunk with a small daughter, one drunk without, a woman from Buryatia with an about 13-year old daughter. Before departure, some friends of the single drunk passed vodka around in the removed lens of the interior light (they put the lens back afterwards). On the way, the drunk with daughter kept on telling that the very small woman next to me was Öndör Gongor's daughter, that the Buryat woman was his Dondogdulam, that I was his friend etc. The other drunk was a bit of a troublemaker, but fortunately sat far enough from me to not cause me any problems. During the night, however, he did bother the Buryat woman a bit, and then got into a small quarrel with the other drunk. I couldn't help admiring the two girls, how the Buryat girl always cared for her mother, and the other girl kept her father from fighting with the other drunk. The Buryat girl was utterly excited when we drove through the Khanuin gol the next morning, some 150 km before Mörön.
In Rashaant, about 90 km from our destination, the driver would pick up two more passengers with very cute, roughly three-ear old, red-cheeked twin daughters, plus some more baggage. By now, Mörön was only two and a half hours or so away, and after we had crossed the Selenge river about an hour later, people began distributing sweets and samar. A last short stop was caused by one of the girls from Rashaant getting sick from the samar, and then we already crossed the last small pass before Mörön, shortly thereafter passed the marker for the sum border, a big plastic deer with an ovoo, and then rode into town. I was tired and shaken after the bumpy ride, but convinced once more that the furgon leg is the best part of travelling to Mörön on the cheap.
posted by yan at 11:53 PM
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