November 15th Mission complete! Yes, Yes, we have made Beijing! Come on! ! ! It's a bit of a sudden end to our expedition I know, but more of that sob story later! The surprising tale of pain from the road continues in Ulan Bator . . .
The city is by no means a big one, but to a Mongolian sheep herder it certainly is the 'big smoke', most of the migrants form the country drive their cars round the place like they are still on horse back and the strange site of a 'Ger' erected in-between buildings is not an uncommon one. Otherwise pretty standard city stuff, lots of adverts, over priced goods and street urchins squeezing you for cash. We weren't too enamoured with the place and spent most of our time in the national park just out to the North East of the city.
The greatest thing about our arrival in that oasis of civilisation was the our first encounter for months and months with a reasonable number of Europeans and assorted English speakers. Most of these we found in the awesome 'Nassan's guest house' (near the russian embassy and cinema). Checking in at the place we were surprised but very happy to find a honeymooning French couple, we wouldn't have disturbed their celebration but for the fact that it was a 2-year affair conducted on bicycles! (Congratulations Fred and Laurence). They have a very extensive route planned as you can imagine but the interesting thing was that up until that point it was very similar to ours! They came very well prepared and had plans to become even more so before leaving U.B. for the cold, we wished them all the best, said we should like to join them and then headed for a local pub.
Another interesting person we met in the town was a gentleman of scouse extraction, called Steve. He had joined the Foreign Office as a filing clerk a few years back and 'stole' his way up through the ranks, now finding himself with the enviable job of filling in for folks away on leave. Basically assuming the roll of an international playboy, jetting all round the world courtesy of the British taxpayer! Tres cool! He carries the greasy perm and luminous towling socks off surprisingly well in his starched suit! (Sorry steve - had to get that one in!) We had a good night out with him starting in the amusing "Steppe Inne" pub opened every Friday night by the British embassy.
Apart from general revelry our trips out to the park were quite fun, the first one was a taxi ride to "Terelj" which ended in a night 'freeloading' with some Mongolian Ger dwellers. The next day the man of the Ger took us out to the woods where he shot various beasts of increasing rarity and rubbed his hands with glee as he thought of the pittance he would receive for their nearly extinct hides! And me a vegetarian!
Having business to be getting on with back in town we returned to the Chinese embassy, through no fault of our own (apart from blameless misinterpretation!) we got stung for another Chinese visa - at the nose-bleeding price of $50 each! Apparently when you buy a Chinese visa its valid from the moment it gets stamped, whether you are in Beijing Airport or the Beta-Delta star system, so the bits of paper we had pedalled all the way across from London were by this time completely useless!
After that tiresome piece of extortion we were about due for another holiday and took it horse trekking back in the national park. We were joined by a talented French equestrian called Marie who must have enjoyed our sorry attempts at riding those moody steeds, Christ had a particularly feisty beast and almost ended up in a hedge a couple of times! Our soft cyclist's thighs were no match for the metal and wood of the Mongolian saddles and we both suffered horribly as a consequence.
We were due to return to the relative comfort of our trusty "Velocepedes" the following day, but had to call a "snow-check" as the weather had worsened. It is important to note that on our arrival in U.B. there was "no way in a pig's cock" that we were going to be riding out of the town, but our national pride had got the better of us since meeting that couple from the continent! How bloody ridiculous!
Fred and Laurence were treating the nigh on blizzard out side as a minor set back, the fact that there isn't a road to the boarder from U.B. and that they didn't have any "way-points" for their satellite navigation system were triffelingly insignificant! Christ and I found this all very amusing and spent the day buying some more socks for our hands and getting hold of some plastic bags for our feet. The very brave Marie was up for the jaunt into the Gobi too so this only added to the 'blas-ay' feel of the attempt.
So the five of us set off the next day from the hostel at nine in the morning with an idea that we should be heading South East for Beijing! The group had quite a large amount of V.D.* between us and the traffic gave us quite a wide berth, we were followed by a van at one point. They eventually stopped us and we conducted our third T.V. interview by the roadside, this time for "Mongolia Today"! The media interest kept the cold off for a while but it became apparent, soon after the asphalt road started to become covered by snow, that we were international superstars going nowhere fast!
A helpful if slightly amused group of roadside coppers pointed us off the road into a snow drift where the track to the Gobi was supposed to start. We got stuck in. It was only as we were digging our bikes out that the complete lunatic of a French man leading the party (No disrespect Fred, but you are a couple of cheeses short of a Raclette) started to wonder if it was indeed possible! Fortunately there was a small town about half an hours ride away (800m) where we could jump on a train.
We took refuge from the freezing wind in the train station and commenced the long wait for the next train - 11am the following morning! We ended up spending the night in a pig's sty, the very kind officer of the law put us up gratis, his flat (I'm not sure that Mongolians have got the idea of living between brick walls yet) was squalid and had the 'ambience' of a 'Smack-heads' Mosside retreat. Things were much more cosy upstairs in his neighbours flat where we enjoyed a nice ego massage - watching ourselves on telly whilst drinking a couple of large bottles of vodka. This in some-way prepared me for the paranoid night that lay ahead, nervously catching a few moments of shut-eye lying NEXT TO(!) a Mongolian 'NARK'.
In the morning we caught the train to "Choir" a couple of hours away, I was upset to see that the snow stopped there, so we were destined to return to the 'track' - not willing to be out done by our French counterparts.
The town's Hotel was full, full of what we never found out, I don't know the Mongolian for 'fresh air'. We were put up by a Poacher-cum-Plumber that night who even gifted Christ some rare-getting-rarer sheep's horns - which work really well with his flying helmet!
The track that we followed Gobi-wise was a feckless, corrugated and sandy one which left a lot to be desired, there was no speed limit on it but that was no problem because there wasn't any traffic. Our funny bicycles had great difficulty getting any decent traction what with the weight so firmly placed over the back wheel and our gears matched for road racing. A 45km day followed, which felt a lot further . . .
The plan was to follow the railway line all the way to the boarder and it was working well, we would have made it all by bike, were it not for the terrain (good and flat but asphalt-less) and our bikes increasingly broken pannier-racks. A night in the train station of 'town-unknown' yielded an impromptu table tennis match with some of the local boys who "could have gone pro" - or so Christ reckoned after one of them beat him! The -7 daytime temps were most disagreeable and stopping was not called for too often. Christ's repairs of the previous night were holding up well and maybe they inspired him with a little too much confidence in his machine because he ragged it hard that day; this was entirely responsible for the 7 failures in his pannier rack and snapped seat post that he was soon to encounter.
We were left by our expedition leader 16km away from any kind of habitation with little option but to walk, fortunately the wonderful Marie was at hand with a completely luggage less pannier rack at our disposal! We loaded her up, took some words of advise from a passing itinerant "your bikes are shit, why don't you get a camel like me?" and commenced the trek to town. On our arrival the navies of the trans-Mongolian-railway pointed us to their cafe which was specially opened for us, we shared our commiseration with Fred and Laurence (who had kindly waited for us) and let them get on their way again. It wasn't all bad, apart from our need of another TIG welder (hard to find out side of a 'formula-one' garage), we were spared the tortures of the Gobi (good for our bikes life span!) and had a good excuse for another couple of days holiday.
We picked the internationally famed resort of "Saynshand". Scooched down their in that lovely armpit of the Gobi dessert. I think Marie who joined us may have questioned the choice, but she was not without the spirit of adventure and stuck it out none the less. It was there we met some American seismologists who were out doing some work for the Mongolian government, we had a refreshing drink with them and got some ideas of what we will face should we ever get that far!
Whilst in Saynshand waiting for Fred and Laurence to arrive we made our repairs, the basic welding being done at one of the most dangerous places I have ever had the courage to enter. A Mongolian building site. It was surely a death sentence to choose to work there, I'm no civil engineer but it looked to me like the luxury apartment blocks they were building had the structural stability of a well advanced game of 'Jenga'. There were dogs, kids and Mongols running all around the litter strewn hospice and your chances of being electrocuted fluctuated with the AC current supply. Natural selection working at a greatly accelerated rate the welder we found must have been something of a super human. Unfortunately his survival was not dependant on his welding ability and he made a very good 'pig's ear' of the repair.
We returned to our accommodation where Christ put his faith in some epoxy resin and glued his seat post back together. I went off to fly my kite in the Gobi with Marie and we came back to find Christ tripping-his-tits-off to the tune of 4 tubes of glue! When Fred and Laurence arrived a day or so later we had seen all there was to see of our wild west town and were quite happy to be getting on our way again, unfortunately we lost one member of our party to the Ulaan Baatar train.
We had decided that our bikes really weren't coping with the Gobi so we left it to have a go at our French friends machines and jumped on a train headed for the border. It was a night-train and held all the unpleasantness you'd expect; literally thousands of pairs of smelly feet, over-zealous tradesmen and not enough room to swing a cat. We slept fitfully in the restaurant car with lots of passers by stopping to wonder at us 'jonny-foreigners'. We jumped off in Zamin-Ude where we reclaimed our machines of pain, every man and his dog was looking at us as we tried to get our brains and body's in gear ready for our Chinese debut.
Not knowing the Togrog/Yuan exchange rate was a bit of a handicap (138?), but I don't think we were diddled excessively, maybe the Taxi ride across the boarder was a tad expensive (100 Y each), but it was about our only option. The crossing was suitably slow for fatigued minds and happened without incidence. We were sharing a minibus (bikes in the boot) with a Mongolian tradesmen; business is good in this part of the world for the 'del boys' of eastern asia. He taught us a little Chinese and took us pebble collecting no-man's land, very spiritual!
Our first impressions of China were the cleanliness of the streets and the number of bikes and people on them, the shops decorate the streets heavily with big neon signs and the place is by no-means peaceful! Our first real taste of Chinese culture was a heavy sore-throat-of-Ming we both contracted just across the fence, I achieved the 'squits' bonus, which made me feel quite special, while Christ remained solid in every aspect. Trying to get money out was fun, the international Visa cards fame has fallen short of Erenhot it seems and I was greeted by many a blank face at the banks of the town. Eventually after finding a friendly english-speaking bank official I became liquid again (for the second time that day) and we went off to escape the crazy throng of rickshaw drivers (with a very keen interest in our bikes) in one of the local hotels.
One of the random bits of preparation we did before leaving Blighty was to get hold of a sheet of translations (Mandarin/English), this has been invaluable since no bugger over here speaks our lingo! Christ has turned vegetarian for this stretch to avoid any rat or "cream-of-sum-young-guy" type dishes and so far the going has been good, In the vegetarian stakes if not in the variation. My taste buds are winging for a break from the minging "chinese-gravy".
One thing about China which we were very pleased about was the exceptional road quality. We made good use of this on our first two days in the country as we whittled 230 or so km off our Beijing target. The scenery is barren dessert - ice cream cold (!) but this held a town or two where we slept. A terrific wind arrived from the west, which was unfortunately very cold, and not entirely behind us, this pissed me off somewhat and was the recipient of a number of swear words, which only made it angrier!
I fell ill on the third day with a bad cough, cold and head ache. Christ was remarkably unsympathetic, mainly because we were stuck out in the wop-wops at the time. We stayed with a couple of families living in a Chinese commune for 2 days, they woke each morning at 7am to some weird Chinese music, which we weren't digging to much - mainly on account of it sounding like a cat being tortured and not having much of a base-line. I was taken to see the local medicine man. I entered his shop with intrepedation; expecting at least to have a crows foot, some sea-weed or some needles involved, but no, he just gave me a packet of Paracetemol some Beachams cough medicine and told me to get my head down for a couple of days. So much for the mystical east.
Christ was very happy to leave the place where he had seen a pig slaughtered and sold in the street and we put a good distance (120kms) between the place and us the day we left. We got as far as "Qahar Youi Houqi" - the spelling of this town is almost as illegal as the incredible mince owned by the bellboy we met that night. He worked in a very large hotel in the centre of the city (driving through which was not fun) and judging by the amazing queerness of his gait he must have carried most of the keys for the place up his bottom. We had a quiet night out there at the hotel bowling ally, which was an unexpected pleasure. The next day our camp friend told us we were 560kms from Beijing, fortunately he was as confused about his sexuallity as he was his 5s and 3s so we were in for a pleasant surprise later!
We nailed a 130 of the buggers that day even though I had trapped a nerve in my knee; this was mainly due to the fact it was all down hill! Not geographically speaking but we were in the possession of a new skill - Lorry grabbing - This low paced adrenaline sport involved, as the name suggests, grabbing on to lorries and getting towed up hills! The exciting bit was missing the occasional pothole and ignoring the shouts of the lorry drivers.
That day we also met possibly the dirtiest man in the world (excluding Stephen Fry) who appeared to be resident in a chimney. He must have had a job cleaning the thing but either way along with the 555 fags he smoked his life expectancy must have been limited, he probably thought something along the same lines about our fragrance!
3 more days to go to Beijing!
We were pretty happy when we stopped that night to hear Beijing was 247km away. The motel/brothel we stayed in was pleased to see us too although we didn't give them the business they were expecting; we left the traffic police outside to fill those roles. One of those fine upstanding gentlemen came in that night to ensure that the cafe were playing us their finest hard core pornography, this was more amusing than anything else and we had them more embarrassed than ourselves in the end!
We saw our first Beijing sign the following day and 120km down the road reached a large town whose name never did stick in my mind, but shall be remembered for the 12-story hotel there. It had a revolving restaurant on the roof; we dined there twice and left the place with a lot of snaps of the panorama.
Our next circumnavigation was of a great big lake out of town; banned from using the expressway, which we had been using illegally up until that point, we were forced to make the chilly hilly switch to the b-road. It didn't even sport many lorries for us to grab. Our spirits were lifted when we saw during the dusk of that evening the Great Wall of China appear on the horizon!
We found a guesthouse to stop at and made ourselves their welcome low-season visitors. The next day as we went to peruse the building work. Pretty impressive. The length which is something you fine hard to gauge when only looking at a small section is the most incredible thing, but I reckon if Hadrian had got hold of some Chinamen we might have had a bit more luck at keeping the Scottish out! I even bought the T-shirt - which is almost as tragic as the fact that the wall never actually saw any real use!
Now we are in Beijing, it was a short 50km ride from Badaling to the Feng Long Youth Hostel here south of the Forbidden City. We both enjoyed that final ride immensely, knowing it was the last time we would have any hills to confront for the time being . . .
*Velocepede Dispensation