There is a big wrestling stadium in Moron (like in most towns) - Mongolians celebrate and worship their wrestlers, often with statues, like this one below.
When we arrived it started raining and snowing for a couple of days, so we ended up staying three nights. Below is one of the main streets of the city.
We visited the market, where you can buy anything the Mongolian household needs. Here is the meat hall.
In summer Mongolians pick forest fruits, all types of berries, strawberry, cranberry,blackberry, blueberry - at the market you can buy bucket loads - so we got ourselves stocked up - tasty treat.
We also ate out each day and had a favourite restaurant, serving fried beef with rice and some salad. (eating out is quite cheap, this one being top range at about 20,000MG Togrog/about 10UK pounds for two, including starters and drinks)
Initially we had planned to head North for a few days before taking transport back to UB (what the locals call Ulaanbaatar) We decided traveling further by bike would be tempting fate as we now had 1week left and did not want to get stuck anywhere with a broken rim. So we took a stroll down to the "Public transport" station.
Therer are all sorts of transport opportunities, mini vans, trolley busses, jeeps and public transport busses. After a few hours of scouting around we realised that it would not be that easy to get someone to take us back to UB or to the North with our bikes. We basically had to go with what was on offer. We were approached by the driver of the Public Transport bus to UB for the next day. For a juicy extra fee (double the normal price, that's 110,000MG Togrog for two people) he would take us, so we said yes.
The bikes were cunningly strapped to the roof of the bus. Public transport in Mongolia has much more demand than supply and ususally the ticket office will sell tickets for all numbered seats and then the driver will fill the rest of the bus with as many more people as he can. The bus basically leaves when its full, which can delay departure for hours (waiting for more people) We were luckily only delayed by one hour.
So on we rolled - with 52 people in an originally 30 seater bus, including lots and lots of luggage stowed away underneath seats so most people were resting their feet on their luggage. The stretch between Moron and UB is about 680km and takes 20hours! The first 15hours are off road on bumpy dirt track, complete with river crossings and mountain passes (one time we had to get off and walk up the hill for 30min - as the bus would not make it with us in it). There were some scary moments! We started at 15.00pm, stopped for dinner in a service station and drove into the night. Everyone tried to go asleep, the kids were launched across everyone's lap (Tim's lap was the pillow for one little girl all night) and everyone just sleeps on top of everyone else, like the poor guys that sit on barrels and makeshift seats in the middle isle, they just fall asleep on the laps of the people next to them.
We also had the inevitable break down, something with the exhaust. We stopped at a village and immediately all male passengers, local villagers and the two drivers were all getting stuck in to repair the damage. The villagers found a spare part (where???) and some passengers proved pretty handy in mechanics - Tim did his bit and assisted with light - holding our bright headtorch for those working under the vehicle.
At 6am we finally reached the tarmac road and the last 5hours were smooth and we rolled into UB for 11am (the drivers did not even bother to stop anymore, but did "flying swaps").
We checked into a nice hotel for one night and slept 14hours straight!
No comments:
Post a Comment