Cows in Coats

In Russia and Mongolia Christmas is not celebrated on 25 December - the Christmas decorations and Santa suits are all about New Year. (In Russia the Christmas decorations were being put up by serious guys in military uniforms which was not so festive).

So on Christmas day we set out with a couple of other guys, Ram and Joe from our guesthouse, a driver called Ekman, and his assistant who changed the tapes, and who we called DJ Fur Hat. We'd been to the bus station to find a driver, and after much excitement, confusion and scribbling numbers on bits of paper we decided the deal offered by our guesthouse wasn't too bad after all.

Our destination for the first day was the old capital from Ghengis Khan's day, Harhorin. The next day we wanted to travel down a river valley to see some hot springs and a frozen waterfall, but mostly just to check out what life in the Mongolian countryside was all about.

Out of the city we could see the bare countyside and its round hills stretched out as far as we could see. We passed herds of goats, sheep, hairy horses, cows wearing winter coats and our favorite, the two-humped camels (always staring at the horizon looking for the bastard deer that stole their antlers, according to the folk tale). Mongolian herders could be seen rounding up their herds out there in the subzero temperatures, smoke coming from the chimneys of their nice, warm ger huts. DJ Fur Hat quickly discovered we shared his taste for a particular Mongolian song which was very cute, and also kept us entertained with an eclectic mix of Britney Spears and 50 Cent.

Harhorin itself was a dusty spread-out town with a few crumbling industries and a huge monastery. The ger where we stayed was toasty hot with a wood stove in the middle. For Christmas night we were entertained by a local musican who played traditional instruments and did traditional throat singing for us which is an amazing sound. A very nice bloke, he explained that his day job was as an air traffic controller.

Highlights the next day included seeing a 5 foot tall vulture sitting beside the road, and having lunch with a nomad family who had cooked up some meat and home-made sausages. It tasted very very good. (We supplemented it with our own noodles to ensure we weren't stealing the food from their mouths). Instead of leggo, their little boy had a miniature ger he was putting together.

Along the way our driver took a break from the bumpy track and drove for some way along the frozen river - the smoothest highway you can imagine. Another highlight was seeing the stars - the moon is almost new, leaving the sky so black that we could see the milky way. It's been a long time since we saw that.

For our second night in the ger we took turns to wake up freezing cold to get the fire going again. The system worked very effectively.

The trip home was uneventful - although what really surprised us was that despite the apparent barrenness of the landscape, there was wildlife everywhere, particularly birds. On the posts close to the road we saw 5 or 6 eagles just sitting there watching the world go by.

So that's Mongolia for now. Tomorrow we take the train to Beijing, and find out if we've been practicing our tones properly.