Ulaan Baatar

Thursday 21st August

First task after arrival is to pick up my ticket to Irkutsk. I have the map sent by Real Russia and a  free map handed to me by one of the tour operators at the station. But I can't match them up. The travel agency doesn't close till 6 so I have plenty of time. The receptionist at the hotel gives me a better map but she can't find the travel agent location either. She calls the travel agency and turns out it is off the end of the map. Definitely a taxi ride away but I only have a few dollars worth of Mongolian Tugrik and the hotel can't do any exchange. So first stop is the bank which has a ticket queuing system. Eventually I get to exchange some Chinese Yuan and US$. If I thought China was a police state,  Mongolia beats it by having a policeman wearing a high luminosity jacket with "POLICE" on the back every 15 metres along the main road. Later I find out that the president of China is visiting.  

All the police in UB ? 

Not seeing any taxis, I stick out my hand and a car stops. I show him the map and the translation into Mongolian and off we go. But then we get into a network of side streets and the driver resorts to asking passers by. One sends us down a rubble surfaced back street that must take a few months of the life of the suspension and when we get to the other end another passer by sends us back the way we came. Taxi driver phones the contact number and gets some directions. Eventually we arrive.  On the basis that the previous ride was 10 000  I offer him 20 000 as a contribution to his suspension and he appears to be incredibly happy. On the front door there is a large notice in English - "Please ring the bell" but underneath, also in English, is a piece of paper "Bell not working. Please call .....and of course my phone is in the hotel charging! So I hammer on the door like a mad axe murderer and fortunately a very helpful young lady answers. Asks if I have come to collect my train ticket and fetches it. She is also kind enough to call me a taxi back to the hotel.  It appears that a huge swathe of UB has an address on "Peace Avenue" which of course is something completely different in Mongolian. Peace Avenue is the main road through the centre of the city, about 2km long but the travel agency has the number 79 and the hotel near the other end is number 10-2b. In both cases the places are on side roads several hundred metres from the main road.

Both taxi drivers, like most of the men I see in Ulaan Baatar, are big. Luckily they seem friendly but I wouldn't want to argue with an unfriendly one. Is body building a national pastime here?

Looking on Trip Advisor, the topped ranked restaurants serve American, Indian and Sri Lankan food but having come all this way, I want to try Mongolian. Some way down the list is Karakoram at the Kempinsky, the top hotel in town. Reviewers say it is quite reasonable. Takes a bit longer to reach it than I expected arriving  just after 9.00 and the menu says last orders are at 9.30. But waitress tells me they are only doing "Comfort "food so I end up with fish and chips!

Friday 22nd August

After an adequate but unexciting breakfast at Kaiser Hotel, I get a taxi to the Gandan Tegchilen Monastery, which has a major pigeon infestation worse than Trafalgar Square 30 years ago. The outside looks rather dilapidated and run down,  not like the temples in all the other Buddhist countries I have visited. But inside it is very atmospheric with people spinning prayer wheels and lighting incense sticks . In another part of the temple complex,  monks perform a very strange chant with different monks coming in with different parts. They are reading from the old Mongolian script and are in very good humour,  sharing a joke and occasionally sneaking a peak at their smart phone. Later in the proceedings, they all don funny hats and throw seeds about. For the pigeons?

Poisoning the pigeons in the Park? 

 www.youtube.com/watch?v=yhuMLpdnOjY

Big Buddha in Gandan Tegchilen Monastery

Prayer Wheels in Gandan Tegchilen Monastery

Gandan Tegchilen Monastery

Angry god in Gandan Tegchilen Monastery

More Prayer Wheels Outside

Most of the current monastery is not that old, having been rebuilt after the end of the communist era in Mongolia, during which large parts were destroyed.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gandantegchinlen_Monastery

Outside there  was  a wedding party. The bride and groom both in Western style dress  but several of the party in traditional heavy robes. 

Big Men in Traditional Outfits

The Wedding Party: Costumes Ancient and Modern

Then it was back to ordeal by pigeon to get out. 

Monk Scattering the Pigeons

Think the Pigeons are Winning

An ATM just in case you ran out of money to buy bird seed

Just next to the monastery I was surprised to see people living in gers and wooden huts.

Hut, Ger and Car

A cafe nearby is the finishing line of the Mongol Rally where I meet two young guys who have just completed the journey from London to UB in 5 weeks via Iran and many of the "stans". Makes my journey seem very tame.

http://www.theadventurists.com/mongol-rally

By now I was feeling a bit chilly; this is the first place on my travels where a T shirt wasn't the most suitable attire,  looked for a place for coffee and ended up in the Broadway Grill on Peace Avenue, where else? for a coffee and pasta carbonara. Despite the name and Western menu, and a decor that is rather heavy on crystal chandeliers, all the other patrons appear to be locals.  There is just a small stretch of Peace Avenue that feels like a capital city. The rest is "small town"..

BHS in UB ? 

Mongolian Parliament building in Sükhbaatar Square 

Russian  Style Architecture

Keeping the Sky Blue

Then went off to visit the Coijin Lam Temple Museum which explained a bit about Mongol Buddhism and its close relationship to Tibetan forms. It incorporates Shamanistic traditions and there was a large display of grotesque masks. A hand painted map of UB in 1913 showed the monasteries,  palaces and no other buildings,  just arrays of gers. 

Coijin Lam Temple Museum

Coijin Lam Temple Museum

Written Mongolian prior to 1940's

In the main square in front of the parliament building I met a tour guide who told me the massive police presence was due to a presidential visit from China but he told me the Mongolians are very wary s of the Chinese. Mongolia only got independence from China in 1911 and many Mongolians still live under Chinese rule in "inner" Mongolia. He also  told me that Mongolia only switched from their own script to Cyrillic  in the 1940s. He is concerned that Mongolia is losing its identity with the influx of Western ideas and language. He tells me the youngsters text each other using the Latin alphabet.

http://www.bolodtours.com

Incorporated into the parliament building is a massive statue of Chinghis or Genghis Khan, who seems to be regarded as a national hero, rather than the murderous warrior, the rest of the world sees him as. 

Chinghis or Genghis Khan:  National Hero

In the evening went to the Tumen  Ekh performance and had a shock realising that my wallet full of money barely added up to the 20 000 T ticket price About US$12. Initial part of the performance sounded like a man imitating a large animal being strangled but it got better with the dances in which the women energetically shrug their shoulders in a quite flirtatious manner. Reminds me of the only Mongolians I have ever met before in the bar that took over from "Anywhere" in Singapore. Anywhere was a popular Singapore institution, a bar owned and run by the band Tania. It attracted the most mixed crowd of any bar in Singapore, some in evening dress,  most in T shirts and jeans. Locals, expats,  tourists, secretaries, hookers, receptionists and sailors. But the band sold up,  and when I visited the place later on it had been transformed into a "buy me a drink" bar dominated by a group of tall Mongolian women with an insatiable appetite for Tequila. But back to tonight,  when the dancers were followed by some more lively music, a couple of lithe contortionists and more dancing including one with men in masks similar to those in the museum. So it proved a good evening's entertainment. Then to the Kempinsky Hotel for another attempt at Mongolian food. Yes, they had the full menu. I choose Lamb Suivan which looked good on the menu but turned out to be lots of flat noodles with some little slivers of lamb. Perhaps now I could  understand Trip Advisor's enthusiasm for Millie's Diner.

Saturday 23rd August

After  breakfast, chatting to a Scottish guy who has been to Mongolia a few times and  is heading to the North of the country for a tour,  I head off to the Bogda Khaan Palace museum on the south side of the city. Again, it looks run down on the outside but is interesting inside. The main palace was built in a Russian style but the adjoining temples are all in Mongol style with many Chinese influences visible. There are lots of Buddhist statues including many gold "taras" . Later I learnt that a Tara is a Buddhist goddess.

http://www.religionfacts.com/buddhism/deities/tara.htm

The Bogda Khaan Palace is a bit out of the centre of town but I find a pleasant cafe nearby which could be anywhere in the world. All the signs are in English and looking out of the window I can see only modern buildings,  shops and offices. In the same building is a store that purports to be IKEA; don't think the real one has much to worry about. From this part of town it's easy to see the mountains that surround the city, already quite high at 1300 metres. Walk back into town and stop for lunch at Millie's Espresso for a Spanish omelette. Check out of the hotel at 6 and go back to Millie's for early dinner before getting the train to Irkutsk.