Mongolia
Trans-Mongolian Train part 2
On September 12th we took an early morning train to continue our journey to Beijing. Next stop: Ulan Bator, the capital of Mongolia, 26 hours away from Irkutsk.
Were we on the right train?? This train was filhty and full of drunken Mongolians! We heard some stories about how the Mongolians use the train from Russia to Mongolia for trading and doing all sorts of business, but this was not what we expected! Our compartment, which we shared with another Dutch couple, was already occupied by a Mongolian girl. After our wagon attendant kicked her and her merchandise (100 pairs of jeans, leather jackets and about 200 pairs of stockings) out of the compartment, we could settle in. Like us, the other Dutch couple had a very clean and tidy train on the way to Irkutsk, so they were just as surprised as we were.
We decided to catch up on some sleep, since the train had left at 6 in the morning. But we did not get any rest, for a few minutes later we heard an argument in the hallway. Half an hour later our wagon attendant was missing a tooth and had two black eyes! One of the Mongolian maffia members had a go at her.. Welcome to train number 6..!!
Lucky for us, a lot of the Mongolian traders had gotten of at Irkutsk, so our wagon was getting more quiet. We heard horrible stories from a few of the other travellers that were on the train, and were glad we only had to be on this train for a day!
The next day we arrived in Ulan Bator. We wanted to arrange a tour into the countryside the same day, because that's where you get to see the true Mongolia. The four of us decided to hook up together in Mongolia and see if we could get on a tour. After looking around for a while, we found a hostel that could also arrange tours and we could leave almost immediately. Good news.. 
We got a driver and a fifth person, an English guy named Simon, joined us.
We drove into the countryside and went to see the rare Przewalski horses. From there, we thought we were staying in a ger camp, but we drove of further into the country. After driving for an hour or 2, we finally arrived at our destination: 2 ger tents, surrounded by goats and cows. A ger is a tradional Mongolian tent, in which nomadic Mongolian people live.
A lot of people end up staying in large ger camps and never really experience the life of the nomads, so this was a great opportunity for us. Ofcourse, tradional nomadic life also includes no fridge, and therefore loads of really disgusting food... 
The Mongolian people basicly live of fermented maresmilk, from which they also make a sort of sour cream, and mutton, which is really tough meat. The lady of the house did make a delicous meal, mixing the mutton with pasta and vegetables. You can have a look at the pictures to see Joost eating and drinking Mongolian style...
The next day we relaxed a bit. We did agree on some activities when we went on the tour, such as horse riding, fishing, swimming and bird shooting. Nothing really happened and since nobody spoke English, except for the five of us, and we didn't speak any Mongolian, we just waited around for a while. Finally, we got a bit fed up with waiting around and the driver took us to the river, where we watches wild horses and just enjoyed the view. When we came back at the ger camp, we found horses saddled up. Joost went for a ride together with Simon, who had only been on a horse once. They took it easy at first but then Joost went into galop. And so did Simon's horse, but he couldn't get it to stop anymore! Unlike the saddles we know, these were made of wood... AUW, you can imagine that is painful on a guy!!
Unfortunately for us, it was too cold to go swimming, there were no fishing poles and the man of the 'house' had run out of bullets, so we had nothing else to do but horseriding (a bit painful), playing cards and drinking Mongolian Vodka.
Even though we really enjoyed experiencing Mongolian traditional life, we were getting a bit bored. Also, our train was leaving the next day and to give us some time to relax and get ready for the next traintrip, we tried to get the driver to return to Ulan Bator early in the morning, in stead of late in the afternoon. For some reason, he was very hesitant. Finally he did get in the van, but was agitated. Then he finally drove us back to Ulan Bator... at a speed of 40 km/h... 
Why, we didn't understand, because he drove like a madman to the gers, so why go so slow?? We finally figured it out. Supposedly, he'd agreed not to take us back to Ulan Bator before 5 PM. So a 3 hour ride turned into a five our trip, with us getting more irritated by the minute! Finally, we reached Ulan Bator and after having a bit of a chat with the owner of the hostel, we agreed to only pay half of the price.
From then on, we named the mongolian currency "Inki", after the name of the driver, because we spend it so slowly... 
That evening, we treated ourselves to some really big steaks and plenty of beer to go with it...
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