After fighting the storm crossing the vast Gobi Desert… I finally made it to Zamyn Uud, the last town for me in Mongolia before crossing into China. My heart was filled with sorrow when I reached this last town in Mongolia for me. After 2 months, I finally was leaving the country. I kept admiring at each Mongolian gers that I could catch on my eyes, each Mongolian faces and took deep breath to smell the Mongolian air one last time. Once in a while, I heard people speak Chinese here, which make sense since China is just 3 kilometers ahead.
Mongolia gave me a sweet memory… a good experience that no currency of the world can buy. The hospitality of the descendent of Genghis Khan is unmatched. Probably the best in the realm of Central Asia. And the smiles in their faces are no fake. They might look big and aggressive at first, and dirty and wild especially the horsemen in the countryside, but once you greet them in their language, “sainbainuu” which means hello, they will reply you together with a friendly smile. And the next thing you know, you are already inside their ger tasting the Mongolian tea together with their family… laughing and talking even though there is a problem with communication.
train station in Zamyn Uud
And living my life on the road for quite some time now, I kinda know on how to differentiate between the pure and fake smiles. The secret is not to look at their mouth, but on the eyes. Human eyes hold many secrets. Even on a handshake, studying the person’s eyes while shaking their hand, able to tell you many secrets. Our brain… are well connected to our eyes by millions of optic nerves. So any activities that are happening in our brain, can be seen through our eyes. But only the trained people know this secret. Genius people of the past centuries. Only now, the scientists are trying to reveal the secret once again….
I cycled around the small town of Zamyn Uud, to watch the activities of the local people here. It’s a very small town and I guess the centre of this town is the train station, where I see the biggest building standing proud filled with banks, atm machines, restaurants and cheap hotels. After admiring this last town of Mongolia for me, I then rushed for another 3km towards the border checkpoint. It was quite tricky crossing the border… just because I cant cycle for a few hundred meters in the no man’s land between China and Mongolia. So there you go, I have to get my bike on a truck just to get to 200 meters towards the Mongolian checkpoint. It wasn’t long in Mongolia, only some 20 minutes, which is fine with the long queue, then I successfully got the stamp out on my passport. Then again, I had to get my bike in another truck to cross another some 300-400 meters towards the Chinese checkpoint. My god, with my bicycle that looks like a minimarket, it took a while to get it up and down the truck.
And the second truck, was a bit rude. After sending for some 300-400 meters towards the Chinese checkpoint, he demanded me to pay him. I agreed and wanted to give him all my remaining Mongolian tughrik since its not so much and I wont be using it anymore, but when I took my wallet he looked and simply took 100 chinese yuan from my wallet without my permission. Then he walked away fast without saying a word. I just let him go but he should have at least asked me first.
Once I got into the Chinese checkpoint, another problem came. I was stucked almost 3 hours inside the immigration building, and this time the queue was shorter than the one on the Mongolian side. I have no idea what was going on since I couldn’t understand a word what they were saying, but it seems that I have a problem with my passport. Maybe they also think that I’m a spy, since they were questioning about my gopro camera…which I guess they never seen such a small camera before and even checked all the pictures inside. They also checked each sms on my phone. And the most funny thing, while waiting for too long, I started to feel bored and started to play some games on my phone, and they were checking it too!… asking what kind of program is that. Hehe…. How can a spy cross a land border on a bicycle fully loaded bringing big cameras? Im really such a lousy spy then… since Im attracting too much attention :)
Erenhot, first town for me in China
so many green dinasours here
A couple of dinasours doing french kiss in the middle of the road…
After 3 hours of waiting and scratching my head, they finally let me go. Once I got out from the building, I see nice and well managed road, and people started to speak Chinese here. “Sainbainuu” has been replaced now by “Ni hao”. Im now in China. I then took a good rest in Erenhot, the first town for me in China. I find it so easy to cycle here, I cycled over 130km a day without much struggle, thanks to the very good road. Comparing to the Mongolians, the Chinese are more curious. Cars and motorbikes are slowing down whenever they passed me, studying my my loaded bicycle, then the colours of my skin and finally the shape of my face, probably wondering which part of the world I came from. I started to pick up my chinese language again once I’m here, and the locals were happy and laughing and smiling whenever they see me struggling pronouncing each chinese words while talking to them. And not much struggling going through the road here, since the road is so good and flat in the Gobi, compared to the Mongolian steppe. But I miss one thing here, no more Mongolian hospitality for me. But still, since I started traveling on a bicycle 4 years ago, the best hospitality, the best people Ive ever came across is the Scandinavians, both the Swedish and the Norwegians.
China side of the Gobi Desert
and the good road starts… in China…
Leaving Ulaanbaatar was the hardest thing to do in my journey so far. Its actually not really about my sickness and the harsh weather… but the Mongolian hospitality is something so special here. How can you leave someone who just started to learn how to pronounce your name now… and suddenly call you brother on the next day? Leaving Ulaanbaatar is like leaving home, it made me teary. I would love to come back here one day… but I can only put it on my wishlist. I can only plan… only the creator of the universe has the power to decide all things.
locals performing some rituals near the temple in the Gobi Desert
Leaving Ulaanbaatar towards the Gobi Desert on the southern part of Mongolia, I see less and less people, slowly it gets more and more quiet, and slowly it feels like I’m getting nearer to China… the emotion… the smell… the surrounding… everything. Comparing to other parts of Mongolia, traveling through the Gobi desert is special. You need to be self-sufficient. The distance between civilization is about 200km here… and nothing in between. Only the lonely road snakes through the flat sand dunes.
Khamarind Khiid, temple of power!! in the middle of the Gobi Desert, southern Mongolia
I kept riding through the vast endless desert, dunes to dunes. The landscape is the same day after day. The land is so vast sometimes I feel like I’m not moving… not progressing, I feel like I’m moving in an endless loop. I kept pedaling through the same landscape and started to feel bored and fatigue… and my mind started to fly away into another realm thinking about something else while my physical body is here in the desert under the scorching heat.
My legs are working hard like a machine, keep pedaling fighting both the wind and gravity. I have no idea where I got all the energy cycling for hundreds of kilometers through the desert. But my mind… my mind is in another realm… keep thinking about so many things, mysterious things… My body is right here on earth, in the physical world that exists inside the 4 dimensions…the 3 dimension of space and a dimension of time. And this world bounded by it’s rules. The world of gravity, push and pull. Everything sits on its own axis, exactly when and where it should be. But my mind is not in this physical world. My thoughts don’t carry weight, it doesn’t require space to exist, it can travel through time… in a split second, my mind can be in the mountains and fjords in Northern Norway a year ago… and I can close my eyes and imagine witnessing the magical light of the Aurora Borealis dancing all over the sky of Norway… or the image of my family back home in Malaysia.
They say, if you want to understand the secret of the world, you can simply look at yourself, its all inside you. I realized that a long time ago, I look at my palm, my fingers, my hands and my whole body, this is just an oxygen mask for us to live in this physical world, the world that can be sense with our 5 senses, sights, hearings, smell, taste and touch. It changes it looks everyday, as I’m getting older, the wrinkles on my skin grow noticeable everyday, I grow darker everyday exposed to the sun… my size and weight depends on how much I eat and how much calories I burn… and many more factors. But my mind, my emotion and my soul… don’t exist here. I can’t sense them with my 5 senses. They don’t carry weight, they don’t require space to exist. I find it amazing… amazing because we don’t even know where our real self belongs. I looked down, watching my legs keep pedaling, pushing myself through the desert, I wonder where does this energy comes from. The food that turned into calories that gives this energy is just like fuel to keep the fire burning, but where exactly it came from? By the time I’m writing this journal on my laptop inside my tent in the middle of the sandstorm in the Gobi desert, I just write whatever comes to my mind… but where does this idea came from? It came from a source that is unknown to us, a mystery.
When I carry my bag, is it me who really do the work… is it me who really carry it? I control probably 1% of it. When I have the intention the carry the bag, I carry it, but the moment I carry it, there are probably thousands of things going on which are beyond my control. I start to breath deeper without me realizing it. My muscles flex when I carry the bag, blood starts moving through veins and fill up the vessels of the muscle on my arm, making the muscles tight and hard, giving me enough energy to fight the gravity to enable me to carry the bag. So much things going on even to do a simple task and its all beyond our control. Who is actually controlling all that? Its something beyond our comprehension, something mysterious. We can understand its presence but we can never understand or imagine it…. just like we understand the existence of the concept infinity.
Throw a dice on a flat surface, it might end up at number six. We call it luck. But its only for us the creations… since we don’t see the future. We cant even see what will happen in the next 5 seconds. But is it just random that the dice end up at number six? Certainly its not. How hard we throw it, the angle, the type of the surface… and many other unknown factors in the rules of physics make the dice to end up at six. We the creation cant control it precisely, so we call it random… but not for the creator of the universe. He knows the secret of the universe and control all things. I believe its “maktub”, it’s a word in Arabic, which means “it is written”… or it is destined that the dice will end up at number six. It is all written, we are here just to experience it. We are all travellers… in a long journey in this physical world. We are all travellers… through the realm of space and time.
Riding and staying a while in the northern areas of Mongolia made me fall in love with the area and its people. I fell in love with the landscape and a small and tiny voice deep inside my heart begs me if I can stay longer here… long enough until the autumn will finally come after the passing of summer, so that I can see the leaves turn yellow. Being here also made me want to go further in the north, deeper towards the Siberian plateau to explore the world beyond. But it seems that the visa restriction is really influencing my route and timing. I imagine a world without political borders… and by now I’m already far north… probably witnessing the magical Aurora Borealis again… this time from the sky of Russia. But the country borders, the imaginary lines stopped me from pressing towards the far north.
the bus ride back to Ulaanbaatar from Moron
beautiful landscape all over from TsagaanNuur to Moron
After reaching Moron to get my bicycle and all my gears, I then took a bus back to Ulaanbaatar. Another 15 hours of a nightmare bumpy bus ride through bad roads, countless river crossings and a drunken guy were sitting right behind me. I arrived Ulaanbaatar early in the morning, when the city just woke up and lit by the light, which traveled for under 10 minutes coming from its source… the sun. The bus driver and his helper were kind enough to help me to get my bike and my entire luggage out of the bus. The curious locals surrounded me while I was assembling my bicycle, very slowly, taking my time, as my fingers moved very slowly due to the cold. Thank god its not as cold anymore now in Ulaanbaatar, the heat of the spring season managed to calm down the frostbiting cold.
feasting some good Indian food in Ulaanbaatar with a Portuguese friend
my cool roommate from the hostel
I also spent the good weekend together with a few foreign English teachers here to Terelj National Park, which is only about an hour drive from Ulaanbaatar city. We shared the cost and hired a driver to get us there to spend a good quality time in the countryside, stayed a night with a very nice Kazakh family who were impressed that I can speak less than 5 words of Kyrgyz. It was a good trip, since I don’t usually do all these kind of touristy things while Im on my bicycle, like horse riding trip and all.
enjoying some horse riding trip
morning light at Terelj
watching the sunrise in Terelj
badass nearly 8kg eagle, which can kill a wolf!
After a few days staying in the cheap hostel, I moved my stuffs to stay another night back in the ger that I stayed earlier, with Chimedee and her brother Tugh. The smile in their faces have curved the shape of their faces to look much younger than their age. Their hospitality has made me feel like I’m back home with my own family. Everyone greeted me with smiles… except for their chained guard dog that kept barking at me, probably angry at me since I’m traveling around the world freely but he’s chained, limited in one small area.
back to my home in Ulaanbaatar
Mongolian ger under the milky way
While staying with them, I then decided to stay a bit longer in Ulaanbaatar until weekend, since the weather was quite bad and they invited me to join them for some hiking on Sunday. So I stayed a while, waited until the bad weather passed and joined the group for hiking somewhere between Ulaanbaatar and Erdenet in the north under the calm weather of Sunday. It was a good hike and I get to know more of my Mongolian brothers and sisters from the group. Only during the last part of the hike, the snow finally fell again… and the wind started to blow wildly. It was in the middle of April and its still snowing and cold in Mongolia. Perhaps the summer will skip this land.
hiking with friends
the hiking group that I joined
While my stay in Ulaanbaatar, I kept watching the direction of the smoke coming from the nearby plant station, checking the direction of the wind. It seems that the western wind has stopped blowing… and the wind is now coming from the south… from China… bringing to heat and rain to Mongolia… it is now really Spring here. This will really slow me down… the wind is really testing me in Mongolia. It blew hard from the west while I was riding towards the west… now it blows from the south, which will really slowing me down… and I can imagine what lies beyond… something that is waiting for me in the Gobi… the sandstorm of the desert…
flowers start blooming! its spring!
looking south from Ulaanbaatar. Very unpredictable weather in the Gobi Desert…
Khatgal is my last cycling point in the north of Mongolia. After exploring the forest on the western shore of Khovsgol Nuur, I then cycled back to Khatgal and took a truck back to Moron and left my bicycle there in a guesthouse in Moron. Time is running out for me, visa restriction seems to dictate my path. I only have a few weeks left before I should leave Mongolia and I wanted to spend the last few weeks riding the Gobi Desert, so I decided to take a bus from Moron back to Ulaanbaatar. But I wanted to spend the last few days in the north exploring the forest north of TsagaanNuur before going back to Ulaanbaatar, so I took an old Soviet era van to get to TsagaanNuur… to visit the exotic Tsataans, the reindeer people of the north.
frozen river south of Moron, reminds me of Vatnajokull in Iceland… very similar feeling!
the colours of sunset of the river south of Moron
I left my bicycle and my gears in one of the guesthouse in Moron and took a 13 hours very bumpy van ride to TsagaanNuur. Now I had another experience, on how the Mongolians here travel by public transport to get to places. Its not really far, TsagaanNuur is only some 250km from Moron but the journey was a long 13 hours of hell bumpy ride. Only some 30km out of Moron the road was paved, after that it was going through the steppe, sand, mud and river crossings. I felt not so good and really dizzy during the ride and having a drunken old Mongolian man overdosed with alcohol inside the van really helps. It was an old Soviet era type of van that is very small, but there were so many luggage inside it together with 8 people inside it, which made us look like those fishes inside a sardine can.
after the 13 hours of bumpy ride, I took some morning fresh air of TsagaanNuur inside my lungs
the lake of TsagaanNuur is still frozen… hard packed ice
After the 13 hours journey, I thought it was over… but its not. I then took another 2 hours of even worst bumpy ride from TsagaanNuur to the forest in the north, where the Tsataan people dwell. The van ride is no usual van ride. It was worst than riding a horse. I think its more like sailing on a very small boat in a wild ocean under a big storm heading to the Bermuda Triangle. Its only a few kilometers from TsagaanNuur to get to the forest but the 2 hours ride seems forever. It was a very good experience though. When I finally reach the forest, I felt so happy and wanted to celebrate it, that I went through the worst ride in my life. I felt like I just successfully climbed the Everest with just wearing sandals or cycled through the Antartica with just a Tshirt.
in a small boat sailing the Atlantic… eh.. I mean, in a van heading to the forest
the old Soviet style van, very strong for this kind of ride
Upon reaching the Tsataan camp in the middle of the forest, everything was exotic to me. The tent here is not like the normal Mongolian ger, but its more like a south American style hut. It’s a shape of a cone and staying inside it making me feel like Im in a forest of Peru more like Mongolia. The Tsataan people are the minority and only living here in the forest. Theyre the people of reindeer. Reindeer is everything for them. Their lives depend on it. The number is about 300-400 people left but I see no more than 30. Maybe because theyre scattered all over the forest looking for a place to settle for the summer which is coming soon. Theyre real nomads, they move a few times a year and they really have to. Staying in the winter camp on summer is dangerous for the reindeer, as they will be vulnerable to insects and parasites.
They depend on their reindeers in almost everything. Reindeers shaped their lifestyle, their clothes, diets and transportation. They get cheese, milk and meat from their reindeers for food. Their clothes were made from the hair of the reindeer and most of their tools came from the horn. They make fire from the reindeer’s dung and also woods from the trees and the grass when its dry. These people are really survivors and theyre strong. I met an old woman who has survived 58 winters in her life, she told me that the winter here is harsh, the temperature can read up to -55 celcius on January/February, turning the Tsataan people to becoming ice cream. She is a very nice woman, serving me some soup and hot reindeer milk tea and telling me besides reindeer, another good friend of them especially during winter is fire. They will keep sitting near the fire when the temperature plummet below -50 celcius in winter time, since they cant afford any Mammut of Northface sleeping bag.
the 58 years old Tsataan lady who can’t afford Northface sleeping bag
hehe… me chopping the wood…
this dog really hates me, maybe i stole his food
mmmm reindeer meat…
I spent a night sleeping here in the Tsataan camp before taking the same van back to TsagaanNuur. It was really a good experience sleeping in the cone shaped hut, since I’m now so used to sleep inside the traditional Mongolian ger. Almost the same size, but I guess its easier and faster to build, since it looks simpler. The van driver told me it gonna be cold that night, maybe at some -10 celcius but I think its more like only 0 celcius. Having a fire inside the Tsataan hut makes it very comfortable night, I had a good sleep compared to sleeping inside my tent here in Mongolia with totally a wrong choice of sleeping bag.
a Tsataan man was preparing my hut for the night
with the same lady who treated me like her own son.. a very dark skin son :)
The next day after saying goodbye to the Reindeer people, I went back to TsagaanNuur, with another 2 hours of bumpy ride, this time the van is packed carrying Tsataan kids out of the forest to TsagaanNuur, since theyre going back to school after a long holiday. 2 hours of extreme bumpy ride is enough to make me melt like a chocolate. Spent another few hours in TsagaanNuur exploring the frozen lake before another 13 hours of bumpy ride back to my bicycle in Moron. At first I was afraid to walk on the frozen lake here, but I changed my mind when I saw people were riding their motorbike over the lake! They were walking over and over again to the middle of the lake to get fresh clean water… since their source of water comes from this lake. Views here are gorgeous, I can imagine how nice this place will be on September, under the colours of Autumn, where the trees give nice yellow and orange colours under the blue sky, and when the rainbow showing off her beauty through raindrops, lit by the sun. This place must be heaven during late summer and autumn season. I will miss it since I’ll be leaving this country soon, but I hope I will get the same view in the mountains of the Kyrgyz by that time.
hehe, people are riding their motorbikes over the frozen lake of TsagaanNuur
Khovsgol Nuur… the largest lake by volume and second largest by size in Mongolia (the first is the Uvs Lake near Kazakh border), is sitting in the northern part of Mongolia close to the border of Siberia, also the younger sister of the Baikal Lake, not far from it. The water is fresh for drinking without the need of filtering but too bad its still frozen due to the harsh winter. You can actually walk on the lake now but I dare not to take the risk, I was paranoid since the incident that happened to me in the Arctic in the last two winter where I fell inside a frozen river near Kiruna, Sweden and were fighting for my life back then, swimming on ice. The heat of the fire saved me later that night.
I rode along the western shore of the lake, exploring hills after hills through the forest. There’s no road here after a few kilometers from Khatgal village. So I made my own path, riding through forest… just ride freely and peacefully, no other human in my sight, I was just alone and it was so quiet, just the sound of trees that were blown by the wind, birds chirping and the sound of my tires. I love the feeling… the feeling of freedom, not knowing where I’m going, no future goal, I lost count on the date, the day of the week and the time. I measure time by the distance of the sun from the horizon and direction from the wind. I’m here and doing what I’m doing with only one purpose, to experience… as experience is my greatest master. I’m glad theres still this kind of place left on earth, a wild place without the touch of human, no construction, no development, no pollution, no timber activities… totally untouched.
just a short afternoon nap…
I rode 2 days in the forest, carrying only 5 days food supply and 3 days water supply. Worst thing happen, I can just break some ice from the lake and melt it into water like how I did in the Arctic in case of emergency if I get lost in the forest. I wanted to rent 2 horses and explore this area with horses, but the owner of the ger that I stayed told me now is impossible, horses are too thin and weak due to the cold harsh winter and windy and dusty spring. Only on June, when the grass grow taller and become delicious to the horses, they start to gain weight and become strong again. So I have no choice but to use bicycle instead. So imagine… doing a downhill mountain biking with a fully loaded bike :)
Camping at night is still very cold and the forest is full of dry wood… easy to make fire. But then I’m afraid to make fire here since the grass here is so dry and can catch fire so easily. With the wind constantly blowing strong, the fire can travel at the speed of sound, causing a forest fire. The ger owner also told me that it happened before, by simply a small mistake done by a local man who threw his leftover cigarette at the grass, burning a big area of the forest, since the fire can travel fast in this area with the dry grass and strong wind. I was feeling a bit afraid when I pitched my tent in the middle of this forest, afraid that what if in the middle of a night I wake up just to realize that I’m in the middle of a sea of fire. But I threw away all the negative feelings deep inside some mysterious tunnels somewhere inside my brain’s cells. Sleeping alone in the dark inside a forest or mountain, far from human is sometimes scary. You are alone… totally alone, no trace, no sound or smell of human, only you and the Mother Nature. But being alone in places like this, I always sense something, something mysterious,something we cannot comprehend, a source… a power that creates all, everything that exist in this world… the prison of space and time…
setting up my tent in the wild forest
spotted a danger… The grass here catches fire so easily!
Diary Of A Traveller 