Apart from that, Ulaanbaatar looks like any post-Soviet city anywhere in Eurasia, except that there are yurts in the suburbs. Some of the concrete Soviet blocks of flats look almost just like those in Czechia, though. I’m wondering where we will be camping because there aren’t many green spots on the map.
An unexpected chain of friends
There basically are just three things we need to do in Ulaanbaatar: get visa for Russia, see a Mongolian friend of Vojta’s father, and go to the airport to pick up Vojta’s Czech friend who will join us for some time to travel with us. We don’t have many other contacts here. So far, Mongolian people seem pretty reserved compared to, say, people in the Middle East or Caucassus, so we don’t expect to make friends easily.
Our driver leaves us near the city center and we go to the first café with wifi we can find. Even though it’s not extremely expensive, it’s very fancy and we look inappropriate in there. But there is wifi.
Eventually, the God of coincidence happens to work in our favor again. A year ago in Czechia, I hosted a Turkish Couchsurfer; when we spoke about my plans to do this journey, he told me he knew a guy from Mongolia called Erdene. In Turkey, we met this guy by accident. I write him if by chance he is in Mongolia right now. He’s not – but he gives me a friend’s contact details and his friend contacts another friend... and his friend agrees to host us. I can’t believe our luck. It took us less than an hour to find a friend of a friend of a friend in a country so far from ours.
So we meet a young guy named Puzhe. He lives in one of the blocks of flats, speaks some English and is in a military school. He also shows us his uniform and Vojta tries it on, but it’s too small for him and makes him look like Arnold Rimmer. We can also take a first real shower after several weeks, and I realize that taking showers is one of my favorite hobbies. Even though I thought I had stayed tidy by washing with gardening hoses and bottles filled at bathrooms, the water turns gray when it touches my body.
The next day, we meet Dima, Erdene’s friend thanks to whom we met Puzhe. He speaks some English and Russian, did a part of his studies in Russia and is actually Kazakh. We learn that in Mongolia, there is a big group of people of Kazakh origin – many of them live in the westernmost part, but some also in Ulaanbaatar. Dima’s parents are among prominent people of the community.
The guys invite some more friends and take us out to see a couple of interesting places in the city. We are going by Puzhe’s car – Dima’s car was broken and his driving license was confiscated last year – and it always takes a long time to get anywhere because of the ubiquitous traffic jam. In Europe, Ulaanbaatar tends to be known for polluted air, but despite all the cars it feels normal, like in any city. Some cars have huge Swastikas painted on the rear. I need to convince my mind it’s not a Nazi symbol in this country, but I still can’t stop laughing every time I see it. We see several Buddhist monasteries and a nice park on the river bank. In the southern part of the city, there is a very fancy district full of expensive-looking tower buildings. There are yurts built among them and sometimes on the roofs of buildings. There also is a lookout point with a very Soviet monument with old Soviet propaganda paintings. The city center, though, is pretty modern and has some hip cafés and bars.
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| A café is being decorated |
A crash-course in recent history of Mongolia, a lost backpack, and troubles with veggies
Back home, we try to make a potato soup for dinner for everybody, but there is no chance of success. Puzhe first opens his freezer, as big as freezers in restaurants, and takes out something that looks like a quarter of a cow. He seems confused when we say we only need a little bit of meat for a vegetable soup, and when the soup is ready everybody look very unimpressed. They dig out the few pieces of meat, and leave everything else. Vojta said before that vegetables were hard to find in Mongolia, and it kind of made me feel sorry for Mongolian people. Now it’s clear nobody actually wishes to eat veggies, so there’s really no need to be sorry.
Puzhe gives us his flat keys and lets us stay for several days. We buy data SIM for our phone and apply for visa at the Russian embassy. The process seems surprisingly smooth with Czech passports – way smoother than in Czechia. We only need a Russian tourist agency invitation that can be bought online immediately for $ 15 without proving anything; a photo; some more money we pay at the bank; and a form. We are told to come back in 5 days for the visa. We also pick up Vojta’s Czech friend Lukáš at the airport. The airline lost his backpack so we spend a couple of days trying to get it back.
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| The Government building |
Meanwhile, we are hanging around in Ulaanbaatar. The weather is mild – I realize we haven’t experienced any deadly heat in Mongolia so far, as fall probably starts early here. We see some history museums and find out that Mongolia and Czechia have a very similar recent history: in the Soviet times, both countries used to be USSR satellites and socialist dictatorships. On the verge of the collapse of the USSR, the civil societies in both Mongolia and Czechia woke up and both countries had a peaceful revolution lead by the dissidents against the regime. Both countries became parliamentary republics and underwent a peaceful transition to democracy. In both countries, the former communist parties are still strong (more in Mongolia).
On the main square under a broad statue of Gengis Khan sitting on a sofa, a random guy speaks to us because he just is bored and curious and wants to chat with foreigners. So far, it seems that everybody and their dog know English in Mongolia – at least in contrast to China. Not many people speak Russian, though, which is surprising to me given the common history of Mongolia and Czechia – the older generation in Czechia does speak Russian.
We can’t reach the friend of Vojta’s father but we get to know some more Dima’s friends. There is Tugs, an aerobics instructor whose English is even better than usual, and her friend who does her studies in Turkey and is now back home for holiday. Tugs told Dima herself that she wanted to meet us, so we jumped on the occasion. We hang out in the city, and go with the girls and the other guys outside Ulaanbaatar to see a big shiny statue of Genghis Khan on a horse – it’s in the middle of nowhere in the steppe, and it’s so huge it looks surreal.
Dima keeps showing up every now and then, spendsing some time with us and leaving again. We never know what his plans are or when we will see him next, and we eventually get used to that.
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| Our new friends |
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| In Genghis Khan museum |
At one point Dima shows up and tells us Puzhe’s parents are on their way to his flat, and we are actually not supposed to be there. So the guys pack our stuff quickly and Dima smuggles it out to us. He is too hospitable, though, so he doesn’t want us to camp at random and lends us the garden of his family’s summer cottage in the suburb instead. With all the traffic, the journey by bus takes almost two hours. But we find ourselves in a nice neighborhood just outside the city, under the hills. It looks cozy but not as flashy as the fancy neighborhood downtown. There are yurts (in Mongolia, they are actually called gers), small family houses, and holiday homes. In Czechia, it is usual for city families to have small holiday houses in the country, where they often spend their weekends – and the same thing seems to be popular for the inhabitants of Ulaanbaatar. So this aspect of Mongolian life and this entire neighborhood feel very familiar.
We don’t know how long we can stay or when will Dima show up again, but Lukáš’s bag is still lost and we need to wait, so we don’t care and go hiking in the hills.
The story of a mugging
Vojta and Lukáš would like to leave Ulaanbaatar as soon as possible and hitchhike to the countryside, so they are getting impatient. I’m so glad we found people to hang out with that I don’t mind waiting for the backpack much. It reminded me that hanging out with local people and talking about life with was still my favorite part of traveling. I had almost forgotten about that in China as it was pretty hard to find someone we shared language with, so now I enjoy it. Finding friends in Ulaanbaatar was not as difficult as I expected, actually. The only thing I’m worried about is that we are annoying them too much by sticking around all the time, as it’s quite hard to see what they are thinking.
Then Lukáš finally gets his bag, so we think of leaving the next day. We don’t get to stay in the garden for another night, though, because Dima appears and brings us to his aunt’s place. We are not sure she is happy about that, so we just try to by as polite as possible.
Dima leaves and then shows up in the middle of the night, with grazed hands, his jacket missing, somewhat drunk and very shocked and shaken. At first, he doesn’t really seem like telling us what happened, but slowly we get the story out of him – it seems he was mugged by a group of men, got everything stolen from him and was threatened to be beaten up. Then he starts to rave, saying that they attacked him because he was Kazakh, that he would become a terrorist and do jihad against them. Eventually, he falls asleep.
In the morning, he looks better and doesn’t talk about fighting anyone anymore, but is still shaken and in a lousy mood. As it seems he prefers to be alone, we get together some cash to replace some of his stolen money, and finally leave.
Today is the day when our visa for Russia is supposed to be ready, so we drop by the embassy – and the visa indeed is ready. Given how difficult it is to get Russian visa in Czechia, I didn’t believe the process would be this easy and I expected some trouble up to the very last moment. But none occured and we both have one month visa in our passports. It was the last visa we needed to get back to Europe, so we are now free to go across Siberia and I feel almost moved. But it’s not time to go to Siberia yet – we want to explore Mongolian countryside first.
A Czech-style holiday cabin in the capital of Mongolia
Before we manage to get out of the city, Vojta gets an answer from Budee, his father’s friend: he has come back from a fishing trip and is now in Ulaanbaatar too. So we change our plans again and travel though the traffic jam back downtown to meet up with him.
Budee is a businessman, originally Vojta’s father’s business partner – and he speaks Czech and Slovak. When he was a student, he had an opportunity to do his studies in one of the countries of the former Soviet bloc. So he looked at the map and picked a university in a city the furthest away from Mongolia possible. The city happened to be Bratislava, the capital of Slovakia. That’s how the story started. Later, he used to buy cars in Czechia and drive them all the way to Mongolia to sell them, and did many other things too. Now he’s well of and spends most of his free time fishing and gambling.
Budee invites us to a restaurant – and convinces us to stay in Ulaanbaatar one more day. He then drives us to his wooden holiday cabin. It happens to be in the same neighborhood as Dima’s and looks even more Czech than the other houses. In Budee’s case it’s probably not just a coincidence. We have some beer together and then Budee leaves us some more beer and goes back downtown. So we spend the evening on the porch, drinking beer and looking over the garden to the hills. It feels very much like home even though we are 8000 kilometers far from home.
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| Budee's holiday cabin |
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| Tower blocks and yurts |
