Category Archives: Experiences

The Great Wall

If we asked a 100 people to name something they associate with the country of China, like they do on the UK gameshow Family Fortunes, our survey would definitely include “The Great Wall“.

Started in the 7th century BC, and extended and fortified to the defences we see today largely by the Ming Dynasty in the 14th century, The Great Wall is not actually a great wall for 2 reasons… firstly, the Chinese name for it literally translates into English as “the long wall”, and secondly, it’s a continuous defence only because it incorporates natural obstacles such as hills and rivers.

But, it is Great..
Us on The Great Wall of China with Julie’s parents, Norman and Moira. The Sīmatái section snakes over the ridge of hills in the distance

There are 7 well-trodden and accessible sections of The Great Wall that vary in their proximity to Beijing by how much they’ve been restored, and how popular they are. In order of popularity:

Bādáling – the most photographed and visited section
Mùtiányù
Jūyōngguān
Sīmatái – sadly closed when we were there, as it follows on from..
Jīnshānling – the part we visited
Jiànkòu
Huánghuā

We picked Jīnshānling because of our preference for quieter spots, and the description in our guidebook:

Jīnshānling marks the starting point of an exhilarating 10km hike to Sīmatái. the journey – through some stunning mountainous terrain – takes around four hours as the trail is steep and parts of the wall have collapsed; it can be traversed without too much difficulty, but some find it tiring.

Getting to Jīnshānling was straightforward, but our helpful local bus conductor woman ushered us off the bus at the first stop in the town rather than the bus station which meant we had to negotiate with a taxi driver who just happened to be waiting for business. Were they in cahoots? We’ll never know…

Having bought our entrance tickets, we then started along a very nicely kept and recently laid stone stairway up the hillside to The Great Wall – it hadn’t really occurred to me that we’d have to walk up to the wall before we could walk on the wall!

The hiking trail up to The Great Wall

The view teasing us through the forest as we climbed – “East Tower with five holes” in the foreground, and “Qilin Tower” behind

The climb to the wall was pretty tough going, but the reward was simply staring in awe at the wonder of this mammoth human achievement once we’d reached it.

And we needed the rest, because these walls aren’t at all like those in Datong, or the ones back home in York – they follow the highest ridge of the hills which means a lot more steps!

A very steep section of the Jīnshānling Great Wall – the “steps” up to the tower are over knee height

The descent into “Flowers Tower”, the furthest point Julie and I reached before we had to turn back

Norman and Moira had stopped back to do a spot of bird watching

The birds were too quick to photograph, but there were plenty of insects, including a giant grasshopper (there’s an ant by its foot to give you a sense of scale – can you see it?)

As you can see from our photographs we were fortunate with both the weather and the tranquility to enjoy The Great Wall by ourselves – I think we saw more people on the trail up and back down than we did on the wall itself!

Mongolian food and drink

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I was going to put this post into chapters like I did with the Baltics food post, but when I thought about it I realised that the meat section would be very long and the other sections would be pretty sparse…

Mongolians are very suspicious of vegetables and so most meals will consist of meat and some form of carbohydrate (noodles, potato, rice, dough, etc.). Some of the most common quick meals are the dumplings. Buuz are steamed meat dumplings (very similar to the ones that we ate in Ulan Ude with Nadya) and Khuushuur are the same ingredients, but flatter and deep-fried. In cafes these are usually priced individually and so you just order however many you want to eat (we found somewhere between 4 and 6 to be about right).

Plate of Buuz and a side shot of Khuushuur on the bus

On one of our first days in Ulaanbaatar we wanted to try some local food and managed to find a small cafe that seemed to fit the bill. The menu was only in Mongolian and even worse it was hand written so we couldn’t even try to say some of the things as written Cyrillic is not easy to decode! In the end we took pot luck and walked over to the board and pointed out a random line to our waiter. It worked out pretty well – Andrew got a fried meat and potato hash, and I got something a little bit similar but with pieces of omelette stirred through and a large steamed bread roll on the side.

The daunting hand written menu

We’ve already written a little about the Mongolian barbecued goat that we ate on our Gobi trip. On our 8 day trip to eastern Mongolia our driver stopped at a local ‘restaurant’ (it seemed to just be the family’s front room where they fed people if anyone turned up). There was no choice, you could have boiled mutton with potato and vegetables and that was it. We agreed and the lady of the house got the fire going and cooked the meal in a large pot over it. About 30 minutes later it was ready. Unfortunately for this post, we were too shy to take a photo of it with the family watching us, but we each got a huge piece of meat on the bone (maybe half a leg), a single potato, half a carrot and a piece of swede, along with a bowl of the cooking broth – Mongolian proportions! We were then issued with an incredibly sharp 6 inch long knife to cut the meat off the bone (but no fork so plate to mouth was done with our fingers). It was definitely a memorable meal and amazingly cost just £3 each.

Mongolian meals

Another strong feature of Mongolian cuisine is dairy. We were quite excited when we first heard this as we love cheese, but Mongolian cheese is a bit different to what we’re used to… It’s sour and very hard and a bit of an acquired taste. One day, suffering cheese withdrawal symptoms, we bought a tiny Brie from the supermarket for an extortionate amount (about £5) – our guesthouse owner thought we were crazy! Mongolian yoghurt is good though. One of the families that we stayed with gave us some fresh goat yoghurt to drink. It was delicious, and still warm!

You know you’re in the middle of nowhere when there’s no choice of tea or coffee, it’s just tea and no one asks ‘milk and sugar?’ you get what the locals drink… In much of Russia that’s black tea with lots of sugar, but in Mongolia it’s very milky and salty (yes really) – someone might have waved a tea bag past it at some point, but not so that you’d notice… Actually it’s not bad when you know what to expect and we got quite a taste for it.

Mongolians also get creative with their dairy products by making them into alcohol. The most common is fermented mare’s milk called ‘airag’. This is sold all over the countryside on the roadside and can have a very low alcoholic content up to about 10%. We tried airag a couple of times and it was OK, a bit like fizzy yoghurt, although I suspect that if you drank a lot of it you would feel very poorly the next day. We heard tales of vodka made from milk too but we didn’t get chance to try it so we’ll have to leave that to our imaginations!

Milky drinks: Mongolian tea and Airag for sale at Ulaanbaatar Naadam horse races

Staying with a nomadic family

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On our recent trip to the Gobi Desert we were lucky enough to stay with nomadic families on most of the nights. This meant that we not only got to have a nosy inside a lived-in ger but we were able to see something of how the nomadic Mongolians live as well as learn some of the etiquette (there seem to be a LOT of rules for what you should and shouldn’t do).

The ger

The ger itself is an incredibly well evolved dwelling. It consists of lattice walls in several pieces (a standard size ger is a ‘five-wall’), two central columns supporting a circular roof centrepiece, and wooden radial poles which slat into the circle and are tied onto the top of the walls. The whole structure is covered in thick felt and a waterproof canvas. It might also have more decorative fabric curtains covering the inner walls. The door is always wooden and usually painted orange with colourful decorations, as are the wooden parts of the roof and its supports.

The ger we stayed in on the first night of the Gobi trip (note the solar panel to the left of the picture)

Heating is provided by a centrally located stove with a chimney through the circular part of the roof. For families living in the treeless desert, fuel is provided by their animals’ dung. Traditionally, the right hand side of the ger (as you come through the door) is the woman’s domain – the kitchen area is here. Men stay on the left side and nowadays this is where the TV is usually found – electricity is provided by a solar panel that charges a car battery. At the back of the ger, opposite the door, is the most honoured place and this is where you will find the family’s altar – the vast majority of Mongolians are Buddhists.

Interior of a ger (clockwise from top left): Centrally located stove, central roof piece, wooden supports lashed together, brightly painted furniture

There is a square of fabric covering the centre of the roof which can be opened during the day to let in light and allow the air to circulate and closed on a night to keep in the warmth, or if it’s raining. It fits neatly around the chimney.

Andrew closing the roof

You’ll have noticed there’s been no mention of bathroom facilities so far… let’s just say that the toilets are pretty basic but do usually have an amazing view!

Ger camp toilet shack

Mongolian people have been nomadic for centuries and this means that the ger has to be dismantled and reconstructed fairly regularly. Our tour guide Ogii told us that 4 people can put up a ger in just 2 hours.

Rules for visitors

As I mentioned, there’s quite a bit of etiquette involved in visiting a ger and for a surprising number of them getting something wrong means ‘I want to kill you’ (according to Ogii at least). Here are just a few of the rules we learnt:

You can enter a ger without knocking but you should call out “Nokhoi Khorio” which literally translates as “Hold the dogs”
You should step through the door right leg first (and if you stand on the threshold it means you want to kill them)
The host will usually offer tea and snacks when you arrive, and you should touch the snack bowl before taking something from it
In the ger it is fine to sit on a bed, a stool or the floor, but if sitting on the floor you should not squat as this is how dogs sit
If you drink alcohol, or take a meal with the family, you should make sure to leave a little in the bowl or on the plate to show that you’ve had enough
Traditionally when Mongolian men greet each other they will exchange snuff bottles and take a little of the other’s snuff. Snuff bottles are exchanged with the right hand, and the bottle top should be a little open
When leaving the ger, make sure not to carry your rucksack on your back as this means that you did not enjoy your stay and don’t want to come back!

The nomadic way of life

Nomadic Mongolians are livestock herders. They will have a mixed flock of sheep and goats, some horses and maybe a herd of cows or camels (or even yaks in the hillier regions). Each day the animals are sent out to graze. There are no fences in Mongolia so they just go where they like but they seem to stay together so are pretty easy to round up on a night. Traditionally this is done on horseback but we saw quite a few guys on motorbikes as well. The animals are kept close to the ger at night and the lambs and kids might be put in a pen to keep them safe. The family’s dogs are responsible for keeping wolves at bay.

Herding the modern way

On the second night of our Gobi trip we were able to help (or more likely hinder…) the family round up the sheep and goats – they weren’t far away so we were on foot. We also saw the very efficient milking system that the woman of the family used. First all the goats to be milked were put in a pen, caught one-by-one, lined up and their necks tied together. She could then milk each goat in turn without missing any, or any wandering off. We also got a chance to try our hand at milking – it’s quite a skill and not as easy as the locals make it look!

Milking the goats (clockwise from top left): Julie helping to catch the goats, Andrew making friends with a kid, goats in a line, milking in progress

In summertime the family must work hard to ensure that all of the necessary work is done while the weather is good. But Ogii told us that in the very cold winter, after the animals have been moved to a more sheltered spot, they have some time to relax in the ger.

The Silencing of the Goat

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The nomadic Mongolian diet consists almost exclusively of the animals they herd, and the dairy products they make from their animals’ milk.

While on the 9 day tour of the Gobi desert, we were offered the chance to see how these remote people kill and prepare a goat for food and materials. Our group clubbed together and bought an (unlucky) male goat which was then slaughtered, skinned, butchered, and cooked for us by our host family.

“Hi there, I’m not really that tasty..”

We weren’t sure how we’d feel watching an animal being killed, as neither of us had seen it first-hand before. We were relieved to witness an apparently very quick death of the goat, with no bloodshed, and we weren’t immediately compelled to become vegetarian either.

Here’s a short video of the whole process which is mostly still shots, but does include footage of the killing itself which I mention in case you’d rather not see it.

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x46iPUVuUTY]

Russian Kindness

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If you haven’t been to Russia then you might have a preconception about how Russian people are. Cold? Reserved? Rude and unhelpful? That was along the lines of what we thought before we came here.

Admittedly, there is sometimes a lack of awareness of other people – we’ve learnt not to follow too closely when going through swing doors because people don’t look behind themselves and just let go, so if you’re not careful you get a door in your face… But when we’ve had contact with individuals, we’ve been constantly amazed at the level of generosity and friendliness.

The most recent example was on Wednesday in Ulan Ude. Andrew needed the knee of his trousers mending (don’t laugh, but he fell off his bike!) so we found a small clothing repair shop. We explained to Nadya, the seamstress, that we don’t speak Russian, but it was fairly obvious what needed to be done and, to our surprise, she started straightaway. She spoke a little English and asked us some questions as we waited, but pretty soon she wanted help to interrogate us, and enlisted Nikolay, a used mobile phone salesman who shares the same unit, and speaks excellent English (although he claims to be a bit rusty). We chatted for about 15 minutes while Nadya stitched up the tear at the same time as chipping in with the conversation. When it was all fixed, Andrew asked how much and was told that it was a present for us. So, we got to have a chat with lovely, interesting people, the trousers were expertly mended straightaway (we expected to drop them off and collect them in a few days), and she didn’t want us to pay for the repair. I can’t imagine that happening in the UK.

Julie, Nikolay, Nadya and the mended trouser leg, and Andrew

Another great experience happened in our hostel in Krasnoyarsk, we were waiting in the common room to use the kitchen after a Russian guy who was making a large pan of amazingly aromatic soup. Moving around him as he was finishing, I indicated that I thought it smelt great and before we knew it he had dished us up a bowl each! His English was about as good as our Russian which made conversation very limited but he told us it was Solyanka and I managed to work out all the ingredients so I might have a go at recreating it when we get home.

EDWARD’S SOLYANKA RECIPE

Russian sausage – something like a Matteson’s sausage
Corned beef
Black olives
Gherkins
Carrots
Potatoes
Dill
Paprika?

All diced and cooked in stock (?). Serve topped with a dollop of mayonnaise.

We’ve had several nice experiences on the train. Andrew had a long, sign language assisted discussion in a mixture of broken English, Russian, and German with Vasily, a salesman. And on the train from Krasnoyarsk to Severobaikalsk, we watched the woman in the next compartment expertly crochet and stitch together a small toy. We were very pleased with ourselves when we worked out that it was an owl, and absolutely gobsmacked when, on finishing, she got up and presented it to Julie. We hardly exchanged a sentence with her, and still don’t know whether she intended to give us it from the start, or gave it because she saw our interest. His name is Sova (Russian for owl), and he now lives in my backpack.

Andrew and Vasily

Sova and his creator

These are just a very few of the many kindnesses that we’ve experienced over the last 10 weeks of travel through Russia. Not many Russians speak English, many not even a few words and so without their patience, generosity and good humour over our mangled attempts at Russian and creative sign language, our journey would not have been nearly as easy or as pleasant.

two year trip

Andrew and Julie's Travelling Adventures