der weg ist das ziel

Changing a tampon on the open steppe actually isn't as bad as I thought it would be. The problem is, that while some female travelers seem to get their period less and have milder PMS, I am one of the few lucky women travelers who get worse PMS... By that I mean fever, nausea and vomiting. I was very happy that we were in Dalanzadgad the two nights I felt worst, since we were at a "guest house" there, i.e. a family's apartment. When we came, they packed their things for 2 nights and left their place to us... But they had a European style toilet and a shower I was thankful for. Although calling it a shower is exaggerating, it was more like a dribble of lukewarm water (you had to wait 30 minutes for it to heat up to lukewarm).
While I'm on the subject of toilets: I do appreciate non-pit toilets. After 19 days of mostly pit toilets (or the open steppe) I am a bit sick of them. But I did find it quite funny to see that our guide book was not lying and we actually found book pages being used as toilet paper in some places. Actually, our guide book said one could find soviet era history books or missionary bibles being used as toilet paper. But alas, I did not get to wipe my ass with pages of the bible... (That's what should be done with those missionary bibles if you ask me. No offense, but people shouldn't impose their religious beliefs on others!)
But I did also have a very nice pit toilet experience, although the part that made it nice was not the toilet itself (a smell I definitely do not want to get used to). When Coco and I went to the toilet one evening when it was already pitch black outside, a couple of goats followed us to the (freezing cold) outhouse and even tried to open the door and get in while I was squatting! They also followed us back to our ger. The next morning they followed us when we brushed our teeth. They were so adorable, until one of them coughed in my face...
Okay, I don't have enough time to write lots more, I need to check out Beijing hostels online. By the way, a fun fact about Beijing: breathing the polluted air there is the equivalent of smoking 70 cigarettes in one day. My lungs are looking forward to it!

Mongolia is amazing, I don't know where to start... We're currently on a 20-day tour of the north (Lake Huvsgul), center (lots of beautiful mountains) and south (Gobi desert) of the country. Given that travelling indepently here means hitchhiking (which is difficult given that it's autumn now, beginni ng winter; and we speak neither Mongolian nor Russian...), and going to the Gobi would basically be impossible to do independently (unless you have a jeep with gps and are a good car mechanic), we decided to take this tour which has been absolutely amazing! We've seen lots of snow too, probably the only snow for us this year.
We started the trip in Hustai National Park, where we saw some wild horses (the only species of wild horses in the world; they were extinct in the wild until 60 of them were bred in holland and then sent here to be reintroduced). We made our way way up north to lake Huvsgul, which had the colour of the Mediteranean Sea! But it was freezing cold, so the urge to dive in was halted by a windchill of maybe -15 degrees Celcius :-) And going to the toilet (a squat pit toilet a bit away in the woods-but the toilets here are a whole nother story...) at night wasn't so fun giving the warnings we got about wolves... We went horseriding there, and I now accept that horseriding is actually a sport, given my sore muscles the next day - I was very happy that I had brought tiger balm!
Well, that's about a quarter of the trip, I'll write more when we're back in UB, which should be Wednesday night. And then I can upload photos with faster internet than at this telecommunications center!
Sending you all lots of love from the Gobi, Dom (Dom, man, make fire!)

After just five days on a train that travels at an average speed of about 60 km/h I am now in Mongolia. Let me start with my impression of Ulaanbaatar: I wouldn't want to live here. Obviously I don't mean this for the whole of Mongolia, I still find the countryside fascinating and assume I won't get disappointed over the next month here, but the city of Ulaanbaatar is very strange, and not necessarily in a good way. Imagine this bizarre sight: loads of Plattenbau buildings (there is no english translation for this sort of socialist-era-building made of concrete slabs...), many still under construction, and amidst this damning reminder of Soviet influence a buddhist temple, looking very ancient but still complete intact. Mind you, this is basically the only buddhist temple left standing here after Choibalsan's purges in the 1930's. It was left standing to "demonstrate the feudal ways of the past".

But let me go back to Moscow with my storytelling :-)
Did I mention Coco's paranoia of Russian police? I have to admit that it was weird knowing that there where I was is the place where Volker Beck, a German politician of the Green party, was beat up by the Russian police twice for taking part in the Moscow CSD (Christopher Street Day, which in Moscow is far from what it is most western European countries: basically just a peaceful demonstration advocating tolerance). And this was in 2006 and 2007. Coco and I were thinking of putting stickers with "I heart democracy" on our bags... On that note, I saw some nice oil barrels with the label "Gazprom" on them in Siberia.

The train we took was Mongolian and there were lots of Mongolian traders on it with boxes everywhere, in every compartment, and they wanted to leave things in our compartments. Eventually some boxes where stowed away under the floor of the train (and amazingly the Russian customs people in Nauschki looked in every nook of the train, even on the inside of the ceiling covers, but not in the stowaway space underneath the train...). Being on the Mongolian train we didn't have a shower, and washing my hair in the tiny bathroom sink (shaking all the time) was an interesting experience. Now that we've arrived I had a shower and am thus smelling fresh and clean again :-)
At this point I need to give a helpful tip to all my female friends: when you have terrible menstrual cramps and stuffing yourself with painkillers doesn't help (the shaking of the train seemed to have amplified my cramps), put a small lavender pillow on your belly: it helps! And at this point I would like to mention my dislike of the taboo that still exists around talking about menstruation. I have read many accounts of adventurous travels to the ends of the earth and never have these accounts mentioned the "special difficulties" of having your period when traveling.

I'm sorry for not being chronological: I just write what comes to mind. I was also appalled by the Stalin souvenirs you could buy in Moscow. Why not start selling t-shirts with Pol Pot on them in Cambodia and Towels with Hitler on them in Germany?!
Although with some of the symbols still on display I did wonder what country I'm in. The best example is probably the hammer and sickle with "CCCP" (cyrillic for USSR) at the train station in Moscow...

Anyways, I guess I could go on for ages, it really was an interesting and fun journey! Except for the food... Cup noodles and Tuetensuppen...

Obviously the organic tasted much better! But food just wasn't meant to be in the form of powder...

We're going to be in Ulaanbaatar for a few days now and then probably head north to Lake Khoevsguel...

By the way, Coco put more photos on facebook and I put some on studivz, since there's a limit here... And if anyone feels like calling us, we have just bought a sim card for our cell phone, the number is +976-99708912. But please remember the time difference ;-)