7510 km (Beijing Main Station, Beijing, China)
8350 km (Erenhot Station, Erenhot, inner Mongolia, China)
8360 km (Zamyn-Üüd Train Station, Zamyn-Üüd, Mongolia)
9070 km (Ulaan Bataar Railway Station, Ulaan Bataar, Mongolia)
Although I’d been on the trains at this point for over 45 days and 7,500 km, plus lengthy side excursions, it was in leaving Beijing that the longest journey really begins.
Here I joined the Trans-Mongolian Railway, which ultimately connects the Chinese capital to Moscow via Ulaan Bataar, Mongolia.
I was also finally joined by oscarneill, who will travel with me across Russia to St Petersburg!
When I was young there was a certain group of places that carried an elevated mystique, borne in exotic names that appeared in stories, rhymes, games, or in my dad’s giant hardback Times atlas. Kuala Lumpur, Timbuktu, Old Peking, Transylvania, Tokyo, Lapland, the Sahara Desert, Mandalay, Jakarta…
As I slowly visit some of these they become real, and ‘Outer’ Mongolia was surely the most unbelievable.
1.3 million people live here on the edge of the Gobi Desert, about 45% of the total population of Mongolia. Much of the city centre’s buildings are 1950′s soviet concrete apartment blocks in serious disrepair. Hundreds of thousands of people live in huge ger quarters that surround the city, and fill the hillsides to the north of town. Have a look on Google Maps. There are a great many permanent houses, businesses, shops and temples as well as the tent settlements, and this is a place I would love to revisit. Wandering there you can really feel enveloped in the vastness of the settlement around you.
Ulaan Bataar is hot in the summer and cold in the winter, and always dry. It is so dry as to often have no snow even at -40°C. At this time of year (late spring) the sun sets slowly and darkness doesn’t fall until almost 10pm. This confused me badly after a month in southeast asia, and left me feeling something like jet lag.
Mongolian people are so helpful, friendly and beautiful! Best was the feeling that the people we passed on the street couldn’t care less about a couple of lost tourists, as they hurriedly get on with their own business. This was so welcome after the constant plucking attention in Vietnam and China.
The train took us across vast expanses of the Gobi and the steppe, after leaving the more mountainous north China, straight through the Great Wall. Another extended late night border crossing, where the trains are modified for the different rail gauge in Mongolia/Russia.
Change some money, adjust the watch, keep moving. Slowly and finally turning west toward home.
These are a few cameraphone photos from this section of the journey.
Incredible :)
I’m falling badly behind again with these posts, so I’ll give the usual plug for my Instagram feed, where I’m posting regularly (currently in Siberia!).
Des mixes que j'ai envie de partager avec vous. Je me limite à trois mixes par post mais je suis tombé sur des sets vraiments excellents ces derniers jours, donc un vol. 3 de Mixed Emotions va très vite arriver.
“Papa, c’est quoi l’electro ?”. Un jour, mes enfants pas encore nés me poseront cette question. Il y a plusieurs albums et morceaux que je leur jouerai afin de leur expliquer.
Réalisé par le Norvégien VLR, ce set est un hommage à Heinrich Müller alias Gerald Donald. Moitié du légendaire duo Drexciya et producteur derrière les projets non moins essentiels Dopplereffekt, Arpanet, Der Zyklus et Japanese Telecom pour n’en citer qu’une poignée.
Les fanatiques de Gerald Donald seront ravis d’entendre des classiques et sans doute découvriront-ils des morceaux à côté desquels ils sont passés. Dans mon cas c’était le remix de Air, qui est tout simplement magique. Les novices découvriront l’univers musical du bonhomme. Un set hommage d'une très grande classe avec des passages vraiment chouettes, je ne pourrais pas plus recommander.
Frankie Bones, DJ de New York et producteur phare de house / techno à la fin des années 80, avec une influence certaine de l'electro de b-boy. 89, il se fait booker à la rave Energy en Angleterre. Set de cloture devant 25 000 personnes et un soleil levant. Moment inoubliable pour Frankie qui composera Energy Dawn plus tard pour marquer le coup, mais surtout rentrera aux USA avec la ferme intention de prêcher la bonne parole de la rave dans son pays.
Merci à Maria 909 (une figure phare de la scène New Yorkaise dont je vous parlerai bientôt ici) d'avoir partagé ce mix. C'est vraiment une belle leçon de DJing, la tracklist est géniale et nous offre un bel aperçu de ce qui se jouait en rave une fois l'ouragan acid house passé et avant que 1991 ne pointe le bout de son nez. Beaucoup d'inspiration pour mes prochains sets donc !
On termine avec un super set du poto Ulaan Bataar aka Михаил. Enregistré il y a quelques semaines, ce mix c'est une vision plus sombre et intense de la techno, l'electro et l'acid, ascendant rave. Classe et brutal (notamment cette tuerie de EDMX, doux Jésus) j'ai pris beaucoup de plaisir à l'écouter, je m'imagine bien danser sur ce genre de set sous un pont en Crimée ou bien au Théâtre de Poche à Hédé...où le compère jouera d'ailleurs avec le non moins excellent Jeune Et Jolie et d'autres guests de feu dans quelques semaines, plus d'infos ici.
Voilà pour cette semaine. La prochaine fois je pense qu'il y aura des ambiances jackin' portugaises du futur et sans doute de la house de type garage du début des années 90.
I’ll actually probably have to make this a couple posts, since it has been a very L O N G, what, 15 days?
A mural I saw in Ulaan Bataar on my first day, and is the main image that's stuck with me
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The plane from Korea to Mongolia was much cooler and much nicer than the one we took from the US. >:/ Almost made me disappointed we were only on it for 3 hours. Look at this ludicrously cool remote.
Hi Yuebert.
We got into Mongolia at about 11-ish, and our guest house at 12-ish, so we all just fell into bed.
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Our first day was a free day to wander about the city, so we were divided into five groups (we were pre-assigned groups during the last semester of school based on on-trip responsibilities; mine is Media, so taking pictures and making the video at the end) and given a couple locations to try and find. In Cyrillic. So the first thing I did was look up a pronunciation guide for Cyrillic characters, so I could at least try to ask aloud how to get to these places, since interacting with people was part of the challenge. This ended up being THE most useful thing I have done on the trip so far, I think, and has served me enormously well; I’m one of the only ones in the group who can read Cyrillic characters, now, and though I don’t necessarily know the WORDS, I can at least recognize things to some degree.
Our places ended up being the Parliament Building/Government Palace, the Mongolian Circus, and what would have been Ganden Monastery if my group had actually managed to get there on time. ;;;
Of course, it was most useful because it ended up being my first sight and taste of Ulaan Bataar. And what a city it is.
Ulaan Bataar is a fascinating place. It’s a city that’s rapidly growing, but it reminds me of an insect trying to leave its shell—it first has to rip itself apart before it can get any bigger. The roads are in disarray, with huge cracks, and pot holes, and the tile sidewalks are coming apart, with holes where tiles were, and loose stones, and everything is covered with dust and dirt. The city is very dry, and I think it carries into the aesthetic a bit. It’s not an ugly city, but it’s… I’m not sure how to put it, really. After Korea, the difference was really very striking.
This isn’t to say it’s a bad city, though. Ulaan Bataar has lots of little places and restaurants and stores, and parts of it are really beautiful. It’s a very old city, that’s all, and not taken exquisite care of.
Although for the love of Christ don’t get me started on the cars here.
If you look REALLY close you can see that there is someone trying to turn left into a line blocked full of cars
I’m so tired of nearly getting hit by cars, and having to glare my way across a road I have no choice but to jaywalk, or even better, trying to cross a crosswalk when I have the little green walking person and people are stilly hurtling through their right turns with complete disregard for all pedestrians. Grrrrrrrr, fuck the traffic here.
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First day of class! We would usually meet in a large, empty room in the side of Lamrim Monastery, a small Buddhist monastery and temple run by a man I know only as “the abbot”, who’s good friends with Nima, my professor’s husband, and has always been extremely kind to the PacRim groups, at least since ’99 when he, Nima, and Professor Benard met. Lamrim is about a thirty minute walk from our guesthouse (although you can do it in about 20 if you risk the sideroads).
I’m only taking one class at the moment, which I thought would be the schedule—one a month, relating to the country we were in. But that is not the case. This class I’ve started—Tibetan Buddhism—will begin here in Mongolia, and end in India, which is several countries down the list. When I’m in Japan, I will apparently be taking three classes concurrently. K I am not looking forward to that.
Anyway, this class is, again, Tibetan Buddhism, taught by our faculty director for this semester, Professor Benard. I’ve never had a class with her, but I have some friends who have, and…. hmm. But it hasn’t been too bad so far, and it’s clear that she ~L O V E S~ being on PacRim, so it’s been mostly good so far. I had no idea why we were studying Tibetan Buddhism in Mongolia, at first, but as it turns out, Tibetan Buddhism is the main religion in Mongolia, from both before and after Soviet control. Mongolia has its own indigenous religion, but Buddhism is EVERYWHERE, and very important to its culture and history.
My textbook. It has a pretty cover, which is apparently a form of the Bodhisattva of Compassion.
Amusingly, (although probably by design), our first day of school was also the first day of school across all of Mongolia. That was pretty neat—except for when the learning center across the street from our guesthouse started BLARING MUSIC at 7 in the morning to celebrate. I have to at least applaud them on their sound system. DAMN. It was so loud, and so clear. OUR class started at 10, so I didn’t exactly appreciate being awoken so early.
Today also marked my first visit to
~ * ~ * ~ THE STATE DEPARTMENT STORE ~ * ~ * ~
God fucking bless the State Department Store. You can find anything you need in its enormous six floors, including a supermarket, clothing, TVs, souvenirs, a food court, and high-class stands selling expensive cosmetics and Gilette razors.
The number of times I have gone to the State Department Store at this point is kind of disgusting, and laughable. But it makes an excellent landmark, and it really does have nearly anything you’d need.
Granted, that first day I didn’t manage to find any of the things I needed—I just went to the (bathroom and then the) supermarket portion, and bought some crap. XDDD
The marshmallow legs reminded me of the marshmallow treats my dad would get me sometimes, and *cough*thelabelsaidwizardPRINCE*cough*.
And then when I returned to the guesthouse, we had no water.
None. None at all. For the entire block. And of course, I had to use the bathroom. o_____o And not the kind you can leave sitting around. =_______= (Sorry if this is gross for anyone—for some reason everyone on my trip just ~L O V E S~ talking about poop, which makes NO SENSE to me, but alas.) I ended up going to a bakery across the street and using their bathroom and hanging out with some of my PacRim companions, which was good, but it was still a bit of a hassle.
A WORD TO THE WISE TRAVELING THROUGH ASIA: Learn to throw your toilet paper in the trash, not to flush it. Mongolia is one of the countries that will ask this of you, but I’ve been told there are several others, too. Lisa’s pretty sure the pipes were routine maintenance, and not because we clogged them with our toilet paper, but still, the latter’s what we all thought, and it came as a harsh reminder to try and throw it, not flush it.
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Today was only remarkable small ways. I got some of the things I needed from the State Department Store (a coin purse, a patch for Mongolia, my mom’s fridge magnet); a group of us went to gelato, which was kind of expensive but very tasty; we went to a Chinese restaurant and I struggled to eat it; etc. etc.
The next day we would be going on a three-day excursion to the countryside, so I mostly just… packed and got ready and such.
As well, since the next day was the excursion—and I’m going to give it its own post—this might be a good place to break off this post, since its pretty long and has lots of images as it is.
Please look forward to my next post, the DMZ trip hopefully ‘cause OOPS I still need to write that the three-day excursion to the Mongolian Countryside!
