It wasn’t inevitable but it happened. Our car was broken into two nights ago in Ulaanbaatar (UB). A small side window was smashed and we have lost a sleeping bag, duvet (down jacket), tent and snow chains, as well as other smaller items. In a sense we were lucky in that everything else remains and we can continue, troubled by the losses but thankful in other ways. To cap off an already bad day, a group of four men tackled Will as we were walking back to our guesthouse after dinner, trying (unsuccessfully, thankfully) to pinch his wallet. Welcome to UB…
We acted quickly to restore our situation. Within a few hours of the robbery being detected the broken glass had been replaced after the car had received another 10,000km service. Our servicing requirements, by the way, were all communicated by sign language and pointing (none of the mechanics spoke English, and our Mongolian is just a teensy bit rusty…). As before, we supplied necessary oils (sump and differential) and replacement parts (fuel filter, oil filter and air filter). We stood and watched the whole process. As the glass was being replaced, a helpful man in a beret, taking a keen interest in proceedings, told us to be beware of the Russians - there are bad men and they break into cars…While smiling at the irony, we nevertheless have taken full heed of his warning. We have also started to replace, to the extent we can, essential items (sleeping bag, tent…) which were stolen, with new.
On a much brighter note, we received our visas for Kazakhstan today, to our great relief (after an initial scare that the Embassy might be temporarily closed, our Central Asian travel agent in Melbourne, Brent McCunn, acted immediately on our sat phone call and email: he spoke to the Embassy here in UB (the numbers we tried didn’t work) and gave us the current address by email. We went to this address that same afternoon by taxi to lodge our applications complete with passport sized photos). We have been given more liberal travel dates (now start earlier, end later) in the visas than indicated in our letters of introduction (LOIs), which assists significantly with the timing of various legs in Central Asia. Brent has already emailed LOIs for our last visa to be obtained - for Uzbekistan - in Almaty, southern Kazakhstan.
Will has taken on the job of flagging down taxis for various trips we have needed, probably nine in all, in the last few days (to and from the Kazakhstan Embassy, to the Embassy’s bank and back, for car servicing (with Will in the taxi, I followed behind in our car), etc.)) We’ve needed taxis to get to these places, which in the main are well beyond LP territory. None have been “official” taxis, (ie with an illuminated dome on the roof) which are nigh on impossible to find, but are unmarked and probably private cars used by the owner to make a bit of money on the side. No meters, etc. I asked W ill how he picked them to flag down. His response: “I look for small, crappy cars, (sometimes) with an aerial…”. It works! Of course, none of the taxi drivers speak English so we have had to get our guesthouse owner to write the addresses out in Mongolian to show the driver. This also works until the driver cannot find the place and asks us for directions…
So what is UB like, apart from apparently being a den of thieves? UB is unexpected; it is largely western in appearance with a few glass towers, traffic lights, modern cars, and heavy traffic. As in many countries we have driven through the traffic is chaotic at times and needs to be accommodated, but we are well used to doing this by now. There are strange (to our eyes) electric busses with dual poles linking up with power wires above, and there is a small, but noticeable presence of locals wearing colourful traditional costume, as a matter of course. There are numerous restaurants and a lot of bustle and vibrancy on the main streets.
What however characterises UB, once one looks beyond the thin sheen of the main drags is thousands of drab, and mainly poorly maintained Soviet era, walk ups of about three or four stories. In our eyes they are grim places, even now, in bright sunshine, and I shudder to think of what they would have been like in cold war times, in Winter, at night…. They appear concrete walled and all have heavy steel doors facing the street, without portico, porch or entry alcove to provide any sort of perceived welcome or shelter. The same type of steel doors are also used in all the dark and grim stairwells for accessing the apartment or tenement beyond. On closing the doors there is a dull clang of steel on concrete; they do not have handles, only a key lock or set of press buttons. Just inside each steel door is a further door, with lock. The word forbidding comes to mind…
Our first sighting of these types of apartment buildings was while we were driving to UB. Just out of Choyr at the start of the bitumen road is an abandoned Russian air-force base with rows of stripped out shells of similar appearing buildings. The odd abandoned MiG fighter still can be seen but there is mainly rubble and sad, hoarded up remains of lesser buildings. Somehow this place wasn’t as grim as the present backstreets of Soviet era apartment blocks in UB itself are, as this was history, abandoned and left to crumble - a relic of times past. Not so in UB…
We are now eager to be on the (dirt and rocky) road again and leave tomorrow - our heading west (after driving north for months) is significant for us. We are now not heading away from home but towards London, and that, folks, is really something!
[Photos: stripped out shells of abandoned Russian air-force base apartment building, near Choyr, electric bus, Ulaanbaatar, steel door of current Soviet era apartment block, Ulaanbaatar]
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