Day 51 - Ger Camp, Terelj National Park, Mongolia

Irkutsk was a fascinating place and it's a shame that we didn't have another day there to look around. We spent some time wandering the main shopping street and then took a walk around the banks of the Angara River (which, incidentally, is the only river that flows out of Lake Baikal; there are over 330 rivers flowing into it!). Some of the old wooden Decemberist houses were really good to see but it would have been nice to see in the museums too.

We got back to our homestay at about 5pm and Tamara had cooked us a wonderful big pot of beefy borsch. To be honest, that would have been enough but then she bought out a big tomato and cucumber salad (which appears at all the meals we've had in Russia), some chicken (fried in lard), some spaghetti (fried in lard) as well as bread, cakes, biscuits and enough tea to refill Lake Baikal! We were stuffed and couldn't manage to eat it all but this, as we've found, is typical Russian hospitality. She almost seemed a little put out that we didn't manage to eat all the food and I was a little worried that we'd offended her. She didn't speak any English and the only words that I've managed to pick up so far are please, thank you, goodbye, yes and no. I had a stab at 'good afternoon' as well, but must've got it a bit wrong because the reply to that was a bemused stare.

In the evening we had another walk around the city and ended up in a couple of bars. It was inevitible. The first one was a cellar bar that brewed its own beer on the premises; very much my sort of place but we had one in there and then moved on to another one dubiously called 'Liverpool'. It turned out to be a tribute 'pub' to The Beatles - what on earth was that doing in a far corner of Russia? We didn't stay as they wanted to charge us entry due to their live music. It was a blessing in disguise, I couldn't have faced a Russian Beatles tribute band blasting out 'Hey Jude' while I'm trying to drink my beer. The next bar sounded more promising, it was called The London Pub and was in a big hotel on the main drag (Lenin Street). It turned out to be awful. I had a pint of Young's London Stout which was definitely off, Rich has some sort of lager and they charged us the equivalent of over £10 for those two drinks! We didn't stop long. The walls and table staff were all decked out in tartan and there was a set of bagpipes attached to the wall - they've a funny idea about where London is supposed to be!

That all seems like a long time ago now though as we are currently in Mongolia. The journey here seemed to last for ever, partly because the train was an hour and a half late and partly because clearing customs between leaving Russia and entering Mongolia took over 8 hours! The process is so inefficient and the customs staff really take their job seriously. They were the most stoney-faced mob I've ever seen and quite intimidating. The train journey itself was over 24 hours long so it really was a drag but the views that we saw following the track around Lake Baikal and across the plains of Siberia made it all worthwhile.

After arriving in Ulan Bataar at 7.30 this morning, we were met by our guide Oyunbold. He's Mongolian but speaks with a really strong American accent and great English so I feel quite reassured. We haven't seen much of U.B. yet but will get to see that in a couple of days. We are currently in Terelj National Park which is beautiful. Much of the scenery looks like Yorkshire, more so because it's absolutely lashing down with rain. This isn't typical for August Oyunbold assures us. One of the first things we did was to see a local herding family and we were taken in their Ger (a sort of round tent made of wood and felt). Here, they served us some milk tea which was, not surprisingly, rather milky tea. Then we had some sweets made of cheese, some biscuits and some other sort of cheese which tasted like clotted cream. All very nice. I then asked Oyunbold about this drink that I'd heard about that is made from fermented horse's milk at which point his eyes lit up and he babbled away in Mongolian to our hosts. The old man scurried off and came back with an old jug full of the stuff which he served to us in teacups. It tasted quite nice, though the first sip is a bit of a shock. It's a bit like slightly fizzy, thin milk that has a whiff of old beer and is quite sour. It's a bit of an acquired taste, and Oyunbold later informed us that it causes terrible diarrhoea. It did... Nice !

We were then driven to turtle rock, which is a big rock that looks like a turtle. The name sort of gives away the surprise, then following that we were bought to our Ger camp where we'll be staying for a couple of nights. It's incredibly cosy now that we've got a fire going and the sound of the rain on the tented ceiling reminds me of being a kid in a tent on a miserable British summer holiday. I can't wait for tonight when the atmosphere will be even cosier!

Postscript Day 52 - The tent is only cosy all the time the fire is burning. I had a pretty much sleepless night on the hard, thin matress and shivered all night after the fire had gone out. It's freezing and miserable without the stove burning. A young girl came in at about 6am the following morning and re-lit it but she wasn't as good as the girl yesterday. It went out within five minutes of her leaving. You just can't get the staff...