words from the world

Last post before leaving for the mongolian steppes on foot or by horse. I hope to give news ten days from now if I find an internet café. Otherwise, You'll have to wait for my return at Ulan Bataar, the 20th of july.
But, in the meantime, here are my adventures since the departure from Irkoutsk, close to the Baykal lake.
The transmongolian carriages are identical to the transsiberian ones, the only difference is the exclusively mongolian staff. My carriage is mainly composed of westerners. 4 French people I get on well with, an american woman and a Czech couple, Michael and Iveta, I share the compartment with. In their luggage, they brought a few smoked fish for the dinner. Michael, Zinédine Zidane's double, learnt the Mongolian at the university of Prague. He can communicate with the staff, I'm amazed when I can hardly pronounce the words of my phrasebook correctly. The mongolian turns out to be a very difficult language.
Classed in the family of the altaic languages, the Mongolian language is far from the other Asian languages and from the Russian it takes the alphabet from for the transcription. The distinctive feature and difficulty are the vowel harmony. Like in Latin or in Russian, Mongolian contains declensions in accordance with the position of the word in the sentence (subject, complement, genitive...). To that, you must take account of the vowels harmony, That is to say the vowel of the declension is in accordance with the vowel of the word's root. You have to be born in Mongolia to speak Mongolian!
Nice time on board of the train, we arrive at the Russian border and the train stops for 7 hours. We get off the train but the town is not really interesting. It seems exist only because the border is here. A lot of carriages are taken off and they change the locomotive. We notice the windows of one the carriages are equipped with bars because it transports under tight surveillance prisonners.



There are only 3 carriages when the trains starts again. And foreigners are mainly inside. After a few hours, the train stops again at the Mongolian border this time. The stop is shorter and train starts again at the end of evening.
36 hours after the departure and 2 nights spent on board, we arrive in Ulan Bataar. A horde of guesthouses owners try to seduce us shaking colourful signs. I look for the Golden Gobi guesthouse' representative in order to meet again my Dutch friends I met in the transsiberian train. A few minutes later and after wishing a nice trip to the people I spent these last 2 days with, I arrive at the guesthouse.
I don't know the other accomodations in the Mongolian capital city but I recommend this one. All the travellers facilities are here, from the books exchange to the laundry, from the Internet access to the TV and DVD player. But what makes the soul of a guesthouse, That's the people who are in. When you arrive, you get in a small community and a few hours later, you belong to it. The atmosphere is friendly and relaxed. Those ones who are about to depart to China or Russia cross and advice those ones who still wait for making memories of the Mongolian steppes.
Unfortunately, my Dutch friends already left for several days towards the Mongolian huge spaces. I meet a japanese, Haruki and we get along very well.


He's my guide in Ulan Baatar where I buy some missing gears for my long trek I planed for the next days. Actually, we find everything here, sleeping bags, water filters, GPS receivers, tents, gas cartridges, kayaks and above all, 1/500000 or 1/100000 detailed maps. That's perfect to prepare his own trek.
We visit the Mongolian history and the Mongolian nature museums, we also visit the main temple which shelters a superb 26-meter high gilded Buddha. Except these highlights, the city has no architectural interest and expresses the poverty of Mongolia.





Nobody comes here to stay in the capital but to see the Mongolian scenery, its out of sight steppes, its rivers full of fish, its lakes and its dunes.
Two days after arriving, I go to the Dragon bus station, east from downtown. I buy my bus ticket for Tsetsereg, in the Arkhangai province, the ticket costs 15000 tugrugs. I meet Marko, a Finnishman that share my bench for the 11 hours journey.