Entries about dust

After our tour of Bhaktapur the day before, today we had to get some shopping done. After all, we’d need sleeping bags for the rest of our trip. We took a taxi into Thamel, the tourist district of Kathmandu.
We had not thought that after our experience with Cambodian traffic that we’d be easily shocked. But Nepali traffic was even wilder and more chaotic than anything we had seen so far. Seemingly, most drivers fully trusted the attention of the other people on the road. Most people seem to just turn from a side street into a busy road without even a brief look. Or they fully trust their Hindu beliefs that the soul is immortal and will be reborn after death. That makes for an interesting traffic (and general safety) experience. Not even the times when we were simply stuck and not moving ourselves were a relief: just watching how motorbikes tried to squeeze through traffic were making my stomach twitch.

After more than an hour we had successfully arrived in Thamel. Our first stop was at a ‘North Face’ store which turned out to be full of fake products. Well, either that or we were shown magic -10 °C sleeping bags with low weight, minimum pack dimensions and a reasonable price.
We preferred to head to Shona’s Alpine, a store that I had found recommended on the internet. They are producing their products in Nepal using imported Australian down at a great price. We were positively surprised about their sleeping bags and soon left the store as the proud owners of three of them.
After a great lunch at Gaia, we quickly headed back towards Bhaktapur and were happy to be back at the hotel. In the lobby, we found an article in a newspaper. A boy that is considered untouchable had been asked by his friend who belongs to a higher caste to fetch something from the kitchen. He did as he was told, only to be beaten up with a stick by his friend’s older brother – after all an untouchable is not allowed to touch anything. The good news is that since 2011 there is a law that forbids discrimination of lower castes. The newspaper reported that enforcement of this relatively new law still needs to be improved.

Nepal is a very different world for us indeed!
On the next day, we explored Bhaktapur. On the main Durbar square, we had a closer look at the temples there. They were decorated with lots of wood carvings. The gods and goddesses had up to ten arms. The temples are not only home for the 330 million hindu gods and godesses (which are all incarnations of the three main gods), but also of many birds.

While this was fun to see, we also laughed about the many representations of various sexual positions. A 16th century king wanted to promote married life vs. monastic life and thought it was a good idea to give his people some good ideas about the benefits of having a partner. Coming from a Catholic background ourselves, it seems just out of this world to go to a temple and to contemplate about pictures like that. How about a religion that helps couples being some variety into their love life?

At one of the temples, we observed a group of girls taking hundreds of selfies of each other. Sam couldn’t resist to take a couple of pictures as well – which led to much laughter on both sides.

We also loved the shopping options of Bhaktapur. There was a wild mix of regular stores with well-organized displays of the wares on offer. But even more fun were the many sellers along the sides of the road.

Max was adamant to spend some more time at the pottery workshop. While he worked with lots of enthusiasm, Sam and I had time to just observe life in the square. Some of the houses around us had artistic facades of latticed windows – which looked even better when someone was looking through the window.

We had lots of fun with a couple of kids. Despite being much smaller than Max, we learned that they are five and six years old and what their names were.

What a great day this had been once more! We continued to be overwhelmed by the amount of sights and smells we experienced in the last couple of days.
But there was more to come. The next day we headed to Changu Narayan, one of the temple complexes part of the Kathmandu Valley UNESCO World Heritage listing. Along the way, we passed some of the many brick-works in the region who seem to make the business of their lifetime in the aftermath of the earthquake.
As we headed up towards the hilltop, we got to see the Kathmandu Valley from above. With the climate getting hotter in April, it was extremely hazy. Even though we had read in our guidebook that only between October and March there’s a good view, we doubted even that. Having seen the sheer amount of brick works and private households using wood fires, we assumed that much of the haze was also man made and present all around the year.

Even though Changu Narayan is the oldest Hindu temple complex of Nepal, we must admit that we were not very impressed. Unfortunately, much of the temple had been damaged in the earthquake and there was a distinct feeling of being in the middle of a big construction site. And admittedly, we did not make a big effort to locate famous inscriptions from the fifth century AD.

On our way down to the minibus, we had to pass through the many market stalls offering souvenirs and eventually got tired of repeating our mantra of ‘No, thank you. We’re not interested in T-shirts / singing bowls / paintings / food / carvings / pottery / etc’. The insights in village life were much more interesting than anything we could have bought for money.

Later that day, we did invest in a souvenir. While Max got to try doing some painting on his own, we did buy a mandala. While we do not care too much about its philosophical meaning in religious interpretation, we liked the geometric forms and thought that it will be a nice memory that we can put up back at home.

We had lunch with a nice view of the place in front of Nyatapola temple. Being up at a balcony, we benefited once more of being able to observe what was going on the square and taking pictures of the many interesting scenes we observed.

Lunch was great. We really like Nepali food and especially the big choice of vegetarian options on the menus - once again a consequence of the respect of Hindus towards all higher life forms.
In preparation of the upcoming Nepali New Year festivities, a big chariot had been constructed and was being decorated. The local kids (and Max) used it as a climbing frame and substitute for a playground.

We also headed up the big steps of the Nyatapola temple. We had a great view from up there. But Max loathed the fact that he was a popular photo motive for the locals and wanted to leave quickly again.

Still trying to get our head around everything we had seen in the last days, we opted for a distinct contrast that afternoon: we went to an extremely comfortable café, had tea and cakes. While we were in a clear tourist establishment with not a single local stopping by, we did not mind having a well-known culture around us for an hour. While life floated by outside the big windows, we knew that by the end of the hour, we’d be in the middle of Nepali life again – excited about what to see next in this fascinating country!

Riding through the Mongolian steppe, we passed the winter camp of a nomad family. They were very busy. In spring time, they are shearing their camels. It was interesting to see how they got the camels to lay down and how they cut the dense fur by hand. We were surprised how many kids in school age were around. The explanation was easy: due to the heavy workload in spring, there are two weeks of school vacation such that the kids can help at home. Usually, the kids would be in boarding school in the next town – as distances are mostly by far too much as to cover them on a daily base.

We rode almost 100 km on nature tracks, Along the way, we passed several ovoos again and learned the quick way of asking for luck: instead of walking around it three times, three honks of the horn will do as well. And hopefully that guarantees not having an accident like one of the cars we came across in the steppe. What followed was a brief interlude of 30 km of excellent tarmac, after which we headed off onto another track. Unfortunately, that track turned out to be extremely worn and not suitable for fast traveling.

All of us were relieved about the break we had at a small well. There were camels, cattle and two large herds of sheep and goats. The nomads were making sure that the two herd didn’t mix. Otherwise that would mean a lot of effort to separate them again into the two groups – distinguished by the color of their horns. It was lots of fun to watch the thirsty animals trying to get to the water.

A bit further we stopped for lunch before the rattling on the bad track restarted. Eventually we reached the town of Tsogttsetsii where we got fuel and Amgaa had his tire exchanged at a small workshop.
We had covered already over 180km on partially bad tracks and were relieved that the remaining 160km would be on an asphalted toll-road. Well, we were wrong. After having driven for about 40 km on the asphalt road, we wished to go offroad onto a track. It turned out that the asphalt road was by far worse than anything we had driven on so far. A piece of acceptable asphalt was followed by large holes of more than 30cm depth that were distributed over the complete width of the road such that avoiding them was impossible. The road was absolutely destroyed by the countless trucks transporting coal, copper and gold from the mines either towards Ulaanbaatar or towards China.
After briefly assessing the situation and considering the fact that we’d need to come back on exactly that road again after having spent two days at a monastery, also dubbed ‘the world energy center’, we easily concluded that we were not keen on doing that at all. We’d rather skip that item on our tour program and spend more time at the others vs. having to endure a couple of hours of being shaken to the bones on that awful road.
Luckily, Oogii and Amgaa agreed to our proposal to head towards the center of the South-Gobi province, Dalanzadgad. As there were works going on to build a new train connection from the mines towards China, it turned out to be a bit difficult to find the turn off for the track towards the capital of the district of South-Gobi. And in the attempt of getting onto the right track, we suddenly found ourselves stuck in a river bed which seemed like a field of stones in soft sand. Even though our 4wd was still not operational, it took us just two attempts to get the Furgon unstuck and up outside of the river bed.
Soon afterwards, Amgaa had found the track towards Dalanzadgad and after a bit of driving we took a sharp right turn off the track for about a kilometer in order to find a secluded camping spot. We were protected in a small depression and had a nice view of the flats underneath us and the mountains behind. Camping in Mongolia is simply great!
And there’s one more thing that is great: seemingly there’s almost everywhere mobile reception. No matter in how remote areas we had been driving up to now, most of the time Oogii and Amgaa were able to make phone calls.

Right next to our campsite, Max and Sam found some wildlife. A small lizard seemed to be frozen in place and even the rare Mongolian gerbil proved not to be fast enough for them to have a closer look. After everyone had a look, they released it again next to its burrow.

It felt great to be at camp and not to be stuck in our Furgon any longer. Being in a great spot and not hearing any sound of human provenance anywhere around – that’s what we love. And as being outside in nature is the point of our travel in Mongolia and not necessarily checking one sight after the next, we felt great about our change in plans.

The next morning, we had 130 km of track to cover in order to reach the town of Dalanzadgad – the center of the Southern Gobi district. The track was good, but we continued to be amazed at the ease with which Amgaa decided at the various forks in the road which one of the tracks to take. For us they looked all the same – none more pronounced than the other and both of them looking as if they were going roughly into the same direction.
Amgaa was driving without any GPS or even a detailed map of the area. His explanation was that driving these tracks in Mongolia requires you to have a GPS in your mind. He is able with his sense of direction, the sun and a couple of landmarks to easily find his way from A to B. And should he miss a marker such as a well, the winter camp of some nomads or a specific hill shape, we’d know that he has strayed and would go into the right direction to just get back onto his original course. Wow… We’d be lost, that’s for sure!

We arrived in Dalanzadgad just in time for lunch and afterwards Amgaa dropped us at our hotel for the night. We had originally not foreseen to stay at any hotels during our tour, but Amgaa needed some time to get the 4wd of the Furgon fixed. He also wanted to investigate some other problems sorted, which might require getting spares delivered from Ulaanbaatar which could then only be fixed the next morning.
We were happy as well about this plot and did not mind having a place with a shower after a couple of nights of camping. The hotel Ongi Tov offered everything we needed: a clean and big bed and a bathroom, but in fact it was nothing special – well except if you’re in dire need of a toothbrush or condoms… In that case, you’d be thrilled about the excellent features of the hotel.
Exploring town in the intent of shopping at a supermarket proved to be dustier than expected. About 100m after leaving the hotel, we got caught in the middle of a small dust devil and the laboriously washed hair was dusty once again.
We soon located the supermarket and were surprised about the presence of military personnel from various countries. Seemingly an international conference was taking place in town during that week and we had been lucky to even still get a room in a hotel. A day later the town would have been cut off for tourism and we would have needed to make a large detour around it.
The remainder of the day we spent in our hotel room. Max was delighted to be allowed to watch some TV, while we enjoyed having power to recharge our electronic equipment and to use the wifi for uploading another article for the blog. The only bad news was that that evening also marked the death of our mobile phone. Let’s see if we’ll be able to get its black screen fixed in Ulaanbaatar. But for the next two weeks, we’d live without the pleasures of checking and marking our GPS position on the map, making videos and quick snapshots or simply using it to read eBooks or to let Max listen to audio stories. All of that is no disaster. After all, before this journey we had not even possessed a smartphone. Still, specifically for the long stretches of driving, we would now not be able to keep Max as easily entertained as we had imagined.
Amgaa picked us up the next day with his newly repaired Furgon. Thanks to a couple of spare parts he had especially delivered from Ulaanbaatar, the 4wd and a couple of other issues had now been fixed and we were ready to hit the road again.