Moscow Day 15

When travelling on a budget, one must get used to a wide variety of circumstances that on a regular fortnight away you would find vexing. Wearing the same clothes every other day. Packing and repacking, then having to pack some more. Missing Game of Thrones. And countless more. The hardest one for many is the necessary act of sharing your sleeping quarters with strangers. Through this trip I would guess that I have slept with hundreds of people. And it was hardly ever fun. Snoring, farting, shagging, crying. You hear it all on the road.

Today I was awoken to the sound of a sixty year old Korean woman mooing like a cow.

Machu Pichhu Tour Day 1

For the six or seven people reading this blog, I’m sorry it’s been idle for so long. A combination of conditions have made it hard to keep up to date. I’ll be better from now on. I recently went to Machu Picchu and it was such an experience-for reasons other than you might think-I decided to break protocol and skip ahead.

I’ll be back in Russia soon.

Today we went to Machu Picchu, and it is a tale of more woe, that that of Hamlet, Brookside and Othello. What a trip it was. So much to say. So let’s be having it.

The day before we picked out our tour agency and got ourselves booked up. We were to get a bus from Cusco all the way to a town named Santa Maria and from there we would travel to an area in which a hydro electrical plant operates and get a train to the town of Aquas Calientes at the foot of Machu Picchu Mountain, stay in Aquas Calientes for the night and in the morning, after hot toast and tea, we would scramble up the mountain, see the place, take lots of pictures, scramble down and do the trip in reverse. Like ‘Memento’ but with nicer scenery and lots of Spanish.

We were told to be up and ready for 7:30 because the bus will arrive between 7:30-8:00am. Now I am not nor will I ever be anthropologically apt in the ways of Peruvians but since arriving I have been informed of, and observed a phenomena known as ‘Peru time’. Peru time is a simple way of saying the people are often late. If a Peruvian tells you they’ll be there for 7, expect them at 8. If dinner is planned for 9, it would be prudent to eat a chicken wing at around 7:30 to stave off the next few hours’ hunger. So it was with this in mind that I got myself ready at 7:20, picked up my bread roll from the breakfast counter and, I swear it, the moment my knife touched the bread to separate the bun:

“Tomaaaaaas!”

What Peru time?

“Tomaaaaaaas! Rapido rapido!”

Moscow Day 14

After the sedentary madness of the train, Moscow was an intimidating place in which to find ourselves. Our old friend John held our hands and took us toward the metro. Showed us how to get a ticket and bid us farewell. A nice bloke was John. I hope he becomes president. We navigated the metro, which thankfully wasn’t too complex, and had a good old stare at some real Russians. From a single train carriage I counted:

3 women in headscarves

2 drunks

1 USSR badge (pinned on to a girl younger than me, no less. Do Russians ‘do’ irony?)

4 KGB spies

8 AK-47s

1 woman holding a bear

The first three are true.

Trans Siberian Railway Day 11-13

We woke up at 9am which turned out to be 8am. We’re not only travelling through the wilds of Siberia, we also seem to be travelling through time. Many times zones will be passed over the next few days.

“Time for a spot of breakfast! I´ll slice the bread” I bellowed from my plinth of confidence. What could be easier than slicing bread? Well, dearest reader, it turns out that absolutely anything in the known world is easier. Where to start? First of all, we had no knife so had to make do with the corner of a piece of plastic which was as blunt as a drunken Irishman. The bread as well seemed to resist the temptation to be sliced and much preferred crumbling into an inedible and unbelievable mess. The cheese and salami which we bought fared no better. It was a culinary massacre and I was the perp.

Irkutsk-Trans-Siberian Day 10

This evening we will be getting on a train and not leaving it for three days. What a stupid thing to do. I mean, you could fly the same distance in 6 hours or so. Skip the hassle, watch a film on the in-flight entertainment and enjoy those suction toilets that make my ears go pop. Instead of that we will spend the rest of the week in incredibly close proximity to strangers, eating from tins and trying not to lose our minds watching endless Serbian pines whizz pass the window. Can’t wait!

But before that, we have to see the sights of Irkutsk.

Irkutsk Day 9

We were up early as the train got in at 7am. Besides the Jolly Ukrainian farting and an odd sound of screaming through the night we slept quite well. These trains were not built for the sensitive traveller but they are actually comfortable enough, once you’re settled. We had a quick wash using some soap paper we took with us and went ashore. Irkutsk train station is not the prettiest, It has a KGB safe house feeling to it, but it was a considerable improvement to Ulaanbaatar. No sheep running around this one. We had some information about a hostel but somehow we managed to lose the info in our train carriage. Pretty impressive considering it was the size of a toilet. But as luck would have it, there was a    woman with a hostel sign inside the station. She was waiting for a couple of guests and we latched on to her.
“Can we stay in your hostel?”

“Are you Charles and Max from Singapore?”

“Well I’m not Max, and she’s definitely not Charles. We don’t have a reservation, do you have any beds free?”

Mongolia-Russia Day 8

 We had to get up early to catch the bus. It was a struggle but I pulled the old girl out of paradise, we quickly did our business then called a taxi. I was hoping to catch a glimpse of a guy staying in the hostel who Jamie told me about the night before. He’s a young Canadian making a documentary with an American guy. The premise of the film is to travel to every country in the world. Though the only reason I wanted to meet him was to assess how much of an idiot he looked. Apparently this guy is a real piece of work. I was told that on the night we were enjoying ourselves in the wilds of Mongolia, the people in the hostel all went out with the owner to a club. All was going well until this guy picked up two locals. The hostel owner, being Mongolian was quick to figure out the situation.

“They’re prostitutes.”

“No, they’re not.”

“No, we’re not.”

“Yes, they are. Yes, you are.”

The yes/no conundrum I was told went on for longer than necessary until the Canadian abruptly left with the girls in tow, dragging them back to the hostel.

“Did they get in?” I asked Jamie.

“Did they fuck.”

Mongolia Day 7

Woke up with borderline hypothermia. Since the ger had no light whatsoever, I had to crawl into my sleeping bag liner/extra liner/sleepbag in the dark. This was fine when I went to sleep as the fire was still on and burning bright, but through the night as my vitals fell, I realised I mustn’t have utilised the layers as well as I should. I woke at 6am with just a thin liner and half the sleeping bag covering me. I was so cold I couldn’t zip the sleeping bag back up as my hands were numb. On top of that-if you’ll pardon the phrasing-my arse was still pounding from the horse.

We got ourselves to the main ger a fill ourselves with Kazakh bread a tea. The tea they drink here is very milky and since there isn’t much caffeine you can drink it all day. We both got a real taste for it. For the rest of the morning we either lazed around or hiked the farm. The lambs were up so we played with them, saw a few yaks strolling around. The dogs made an effort of trying to chase them but thought better once they got close. Big buggers, yaks.

Mongolian Tour Day 6

Toury time.  We fumbled and rumbled around our things, remembering things to forget and forgetting things to remember. Had a quick breakfast in the hostel: tea and bread and the like, we then asked the hostel to pick up our bus tickets to the Mongolia/Russia border, as we won’t get time.

“We will go to the bus station for you and get your tickets then bring them back. Though we will charge a fee because it’s far.”

“How much?”

“3000 tugrik (80 pence)”.

“Sold!”

With that sorted we ventured to our van, met the driver and shortly later met our guide. Her name was Soko. She gave us details of the day ahead then we were off.

We started at Zaisan Memorial, a Russian/Mongolian monument nestle high on a hill. The momument commemorates the years of friendship and corporation between the two nations. Russia has had a very big part in Mongolian history and still continues to fund a large part of its economy. The monument wasn’t much to my taste but the real reason to go is to see the complete view of Ullaanbaatar to the north and the Bogd Khan Mountain Range to the south. It’s a good spot for a capital, and they should know. Apparently the capital has changed location no less than 29 times.

Zamin-udd-Ulaanbaatar Day 5

Slept fine for someone vicariously positioned on a top bunk of a rickety old train. Fortunately there was a sort of harness attached to the side of the bed and I strapped my leg to it. It could very well have saved me a broken arm. Baggi let me know that the Gobi had ended and the shacks and gers dotted over in the distance were the far reaches-the suburbs-of Ulaanbaatar. The houses seemed a little ramshackle but wholly liveable, and who wouldn’t want their own ger in the garden?

“Normally a family member, maybe an aunt, will live in the ger.” Baggi told me.

“How many rooms in a ger?”

“Just one room.”

“For the whole family?”

“Yes.”

“How about if…the parents want a bigger family?”

“They will all stay there.”

“Yes, yes, but how do they…make a bigger family?”

“Sex.”

“Thank you, Baggi. I’m wondering how the act of copulation occurs with the little’uns scamping around.”

“The family helps.”

“Gotcha!”