Summaries: Mongolia, Russia, Vodkatrain

After a 6 hour bus ride from St. Petersburg to Tallinn, Estonia (and a hearty breakfast of duty-free gummy bears), we've finished the Russian leg of our trip. We're now taking a few days to be lazy, lazy travellers in Tallinn before we start moving around again (Mal has dubbed this part of the trip "Restonia"). The old town in Tallinn is like something out of a fairy tale, or a movie, or a movie about a medieval fairy tale. We'll post a review of the city in a few days, but here's a foggy preview:


And now, here are some wordy final summaries of Mongolia, Russia and Vodkatrain (the company that booked our trip for us).

Mongolia: Our first real experience in Mongolia was in Ulaan Baatar. We were pretty excited to get there, partly because it has an exotic-sounding name, and partly because it is the answer to a trivia question ("What is the world's coldest capital city?"). The actual city was... interesting, but not the kind of place you'd want to hang around for long. It's incredibly smoggy for a city its size (around 1 million people), is apparently packed to the gills with pickpockets (we escaped un-picked, but our guide said she has been robbed several times) and, appropriately enough for the world's coldest capital in late November, was bitterly cold. Fortunately, the people who weren't trying to steal our wallets were extremely friendly. Once we got out of the city, things were much better. We went to a nomadic-style (but not actually nomadic) ger camp for a few nights, in some of the most spectacular scenery we've seen so far on the trip. The Mongolian countryside is the opposite of Ulaan Baatar - incredibly sparse, quiet and clean. Our 3 days of camping there were definitely a highlight of the trip.



The gers themselves were surprisingly warm and comfortable, with three actual beds (no sleeping on the floor for us!) in each tent, thick felt walls, and a roaring fire in the wood stove (except the one or two times when it went untended through the night, and we woke up to near-freezing temperatures). Here's a partial view of inside the gers. Three of our Vodkatrain travel companions (from left: Rich, Laura and Tim) are passing the time with some recreational card games and beverages.


As for the food, it wasn't nearly as bad as I thought it would be, though it did tend towards big, fatty portions of mutton, and deep-fried dumplings. We went out for dinner at a "Mongolian Grill" on our first night in the capital, which was pretty much the same as Mongolian Grills in Canada: a buffet of vegetables, meats and sauces that you combine yourself, then give to a guy who grills it all up for you. I have my suspicions about the authentic "Mongolian-ness" of these grills, though, since in most of Mongolia the closest thing you can find to a fresh vegetable is camel stew.

Overall: Ulaan Baatar - interesting, but not exactly a travel hotspot. Wilderness - fantastic and highly recommended. One final point though: it is immeasurably helpful to book with a tour company, or at least go with someone who speaks Mongolian. Otherwise, the language barrier could pose some pretty significant problems.

Russia: Our Russian experience really consists of three cities, plus a lot of train. Irkutsk is a good-looking city, though we didn't spend enough time there to really get a feel for it. Listvyanka, the nearby village on the shore of Lake Baikal, is a nice little town with lots of 19th century wooden houses, some dating back as far as the failed Decembrist revolt of 1825. Back then, a bunch of Russian soldiers and academics decided to rise up against Czar Nicholas I, but didn't succeed and were exiled to Siberia (fail!). Lake Baikal was even cooler than we were expecting. We figured our experience living on a great lake would have kind of jaded us to big bodies of water, but Lake Baikal has an edge on Lake Ontario in that it's surrounded by mountains, which make for some pretty cool scenery. There are some good hikes around town, and that's what we spent most of our time doing. We also took in a traditional Russian sauna (called a "banya"), which involves getting whipped with pine branches. Way more relaxing than it sounds, trust me.

We also hiked up to an old-but-still-functioning astronomical observatory on a hill. It was full of 1970's era scientific equipment, and kind of run-down, which was cool because it made it seem like something from a snowy version of "Lost".


Moscow mostly got covered in my last post, so I'll just reiterate that there are lots of really cool things to see there, and we even heard rumours that there are some restaurants in town where you can eat a full meal without having to auction off any internal organs on the black market to cover the bill.

St. Petersburg doesn't have the same quantity of iconic sights that Moscow has, but it is slightly cheaper, and it really raises the bar on all-around impressive architecture. We didn't see a single ugly building in downtown St. Petersburg during our entire stay. That, combined with the fact that it's full of canals, make it seem like kind of a near-arctic combination of Paris and Venice. The near-arctic thing is definitely noticeable though. This time of year, the sun rises around 9:30am, and sets by 3:30pm. Their tourism slogan could be something along the lines of "St. Petersburg in winter: hope you like architecture and darkness!". Oh yeah, there's also the Hermitage, one of the biggest, most ornate, treasure-filled museums in the universe. It was awesome.


As for the train, we've discussed it a bit in past posts, but I'll summarize it here: long days of reading, listening to music and playing cards, punctuated by meals of instant noodles, peanut butter and Snickers bars. The scenery out the window in Russia ranged from "trees" to "snowy trees" to "different kinds of snowy trees", but it goes by in a hypnotic kind of way, and we spent many hours just staring out the window. All in all, the time passes in a pleasant enough fashion, and it really is a neat way to cross about a quarter of the earth's surface.

Overall: Russian people are friendlier than the stereotype makes them out to be, but several other stereotypes are very true: tons of people wear big furry hats, people very rarely smile to strangers, and there is TONS of drinking (last week's Economist estimated that 30% of all male deaths in Russia are related, directly or indirectly, to alcohol). Still, we enjoyed the people and the food, which was usually hearty and delicious, if maybe not the healthiest in the world (mayonnaise is an integral part of just about every dish in the country). Our few experiences with sports and music events were super fun, and we can fully recommend KHL games or Russian afrobeat to anyone who finds themself in Moscow. Beyond that, the country is full of incredibly interesting history and amazing sights. If you can stomach the bureaucratic process of getting into the country (which is like a paper-based version of "The Eliminator" from American Gladiators), I'd say it's well worth a visit.

And finally...

Vodkatrain: I thought I'd include a quick review of our tour company for the train, in case anyone else is considering a similar trip. We booked our train through an Australia-based company called Vodkatrain. Basically, you pay them one lump sum and they take care of all your tickets and accomodations for the entire trip (plus a few meals here and there) and set you up with a group of fellow travelers, and a "honcho" in each city you visit. The honchos are usually local students who want a job that lets them practice their English. The honchos aren't really "guides" in the conventional sense, as there's no structured itinerary. They're mostly there to help with translation in tricky circumstances (like hailing a cab in Ulaan Baatar, or ordering food at a tiny restaurant in Moscow, for example), and to suggest the best things to do in each place, and the easiest way to do them. Our trip consisted of six people: Mal and I, two British girls named Sarah and Laura, an Australian guy named Tim, and another British guy named Rich, all in the 23-25 age group.

In total, we estimated that the Vodkatrain package cost about 30% more than we would have paid to do the whole thing on our own, which was DEFINITELY worth the amount of hassle it saved. There's nothing better than getting off a train in an unfamiliar, non-English-speaking city, bleary-eyed and disoriented, and being whisked onto a bus and taken directly to your hotel by someone whose job it is to make sure you have a good time. And that's not even taking into account the amount of time and stress it would have taken us to figure out things like train schedules, Cyrillic maps, and navigating the Russian visa registration process, which you have to do in every city, and sometimes costs money, but sometimes doesn't, etc. etc. There are places where fully independent travel is the way to go. Russia and Mongolia are not among them.

Final summary of the Vodkatrain experience: beyond a doubt one of the easiest ways to ride the Trans-Siberian railway and actually stop and see things along the route.

Well, that just about wraps up the Great Train Adventure portion of the trip!