Calm before the storm?

20/09/09 - Ulaanbataar

We arrived in UB this morning (Sunday) at around 7.30am after five nights and four full days (about 100 hours) aboard the Trans-Siberian #004 bound for Beijing. We loved the train and the journey. We loved every minute on the train, mostly in our cosy cabin, sometimes dashing onto the station platforms to grab some home-cooked food from the waiting Babushkas and occasionally in the Russian diner car (wonderful 60s kitsch - technical problem with Astrid's camera prevents a picture of the lime green, brown and white 60s-styled diner with breakfast bar). Over the course of the journey (6,600km) our cosy cabin remained a mostly warm and comfortable constant whilst the environment outside the train slowly morphed from a warm balmy evening in Moscow, through a increasingly chilly Russian countryside/birch forests and onto a decidedly cold siberian autumn/winter, culminating in more or less continuous snow from the Russian/Mongolian border through to Ulanbataar. The freezing sleet outside the train as we waited 5 hours at the border was particularly memorable.

After the urbane St.Petersburg, imposing Moscow and the tranquility of the train, Ulanbataar at around 5 degrees feels cold and slightly surreal with the potted roads and muddied and rubble-strewn 'pavements' demonstrating the effects of the blizzard and subsequent and ongoing thaw, huge puddle/lakes, crumbling buildings and 70s style artefacts and street-lighting fixtures, a bizarre memorial to the Beatles in the central sqaure, a half-empty State Department Store and a general weather-beaten feel that is unsuprising given the extremes in weather that UB experiences.

Unfortunately due to the aforementioned blizzards a lot of the roads out of UB are impasable which means we must play a waiting game to see when we can get out of the capital and enjoy the Mongolian countryside and nomadic lifestyle. Tomorrow will be an urbaneering day and hopefully a postal day as we finally send our accumulated postcards.