Ulan Ude Siberia and on to Ulan Bataar, Mongolia 25 June - 1 July. (8700 miles so far)

Ulan Ude is a pleasant Siberian town but very different to Irkutsk.  Whilst Irkutsk was almost entirely populated by  European Russians  Ulan Ude,  like Astrakhan on the Volga,  has a majority of oriental people  which slightly confused us and often made us feel we were already in Mongolia.  It has a well appointed opera house/theatre with a busy season of shows but we didn’t manage a visit.  We enjoyed a walk round the town and the parks and beside the Selenga river, another tributary of the Yenisey, after it flows into and out of Lake Baikal.  Had our pictures taken with the Lenin head in the main square which seems to be the tourist thing. It is the biggest Lenin head anywhere in the world apparently!

Met a pair of women bikers, Belle and Nadine, on mopeds in Ulan Ude,  they had left UK in early May and had been through Kazakhstan like us. We were very impressed with their achievements.  They had just met up with another biker, Will,  who they had traveled with on an earlier trip to West Africa.  All three headed off to Mongolia a couple of days before us.  You can follow their progress at ENYATOPBOX.BLOGSPOT.COM  and WILLWANDERING.BLOGSPOT.COM..

The world's largest Lenin's head,  probably.

Opera House/Theatre in Ulan Ude - had  a beautiful fountain in front of it which did intersting things in time to the classical music played in the background - lovely place to sit and take in the atmosphere

Nadine & Belle - also on the way to Mongolia (this photo was right way up before we transferred over but can't seem to right it now). They got to Mongolia but Belle's scooter 'blew up' in Ulan Baatar - see her blog.

Around Ulan Ude (also below)

In and around Ulan Ude there are lots of interesting old buidlings, mainly of wood.  Sadly they are not being looked after and preserved and are gradually falling apart.  



Development like this all around Ulan Ude - for some reason we thought of Wimpey Homes?



We left UU on 27 June and camped  just before the border.  A lovely site in a small pine copse on a granite outcrop.  Scops owl calling there.  At the border the next morning we spent five hours getting through the Russian and Mongolia formalities.  We could not believe how slow the process was - our worst so far.  The wait was relieved by  Henry and Jennifer, an English couple living in southern France, who had brought their Toyota Hilux mounted camper to Mongolia .  They were going back via Kazakhstan.

Carol does some last minute fruit shopping from an allotment market stall on the way to the border - fruit is in notoriously short supply in Mongolia (outside the capital) we heard

KBAC - or Kvass - is a very popular drink in Russia and is sold at the side of the road from small tankers l ike this one. It is  non alcoholic but made from Rye bread so Carol had to give it a miss - Mike didn't think she was missing that much though

A Buddhist shrine on the way to the border  - there were several

Mongolia

Jennifer & Henry with their Toyota camper

Our first experiences in Mongolia were unfortunately rather negative.  Just through the border we thought we would have an early camp in some fine hills off to our right and headed for them. We had just gone through the ritual of getting the Tab level for sleeping when  a minibus with dark windows arrived with a couple of guys in civilian cloths who wanted to see our passports.  We suspected some kind of scam and refused and quickly got in the LR.  The older guy in a Tshirt (lifted up to reveal his rather well fed belly which he rubbed throughout the conversation!) was most insistent and so we asked for his official ID.  He produced an ID card with a picture of him in a uniform that would impress the Admiral of the Fleet.  At that moment the minibus disgorged about eight soldiers (some armed) in uniform.  They had obviously got the message that they were going to have trouble with these two!  We showed our passports and everyone was happy - well except us because they told us we could not camp their because it was too close to the border.  It was a stupid mistake on our part, we had just not thought.   We camped on a scrub covered hillside about 10 miles up the road.  The other occasion for disappointment was when Mike was deliberately shortchanged on the purchase of some drinks.  The first time we have experienced this on the trip, to our knowledge.

Our first camp in Mongolia

A Mongolian caravan

Statue on way to UB

We had two other great campsites before getting to Ulaan Baatar (UB) both overlooking huge pasture landscapes with masses of domestic stock, gers (or do they call them yurts here?) and nomads. The countryside north of UB is hilly but not mountainous and the valleys and hillsides are green as can be, with pine and birch forests mainly on the northern slopes.  It is really beautiful scenery and we are loving it.  We experienced a massive thunderstorm shortly after we camped on the first night with amazing forked lightening - quite a show from our cosy Tab. It cleared overnight though and we have had lovely big blue skies and temperatures in the mid 20's since. We saw our first Yaks on 30th.  We got to UB at lunchtime on 1st July

Second Mongolian campsite - starting to really love it

We found this hare near our camp - it didn't move at all and we think it must have had a blow to the head

Horses in a village where we went to get water

As we were having lunch this herdsman attempted to get his sheep and goats across the stream (also below) - some really did not  want to go!

There are horses, goats, cows and sheep everywhere in this  part of Mongolia

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Throughout our trip we have communication problems of one kind or another.  In Kaz we did not seem to be able to get our gmail accounts and could not use the internet on our laptop, not even to view our own blog.  In Russia we were unable to buy a local sim card, because of bureaucracy, and could not get emails or check the internet until we had a hotel in UU with WIFI..  In Mongolia we found that our UK Virgin phones do not work at all not even for texts.  That’s something else we will change when we get back home.  We have therefore bought local sim cards,  Mike’s is 94198623 and Carol’s is 624, both preceded by the dialing code for Mongolia which is 976.

We will write more about UB and our excursions to the country later.  An updated bird list for June will be posted to the file sharing site soon.

Third campsite in Mongolia (spot the Tab!) we climbed up to  the top of the hill behind and felt on top of the world

Nearby ger camp.  

Many areas of countryside are now being fenced off (as in Arabia) and fancy new houses being built - a sign of things  to come

Some horses raise a bit of dust - below a skillfull hoseman sorts them out

Buddhist shrine just before UB

Entering UB! Not the best of experiences as a new road is currently being put in - a lot of the haze was from vehicles having to drive on dirt tracks for several miles - but the west of the city is also the industrial area

View from our hotel which has the interesting name "Luxoil" - not the most salubrious part of town but it is  a good hotel with an excellent restaurant and, most importantly for us, secure parking for the vehicles. Tab will rest here a while when we go off on short trips around the city

We arrived in Ulan Bataar at midday on 1 July, more or less on schedule.  So we have achieved our first objective.  The next is to see the country and then to get home in one piece.
We have added a few new pics to the Invertebrates pages.

Semey (Kaz) to Ulan Ude (51deg 49'N, 107 deg 35'E), Siberia, Russia : Eight time zones and 8319 miles

We passed the World Harmony Run  near Irkutsk - can anyone tell us more about this relay? We thought it was the Olympic torch got lost

Carol dips a toe in a very cold Lake Baikal

Gas: Our two 6 kg Calor propane bottles run out in Semey and as expected we were unable to replace them with anything similar. Three gas bottle companies had never seen this size or type of bottle. We need gas to cook and heat water when it is too dangerous to light the Kelley Kettle for fear of fires, and to run the fridge when we are camped without any mains power supply (East of Slovakia = that’s never). The only available gas bottle (‘gaz ballon’ in local terminology) was a 10 kg compressed gas monster which would not connect to our existing regulator. To achieve a solution we needed to buy a gas bottle (£15), a regulator (‘reductor’) and a metre of gas pipe (£6). I had a few jubillee clips to connect it all up with the gas inlet nozzle on the Tab. The new gas bottle had to be strapped where one of the water jerrycans goes on the front of the Tab as it would not go in the gas bottle container. (We added a padlock and chain as it would have been too easy to remove otherwise). Luckily however the displaced water jerrycan fits neatly into the now redundant gas bottle holder - plus a few other bits and pieces to stops things knocking around together. A hole needed to be cut in the gas bottle box and lid to achieve a neat connection.

Last camp in Kaz near the border

Mike gets us in a mess

Tow rope needed to haul the tab out

......but the camp site was worth it

The trans Siberian highway, typical  between Novosibirsk and Krasnoyarsk, later it opened out into rolling hills and wheat field near Irkutsk

One of several small new churches along the way

Typical old style vilage house along the highway

The road avoids most villages but not this typical one

At 90 degs east - a quarter of the way round the world at this latitude, still some way to Irkutsk

The Trans Siberian railway runs beside the Trans Siberian highway for a lot of the time

Most houses were already making provision for the next winter by the stock piliing of firewood 

Our campsite at the Irkutsk municipal offices

Camping idyll, pine forest beside river : by Lake Baikal

Siberian Chipmunk

A section of the highway gets a new bridge - presumably road works like this can only be done in summer

Lunchstop by Lake Baikal

Baikal Herring Gull

The young mechanic who reparied our UJ

Alec the caretaker at the Irkutsk municipal buildings was very kind to us



One of the many rivers entering Lake Baikal




 We had heard that the Semey road to the border was the worst in the Kazakhstan so we were prepared for the worst. However perhaps they have caught up with the road maintenance schedule as we found it generally good. The endless steppes are ending here with much sandy soil which supports pine forest. Out last camp site in Kaz was a pine forest just southwest of the border - there were nightjars calling as we went off to sleep. Our immobiliser alarm has been going off a lot and it went off again that night before we had even got to sleep. Not sure why - we will not be setting it again. Each time it has gone off in the night Mike has fallen out of the Tab in just his underpants, immediately shouting because he forgets his shoes and steps on pricklys. Enough to scare off any would be prowler.

The border routine including getting new insurance for the Landrover, took two and a half hours, all very agreeable officials but very slow. We were among about 15 passing through, one wonders how they managed with four coach loads.

We were quite startled that immediately on entering Russia everything changed. The steppes seemed to stop abruptly . It was much greener for a start and a lot more agriculture. More trees. The houses looked much more modern and better constructed and the familiar oriental faces seem to have disappeared altogether. Also the roads were much better and we were easily able to achieve our preferred cruising speed of 50 mph for most of the time.

Novosibirsk is a big place and there seems to be no bypass so the only option is directly through the town. It was hot and sweaty with long traffic jams but then there was a terrific thunderstorm with local flooding in the streets. Most of the towns to Irkutsk (1800 km away) were a pain, either no bypass or a bypass which was very erratic and usually along very poor secondary roads, not roads constructed as bypasses. Krasnoyask was the exception it had a good bypass a pleasure to drive along. East of Poyma 97 deg E the road gets bad for probably a total of about 50 km whilst they repair and replace old tarmac. There is no part of this leg that is still wholly unpaved track.

At Novosibirsk you have definitely swapped the endless steppe for the endless forest. Miles and miles of birch, sometimes with pine, rarely all pine. There are surprisingly many areas where the trees have been cleared and agriculture is practiced. This part of Russia is the land of mighty rivers. We crosses the Ob at Barnaul and the Yenisey at Krasnoyarst, both flow north to the Arctic Ocean. There are many minor rivers much bigger than you would find in the UK. It is also a land of swamps and wet ground and this means mosquitos, thousands of them, Siberia also specialises in very big flies which are basically harmless but buzz round you like hornets, you cannot afford to take you eyes off them as some are horseflies which sneak in a grab a mouthful very quickly. We had our first tick attachment on this leg - Mike found one attached under his right arm during a rare encounter with soap and water. It had only been there a few hours and was not yet distending and it came off easy with Carol’s special tick tweezers.

Mechanical trouble struck about half way between Novosibirsk and Irkutsk, one of the front universal joints began to collapse resulting in a juddering of the steering. We had a couple of spare UV spiders and a local garage put one in for us. It was the same UV that went last September coming back form Scotland so only about 10,000 miles out of that one!! The mechanic who did the job did a master class on UJ spider changing for Mike and three mechanics under training which was very helpful to all. The vibrations of the collapsing UJ has caused a secondary problem as oil is now seeping out of the transfer gearbox where the UJ sits. This may yet develop into a serious problem.

We got badly stuck at one point crossing a ditch to get to a camp site. Mike misjudged the amount of mud in the ditch, the wet sides from recent rain and selected the wrong gear to get us through, he had stalled before he realised the problem. We needed to unhitch the tab in the ditch, and slew the Landrover sideways so that it could get a grip in some vegetation and haul itself up the bank. We then needed to drag the tab out by the towrope from a position where the Landrover could get a grip. But it was a great camp site in a hayfield stuffed with wild flowers.

Our route on this leg follows more or less constantly the Trans Siberian Railway to Vladivostok. There are an amazing number of trains go along it , mostly goods trains hauling coal, timer, oil and other bulks east and coming back with cars, and imports. The trains seem to be only about 5-10 minutes apart in both directions and once a day we see the Moscow - Vlad ‘express’. On arrival in Irkutsk we got lost looking for somewhere to park up and doing a U-turn in the municipal offices car park stopped to ask the caretaker the way. We were offered the security of parking up in their car park for the night and the caretaker Alex took good care off us, including plying us with cups of tea, fruit and biscuits and showing us his photos of local sites and wildlife. Pity his dog could not keep quiet. We have found little kindnesses like this all through Russia, people seem to start off all conversations appearing rather stern but usually by the end they are very friendly and always helpful if we can make ourselves understood.

After Irkutsk we camped a couple of nights near Lake Baikal, the world’s deepest lake at 1637m deep and measuring 636km from north to south. It holds 80% of Russia’s freshwater - apparently more than all of North America’s five Great Lakes put together. The lake is home to lots of unique marine life - and large numbers of nerpa seals - sadly we didn’t see any. There was still some snow on the tops of the mountains behind the lakeshore.
Birds in Siberia
The journey between Semey and Ulan Ude saw a distinct change in the weather, bird habitats and birds compared to Kaz. For the worse! I was surprised to find that the endless birch forest was almost empty. Very few birds, those you could see and identify were of a relatively small range of species, but there were another group you could hear, which were unfamiliar and very difficult to come to grips with. Entering the forest was often not a good idea on account of the mosquitos and this became very frustrating. OK so we were traveling fast on this section with limited opportunities to watch birds, but that cannot be the only reason. What was most surprising was that with so many large rivers, numerous lakes large and small, swamps and ditches everywhere, there were almost no waterbirds! Unbelievable. In the 2000 + km between Semey and Irkutsk I did not see a single duck, only about one heron and three species of wader. There were a few Common, Herring and Black-headed Gulls. I was at a lost to explain the absence of waterbirds as habitats seemed healthy and perfectly acceptable to many species and there was an abundance of invertebrate life. Maybe there is a limited accommodation for birds from this region in their winter quarters? The details of observations will be available on the file sharing site after 1 July.

Weather
As well as the landscape the weather has changed on this leg. We had a couple of hot humid days followed by huge thunderstorms (a welcome relief) then things cooled down to mid-high 20's rather than 30's, with a mixture of sunshine and clouds. Near lake Baikal we experienced a clear microclimate with a persistent very cold wind blowing off the icy water bringing daytime temperatures down to 15C and nighttime to 8C. Parts of the lake freezes deeply enough in winter to be driven across and it’s temperature rarely rises above about 3-4C even in summer - Carol would have had a swim in it if it had just been that little bit warmer!

See also new invertebrate pics and notes on Food Page.