Photographs

After figuring out how to post some group photos on Facebook for my Mongolian travel buddies and seeing that people have looked through the album and wrote funny comments, I thought I would post my Flickr albums, which are a much better collection of my travels so far....enjoy:)

http://www.flickr.com/photos/23341597@N07/sets/

Mongolia

At exactly midnight on the train-ride from Irkutsk to Ulaanbaatar, I clinked my glass of red wine with a toast of “To Our Health” with my friendly cabin mate Anton. I had many things to celebrate; the train was finally moving again after sitting stationary at the Russian border for nine long hours, I had gotten a local Russian man to drink wine instead of Vodka, and I was crossing into the thirty fourth year of my life, albeit in a very different time zone than the one in which I was born. As I caught a glance of my MacBook Air laptop on the table, I was reminded of so many friends from the past who have recently contacted me through Facebook with pictures of their husbands, wives and children included in their profiles. My peers were holding down steady jobs, cohabitating, reproducing, and buying homes while here I was, riding a train into Mongolia, alone, in the middle of the night, celebrating my birthday with a stranger as 99.9% of my belongings sat in a 10 ft x 10 ft storage unit in New Jersey and the other .1% sat in the backpack below my seat. “What happened?” “Where and when in my life did I step off the road frequently traveled or was I never really on it to begin with?”
The weather was cold and the morning still dark when I got off the train in Ulaanbaatar and from the short car ride to the hostel, I could already tell that this city was living outside the fringes of Westernization; there are no H&M or Armani stores lining the streets, the Golden Arches are missing from the skyline, and the main attraction in the town square is a massive statue of Genghis Khan rather than a collection of outdoor café’s with fancy umbrellas and overpriced drinks. By the time I finished my first cup of coffee, I had luckily managed to meet two other hostel guests who were interested in a fourteen day barebones, backpacker’s tour into the Mongolian countryside, which turned into three people by lunch time, which turned into an ideal of six people, including me, by dinner.
So, two days later there was a Dutchwoman born in France, a Frenchman born in France, a Dutchman born in The Netherlands, two guys from Canada, and an American born before all these kids, piling into the back seat of a green van packed to the brim with gear and supplies as our driver, Erka, and guide, Nishgee, sat at the helm. As we rolled out of the city and onto what felt like the set of the popular Mongolian movie “The Weeping Camel”, leaving behind the urban clouds of car exhaust and factory pollution along with our devices for communication, it was the first time that I started to feel truly “off the grid”. Before I had left for my trip in March I sent out a group email to my family and friends titled “Getting Off the Grid” and then proceeded to include my international cell phone number and my three email accounts while assuring them they could get in touch with me anytime and in any country, but as the paved road slowly faded to dirt under the tires of our van, so did the natural 21st century reflexes to check computers and phones for newsflashes, pointless information and new messages. We were voluntarily enrolled in “Getting Back to Basics 101” and the further we drove into this incredible landscape in which time seemed to stand suspended in the boundless physical space, the further my concepts of freedom were challenged. Is it the nomadic family, sleeping together side by side on mats on the floor of a ger (yurt) heated by wood or cow dung, living off the land, which summon majestic sunrises, sunsets, and starry nights as well as harsh weather conditions, with a herd of animals and limited technology that is free? Or is freedom found in the modern city dweller who has the bank account to vacation every year, dine out at new restaurants offering the latest trend in cuisine, sleep on an expensive mattress that pads stress in the lower back and owns the latest iphone in which emailing stock quotes and party dates with friends is done as cars honk and street and building lights mask the glow of the moon overhead? Has the simple way of living and loving where we are in intrinsically connected to nature, which has been replaced by a migration away from nature and towards technology producing a more confused way of living and loving whereby divorce rates, prescription happy pills and unfulfilled dreams and expectations are on the rise, been worth the sacrifice? 

It was, however, nice to be marginally connected on November 6th with a family that had a ger with a black and white T.V. and a satellite connection as they reported news that affected their lives none, that the “black man” had won the presidency in the States. This ushered in a whole new set of wild freedom thoughts as I jumped up and down, in the middle of nowhere, yelling Obama’s name toward the sand dunes and some camels, elated that my country had finally, after two strike’s out, come around to hit this one out of the park.
After the first night we left the black sheep of the group with a family out on the steppes and continued on, traversing the open earth, forming witty humor and intelligent conversations between the remaining seven of us along the way (guide and driver included) whereby I was kindly labeled “Grandma” by my much younger adventure comrades. By day, our vehicle was akin to the Beatles Yellow Submarine as we rolled on to the Gobi Desert, till we found the sea of infinite land, and we lived beneath the sky, in our Green Soviet-ski Van (We all live in a Green Soviet-ski Van, Green Soviet-ski Van, Green Soviet-ski Van….). By night we became ger hoppers, finding gracious families to put us up along the way; some of whom were prepared, with an extra ger, for a small caravan of tourists and some who had never hosted foreigners before and looked at us nestling into our sleeping bags on the floor of their home, like sardines in a can, with undivided curiosity.
The constant transition from hot-cold-hot-cold-hot-cold, with the thermostat-less ger stove creating a sweat lodge at sleeping time only to burn out and make the place feel like the inside of a freezer by morning, had my flu-ridden body swinging it’s temperature back and forth while the rugged beauty of my surroundings, with naked fields breaking into ancient ocean floors, dinosaur mountains that take on a lunar quality and sand dunes dotted with Camels that are slowly drifting their way toward China, had my thoughts following the same pendulum; it seemed that the more space I had, the more trapped my mind felt. In fact, there was so much space available, everywhere I turned, that it made my body mass feel like the lowest common denominator in all of Mongolia; a spec of sand in the Gobi, a tiny star in the galaxy.
I had made quite a bit of sarcastic speculation about what my trip into the Mongolian countryside would be like by joking that I would be trying to sell my firstborn if someone could rake me over hot coals as I sat wrapped underneath an animal skin and snacked on sheep’s rump and drank yak’s milk. While it wasn’t quite cold enough to let my firstborn go, I did spend considerable time promising better behavior to God if he/she would just send someone in to light the fire stove in the mornings. And perhaps I passed up trying all the boiled components of the inside of a sheep’s stomach, but I did manage to dine on some Camel-vegetable stew, wolf dumplings and dried goat curd while washing it all down with a refreshing glass of fermented mare’s milk (a local alcoholic specialty called Ayrag). After a while you even get used to the sight of hacked off hooves lying on the ground, abandon animal skulls scattered throughout the desert and goat’s heads sitting on tables inside of gers; there is even a “dice” game played by the kids with animal bone ankles. I didn’t get the chance to wrap myself in a heavy animal skin, but I did wear the traditional coat called a Del while horseback riding and it made me feel like a Mongolian-Warrior-Princess as I galloped my horse Butch into home ger territory a few days later. My two week trip out into the countryside was an unforgettable experience that brought me to new levels of clarity on my journey of healing and when I think of my comrades calling me “Grandma”, I can only hope that one day I’ll decide to explore the road traveled by my peers and be able to share all these amazing life adventures as “old lady” stories with future generations of me.

Disappearing Act Into the Mongolian Outback

As I sit here in my hostel bedroom wearing the sheepskin boots I have just been given for my two week journey into the magical lands of Genghis Khan and the Mongols, traveling South to the Gobi desert and then into Central Mongolia, I am a bit concerned about the immense warmth radiating from my feet. Why are these boots so warm? Is it because the weather will actually be that cold? I think the answer is yes. Whose bright idea was it to come to Mongolia in the wintertime anyway?

This will be the first time on my trip I will truly be off the grid; no phone, no internet, no electricity. Just a jeep, some camels, some horses, a driver, a guide, local nomadic host families living in yurts, two French, Two Canadians, a Dutch, and Me, the American with the big, warm feet and the red nose. If I don't get inspired to conquer China and parts of Russia while out on the plains, then I will be posting the details of this journey in about three weeks....

(wish me luck!)

Lake Baikal / Olkhon Island, Russia

Leaving Irkutsk, after a day and night of light precipitation and bitter temperatures, in a semi-snow-woman condition for the Island of Olkhon, I was not aware of the journey that lay before me. You can make it to the banks of Lake Baikal from the city in about an hour on roads that cut through the flat and bare landscape of the region, but getting to this island is a bumpy six-hour trek in a minimally heated mini-bus that includes a ferry ride which can add an extra hour or so depending on the queue and the weather. The passing scenery had put me in a hypnotic state of motion but even with the rough terrain of the roads, I managed to doze in and out of an afternoon travel slumber that had me almost falling over, in periodic spastic jerks, onto the shoulder of my Buryat neighbor.
I wasn’t quite sure what to expect, having only read things that called Lake Baikal the “Gem of Siberia”, but when we arrived at the ferry landing and I took in a sip of the crisp, windy air and saw the sun shimmering off the surface of the brilliant blue sapphire water as velvety, honey-soaked mountains framed the view, I immediately got butterflies in my stomach, like an adolescent developing her first crush, and I could hear the ghost of John Wayne riding up beside me on his horse, looking me in the eye and saying, “M’am, this right here is God’s country.”
Olkhon Island is like Mother Nature with her Saturday night party dress on the bedroom floor. She is exposed, seductive, passionate and unpredictable. She will either bend under the touch or claw back with nails. She will inspire poets and warriors alike. It is legend that Genghis Khan is buried here and the spirits, which the island Shamans call to from trance, seem to soar in the sky like determined arrows from a bow. The myriad of patterned clouds hang so low that it feels like you could attach a hose to a vacuum and suck them down like dust in the corners of the ceiling. The earth here stares at you fervently and every second is spent with a heightened awareness of being.
“How did I get here?” I wondered, “Where am I?” For a second in time I seemed to lose all sense of gravity and, even though the distance and time difference from my family and friends was enormous, I felt calm and safe. It was as if, suddenly, I could zoom out from the microscopic dot that was Me and, from an omniscient perspective, see the sequence of events that led to this moment, as if through a 1970’s plastic Viewfinder from my youth, and everything was as it should be. The service on my cell phone had switched to the local carrier and it announced its’ name on the display window, “Far East”; appropriately named. I really was in the Far East in what seemed like an unintended, but welcomed, exile into the spectacular fields of the Siberian steppes and on the shoreline of the deepest and largest fresh water lake in the world.
The mini-bus dropped me off at Nakita’s Homestead, one of the oldest guesthouses on the island, and from the second story of the pagoda-like terrace, I could survey the village with it’ wide, irregular and uneven dirt roads, old wooden shacks blowing smoke from their chimney with Soviet-style factory cars parked in front, cows and dogs roaming free and the indigenous Buryat people, cousins in ancestry to the Mongols, walking the streets in gloves, hats and heavy winter jackets lined with fur. Sergei, the local priest of the islands only church, a Greek Orthodox Church, told me that the past few years have seen a huge increase in tourism during the summer months; with 30,000 visitors in a four month time frame compared to the island’s 2,000 inhabitants. But not many people come in the winter and I was happy to find that I had the place, wrapped in peace and quiet, almost entirely to myself.
Which ended quickly when I met Crazy Italian Daniel. After spending the first two nights and days in complete and meditative solitude, falling into deep sleeps in my warm cabin room and enjoying the beauty of my surroundings with five hour walks on the beach, through the forests and into the steppes without seeing a single living human, Daniel and I struck up a conversation while waiting for lunch to be served in the communal canteen. He is an older, successful business man from Florence with a free spirit and an artistic heart and when he came to the island five years ago on holiday, he impulsively bought a piece of property overlooking the lake on which stood, and still does stand, a dilapidated, unlivable house. He comes every year for about fifteen days and stays at a guesthouse while he thinks of what to do with this property; Restaurant? Rooms for rent? Shops? When we met, his latest impulsive purchase was a Soviet-style truck, and after finding an easy and fun rhythm to our discussions, we took this truck on daily excursions to tour the landscape and to visit some of the neighboring villages, which are no more than five or six houses on a dirt road and maybe a little market for dried goods. We became the non-violent Bonnie and Clyde of Olkhon, blazing through the open fields, perhaps scaring a few sheep or cows into moving aside, while giddily bumping up and down in our seats as the water and mountains stretched out before us like a famous museum painting. Daniel seemed to embody the spirit of director Roberto Benigni when he spontaneously stood on the back of his theater chair, joy emanating from his entire being, as he was announced the Oscar winner for the movie Life is Beautiful, as we shuttled along, Daniel would turn to me every so often with an enthusiastic grin, his finger pointed in the air and shout over the loud hum of the motor, “And the Adventures Goes On!” And the adventures did go on; that night, with a bottle of wine and some Vodka, a collection of the staff, some locals and a few straggler tourists, we made a party, complete with live accordion and piano music accompanied by sing-alongs and great conversation and we all drank and danced by the wood burning stove until well past midnight.
My departure was the next day, but I was having such a wonderful time that I decided to stay a few days longer than planned because at $27 a night with breakfast, lunch and dinner included, a cozy cabin with a cookin’ space heater and an outhouse for the toilet, I thought to myself, “Life really is beautiful.”

Irkutsk, Russia

When I arrived at the train station in Irkutsk at a very early 6:00 a.m and walked outside, where I could see my breath exiting my mouth in big white plumes resembling a factory chimney but could not feel any bite to the air around me, I started to think that Russians are just lying about the notoriously cold temperatures found here during the winter. I thought they had me fooled, walking around in their big jackets and fur hats as a guise, but, oddly, as the clock started climbing in hours toward 10:00 a.m, the thermometer started dropping fast until the sky turned a deep shade of grey and started covering this small Siberian city on the banks of the Angara River with a windy snow; now the air was biting right through my clothing and my skin, straight to my bones, and I decided then and there that Russians really were telling the truth when they said it gets cold.
I had come to Irkutsk mainly as a launching city for my trip to Lake Baikal, and so, without the pressing feeling of many sights to see and with consideration for the weather outside, I spent most of my time becoming close friends with the heater in my dorm room at the hostel. I managed a short trip outside to take the token picture of some of the traditional old-style Siberian wooden houses that line the streets close to the river and when that was complete five minutes later, I ran to the glove store and purchased a wooly pair for my nonfunctioning, red hands and then ran back to the hostel with frozen weather tears in my eyes. The most I saw of this city was the next day, on my walk to the bus station for Lake Baikal, where under a few rays of sun, being outside became bearable for this Mediterranean-blooded traveler.

Trans-Siberian Railway, Ekaterinburg to Irkutsk, Russia

After Ekiterinburg, it was time to board the train again, this time for a three-night, two-day journey to Irkutsk. I was hopeful to continue my lucky streak of friendly and entertaining cabin mates such as I had with Valery and Valentina. These experiences were so pleasant that I started thinking if I ever needed a hug or some cheering up that I would just book a train ride in Russia, but as soon as I saw that the placement number on my ticket put me on the top bunk, I began to worry that my comfort on this leg of the trip was going to be a little bit compromised. I always request a lower bunk because of the extra space, cooler temperatures, prime scenery-gazing opportunities and easy access in and out of the cabin that it affords, but these places must have already been filled when I booked my ticket, and so I reluctantly did an ungraceful acrobatic jump up to my 2ft x 5 ft riding zone, almost throwing out my back again after carefully healing it for three weeks.
My roommates were a nice, deaf couple occupying the lower bunks and since I neither knew sign language or how to write in Russian, I prepared myself for a solitary journey into Siberia. After boarding late and going straight to bed, I started the next day with my usual routine of taking these down moments to organize photographs, listen to music and write on my computer. I was happily rolling along when, in what seemed like a simultaneous catastrophic moment, my computer battery died and, for the first time on my trip, when I went to re-charge, I found out it was not compatible with the train’s electricity and then… Gold-Tooth came stumbling into the cabin. Since all my electronics run off the same voltage, it was only a matter of time before my entrance into Siberia would feel strangely isolating as slowly all my comforts and creative vices lost their power; music, pictures, writing. Luckily I always have a book handy and, given the electronic meltdown, I would make more progress in its’ completion than usual. I also took a second to size up my new top-bunk cabin mate and knew immediately that this man was going to nail my patience into the frozen tundra like a metal spike.
Gold-Tooth was an extremely drunk Russian man who looked as though he was approaching sixty, but in reality was probably only forty and who, appropriately named, had used up all Russia’s gold resources to have every single one of his front teeth capped so that if the sun was shining down on his smile, you were immediately blinded. If you stuck a post it note with every physical offense this man displayed, there would not be a single piece of his underneath showing through; he grunted, he moaned, he snorted, he unleashed his fetorous alcohol breath into communal air, he disregarded personal space, he smelled, he farted, he burped, he snored, he stumbled, he heaved, he stared and….yes, he was my top-bunk neighbor! A mere elbow’s length of space separating us that not even the cotton shield of my bed sheet could mask the pungent odors or muffle the orchestra of criminal sounds. I was stranded in Siberia. I had no one in which I could commiserate and all the sources of drowning out the gurbles, burbles and grunts were void of power; I started to envy the silence my deaf cabin mates, unfortunately, had no choice but to be a part of. I wondered to myself if the KGB would become suspicious if this man just happened to “fall” off the train because he was so “drunk.”
This forced me to spend a lot of time outside of the cabin, in the corridor, where I turned my attention to studying the passing scenery through dirt stained windows with great focus. I had started to question my fascination with the Trans-Siberian Railway on my journey from Moscow to Ekaterinburg; it seemed I had romanticized a landscape that, at times, gave the same unvaried effect of driving through days worth of cornfields in Kansas. But as the train pressed further East, I felt as though we were rolling through a vast piece of landscape art; the Birch trees resembled delicate fallen twigs which were painted white and stuck upright in the wheat colored ground whose patterns can change from a linear cluster to a circular cluster with the blink of an eye. Sometimes there is a stretch of land that is void of anything but the color of it’s surface, and sometimes on that lonely plain there will stand one tree, away from the pack, as if it knew it had a life destined for complete solitude. There are trees that have fallen over on their side and seem to crawl across the earth like white centipedes and villages of small wooden shacks appear and then disappear, in what seems like the middle of nowhere, and I wondered how people survive here in the harsh of winter. Then I am reminded of some things I have learned along the way, like the people who were sent here to the gulags who not only survived the seasons with improper clothing and inadequate food, but did so with creativity and imagination, constructing books of poetry from the bark of these very trees before me and devised chessboards and figurines from hardened bread. It was the story of these people that gave me the strength to go back to my assigned cabin, where Gold-Tooth lay passed out, drooling stale alcohol on his pillow, and with my own creativity and imagination in bloom, I drugged myself with two Tylenol PM and soon found, that in making good use of all available resources, it was possible to survive just about anything.