Mongolia

YYYEEEESSSSS, we are in Mongolia!!!!
The trip is going fast and it was strange to realize that we finally made it here.
Our first impression is that the beauty of Mongolia goes far beyond any idea that we could have imagine from what we saw on picture and we only look forward to discovering more of this country.
Before the border we had a couple of productive days in Irkutsk (Russia): first we found a place to repair our broken passenger window. The Toyota garage was unable to find any pieces for our 12 year old car so a little glass factory made us a new one. This of course was a huge improvement for us. We dismantled the driver’s door to extract the original window and from this they cut and shaped a new window. The process took almost the entire day but we’re just so happy to see properly through the passenger side and to have some noise and temperature insulation finally! Then we went to the Baikaler Hostel in the city centre for a super nice shower and one of the warmest welcome we had in Russia. If you ever go to Irkutsk this is definitely a good option to find a nice accommodation (even if we slept in our Toy like every nights). The next morning we went back to the Toyota garage to repair our back lights that didn’t work since they high powered washed the car last time we went there for an oil and filter change. At the end everything worked again, fuses stopped to burn and few hours later we were back on the road around Lake Baikal in direction of Ulan Ude. By the way Pierre, we found out what made this little noise in the direction: the stabilisation’s bar bushings (if this is the way to call it in English). We have to change it soon but in the mean time a piece of old timing belt will prevent the bar from sliding sideways when we are off-road!
Anyway, just a quick stop at the exit of Irkutsk to meet friend and colleagues at the Institute of Limnology (Ibrahim, we met Dimitri and one of the two Irina; you have their warm regards!).
Ulan Ude is one of the nicest city of Southern Siberia (there you can find the biggest Lennin Head of Russia – over 7.5m of diameter ... if you were interested). From there we reached the Mongolian border through landscapes that changed radically from the big Siberian forest that you can find all around Baikal: no more trees and valleys and the sky becomes wider and wider as you approach the border. It took us five hours and a half to cross this border and there we had a good overview of the chaos and fury that you can find on the road in this country. We thought we saw the worst in Russia but Mongolians manage to beat the record of wreckless driving...here it’s a real war on the road and who gets to the gate first (or where ever you go) passes before you and if you leave 20cm between you and the car on front of you someone else will manage to put his bumper corner in between and take your place in the line.
So, after lots of formalities and several car checks (nothing scary really) we climbed the first mountain that we could reach for a breathtaking camp site on frond of an endless valley surrounded by pointy relief. The next morning we visited one of the nicest Buddhist temple of this part of the country (after few hours of driving on dirt road). The scenery was so nice that we decided to stay there for the night. Early in the morning Mat and Elise woke us up because we were invited for breakfast somewhere; indeed a group of Mongolians from a nearby city came here and killed a goat a couple hour earlier and cooked it in a big jar on top of the fire. Not so easy to chew on a goat’s tongue at 7am and scratch bones to find some meat among burned skin and fat but the people were just so nice and welcoming that we were extremely happy to have met them and to discover some of their culture.
One thing that we all notice is the very friendly, welcoming attitude of the people here. They are all smiling and curious of who we are and what we are doing here.
Later during the day, on our way to Ulaanbaatar, we stopped by a few cars along the road in the middle of nothing...they were all waiting for the passage of one of the horse race, part of the great Naadam celebration during the summer. It was amazing to see all the kids horseback riding in their traditional outfits and all the excitement around this race.
At the end of the afternoon we reached Ulaanbataar and fought our way through the traffic again to find a safe place to park our car, take shower, do some laundry and enjoy a pretty good cheeseburger with beer... incredibly nice after few days of camping in the wild. Within the next few days we should have an extension of our Mongolian visa and get a transit visa to reach Kazakhstan (sometimes during the month of August)...but we still have a long road before this so until our next message: Cheers to you all and talk to you later!

PS: Contest #3 !
We still have a few Matryoschkas to give away so whoever can tell us what are the different sports performed during the Naadam in Mongolia wins Matryoschka number 3!

PS2: For those interested by our HZJ75 performances: we burn in average about 13 litres of diesel per 100kms and we already had 4 flat tires (2 because of we used old air chambers and 2 because of small labels left inside the tires at the tire shop that pinched our new air chambers). Beside this we are more and more impressed by the Toyota’s ability to carry us over mud ponds and steep slippery forest tracks!

PS3: Bravo JM pour ta réponse; t'as la grosse Matryoshka!

(Born to be) into the wild!!!

Olkhon Island is an amazing place. For the past few days we finally start to feel like we are somewhere else. Here the world ends when you take the ferry and you enter in a parallel dimension. The rhythm slow down and you feel relaxed and causy. We spent here four days, where the first one was entirely used to reorganized our stuff in the car and finish the closets and other little thigns that we didn't have the time to do before the departure . Finally we have a nice “mobile apartment”!!
Prairies cover the west side of the island, forests and cliffs cover the east side. Few wood-made villages are spread along the coasts. Life here is simple but pretty hard especially during the winter and we were wondering what could keep people here during this season but then, when you start to visit the island, you understand why people can stand such hard conditions. Every hill and valley that you pass is more beautiful than the previous one...
We were not lucky with the weather as it was raining most at night and sometimes during the day and the temperatures were pretty low, but probably this was better like this, at least the mosquitoes were not attacking us as they did other places. With this weather the island has a mysterious atmosphere and, together with all the Shamanic symbols spreads all over the island, everything becomes intriguing and magic.
Finally here on the island we tasted for the first time the Russian vodka!!! We were camped in front of the lake, ready with our dinner, when a new Toyota Land Cruiser arrived with the music very loud. Our magic moment was destroyed. Two pretty drunk guys came to us with a empty bottle of vodka and they wanted to share their drink with us. At the beginning we were not so comfortable with this situation, but few minutes were enough to understand that they where really nice guys and they really wanted just to share their drink with us. They realized immediately that the bottle was empty..but no problem, another bottle was ready in the car. So we started to drink and to talked a little bit (alcohol helps a lot to speak a language that you don't know). They offered us a smoked “omul”, a typical Baikal fish, that we share all together and then the woman that was driving the car joined us. She spoke a little bit of English and the conversation became a little bit easier, but with the alcohol there was not so much problem! They offered us one new bottle of vodka, 2 omul, one can of Russian meat and a picture of one of the two guys fishing. We had a crazy funny hour with them and a good first meeting with Russian vodka!!
This island was a good place also to do a little bit of real 4x4. In the island there are only tracks and dirt road and if you want you can drive anywhere you want. We took the track to go north and, as the landscape was terrific, we decided to spend the night there. We had two difficult passage in the forest, but our pilots are great and we passed them. But the situation was not the same after 12 hours of rain. Yes, at midnight it started to rain and it finished the day after around midday. The tracks were full of sticky mud and it was difficult to have the control of the car on the flat part..impossible on the two passages where we had problem before. We tried to enter in the forest but it was too dangerous: we are heavy and tall. So the only thing we could have done was wait and hope for the sun. After few hours the rain stopped and the ground started to adsorb the water, it was the time to try to reach the village. We studied the track accurately and, with some moment of stress, we did it and we reached the village! Well, now we can laugh a little bit, but it was not a relaxing drive in the forest: fortunately everything went good and we had a good dinner in a little cafe along the street to decontract our minds: we deserved it!
Here is some pictures of Olkhon Island and, of course, our new Russian friends and the 4x4 day!
Few days and we will enter in Mongolia, see you there!

PS: Contest!
The person who can tell us 3 major caracteristics of Lake Baikal wins MATRYOSHKA # 2!

Highway star

Ciao a tutti!
Yeah, finally some news from Russia! So, we didn't make it out of Moscow without a scratch after all... Since our last message we drove a long distance but to start by the beginning, here is the bad news. On June 12 (Russia day) we spent a very nice morning visiting Moscow that was getting ready for big parties in the evening; for this all the streets were empty of cars and this gave us the opportunity to see the center with a very particular and quiet atmosphere. Another nice look at all the architecture, a stunning visit of the the nicest metro station then we hit the road again to the east. Finally out of the traffic jam we stopped a few minutes to get some groceries and when we came back to the car we discovered a broken window, door locks forced and our cameras gone... Shit... a D70, a D200 and little Ixus gone. There wont be much bird or animal pictures on this blog unfortunately.
It was a difficult moment but at least we still have our documents, passports with visas for the rest of the trip etc... A very nice woman helped us to call the police and waited with us for a long time before they arrived and escorted us to the police station. They were very nice and despite the « near impossible » chance to find our camera they filled a deposition for us.
That evening I built a new window with trans-lucid plastic, Duct Tape and some wood (camber like for those who know windsurf). It sucks when temperature reach 38°C on the highway but after few modifications we manage to use our car almost normally now. It will be difficult to find another window like this in Russia but we have some hope to find one in Mongolia where Land Cruiser seems to be more common.
This bad experience thought us to keep our vigilance always to the top and after one day of bad mood the taste for the trip and our enthusiasm came back. When we tell all this story to other Russian people, many of them felt very sorry and apologized that this happened in their country. Well; we don't feel anything bad about this country; we love it and every person that we met were usually very nice, helpful, happy and a great company. I guess thieves like to break car windows everywhere in the world... When I think about it I had my entire car stolen in Belgium once so what could I say against Russia? Nothing except that we enjoy it very much!
Alright, enough of this for now and, to explain more of our trip, the next few day were very nice.
Indeed the first gift this trip gave us was to meet another couple traveling just like us in a Toyota Land Cruiser to Mongolia. Math and Elise are from France (living in Tahiti) and friendship grew up rapidly among us. The amount of similarities between the preparation of our respective trip and our lives is incredible and we form a great team to cross Russia and spend part of our time in Mongolia together. Traveling together is great, safer, fun and certainly less monotonous when we have several thousands kilometers to drive from one side to the other of this huge country.

To speak a bit about the life here and the traveling conditions, we have to say that all the stories that we heard or read on other blogs about Russia are most of the time legends or obsolete. In our little book: “Speak Russian in your trip” it was written that traveling by car is strongly not recomended because the roads are in terrible condition, gasoline stations are rare and the only safe place to sleep are in expansive hotels...well, not much of this is true; Russia is not like this anymore. OK, roads are not in a good condition everywhere but Russians are doing a lot of work to fix it and we would say less than 500 km over 5000 km was in poor condition. Gasoline stations are everywhere and most of the time there is a little supermarket and clean toilets beside it. Most of the time we slept in the motels' parking along the road with security staff during the night, good food, clean shower and toilets and few times even a nice sauna. We have absolutely nothing to say about the Russian police: they stopped us only once and asked us something and we answered “Mongolia!”..they started to laugh and let us go...we never knew what they asked us...
Russian people are very nice and curious, they are always ready to ask us who we are and what we are doing and they don't care at all if the conversation is hard and we understand almost nothing. They continue to talk, trying to make their sentences understandable for us. It's really funny sometimes but at the end we usually manage to understand each other and we are learning some words that make conversations easier.

We did not visit so much during our journey through Russia because of our time restriction in this country: only 30 days visa and there were no time to visit 5200 km of land and towns so after Moscow we just stopped in Kazan (where we met Elise and Mathieu) and then we drove directly to Irkutsk.
Kazan is the capital of Tatarstan Republic, a beautiful city where Muslim and Orthodox live together and respect each other. It is a nice example of tolerance. Here we did a little city tour with our new friends and Danyar, a very nice couch surf's guy who welcomed us with great hospitality. Thanks Danyar for everything you shared with us and the very informative talk we had!! After this moment we met someone new almost every day, especially truck drivers on motel's parking lot, besides our car. They are always ready to give us information about the road or about the city we were ready to cross or give us some present to remember then (e.g.for desert, once we received a swan carved in some local vegetable!!). Then we met other travelers and every time is a good exchange of information. We don't feel to be the crazier travelers as there are people that left France to reach Pekin by bicycles!!!
After 12 day on the road stopping just to eat and sleep we reached Irkutsk and finally the “holiday” started. We have few days here where we can relax a little bit, fix the car and make everything ready for the off road rest of our trip and enjoy the people and the landscape. First we will go to Olkhon Island, a little island on the west coast of the Baikal lake.

PS: little contest!
Since we spent long time on the road we kept on listening to this song...Highway Star.
The first person who can tell us the band who sings this song wins MATRYOSHKA #1

Few pictures of our journey through Russia, people we met and our arrival to Irkutsk and Lake Baikal.