We woke up our last morning in Hohhot and feasted briefly on the Internet before strapping all our things down onto our cycles and heading to our in search of noodles.

We ended up going back to the same Uyghur noodle place that we’d found our first morning here, and ordered a couple more bowls of lamb noodles, this time accompanied by a few Uighur kebabs, and what the Chinese call “Chuar.”

The symbol for Chuar is 串, which can be found throughout all over most mainland Chinese cities. It’s an easy one to spot, the Chuar character, since it looks like a kebab. Another character which I noticed it also looks a lot like 中, which is the first character of the Chinese word for China, 中国, literally translated “Middle Kingdom” or “Central Country”. That made us think. What if there was a chuar guo (串国)? Would that place be anything like our beloved Xiniang Uighur semi-autonomous region? And so with it we’d like to announce a new t-shirt: Chuarguo, in hope of promoting it as a pro-Xinjiang underground movement in favor of increased chuar consumption and support of Uighur entrepreneurship in the world at large.

And with that we hopped in the bus.

Even before the bus had left, the drivers’ started playing ridiculous kung fu movies, each of which seemed to be better than the last, and which continued to play throughout the entire ride to Beijing.

The highlight of the bunch and the final film was John Woo’s classic Once a Thief.

The ride ended up being pretty long.  For part way through, we hit some truly horrendous traffic, which had us waiting for hours in frustrating gridlock, making me wonder whether wheeling would not have been faster.   People hopped off and on the bus to relieve themselves and smoke cigarettes.  Looking out the window at our fellow stuck travelers, I began to realize that with the exception of busses, almost all of it was commercial drivers: mostly giant trucks transporting industrial and agricultural goods. China was moving so much stuff, that they could have a full stop and go gridlock traffic jam on a 6 lane highway in the middle of nowhere the most depopulated Provence of the country.   Most of it was product which was paid for by point B to be moved from point A.  This country never ceases to impress. Eventually, thanks be to Jah, we hit the open road again, and made it into Beijing only a few hours late.

It was by then well after nightfall. Gone were the days of blessed far north summer nights when the sunlight extended on until 10 or 11, and we were not quite sure where we’d been dropped off. What we were sure of was that it was surprisingly warm out. We had been able to wear the leather Jackets still in Mongolia and Inner Mongolia, but it seemed that here we would need to put them into storage deep in the bags, hoping for a reappearance in Korea.
It had not been this warm at night since perhaps somewhere in Turkey, or even before that. And I marveled at how quickly I became soaked in sweat just wheeling away from the bus station and out to the main road. Our only real goal was to find an affordable hotel, and knowing China, we figured that would not be too difficult. We’d wheel into the city center the next day.  So off we went, wheeling along and keeping an eye out for the ubiquitous Chinese business hotel. But, strangely, we couldn’t find any. Perhaps we were in the wrong neighborhood, we thought. Heading on further, and keeping our eyes peeled.
Still no hotels presented themselves. We did spot a delicious smelling cluster of restaurants, though, and decided that eating could only help our situation. So one giant sizzling plate full of fish and few plates of greens later, we climbed back on the cycles with not only full stomachs, but armed with directions from the waitress towards a hotel.

We found the place no problem, but it turned out they were not authorized to accept foreigners. This was something we’d never encountered in China before… and we were puzzled. The owner of the hotel apologized and sent us on up the street to another hotel, but that place was way too expensive. And I’ll be darned if this trend didn’t continue on well into the night. We would wheel up to a perfectly respectable and affordable looking Chinese business hotel and attempt to check in, they would have vacancy and be very friendly, but sad to inform us that we as foreigners were not allowed to stay there, and then send us on to a nearby fantastically expensive place. How is a man to choose freedom in such conditions?
It was thus that, at nearly two AM, exhausted, sweaty, and discouraged, we rolled up to a certain hotel whose name shall remain for now a secret. The owner of the place was just leaving after a long night of balancing the books, and walked by Scott just as his front desk manager was being sorry to inform him they not authorized to accept foreigners. Something touched the man about us. Perhaps it was seeing our haggard state, or being somewhat of a cyclist himself. Maybe it was Scott’s Chinese, which we must have sounded not unlike Scorat: Cultural Lessons for Choosing Freedom in Chinese Cities and Betterment of Glorious Partners of AsiaWheeling Global Enterprises. Whatever it was, he decided to cut us a break and do a little under the table deal making.
He let us into a room where we would be able to sleep, showed us how to use the bathroom, and how to flush the toilet by diverting the water from the sink to the shower via a large metal handle, and then spraying water into the keyhole.  But he never even gave us the key. Presumably we were never to do anything more than sleep, get up, and leave, so there would be no need.
The room was interesting. Not Chinese business, but it was nice, like sleeping on the futon in your unemployed friend’s basement apartment. It had two huge beds, which took up almost all the floor space, the rest of which was taken up by a low table on which was a complementary Windows XP PC. Having our own notebooks, we had no interest in the PC, but we were able to use its Ethernet connection to sync our email. Then we just crashed hard and woke up the next morning to leave. The owner wished us good luck finding a more legitimate place to stay and then we were back on the road, wheeling fully loaded again.

This time we pushed on towards Tiananmen square, scanning all the way for a noodle shop. There were plenty of people wheeling as well, and a very intense police presence in this city, really unlike anything we’d seen in China. There was going to be none of the usual white crimes of AsiaWheeling, like running red lights or dashing across an intersection in between signals. Here the cops were on the job and tuned in to bikers, shouting at you if you crossed too far over the yellow line which marked where cyclists should wait when crossing the street.
We continued to wheel, keeping eyes peeled for noodles, but to my great indignation, they continued to be a scarce commodity. When we passed our third McDonalds I turned to Scott “Three McDonalds and no noodles? Are we still in China?”
And it was true, Beijing felt different than any other Chinese city we’d been to in this great country, and different then it had felt in 2008 when we first visited. It was so… shiny and clean. People we so orderly, toeing the line. Where was the raw? Where was the yelling? And where were all the damned noodles?
Finally, after much searching, countless McDonalds, KFCs, and Pizza Huts, we found a restaurant that was not a noodle house, but was at least a down home Chinese restaurant.

We ordered a large plate of pork with cumin, a cucumber salad, some white rice, and drank many pots of their tea, so much in fact that the tea in the pot became so exhausted by repeated soakings that we were no longer able to detect the actual tea flavor by the end of our time there.
Now, with some food in our stomachs, we continued to wheel on, past Tienanmen Square.

Even Tienanmen felt significantly different than the last time I’d visited, which had been on a cool and misty day. Today the sun was blinding and there was not a cloud in the sky. I realized then, also, that I had not ever seen Beijing with so little pollution. It was really quite amazing.

When we spotted a China Mobile office, we called a waypoint to buy a SIM card. We were able to do this no problem, but were quite surprised to find that here in Beijing SIM cards cost about 100% more than had we bought them in, say, Hekou.

A phone would be important, so we decided to purchase one SIM card to share between the two of us.  Scott ran in and executed the mission while I sat outside and just played the ukulele. Most of the well dressed Beijing pedestrians had no idea what to do with me. I must have looked like a filthy homeless vagrant (which is what I was) and Beijing is not a city with street performers. So most pedestrians, as they passed, would just glance at me uncomfortably and then avert  their eyes while walking onwards stiffly. Doing our best to push peoples limits here on AsiaWheeling, on rendition of BlackWater at a time.
Scott came out triumphant with the SIM card and ran over to buy a peach from a man and his wife who were roaming the streets with a peach selling cart.
Just then, our man MCK called, and as luck would have it, he knew of a hotel not one block from where we stood just there and then. It was a place by the name of Hai Na Binguan, and we strolled in to find that they even had a vacancy for us. So we headed up to the room, pleased to see an Ethernet cable hanging out of the wall, and that the bathroom was on a raised platform, covered in deafeningly screechy sliding smoked glass doors and headed out for a quick sunset wheel.

We began by heading down a large street near our hotel, lined with block after block of restaurants, making our way down the bike lane which ran, strangely enough, through the middle of the sidewalk. As we wheeled along, people called out to us, sometimes even in English asking us to come investigate their restaurant or their wares.

When was the last time that I had been yelled at on the street to advertise a restaurant… I can’t even remember… what was Beijing becoming? Bangkok?

We wheeled on, through shockingly manageable, well organized, and mostly brand new streets, able to get almost anywhere, without ever having to ride on a road with no bike lane, and spending an unprecedented amount of time waiting, under the watchful eyes of multiple traffic police, at stoplights.  A new Beijing sprawled before us.

After taking a huge loop, circumnavigating and eventually plunging back into Dongzhimen, we headed across the street from our hotel to try out the Uyghur restaurant there. We ordered a cucumber salad, a variety of Chuar, a big bowl of spicy Lakman, and some of that wonderful Uyghur bread called nung. The food was very good, but the nung was truly incredible, cooked in a large coal burning oven outside the restaurant, and brushed with oil and spices and browned on the char grill before being served.
As we were leaving, we stopped by the register to pay, and thanked in owner in his own central Asian tongue. “Rakhmet.” We were admiring a large calendar on his wall, featuring a large gold accented photograph of the K’aba. He came over to us, and seeing the mustaches (which are a symbol of being muslem in China) asked us if we’d been on the Haj?
“No,” Scott replied in Chinese “But hopefully one day, Insha’Allah.”

We woke up the next morning to find it still raining in Hohhot. Either it did not rain much here, which would make the flooding and torrents of muck filling the streets much more forgivable, it was that whenever it rained in this city everything just became a shockingly filthy mess. The streets turn to mud pits and each puddle seems a lurking disease vector. Just our kind of place.

Meanwhile, we’d been hard at work in our hotel room, churning away on correspondence for you, dear reader. When we spotted a break in the rain, we headed out with the goal of catching something easy and quick near the hotel, but as happens so often in China, we became fascinated with our surroundings and started strolling, which was worth it if for nothing else than to get to see a little girl wheeling around on an amazing device, something like a cross between a bicycle and a rollerblade.

We also found lunch, in a very crowded restaurant a few blocks over from our hotel.

We ordered a savage feast of boiled dumplings, fried eggplant, and Inner Mongolian meat and potatoes.

While we were eating, it began pouring outside, so we ran back to the hotel to wait out the rain.

When it looked like it might have let up for a bit we headed out again on the bicycles. As soon as we started wheeling, though, the skies open up once again. There was only one choice here: rain gear. And so we called a waypoint at a corner shop and purchased two large cyclist’s ponchos.

The Chinese have really mastered the cyclist’s poncho by designing a product which can be worn not just by the human being, but also by the cycle itself. You see, the front and back flaps of the Chinese cyclists poncho are enlarged so as to allow the user to place the front part over the handlebars of his cycle, turning he or she into a kind of waterproof bullet train on two wheels with a head sticking out the top.

Now armed with rain gear, we commenced some really serious wheeling, which sent us all over the city, getting completely lost, in the back alleys and muck filled streets of Hohhot.

The rain did let up by the time we were finishing the wheel, though, and allowed us to get out the camera once again here in a giant park dedicated to Chengis Khan, who unsurprisingly is also quite popular here.

From there, we wheeled on into the night, taking advantage of our new Chinese headlights, which were startlingly bright. We realized that we were hungry right outside of a very popular looking hot pot restaurant. Inner Mongolia is rumored to be the original home of hot pot, so we decided to give it a try.

The restaurant turned out to be absolutely jaw dropping, Each order hot pot was brought out with a variety of dipping sauces including chili pastes and thick sesame butter based condiments. After that the hot pot proceeds more or less as normal. Here however, the hot pot itself was particularly old school. It was a kind of all in one hot pot vessel, consisting of a round, hammered copper, exterior bowl, and a large cylindrical interior chamber which was filled with hot coals. The coals then boiled the water, and also heated up the edges of the chimney which could be taken advantage of by power users to fry little bits of meat.

As good as the hot pot were the people with whom we shared the restaurant. We were surrounded by some serious Hohhot ballers, most of whom seemed to be out to dinner on the company’s dime and determined to go for the wall.

We woke up our first morning in Hohhot and began by feasting on the ethernet connection, just sitting there in the room, drinking cup after cup of Nescafe, which we whitened with some bizarre Chinese sweetened milk. We were coming up with some interesting ideas for a presentation that we planned to give in Beijing, but once the rumble in our stomachs became too loud, we shut our laptops down and grabbed the bicycles.  We hit the streets of Inner Mongolia’s capital.

Outside, the city of Hohot was grey and inviting, churning with traffic, noise and filth in all its monstrous glory.  In reality the population of Ulaanbaatar might have been larger, but there was a feel to these Chinese cities, a certain rushed feeling to the pedestrians, an ugency in the voices of the street vendors. It was intoxicating.  It was China.

The first thing we did was get on the cycles and head towards the train station. We had every intention of snagging a ticket on a train sometime in the next few days to the northern Chinese city of Harbin. When we got to the train station, we found the place to be a total madhouse, with lines stretching well past the metal barriers designed to prevent cutting, and plenty of hurried and grumpy people hoping to get a seat on such and such train before it sold out.

You see, dear reader, we’d made a bit of a miscalculation and arrived in China during the mid-autumn moon festival. This meant we’d be trying to get around the place just at the time when all its transportation systems are strained to the breaking point with people heading home to celebrate the harvest. We, for instance, waited in two different lines for 40 minutes to find unsurprisingly that only hard seats were left on all the trains to Harbin. 16 hours overnight on a hard seat is doable… We’re not above it, mind you.. oh we’ve seen worse… but at least we thought we might as well check out the busses before resigning ourselves to such torture.

The bus situation turned out to be even worse. There were actually no busses originating here and terminating in Harbin. If we wanted to get there, we’d need to change in some intermediary city, making the entire trip way too long and tiresome for even your two callused correspondents.

So we decided to improvise. Standing right there in the bus depot, we reshuffled the AsiaWheeling Northern China Itinerary, switching Beijing and Harbin, and thus adding in on very long train trip (from Harbin to Qingdao), and solving the probelem. And with that, we bought tickets on a bus to Beijing, and walked away brushing our hands together.

There was of course the presentation that we’d been working on for Beijing as well, so the next thing we did was to get on the phone with our dear friend MCK, who would be helping us arrange for the event to confirm the days that we’d be there. The new dates seemed to work for him, so all was falling into place.

Now it was high time to eat something, so we headed over to a Uighur noodles joint, and ordered two big bowls of spicy lamb noodles, and a few kababs. Central Asian food, Ya Habibbi, with Chinese noodles.

Filled once again with noodles, the true fuel of AsiaWheeling, we were taking to the streets in a way he hadn’t in some time. We were back in a city where the traffic speed was low, where the drivers were used to having cycles on the road, and where the city was designed with wheelers in mind.  In fact, I might even go as far as to say that Hohhot had the highest concentration of wheelers we’d encountered on the entire trip.

The city was overcast, but very comfortable, and we whipped along the large sidewalk/bike lanes, snaking around trees and generally enjoying the increased nimbleness one gets when riding a cycle with 20 inch wheels. Like Mongolia, Inner Mongolia is a Buddhist region of China, and we passed by not a few temples as we wheeled.

We also passed by some even more interesting sights, like this huge pile of freshly painted blue cycle rickshaws.

When we spotted a flashlight shop, we stopped. Our bikes had been too long without lights, and this seemed the perfect opportunity to rectify the situation. Scott bonded quickly with the owners, and by the time we had narrowed it down to a couple of savage miner’s headlamps, they were already practically giving the headlamps to us as gifts.

With the new headlamps bagged up and strapped onto the backs of our bicycles, we headed out into some of the more remote parts of Hohhot to do a little exploring.

The road we were riding on terminated directly into this giant pile of raw coal,

at which point we were forced to take a left. The left took us along a particularly trash strewn sewage creek , which we continued follow.

Even the path on which we rode, which ran along the creek, seemed to be constructed mostly of filth and many multicolored old plastic bags.

That path of garbage lead us back out onto a main street, where people were whipping by, carrying all kinds of goods in that way that you only really find in China

We took a right on that rode and rode it as far as it would go. When eventually forced to turn, we took a right, wheeling on past a School which was farming corn and raising sheep in the side lot, I hoped as part of the education of the children.

Not long after the sheep, we found ourselves at another large Buddhist temple. This one was huge and stark white with a gold stupa. There were a system of paths around it, so we decided to circumnavigate the thing, which was only partially successful, dumping us out onto the other side of the block where there was yet another large temple, or perhaps it was a palace, outside of which a group of men had set up a little campsite out of cloth and baskets and were the process of burning garbage in the street. We could not quite tell if they were burning the trash to produce heat (it was not particularly cold) or to get rid of it. Regardless, it was producing an acrid smoke that soon pushed us to leave.

We then found ourselves in a new “old style” housing development, where we purchased a few of those delicious jars of yak yoghurt and a couple bottles of water.

As we were sipping it, a woman came by to do shtick with us in Chinese. Scott did his best to hold his own, but as you can see by her smile, Scott was outshticked.

And with the outschticking came the rain. It poured down on us as we hurried to get back to the hotel before we were so thoroughly soaked as to wipe the stamps out of our passports, which we were still carrying in our pockets, so fresh we were from the post soviet world. As I rode through the wet streets, I skidded against some slick stones and fell off my bike. I was fine, and so was the cycle, but it marked an important moment: the first time I’d ever fallen off my Speed TR. Let’s hope it’s the last as well.

Our last evening in Ullanbattar, Ariunna invited us over to her house for dinner.

She and her mother had made an incredible feast, and invited some other Americans over to share it with us.

The meal was huge and delicious, with two fresh salads, fried sausage, meat pies, Manty, homemade Solyanka (my favorite), roast chicken drumsticks, and even a big cake to celebrate Scott’s birthday.

Ariunna then took us out to a traditional Mongolian song and dance show, where booming announcements in English heralded 2 and a half hours of performances varying from giant group dance numbers to solo throat singing renditions of everything from traditional tunes to western favorites.

My favorite was the throat singers, for sure. They appeared in many different acts, often accompanied by lutes and bowed instruments called horse head fiddles.

After the concert, we headed up to the top of the mountains to the south of the city, where there is a large Soviet monument to cooperation between the Mongolians and the Soviets.

It was a very popular place for young people to hang out and as we were leaving, we even spotted the contortionist from the show that we’d watched earlier. She’d come up here with some friends to watch the sunset as well and was contorting here body so her friends could take pictures of her in front of the sunset.

It was a great last night, and we thanked her again and again before leaving to head back to the Hotel to pack.

The next morning, we feasted on the last bits of internet before we packed up our things, strapped them down on to the Speed TRs, and hit the road.

We made it to the train station with plenty of time to spare, and climbed on. It was platzcart again, so thank goodness, there was plenty of room for the bikes. I also got one last chance to speak Russian before plunging back into China. A barrel chested Mongolian fluoride mining engineer came over to speak with me. He spoke very little English, but was fluent in Russian, and we went on for hours chatting about the history of Mongolia, reasons why the great horde came to power and fell (my knowledge in these areas was all thanks to the wikireader), and the peculiarities of the fluoride market. He sold almost all of his fluoride to Russia, and the majority of his Russian sales went to firms in Buryatya. I had no idea Russia had such an appetite for fluoride!

He laughed when I expressed this: “They have bad teeth!” he said, flashing me his own set, which was itself none too shiny and manageable.

We did our best to go to sleep early on that train ride, for we pulled into the border town of Zamin Uud at the crack of dawn.

Zamin Uud was only 7 kilometers from the Chinese border, and we figured we would be able to easily wheel across. So it was with great confidence that we unfolded our cycles, strapped our bags down, and fended off all the cab drivers who attempted to convince us that it couldn’t be done.

But when we arrived, all bright eyed and bushy tailed, at the road that lead to the border, it was a madhouse of honking jeeps and screaming people, and a huge police roadblock. We headed up to talk with the guards, who confirmed for us that it was illegal to wheel across into China. So we would be needing a jeep…

We headed then over to find some chaps who might be willing to drive us. Tons of jeeps were already lined up and waiting for passengers, so it was certainly a buyer’s market.

We selected a couple of guys in an old soviet jeep who seemed especially friendly, and were not driving too hard of the bargain. They also spoke some bits of Chinese, which helped lubricate the wheels of communications.

It looked like they were using a system not dissimilar from that used by the uzbek border officials, in which at the shout of one man, the entire line would be allowed to flow into china for a moment, the when the road seemed full enough, cut off, like pulling a draft of beer.

And it looked like the next pint was going to be pulled any minute now, for the jeeps were all stating their engines, and beginging to whoop and holler as we wheeled our bikes over.

Our two drivers, one in a bright pink shirt, one in deep purple, rushed to load our things into the van and then we were off!

It was a wild ride.

All the jeeps burst forth, drag racing down the road, taking up all lanes and the shoulders, passing each other when they could. Our drivers turned up the music, downshifted into second, and just put their foot into the old soviet jeep. The ride was both terrifying and exhilarating, and the termination of the ride at the Chinese border was both relief and letdown.

We walked into the Chinese customs hall, and things we very clean. Cleaner than anything we’d seen in weeks. The system was also newly automated, so that no one needed to fill out customs cards. Instead, we just put our passports down onto a large scanning machine, and it did optical character recondition on the documents and printed our entry card for us. Was it possible that China had developed perceptibly even in the few months since we’d left her?

The border official seemed pleased with all the stamps in my passport and bubbled at me in English about how he had family in Indonesia… knowing Indonesian-Chinese they were probably running the place.

We exited the customs hall and proceeded over to wait for our jeep to make it through the vehicle inspection. While we waited, I took out the ukulele and played Queens of the Stone Age’s tune, “no one knows.” The other travelers who were also waiting for their jeeps to make it across gathered round and listened while the customs agents took their sweet time inspecting the Speed TRs.

Finally our things arrived, we paid our pink and purple shirted friends, and we were off into the city of Erlian. Erlian was quite a place. We were excited to be back in china for many reasons but not least among them was the availability of noodles. Food in Mongolia had been interesting, but also not our favorite of the entire trip. In fact we’d both been losing weight ever since we left the culinary womb of Uzbekistan, and it seemed high time to start 吃ing hard again.

So once we were in Erlian, we stopped into a noodle shop, and ordered two big bowls of lamb noodles, embracing the return of not only those chewy thick Chinese soup noodles, but also the availability all kinds of condiments at the table.  I poured hot oil, soy sauce, and vinegar into my soup with abandon, as though making up for lost time.

We exited the restaurant, and asked the owner for directions to the train station as we hoisted our packs back onto our shoulders. At the train station, however, we discoverer that we would need to wait until the next day to get a seat on a train to the Inner Mongolian capital of Hohhot, so we headed over to the bus station.

Have I mentioned recently how much respect I have for Chinese busses? No matter where you are in China, no matter how sold out the trains and planes might be, there is a Chinese bus that will get you were you need to be. My opinion of bussing as an industry has only grown as AsiaWheeling has progressed, and for me China is right near the top, just under Thailand, perhaps.

Sure enough, there was a bus leaving for Hohhot within the hour. We bought tickets and began plugging our various peripherals into the wall socket in the station to charge them a little before we left.

As we were doing so, another startlingly drunk man approached us. He cracked open a bottle of Er Guo Tou, a heinous 70% alcohol sorghum liquor that is truly undrinkable, and began sipping it from the bottle. He came closer and tried to talk, but was mostly able to splatter us with saliva and stutter incoherently. He then attempted to make up for his inability to speak by waving his hands around in vehement gesticulation, splashing the terrible reeking liquid everywhere. We did our best to be simultaneously polite and brush him off, but succeeded in neither.

It was close enough to the time our bus was leaving, that we attempted to busy ourselves packing our things up while paying just enough attention to not enrage the guy. We finally apologized, excused ourselves, and climbed onto the bus.

The very drunk man had been holding tickets for our bus, we’d seen them. But it seems that either the powers that be had decided not to let him board, or that he had wandered off and gotten lost, for he was not on the bus as it pulled away from Erlian, through a giant archway of French kissing dinosaurs, which marks the entrance to the Erlian to Hohhot highway.

Much like they had in Mongolia the nation, here in Chinese Inner Mongolia the semi autonomous region, they were very proud of their fossil collections and build many statues of dinosaurs. As we drove along the steppe, we could see them out of our window, and they just refused to cease, and for kilometers the roadside was studded with life sized concrete dinosaur statues.

On the way, our bus collided mildly with a semi-truck, bending one of its antennae-like rear view mirrors. This caused a slight delay, as everyone on the bus felt they needed to climb off, inspect the damage and then weigh in in the argument as to whose fault it was: the bus or trucks. We attempt always to stay neutral in such conflicts.

It was just after dark when we finally reached the city of Hohhot and unfolded the bicycles. We were surprised to find the place lit up like Las Vegas, and absolutely busting with Chinese business hotels. We really had the pick of the litter, so we rode around for a while testing our various places, before settling on the hotel.

We woke up plenty early on Scott’s birthday. We had plans to do a really serious wheel, all the way out to the Tarelj national park, 40km outside of Ulaanbaatar. Depending on how we planned our route inside the park, this could be as much as 100 km of wheeling. We had mapped the whole thing out on Google maps, and it looked like an amazing loop.

We began by loading up our packs with foodstuffs that we had purchased the night before; we also included sweaters, a large map of the area around Ulaanbaatar, including most of the Terelj national park, and our cell phones, just in case. We then headed around the corner to a grocery shop and bought 5 liters of water each. We stashed all the stuff in our bags, strapped them down and headed out into the city.

We were lucky. Traffic was not bad as we pounded south and east, past the ger district where we’d wheeled that first day and on into the countryside.

The larger freeway type road that we were riding on petered out into a crumbling two lane highway a few kilometers outside of the city, and with it the traffic fell even further.

We hit our first security checkpoint not far after that, but they seemed totally uninterested in us as we cautiously wheeled through.

It has been blazingly sunny when we left Ulaanbaatar, and had been cloudless for our entire time there, but as we road on clouds began to roll in adding a certain appropriately lonely feeling to the landscape. This was wide open country, with barely any trees in sight, you could see the topography of the land, flowing out for miles in front of you.

We rode by a rather large looking missionary operation out here, which was puzzling since there appeared to be nearly no one around, but then again I guess these were still probably some of the most densely populated non-Ulaanbaatar areas in the whole country.

We stopped next to an old beaten up car, hoisted up onto a block on stone, so that we could take a leak.

If anyone can explain to us what the sign underneath it means (Khurd Ukhel?), or even better why the old car is significant to the message, please do so in the comments.

It was great to be out of the city, in the fresh air, wheeling hard over these rolling hills. The world around us was beautiful and we could count on it getting much better before it got worse. A few kilometers of hard wheeling later we spotted our left, turning off the main highway and heading towards Tarelj.

We decided to stop there to snack a bit. It was going to be a long day, and maintaining blood sugar would be key.

We snacked on some delicious dried horse meat that we’d bought at the super market, and some little sesame rolls which we squeezed some Russian cream cheese onto .

It started to rain ever so slightly as we finished our snack, but it stopped as soon as we put our sweaters on and started wheeling again.

We continued to wheel on, through gorgeous wide open country, just drinking in the refreshing nature of the landscape.

When we saw this sign that let us choose between Tarelj (the trees) or Baganuur (the factory), we put away all thoughts of the Russian space program’s launch site in Kazakhstan by a similar name, and the associated debris fields which we would have liked so very much to have visted while in Kazakhstan, and kept to the left.

Not far after that, we hit our next checkpoint. We pulled up to the booth, and to my surprise the fellow sitting in there said “ztrazvuitye!” (a formal hello in Russian). I responded to him excitedly in Russian, but he seemed to take some sort of offence, and called out to us for 7,000 Tugrug each. I did not have exact change, and when I handed him a 20,000 tugrug bill, he laughed and took it, handing me a giant stack of receipt like vouchers, and waving me on. I stood there demanding my change, but he just kept waving. Now the giant soviet transport truck behind us was honking deafeningly, and we just wheeled on.

I took out the stack of vouchers and could see that each one of them showed that the proper tariff for a normal car was just 1,000 tugrug. He had just taken us for quite the ride. But in a desert this beautiful, one can’t waste their time dwelling on the only negative thing that’s happened since we got to Mongolia… well with the exception of some truly hard to eat dishes.

It was a desert, be sure of that, dry and mostly devoid of plants and animals, but it did not feel that way. It did not feel desolate, instead the Mongolian steppe felt somehow rich, mysterious and inviting, all good motivators to wheel on.

Soon we began to spot little encampments of gers along the way, which we had been trained to identify by their clean white exterior, and arrangement into grids to not be the homes of locals, but large ger-based hotels that are set up to serve tourists.

Soon we came to a much wetter place, where a long river snaked through the center of the valley. Now we reached our third checkpoint.

Here too the attendant called out to me in Russian, but similarly was vaguely offended when I replied in kind. I showed him the giant handful of receipt/vouchers that I’d gotten from the second checkpoint, and he laughed as if to say he’d seen that one before. We proceeded to pay him 4,000 tugrug each to get into the park, and he provided us with a much more legitimate looking ticket, which even explained in English that our money would be put towards the betterment of the park, and maintenance of it’s natural wonders. That was a heck of a lot better than the bottle of Chengis Vodka that the fellow at checkpoint two was no doubt thinking of investing in with the money we’d paid him.

We wheeled across the long wooden bridge which spanned the river and headed from there into the park. Now the traffic fell to almost none, with the presence of a car being just as likely as that of a horse and rider, and either one being interesting and unexpected.

We wheeled deeper and deeper into the park, watching the river’s valley revealed below us as we slowly climbed in elevation.

We passed a family selling camel rides, and thought briefly that one of the most common questions when someone sees the AsiaWheeling business card is “Well, have you ridden a camel?” We had the chance here to forever more answer yes to that question, but from our vantage point we could see the well trodden loop that each tourist takes on his ride, and just couldn’t bring ourselves to do such a senseless thing.

So on we rode, deeper into the park. The mountains started to grow nearer to us, now not in the distance at all, but by the roadside, then we road turn and began to actually climb into them. As we rode further and further into the mountains, things began to green up more too. Now we could see trees changing color on the mountainside, and there was enough grass for cattle to be grazing around us.

Mongolia has a geology that is uniquely positioned to do a great job of preserving fossils, and they were proud of it out here, with life sized statues of dinosaurs being not an uncommon site along the roadside.

Now things we really getting lush, with trees and shrubs lining the road. Something about coming out of the city and through the desert makes the green all the more intense, drawing you in. It might also have just been the polarization of the Dawn Patrols. But, as with all these things, the truth almost certainly lies in the middle.

We were well into the mountains now, and as we pulled onto a large and gravely uphill section, we spotted a rustling in the bushes nearby the road, and out popped a Mongolian man on horseback, drunker than anything we’d seen on the entire trip. He was like a zombie, sloshing around in his saddle, with a cigarette permanently glued to his lower lip, the filter deep in his mouth. He did not spot us until he was almost right next to us, and as his horse decided to make a turn to head uphill there was a moment when I thought he might fall right out of his saddle and onto the ground. But he had developed some very deep seated reflexes and twitched back upright. Scott called out to him, asking whether we were in Tarelj or not, and whether the road we were on would indeed loop back to Ulaanbaatar.

His answers appeared to be in the affirmative, but it was hard to tell for he was truly now more beast than man.  He made a motion and some gurgling noises which might have been best interpreted as a challenge to race him up the hill, and then galloped off.

Extreme Stuff.

At the top of the hill we paused for a moment, reasonably confident from our investigations of the map that this was the highest point on the wheel, and therefore marked the 2/3 point of the wheel.

After we crossed over that crest and began wheeling down, things became even greener. We were riding bow through meadows backed by forests. All day the weather had been oscillating between bright sunshine and dark rainclouds, but here it felt as though we’d passed through the darkness and come out into the light.

Then, suddenly, we came upon a huge luxury hotel. This was unexpected. We were suddenly wheeling through manicured lawns, by tennis courts, and eventually into the entrance of a huge 5 star hotel. What was this place doing literally in the middle of a deserted national park? It felt like we’d entered a dream world… Could this place actually be real?  Were we delirious?

Well, dream or not, it seemed as good a place as any to ask for directions, so we headed in.

The front desk staff spoke perfect English, and was more than happy to pour over the map with us. They confirmed the worst of our fears, however, which was that while there was a way to head all the way through Taralj, looping around back towards the city of Ulaanbaatar, it was not on exactly what you’d call a road, and they assured us that from here on the way was unwheelable.

What this meant was that the 2/3 point that we’d though we’d hit a while ago was not even a half way point, and that, unless we decided to sleep in a Ger or at the 5 star hotel, the entire wheel was going to be much more like 140km. This was nothing to face on an empty stomach so we sat down on the steps of the hotel to have another snack.

While shoveling thumbfulls of funky tasting peanut butter into our mouths, and tearing into another package of Jerky we decided that we should just try to wheel the whole way home. A brief calculation suggested that if we raged, we would probably be just be able to make it home before dark. In our favor was the fact that it was more downhill on the way back than on the way here, as well, but not by much…

So we wheeled on, really tearing into it now, with a new resolve and a new stomach full of processed foods to keep fueling us into the ride. And so we started climbing, up and out of that valley and down the gravelly hill where he’d seen the very drunk horseman.

We rolled on, through the next valley, over the crest of another set of hills, and then into a long slowly downhill sloping straight away.

As we rode, we were joined by another rider, this one on a horse, with the help of the downhill, we were going just barely faster than him, and gave the man our best as we rode by.

As we rode back across the long wooden bridge, a work crew was now active down in the river, piling up rock for a new concrete bridge that was under construction.

The sky continued to threaten rain off and on as we pedaled out way back up and over yet another set of hills, and finally back onto the straight away towards Ulaanbaatar.

It rained briefly on us again as we pedaled by that old dead car. The rain stopped quickly, leaving us riding along on a slick wet road.

The road was beautiful, but dangerous. It reflected the world around us like a long thin strip of mirror, laid out in the sandy desert soil, but also hid untold obstacles. Twice, I rode through what looked like just more glistening rode, but turned out to be a deep, water filled pothole that almost flung me over my handlebars.

The sun came back out once more as we drew closer to Ulaanbaatar, exposing the countryside in some of the most dramatic hues imaginable, and conjuring rainbows all around us.

Sunset was just laying in for real as we completed the last leg into Ulaanbaatar, triumphant in completing what would almost certainly be the longest ride of the entire trip.

After spending a day acclimating to the Ulaan Baatar streets as modern nomads, it was our time to investigate the inner-workings of a new economy.  Mongolia, which had a GDP per capita of $1,573 in 2009, was now boasting a booming minerals extract sector.  This drove corporate profits and foreign direct investment up, making the Mongolian economy a veritable proto-kazakhstan, and explained the presence of Irish pubs, Lexus SUVs, and commercial bank branches which dotted the capital city.

Today was to be a lucky and fortuitous day, as we had the opportunity to wear the most presentable clothing we owned, which at this point was for both of us a pair of well worn jeans and shirts which were to hopefully ment to be worn wrinkled.  We polished our shoes in the divice provided at the door of the glorious and fortuitous Wen Zhou Hotel that morning and strolled into the blazing Mongolian sun before Ariunna arrived in her charriot.

Today we were to have the opportunity to speak to Jargalsaihan Dambadarjaa, chairman of Xacleasing and a seasoned financial professional known regionally for his adept employment of Social Media.  As a prolific blogger concerned with the well being of his countrymen, Mr. Dambadarjaa engages sociopolitical issues through both his publishings and the daily work he does at the head of Xacleasing, a member company of Tenger Financial Group.  With Ariunna, Dr. D’s daughter, at our side, we considered some final questions for the seasoned financial professional in this no doubt arduous and volatile financial climate.

XacLeasing, the firm which Dr. D chairs engages in what it discribes as a kind of Microfinance.  While generally considered a socially organized financial arrangement in which money is pooled to provide loans on the magnitude of 3 to 4 figures, microfinance in Xacleasing’s case deescribes loans generally considered small by international commercial banks.  In the case of Xasleasing, these loans to individuals, small ventures, and medium sized enterprises are collateralized by assets such as construction, transport, or mining equipment, and in the occasional case, real estate.

With Dr. Dambadarjaa, we discussed the nature of recent growth in the Mongolian economy driven by resources, the fledgling financial market, and the gigantic untapped potential on regional borrowers and lenders, most of whom were modest in size.

He encouraged us to continue our investigation of the economy through his firm, and to that end introduced us to the Philipp Marxen, a recent recruit from Germany who now headed up Tenger’s China investment office.

Philipp went into detail describing Tenger’s efforts in developing microsavings accounts with no minimum balance marketed toward first time bank customers in the country.  I could relate to the fellow as a lad with a taste for adventure and a penchant for frontier markets.  With experience leading investment project’s in Paraguay’s agricultural market and a licensed derivatives trader on the European Energy Exchange, Philipp  came to Mongolia seeking career development alongside the change to do something truly different.

After an informed explanation of the regulatory environment of Chinese consumer finance, Philipp invited us out for  lunch at a local Indian restaurant which apparently garnered some fame.  Sipping down Lassis, Philipp delved into his background further.  By the time we had finished, the Mongolian microfinance landscaped looked significantly more fascinating than it had when it was completely opaque that morning.

Strolling off the rice and curry, we walked to the splendorous main square in front of Mongolia’s parlament, the great Khan holding court atop a mighty steed.

Across the street, we saw a forlorn pink building in a fantastic location.  Upon further inspection, it revealed itself as the Mongolian Capital Market, commonly known as the Mongolian Stock Exchange.  Rapping on the door and speaking to the attendant, we were able to garner a guided tour through the establishment.  Each broker member of the exhage has a seat at the exchange to trade on behalf of its clients, and the exchange is open for one hour each day.  For most of Asia’s exchanges, the Mongolian Stock Exchanges trading hours represent a lunch break.

Fascinated by the exchange’s earnest and deserted interior, we perused the walls, looking at charts of bond issuance and stock offerings over the past couple of years.  We took a lucky moment to host a brief press conference in front of the marble backdrop of the press box.

Considering the challenges and thrills of operating in such an environment, our minds entertained ideas of new ventures in Mongolia.  Was this country to become the next Dubai or the next Kazakhstan as a result of its newfound resource wealth?  How much of the extracted value would recycle its way back into the economy of the nation?  Was the role of a small and illiquid equity market on its way to playing the role of its larger Indonesian counterpart?  We pondered thee thoughts over a small feast of mayonaise carrots.

And with that, we prepped our bodies for a next day of rigorous wheeling with a night of rest.

The next morning we checkout out of the Sunny Motel, thanking them, and storing our luggage in one if the rooms that was currently being renovated.

Always in search of internet, we headed to a certain café that had been recommended very highly by the lonely planet, a place by the name of Michelle’s French Bakery. We had every reason to expect it to be therefore mundane. We were pleasantly surprised, though. It was probably the highest concentration of foreigners that we’d experienced since Hong Kong, but the food was decent, the baked goods better than decent, and the coffee not bad either. The internet was fast enough to get things done, though the owner seemed to think that if he typed the wifi password in for you there was no way for you to retrieve it later (shame on you! just change your password from time to time…) and we felt just fine about biding our time there and waiting for a call from the Chinese business hotel.

Before we got a call from the Chinese business hotel, however, we got a call from a woman by the name of Ariunna.

She had been one of my father’s students at Grinnell College and had returned to Ulaanbaatar after graduating. We were in luck, she would be around during our time here and was more than happy to show us around. She sounded sweet as pie, and as I headed back to deliver the good news to Scott he was on the phone with the Chinese business hotel, which I might start from now on more properly referring to as the Wen Zhou Hotel. We were doubly happy  (to reference Chinese ligature 囍), for they also would be able to accommodate us.

Knowing now that in-room ethernet was in our future, we closed up the laptops, and were just about to blow this cafe we ran into some more Mongol Ralliers, they too just having completed a trip from London to Mongolia in a little micro machine. They directed us to their website, four stans and a pole, which told their story. This driving across post Soviet countries business looked like fun, and the more we chatted, the more Scott and I began having parallel dreams of driving across Siberia…

Back in reality, it was high time to wheel over to the Wen Zhou. The ride was quick, and we were checked in and feeling Chinese-business-good in no time.  Then we got a call from Ariunna. “I’m coming to your hotel, and we’re going out to lunch. I’ll see you in five minutes.”

We would learn soon that this was Ariunna’s style, the 11^th hour call. And we were ready to roll with it.

We changed our shirts and ran outside the hotel. Ariunna pulled up in a Silver Chevrolet, which was being driven by her cousin, whom she called her “brother.” We had run into this too in Buryatya. In these Mongol cultures, the distinction between cousins and siblings is essentially disregarded in casual conversation.

Ariunna’s brother-cousin drove us to a restaurant called The Modern Nomad, where we proceeded to pour over the gigantic menu filled mostly with traditional Mongolian fare, and looking to Ariunna to recommend. She was happy to step up to that challenge, and soon we were digging into some deep fried, meat stuffed pockets, a bowl of lamb broth with thick noodles, another soup made of coarsely chopped heart, and a few salads.

The food was good and hearty. The Mongols are into a gamey, meaty flavor, which is a recurring theme throughout their culinary cannon. It was a loud and interesting flavor and we were eager to study it further.

We exited the restaurant just in time to see a dish dash wearing Emeriti fellow roll by in a Hummvee with Abu Dhabi plates, bumping some really hot sounding Middle Eastern beats. Ariunna’s brother-cousin was still outside, and we were shocked. “Has he been waiting here the whole time? Why did he not eat with us?”

“He’s working for my dad, running errands, he’s just back to pick us up.”

Now it was making more sense. This cousin-brother was working for Ariunna’s dad as a driver. We decided it might be better to give him the day off, and stroll a but.  So from there we headed out on foot, checking out monuments like this man trapped in a metal box.

or this fantastic and gigantic statue of Chenghis Khan the parliament building.

We were very much enjoying this tour of modern Mongolian architecture. I just couldn’t help thinking about Klingons.  I am now absolutely certain that the entire idea for the Klingon race in Star Trek, especially the next generation was directly influenced by Mongolian culture, history, dress, and architecture.

We parted ways with Ariunna and headed out for it little late afternoon wheeling, heading for the hills, though this time instead of towards the Ger district in the east, we headed towards the super posh housing development hills in the south. Traffic was once again terrible, and we found ourselves in a snarling jam that stretched forward for kilometers, and so be began weaving among the cars, working our way towards the hills, which we could see in the distance. Even this proved harrowing, and impossible without choking down lungful after lungful of sooty exhaust. So eventually we just started riding on the median.

Eventually the traffic broke and we were out in the open. And the first thing I noticed was the air. The air here was much cleaner than in the city, no doubt part of why this was where they were building the newest and poshest housing developments in all of Mongolia.

The road got worse and worse as we continued on, but wheeling out here were there was no traffic felt great, and we wanted to keep going further.

One of the housing developments reminded me of a certain ”hard-scrabble town in Iowa” , where I’d spent many an hour.

Finally, the road petered out into a giant construction site, and we had to turn back. The traffic on the way home was just as bad as it had been coming out, which was puzzling. One would assume that Ulaanbaatar followed some kind of a daily morning peak in influx and evening peak in outflux based problem, but every direction here seemed to be equally doomed to immobility.

We rolled past the Well Mart Supercenter on our way back to find dinner at a very strange Korean restaurant called Red and Black. The walls were load, the use of Helvetica was rampant, and everything felt new and shiny. We ordered a large bowl of noodle soup, a plate for fried spicy glass noodles, a basket of deep fried everything, and a Kim Bab roll. It all looked beautiful, but was somehow lacking a certain something… salt perhaps…

That evening we wandered out into the night, taking a break from our furious work on correspondence for you, dear reader, and found the air to be thick with the added smoke of hundreds of outdoor food sellers, all roasting meat on charcoal grills.

The Sim City 2000 theme rang out loud and clear, bright and early. We were somewhere outside of Ulaanbaatar, on a train bound from Ulan Ude into Mongolian capital. The Dutch women that we’d been sharing the compartment with had already woken up and had enough time to brew their first cup of coffee. They drank a strange space age kind of Nescafe that foamed and bubbled, whipping itself right before your eyes as you mixed it with hot water.

We had just time enough to mix a couple cups of our own ho hum run of the mill instant coffee which we mixed with a little Siberian 7.5% high octane coffee mixing milk. We barely had enough time to pour two of those cups back before the train was hissing and squeaking it’s arrival at the station.

The Ulaanbaatar station was very impressive, blocky and imposing. It was a cool morning outside and still felt kind of like Siberia. As we were strapping things down, Buryat looking women who spoke perfect English were coming up to us and offering us guesthouses for 4 dollars a night per person. It wasn’t Siberia, but seemed at least that hotels would be cheap here. What a strange phenomenon, this pining for Siberia. We pulled on the leather jackets and hopped on the bikes.

Scott had lost his lock again. This one had been a really great one too, purchased in Turkey right before we left, but regardless we were in the market for a replacement, so we scanned the streets for bike shops as we rode. This did not look like a city that purchased many bikes, however… at least not bikes for the people.

It was touristy. The most touristy place we’d been in months, I’d say, since perhaps Istanbul. The city was full of Irish pubs, night clubs, tour agencies, and all the other less savory businesses that cater to vagrant backpacker riff raff. Many of the signs included English as well.  How did we all of a sudden arrive from Siberia into Phuket?

The Mongolians use the Cyrillic alphabet (more or less) so I was stuck in a loop of trying to access the Russian sector of my memory banks as we rode by signs and advertisements, but continually coming up empty handed, the words being all in Mongolian. In fact, there was a shockingly small amount of Russian or Chinese on the signs here. For a country wedged between two great powers, both of which spoke not much English, it seemed interesting to me that Mongolia was choosing English as its second language of choice.

It was early, and the streets of Ulaanbaatar were empty, giving us the very incorrect indication that this was a reasonably relaxed city to wheel in. Feeling none to pressed for time, we began to meander through heart of the city, looking for hotels, guest houses, places to eat breakfast, and the like.

We rode by some Australian people, who I feel I can now safely say were Mongol Ralliers, having recently achieved their goal of driving from Europe to Ulaanbaatar. They looked like they’d been out all night, and yelled out to us as we drove by “So you think you can cycle in this city, eh? Have you seen the traffic?”

“What traffic?” we called back gesturing to the empty road around us.

We’d find out soon enough, though, exactly what they were talking about. Just give the maniacs time to wake up…

Speaking of maniacs and breakfast time, it was still having not found a hotel that we pulled into a little local eatery to eat a little breakfast and drink a little more coffee. All they had in the way of coffee, however, was this “American Flavour CoffeeKing” The stuff was really bad, like an old a melted coffee-flavored lozenge blended with Elmer’s glue.

The mug that came with it on the other hand…

We could not read the menu at all, though my mind kept trying to interpret it as Russian, so we just ordered at random. The food was interesting, like a cross between Chinese food and Russian food, without quite the stylistic refinement of either.

We got a very mayonnaisey carrot salad, a large pickled cabbage salad; and a hamburger patty with a fried egg on top, doused in what might have been termed Pace brand mild enchilada sauce, accompanied by two squat gers of rice each sporting a little areola of ketchup.

The women who ran they place were very friendly, though, and while they spoke no English, Russian, or Chinese, they were very kind to us in allowing us to plug our laptops in and to investigate the maps in the Lonely Planet.

So it was with a slightly better idea of where we were that we headed back out on the cycles. This by no means meant that we were out of the woods yet, however, for finding the hotel that we’d selected turned out to be another Irkutsk style venture into the confusing depths of a huge soviet housing block.

Inside the block, we were able to find first an old man who spoke Russian and was able to help get us to the right sub-sector of the gargantuan apartment block complex, then a young boy who was more than happy to lead us right to the door of the French youth hostel that we’d been interested in. They were unfortunately, however, booked solid for that night.

So we followed a Mongolian girl who spoke French but no English across that particular section of the soviet housing block over to the Sunny Motel, which turned out to be quite affordable and very cheap. The husband and wife who ran the place were also stellar folks, learning English, Chinese and Russian, and running a spick and span little operation.

We dropped off our things there, and climbed back on the cycles to head out to the train station. We needed to get from Ulaanbaatar over to Inner Mongolian China sometime in the next week and a half, but we had no idea exactly how often, and where or when the trains ran.

Now free of our packs, wheeling felt good, so nimble and speedy were we. We made short work of the trip to the giant yellow MTZ station.

Inside we found a bewildering number of options, including international trains to Beijing and cities in Inner Mongolia on a bi-weekly basis, and domestic trains much more often which take a traveler to just a few kilometers shy of the Chinese border.

Still not knowing exactly what our plans here in Mongolia would be, but happy to find that we had many options, we headed back out to unlock the cycles, stopping as we did so first at a SIM card kiosk and then at a very cheap Korean powdered coffee machine, which had been retrofitted to take Mongolian Tugrug.  The problem with the retrofitting operation was that the machine was unable to give change, and so cheap was the coffee that our smallest bill was enough for 6 cups. So we made friends and just bought them coffee with the excess change.

Then it was time to do a little wheeling. The traffic was getting very thick as we pulled back onto the roads, and we began to learn that the drivers here are none too perceptive. Ulaanbaatar is filled with giant and expensive SUVs, in part because they are useful during the long and savage Mongolian winters, and in part because of the recent boom in foreign direct investment and development centered on the exploitation of Mongolian mineral resources.

Regardless of petty excuses, this was a highly technical wheeling city. A rider in Ulaanbaatar must be vigilant against maniac drivers, assuming always that the people around you will be breaking the rules, never signaling their intent, and generally ignoring not just lanes, but the border between road and sidewalk as well.

Ulaanbaatar is also full of gers too, the traditional Mongolian nomadic dwelling. Gers are a pretty ingenious structure, resilient against the weather, and adjustable to increase ventilation, store heat, and the like. It might come as no surprise, then, that amidst the blocky soviet structures and new shiny metal and glass buildings of Ulaanbaatar, there are also plenty of gers just set up on open bits of pavement. As far as we could tell, there were no rules about parking, and I would assume this extends to parking of houses as well.

Suddenly, as it always seems to go, we realized we were starving. And so we dropped into a very high concept 1960s plastic shape themed restaurant, which turned out to serve traditional Mongolian food.

We ordered blind again, being unable to interpret the menu, but more or less struck gold with a large plate of red cabbage salad, and a sizzling meat and egg scramble. We also got a dumpling soup which came with a certain kind of white milky looking pork broth, which I’d only up until that point found at Korean restaurants.

We headed north then, past Freedom Night Club (American Soft Power get’s er done), and by a very intriguing Chinese business hotel. We decided to pull an uber lichht and send Scott in to shuo a little and see what he could see. He came out looking very excited. “The place is great. It’s definitely a Chinese business hotel, it’s about 20 bucks a night, it has in-room Ethernet, and there’s a dank looking restaurant downstairs.”

“Excellent.” I replied.

“They’re booked solid right now, but I’ve made some friends in there, and they’ll call us tomorrow.”

Feeling great about that option, we hit the road again, wheeling northwards and taking a right turn, veering slightly down hill now and out into the countryside. We spotted a large grocery store, and locked the bikes outside to go in and buy water and generally gawk at the products.

Here we saw the return of the Kickapoo joy juice that had been such a smash hit with David Miller in Borneo. Meat was moving quickly here, and the shoppers were invited to pick and choose from unpackaged piles of it that just sat in the bottom of the cooling unit.

Anything thing which we could not help but notice inside this and all the other Mongolian grocery stores that were to follow was that absolutely everything here that could be was branded with the name of Chengis Khan. There was Chengis Khan Vodka, energy drinks, crackers, sodas, beer snacks, chewing gum, cigarettes and lord knows what else.

From the grocery store, we headed on further into the countryside, and taking a left to wheel towards the Ger district, the part of town where there are many more gers than permanent structures, and where a family might move for anywhere from 2 months to 5 years to spend some time participating in the largest and only truly developed Urban Economy in Mongolia.

The air in Ulaanbaatar is some of the worst in the world, especially in winter. This happens for two reasons: one is that the local wind paterns and the proximity of certain elevation changes encourage air to local air to hang around the city. The other is that during the winter the poor in the ger district burn lots of coal and dung to heat their homes, while the impoverished burn garbage (we’re talking plastic bags to batteries). All that smoke gets trapped in the same cycle of bad air caused by reason number one, and makes for a truly heinous lungful.

Homes in the ger district are separated out by wooden fences and cordoned off into treeless yards. We rode along by the central giant trench, which seemed to act as a collecting spot for all the refuse of the community, and took it up into the hills, the heart of the ger district.

The people we encountered were generally smiling and seemed happy to see us visiting their neighborhood, which I am sure is not on the normal tourist’s itinerary for Ulaanbaatar. We were riding over the loose gravel roads, cresting the top of the hill when all of a sudden three new riders joined out pack.

They were boys, locals of the ger distric, and out wheeling presumably after school. They stuck with us for the rest our wheel through ger district, constantly challenging us to ride harder, or take turns faster. I was beginning to understand that the wild driving of the people in this city might stem from a more basic biological need for speed…

Back on the main road, we pushed it hard back into town. We were fighting a terrible headwind, and so the going was tough, with cars whipping by us, and the subsequent clouds of dry dirt they threw up ending up cought in the teeth. I would hold my breath as I went threw a cloud of dust, pedaling hard and thinking the heavens for the Maui Jims.

That evening, as we attempted to write, lying in our beds at the hotel, a savage domestic depute broke out. Two people, man and woman, in the room next to us were really having an intense argument. The walls were very thin, so we were the sorry recipients of the entire ordeal. Soon the argument escalated to screaming. Then we began to hear stomping and slamming of doors, then bashing noises and more screaming. Soon, what was almost certainly now a physical fight burst out into the hallway, and we heard a human body smash against the wall.

All the while, Scott and I were in the room, listening to Tom Waits’ album “Alice” wondering what we should do.

Throughout the next few hours, the battle nextdoor would simmer down then heat up again, with more banging, screaming, slamming and similarly violent noises. The Sunny Hotel was nice and all, but we needed to get a new place first thing the next morning.

And then it was suddenly 4 in the morning and we were hustling to get all our things together, take down the laundry line, pack up our lives and go to Mongolia.

Our time in Siberia felt like it had gone by in a flash, and I would be lying if I told you we didn’t find it difficult to place our excitement about Mongolia ahead of our fondness for Siberia.

It was gently raining on us as we wheeled through the still darkened streets of Ulan Ude towards the main train station. If this had been Krasnoyarsk, of course, it would have already been light, so far north is that city. When we got to the train station, we discovered that we had made an error in assessing the time of the train, miscalculating the change in time zones between here and Moscow (we’d been warned against this by that fine e-ticket lady in Novosibirsk). Luckily, we had made the error in our favor, so we had only to wait around for an extra hour so, letting time catch up to us.

It didn’t even take a full hour, though, for the train arrived 40 minutes before its schedule departure time, which gave us plenty of buffer to spend climbing aboard with all our stuff and smashing our way into our cabin. Inside we found two very friendly and patient Dutch ladies who were sleeping. They were very forgiving when we not only woke them up, but executed a very boisterous reshuffling of all the luggage in the entire compartment (including theirs) in order to make our cycles fit.

There are a few reasons why fitting the cycles on this train was difficult. The first is that this was a trans-Mongolian car, rather than a trans-Siberian car. The main difference between the two sets of rolling stock are that the trans-Mongolian cars are all Chinese made… This means less luggage space, and smaller bunks. On top of that, the train to Ulaanbaatar has no Platzcart class, so we had to deal with the more expensive and less luxurious “Kupe” class.

Regardless, we managed to get all our things into the train car, Storing my bike under one of our bunks, and Scott’s underneath the bunk of a nearby friendly gentleman.

Meanwhile Buryatya slowly transitioned into steppe outside the windows, opening up into wide and endless grassy fields, flanked by kind looking mountains. Not long into the ride, the train stopped at the Russian border town nestled up to Mongolia. It was a sleepy little Siberian village, and we were quite shocked to learn that the train had every intention of spending the next five hours here. We assumed that meant we needed to go file through some kind of customs processing, but after walking around for some time we found that too was not until after the 5 hours of waiting. It seemed we were doomed to wait here so that the train could be reconsolidated from cars arriving from all over Russia, bound for Ulaanbaatar, many of which, I believe were full of not people, but freight.

We had learned a few interesting things about this train already, apart from the fact that it featured Chinese rolling stock. It was also populated almost completely with foreigners.  We could barely remember how to socialize in English. Were the Russians not interested in visiting Mongolia? Or do they take a different train? I can’t be sure, though we invite speculation in the comments. One thing we can be sure of, however, is that the Mongolian railways symbol is fantastic.

The wait in the railroad station in Zamin Ud turned out to be even longer than expected, so we had plenty of time to wander around looking at the train loads of tanks that were heading down into Mongolia,

and to speculate as to what was in all the rusting chemical cars, especially the leaky ones.

Just like the other cars we’d ridden in Russia, ours on the Trans-Mongolian had a fantastic wood burning samovar, which provided the people with hot water, even throughout the entirety of the wait to consolidate the train.

And then it was finally time to go. We were all ordered to go back to our bunks, and the first wave of Russian officials bordered the train with more of those adorable drug-sniffing Dachshunds that we’d seen in the Novosibirsk airport, followed by wave two: a woman who’s only job seemed to be to wander through the car shouting at everyone to get out of their rooms, while new inspectors, with bigger and meaner looking dogs headed in to investigate, then to shout at everyone to get back in to the next “kupe” could be assessed.  She would approach each kupe, announcing “Please leave your room.”  As European the european tourists simultaneously paused in releif of her politeness and the directness of the request, she quickly followed it up with a curt, “Leave now.”  And so they left.

Next came the actual border police, who demanded our passports and immigration cards, taking them one by one, and determining whether or not our faces matched the documents and placing them into a very fetching double headed eagle emblazoned leather satchel that I would love to one day own, and disappearing with the documents. We then waited on the train for an hour and a half, unable to leave, while the passports were inspected, detected, and stamped.

Our documents arrived back in good shape though, and the train rumbled on towards Mongolia.

Once in Mongolia, we experienced essentially a parallel operation. It was slightly less heavily staffed, and there was only one, rather beat up looking dog, but they same basic algorithm.

It was time, after long last, to switch back to our “sun” passports, the one’s we’d last used way back when we left the UAE. We needed to enter Mongolia on these, since they contained our Chinese visas. At first the woman was skeptical.  “Where is your Russian Visa!” she demanded “Show it to me!” the librarian style silver chains that connected her glassed to her head jangling audibly.

I sheepishly produced the “moon” passport, not knowing if I was somehow breaking the law, and showed her the visa. She scrutinized it for a while as I blabbered on trying to explain that we needed to enter Mongolia on the passport that she had, and why we might legitimately have two passports to begin with. Finally with a snort and a whinny, she gave the “moon” book back to me and headed on down the car.

Great Success!

From there we continued to roll on towards Ulaanbaatar, through a Mongolia which I found to be much greener than I had ever suspected. Mongolia was downright lush in some parts.

While the train rumbled on, the Dutch women were teaching Scott some words in their mother tongue, in between rounds of insane Dutch scrabble (J’s are worth very few points). Meanwhile, I wandered off to the end of the train and played the ukulele, longing for a little more Siberia.

That morning I woke up somewhat groggily and late at the Hotel Buryatya, feeling disoriented and wondering for a moment where I was. I had been dreaming about Indonesia and black magic, and was very perplexed initially to find myself staring up at this soviet light fixture.

It all came back to me then… Buryatiya, Siberia, Beeline, Megafon, Plov, the Ladies of Shymkent, Turklaunch, Samer in Latakia, Hosam in Damascus, Sid in Dubai, Jackson Fu, Haba Xue Shan, Sri Lankan Koththu, Bangkok… AsiaWheeling was immense and it all flooded over me as though it were pouring out of that light fixture in a deluge of memory.

The crisp morning air and the bright sun of Buryatya brought me back into the present, as we climbed on the bikes and wheeled downhill in search of breakfast. We found it not far into the wheel, at this little people’s cafeteria, located conveniently in between a Russian orthodox church and a giant pile of dirt.

The piles of dirt had something to do with some really aggressive construction which was going on in downtown Ulan Ude. They seemed to be putting in a giant new promenade, terminating at a certain giant sickle and hammer topped obelisk in the city’s central round about.

The restaurant was filled with plenty of Russian people eating and drinking, and we scrutinized the menu, quite thrilled to find a few of our favorite Central Asian dishes available.

We ordered some Lakman and some Manty, but ended up getting a small plastic Tupperware container filled with instant chicken noodle soup mix, combined in equal parts with corn oil and some old leathery Pelmini. Things were very cheap, though, so I guess in Buryatiya you get what you pay for.

We continued from there, wheeling up and out of the city past the Hotel Cagaan Morin. We called a waypoint only an hour later, however, feeling that before we execute a savage Buryat wheel, we needed to eat something real.

So we stopped into a pizza place which was themed after old Soviet architecture magazines and home goods (remember, concept first!).

The pizzas took forever to arrive, which gave us plenty of time to look through ancient soviet magazines (which were quite honestly riveting).

When the pizzas finally did arrive, though, they were absolutely scrumptious, laden heavily with meat and cheese, and very light on the sauce.

Now, having actually eaten, we headed out for some more serious wheeling, pedaling towards the outskirts of town, and soon finding ourselves in the midst of a giant grassy freight yard.

And the shot…

On our way out of the freight yard, we also spotted this amazing announcement, warning against the dangers of crossing the rails while trains were passing.

We did our best to follow its instructions, dashing across a few rails just as a train was coming, and heading over to a new road that ran alongside the river.

Now here was some real Siberia! It was overgrown, and full of abandoned houses.

Stray dogs wandered everywhere, and picked through giant piles of garbage, we continued to wheel on, past this long inoperable pipeline suspension bridge, and past a giant power plant belching smoke into the sky.

Eventually, we were siphoned into a road that dead ended at a large swath of pounded sand, where men slept in the back of their Marshriutkas, cigarettes burning in their lips, and waited for passengers to arrive.

We turned around at the packed sand, and headed back to the old pipeline suspension bridge, where we found a pedestrian crossing that we used to get across the river and into a new and somewhat wealthier neighborhood.

Now we were back amidst the gigantic Soviet housing blocks, and courtyard gardens.

We suddenly realized that we were frighteningly, terribly, thirsty. And just as suddenly, the ever ubiquitous Russian water selling kiosks all disappeared or closed for a smoke break simultaneously, and we were sent on a maddening goose chase across the outskirts of Ulan Ude in search of water.

We ran into stationary shops, restaurants that only had beer or soda, and even into an English School. Eventually, in parched desperation, we rode on into the next neighborhood, where we finally found an open kiosk next to a bus stop.

Drinking the whole liter and a half in nearly one barbaric gulp, we headed back onto the road, which siphoned us towards the city center. We spotted an interesting riverside byway made entirely of sand, and decided to give it shot. It turned out to be an exceedingly technical wheel, so thick and mushy was the sand. Who would ever build a rode like this?  So tough was it, in fact, that we eventually gave up and headed back up onto the main road to take a large bridge back into the city.

As we crossed over the bridge, we spotted an under construction set of new residential roads, and decided that since the construction was not taking place that day, we would make like the locals, and just start using them. So we headed into a new part of town, marked by some very interestingly ornate wooden buildings. At the edge of the wooden buildings neighborhood, we spotted a large paved path that ran along a central canal.

We hoisted the Speed TRs up and onto that path and began wheeling it.  The pavement was uneven, cracked and covered with broken glass, but the sights and scenery was fascinatingly degraded and industrial, and our Big Apples seemed up to the task, so we wheeled on.

When the path on which we were riding petered out into a wasteland of twisted rusting hunks of metal, asbestos siding, and broken glass, we moved off the path, cutting across a large construction site.

We wheeled on through more gnarled buildings, half way between being built or falling to pieces. In the midst of it all, we met this young Buryat boy, also on a folding bicycle.

He joined us to wheel for a bit, and we chatted in bits of English and Russian. He did not seem to speak either of the two languages very well, but what we lacked in ability to communicate, we easily made up for in the comradery of the road.

It was not long after we’d made it out of that construction/junk-yard area of Ulan Ude that we realized Scott’s bike had shed some important screws that held the rear rack on. We headed to a market street to look for some replacements. I approached an old Buryat man in a giant cowboy hat and asked him where he thought we might find some screws, showing him an example of what we were looking for. He thought for a moment, and then very clearly and confidently told me that there were no screws of that size in all of Buryatya. Apologizing, he then walked away.

We, of course found plenty of them at bargain basement prices in a hardware store two shops down, and screwed his rack back together using the key from our long lost Indian bike lock.

We then headed up to investigate a giant Soviet-Buryat theatre, with carvings of traditional peoples on the front of it, before wheeling back to the old Hotel Buryatya to do a little Laundry.