Back in Ulan Ude

Everything went wonderful today--almost everything. 

I had to catch a bus early, and so I told everybody in the hostel to get me up early. One lady promised she would get it done because she was a light sleeper and early riser. 

I set two alarms and did not sleep much worrying about whether I would get up in time. Then about four o'clock I noticed the light sleeper/early waker's bed was empty. She was already awake.  No problem. She would wake me. Relax. But I could not go back to sleep. So at 5:00 I got up to shower. The lady was not around outside in the common room but as I walked back in, I saw her in a different bed than where she had gone to sleep. She waved at me and, noticing my quizzical look said "I moved.   Bedbugs "

OK, I thought.  Good reason to move. But is it really possible to have a six bunkbed dorm and have bedbugs in just one? Can you move away from them? And how does she know they were there? Don't you find out only the next morning?

Any ways, I headed out the door worrying whether I would get any taxi, and especially one at the proper price. It was barely 6:00 in the morning. By the time I had gotten to the sidewalk, I had two taxis drawing a bead on me. But a third made a wild u-turn in front if them. I showed him the little piece of paper that I had asked the hostel manager to write the destination and price (voxhall 4000t). He said "yup." I got in and boom all my worries were over. 

I was relieved because I had a real problem a few days ago getting back from Mongolia. I got attacked by about five taxi drivers who wanted 10000 to get me to the hostel. I said 6000 since that is what my hostel manager said it should cost. (And what I had paid a week ago to get to the bus station. ) Nobody wanted to go to 6000. So I started to walk away, and two guys came up and said come with them. I said 6000 and wrote it on the card for the hostel ( with the map) and showed it to them. They said "yes," using universal sign language if not words.  They take me to their car, which already has a driver and another guy in it. I show the card and the number 6000 on it. He says," yeah, and shakes his head up and down. I put my luggage in the trunk (something I don't like to do because it can be held as hostage. )

(I am writing this while drinking a really bad beer. It is Ulan Ude local and tastes sour like the fermented mares milk in the yurts.    But I finished it.  ) 

So I get in the taxi ( remember--every car in this part of the world is a taxi. You just have to pay to get a ride. ) I got me and two guys in back, the driver and a passenger in front. And my luggage in the trunk. The crew is just out looking for a way to get somebody to pay for their night out. They are driving the right direction. Finally, I get them to pull over near my hostel. ( They had no idea where it was, but had gotten close with the map card and my directions. ) so, they stop. I get out, And magically the trunk opens, my stuff is out. I hand the guy the 6000 and he says 10000. I say 6000. He gets mad and starts shouting. I show him the card that says 6000. He just yells some more and says 10 with his fingers. I hand out 6000. He starts to walk away without it, turn sand takes it, then storms back to the drivers seat. I start crossing the street to the hostel. The driver is making a hasty u turn right back my way. I did not look back, but hurried on, finished crossing the street and hurried in the door. 

No such problem today. Just got on the bus and twelve hours later pulled into Ulan Ude. I had made reservations at ones hostel but when u got there was told they were full, but had made a place for me at a hostel a kilter or so away. And up six flights of stairs. 

I was disappointed because that was an additional kilometer away from the train station.  And in a couple of days I have to leave from there at 5:00 am.    But I found another good hostel nearby. And all is well. 

Yertland

I have been down in central Mongolia, northern end of Gobi desert. 

Five days of trekking through the desert by foot, camel, and horse cart, jeep, and motorcycle was quite interesting. Fed by local herder families. Drank fermented mares milk. Ate goat cheese (what the lady is making below). Saw lots of rocks, sand, and goats, sheep, horses and some big beetles. Slept in tents and yerts. 

Only electricity was solar. And that was just enough to run the televisions and cell phones. 

There is a lot to say about this segment of the trip. Suffice for now to leave it at: "glad I did it, and it is good to be back." 

Ger To Ger

So here I am in the Ger to Ger offices. This is the company that offers travel experiences that let you live with families in their yurts (yerts, or gers). Out in the Gobi desert. Or near it. 

Anyway.   (Now it is twelve hours later.) saw a monastery, a beautiful museum, and lots else. Also had a four hour lecture orientation for the yert trip. 

I have to pack now. Maybe I will write more as I get ready for sleeping. 

Where I am going for five dsys has, I am told, no electricity.  So don't expect communication for a while. 

In Ulanbatar At Last

I am in a strange land today. 

Saw an old guy on my bus wearing a Ghengis Khan t-shirt. Yup, this is where it happened. 

My day started with google telling me that they had blocked my account. So I could not send out the long blog I had about the trip from Irkutsk. And it has apparently disappeared. So I have to rewrite it. I will later. 

The bus ride today was long. Thirteen some hours out of a promised 11. Three of that was border crossing. No real glitches, but it was forever. 

Mongolia had a few trees far north, but several hundred kilometers ago, it gave way to rolling hills and flat fields covered with sparse grass, an occasional yurt, lots if wandering cows (including on the highway slowing traffic). A couple of times I even saw herds of horses running along. Really pretty. 

I was real proud of myself. Got to the city and a couple of taxi hustlers wanted to get me to go into the center. Told me it was seven kilometers. I even  found what I assumed was an English couple in the station who sis it would cost me 10000 ($6) to get to town. I decided I would take taxi, but needed money first. It was hard to find bankomat, but I did, and got the money. On the way back to taxi stand, I found a bus. I figured--why not?

I asked the conductor. At first she did not understand, but when I showed her the map and pointed at the big square she knew exactly what I was talking about. So, for 400, I was going to get a ride that would have cost 10000 in a taxi. You get what you pay for. 

The conductor told me what I assumed meant she would tell me when to get off. Even named the street. Following along on My map, I got up and moved to the exit at the right time. She said wait. I did three stops later she tells me it was my street (by name) and that my street was "back there," pointing. What she did not say was that it was about a mile back there. 

Anyway, I got here. 

Religion in Russia

I don't have any iPhone pictures to post on this topic. And I have no access to a card reader to download pics.  So, no pics for now!!!

The minibus driver yesterday had a battery operated prayer wheel spinning on his dashboard. 

In Moscow I saw more than a few icons hanging from rear view mirrors in cars. To my western mind these looked like Russian St. Christopher medals. 

More than a few times I wandered into churches in Moscow or Irkutsk where I saw active worship going on.

Along the Moscow River last week, I was excluded from a church because I was wearing shorts. ( So I zipped on my legs, went back in, and watched about three hundred parishioners as a herd of priests conducted some really solemn mass--incense, procession, call and response chanting, a full choir..., really glorious.)

Today on Olkhon Island, I am in one of the five holy shamanic places in the world. (I don't know what that means, exactly. But it has religious significance. ) This place has prayer flags hung around nearly every vertical support--tree, fence post, whatever. 

Irena, the Moscow tour guide, says she was secretly baptized when she was a child, as many others were. 

And next week I am going to Mongolia. Although it is now an independent country, it was one of the former Soviet Socialist Republics for most of the last century, and therefore in the same boat as Russia itself under the communists. And my "list" for Mongolia includes a few monasteries. 

Suffice it to say that,  despite atheistic communist rule for seven decades, religion survived. I'm not saying it was easy. Stalin had more than a few churches destroyed, one famously because it impeded the flow of processions into Red Square. And Irena's baptism was "secret."

Other churches and monasteries were turned into museums of religion. 

One of the things Russians were talking about, I was told, around the time they were first exploring space was whether the cosmonauts would be able to see god. When Gargarin said yes, that he thought he could, Kruschev suppressed the comment. 

In general, while there was little that said one could not actually practice religion, the church itself suffered, and its more vocal supporters were marginalized. 

Part of Marx's seminal Communist Manifesto decried religion as "the opiate of the people." So there was a philosophical basis for the communist government to disparage religion. The Manifesto's reason for its attitude towards religion is interesting: the problem with religion is that it made people give up on improving things in this world because they were interested only in the next. Marx felt people should concentrate in this world. But religion dulled that sentiment just as opium dulls the real needs if the addict. It is hard to get the proletariat to throw off their chains if they know chains are only in this world, and they care only about the next. 

Curiously, this philosophical argument was not the real reason the church suffered under godless communism. The communists did not like religion mostly because the church had power. It was, along with the czar, the Establishment. If the communists wanted to take over, they had to cut off the church's power, just as they had eliminated the czar. 

If the church had not been also a political power, it would probably have been ignored. So, what the communists focused on was breaking its influence. Once that was done, the church was left somewhat alone. People were even allowed to practice their religion. I attended a mass forty years ago, and saw dozens of young seminarians studying in Yaroslavl at that time. And, as Irena is proof, people were being baptized in 1988. 

Watching a Russian orthodox service is pretty difficult. Some of it takes place behind an iconostasis that hides the action. It takes hours. (When I said I saw a mass back in 1973, I should have said I saw part of one in an hour or so.

i have some pics to illustrate se of this, but it will have to wait for a better Internet connection. 

Astronomy in Olkhon Island

Ok, so I am walking down a dirt road, coming back from the beach, looking for a little store to buy a beer for dinner ( the "board" in "room and board" at this place   includes three square meals, but nothing except coffee and tea for drinking). 

So, among the souvenirs stalls, cheap cafes, and all that you find in most tourist places, what should I find but one of those blow up planetariums where you pay a few bucks (probably rubles) crawl in, and see the constellations on the inside of the dome. I did not expect to see one of these. 

No, I did not go in. 

Instead I did something I do not think I have ever done before in my whole life. I went  a store and bought one can of beer. 

i had seen other guys do it. Buy just one tall can of beer. Usually one of those stronger beers that i don't know the names of. Mickeys or Malt liquor or something.  I looked at them, the guys buying one can of high alcohol beer. I looked at the way they were dressed, and how they carried themselves kinda down low and humble. And I wondered what circumstances drove those people to buy just one can. Why not a six pack or whatever? Did they not have a few left in the fridge from last week's six pack? 

Well, anyway, now I am one of them and I understand. They live at a boarding house that does not serve beer for dinner!

 More astronomy: I have thought about a starscape of the big rock on the lake here. But, really, as of 11:30 last night it was still light enough that there we were essentially starless. I was trying to go to sleep, but couldn't because of the caffeine in the too much tea I had for dinner. That is why I had to find the beer tonight. To avoid the caffeine. For health reasons. 

Update woke up in the middle of the night. The pointers in the Big Dipper were real high, and pointing south to the North Star. 

Olkhon Island

I am on on Olkhon Island, a long stretch of land near the western coast of Lake Baikal. The view above is from the cliff just outside my room. 

To get here, we bought a ticket at the hostel, and went downstairs and waited for the van. It was 90 minutes late. Eventually, though, it got there, picked us up, and dropped us at the.minibus station in town. There we joined a dozen others headed to Olkhon, We reached the ferry station after three o clock, but were told there was a four hour wait. Our driver figured he could get there quicker if he went across into the other lane ( the one drivers going the other way are supposed to use). He was right. We passed a lot of cars waiting properly in line and an hour later were boarding the ferry for the quick trip to the south end of the island. 

Once on the island there was no paved road. The roads on the mainland had been rough enough. These were worse. 

At one point, the mini bus could not make it up the hill. We all got out. The driver backed down the hill, took a running start, and reloaded us at the top. Finally at six o'clock we got to town. 

When we pulled in, we were dropped off at various places. I was worried because I had been told there was no room for me in the hostel, but that they would find me a room I could share with another tourist with a local neighbor family.  I envisioned living in some spare room with the family milling around. In fact the neighbor had a two story guest house with four purpose built guest rooms on a cliff overlooking the lake. There was in fact, no "family" around. And since they were not sold out, I had a room to myself with a great view.

Only way it could have been better would have been a sit down toilet instead of a squatter. (And heaven had it been en suite. )

This is quite a place.