have you ever been in a chest freezer for over an hour? me neither, but this place must be bloody close. we arrived in irkutsk, siberia just after 8am this morning to be greeted with minus two and snow. not the warm welcome we were after, but certainly keeps you awake.

(just like to say that this russian keyboard doesn't have capitals. it keeps every letter at the same equal level...a kinda fair alpha system)

continuing on from my last elongated sars email without the fluffy crap about scenery...well...i couldn't be bothered either with this email. Just imagine the windows-xp grassland wallpaper but yellow like the blond stubble of a two-day-grown fuzzy beard.

ok. where was i.

capital of mongolia is ulaanbaatar or otherly known to locals and lazy tongue english as "ub". ub is not what i expected nor what i would unexpect the expected . i was expecting to see poor disadvantged, lepracy infested, horse and cart sort of stuff. but was introduced to a weird world, a scenery that was diluted of all colours. it was a mixture of concrete and dust with modern cars and modernly dressed people. the facade was similar to the western world with kareoke bars and pro-american budwiser bars.

our tour leader, looked like a retired kgb official. long jacket with military button shoulders, squinty eyes (the one's that look suspiciously side to side without head movement) and a hazy accent. his name or maybe codename was "ider". he met us at the train station and became our escort for the next four days.

roast of the day, week, month, year, light year in mongolia is mutton. variation of the delicacy is limited to the number of vegetables that accompany the dish. the meat, mostly lamb, is either roasted or boiled and fresh if the animal is close to the kitchen door. from raw material to final product is around about a few hours. it is preferable to order dinner at lunchtime, this gives the chef enough time to find, hunt, kill, cut, cook and serve. otherwise, two hours and you might get a sloppy cut.

second night we spent at a ger camp in a yert (85km from the capital). it's white, ten metres in diameter, cast iron stove in the middle and the infusion of mutton lingers the air. the yert is continually kept warm by a local who invites himself in and stokes the fire every three hours of the night. although it is minus 5 outside, white oven roasts at about 34 degrees as indicated on my watch (once i wiped the sweat away from the screen). it got that hot during the night that i had to regulate the heat with the tiny cat-flap of a door at the front of the yert. pain in the ass really.

at around 3am, after sauna man had just left, i again open the door of the yert to welcome some oxygen. beers that night, from our yert party, had needed to be released. so i turned around, got dressed, shoe in each hand, turned back around...and this bloody big fat evil wolf was standing at the door of the yert!!!

i tried the universal word of "shoo" and waving my arms to get this wolf to piss-off. after the third "shoo" i accidently threw my sweaty shoe out the door. the projectile got rid of the wolf and i shut the door in a flash. problem was my shoe was outside and the seal needed to be broken. five minutes later the bladder scale was too high and i went outside. thank god the wolf was gone.

during the day we went horse riding on these stumpy legged in-bred pony slash donkeys. we rode with three locals to a remote buddhist monestary in the hills. the scenery was remarkable. the locals had a ball, they would ride behind you secretly and then smack your horse's arse. horse would do a mono then bolt like the wind. locals thought it was hilarious. my family jewels don't think so.

other activities in mongolia included some throat singing performances and an injection of history from the local museums. by the way, it's chinggis khan not genghis khan (genghis is some american translation).

back on the two-nighter train to irkutsk we had a twelve hour border crossing in to russia. only about three of those hours provided access to a toilet. dehydration was the key to survival.

five of those hours was spent alone in a cargo hold. we awoke in the morning to find we were the only carriage with no engine and amongst russian fuel carriages. it was funny to see the locals unload boxes of cashmere and various other crap to people hiding behind carriages laden with wood. After the customs offical left, they would come out of hiding and pass back the belongings to the locals on board.

the previous night was intense session of vodka with three guys from france. it was absolutely hilarious as we poked fun at the masculine female provoditza. one frenchmen passed-out in the corridor, another rearranging the carriage decor. Cass from our group was violently sick on the mongolian version of russian vodka and was continually sick throughout the border crossing. with no access to toilets, she had to vomit in bags and store them in our berth.

tomorrow we drive to lake baikal, the worlds deepest lake at 1.6km deep for two nights.

times up again...catch ya later.

sorry can't write personal emails, as time is short.

cheers,
hatton.