On a bus to Lake Baikal

Mongolia was cold and Ulaanbaator the poorest and most underdeveloped city we've ever seen. It seems that nearly half the city consists of the Mongolian equivalent of a trailer park, substituting a trailer for the original mobile home, the semi-permanent felt yurt, known as the ger. Ulaanbaator was originally known as the city of felt, traditionally being a ger encampment that grew over time to become the largest city in Mongolia. During the communist era, however the Soviet Union pumped money into Mongolia, subsidizing the building of numerous
housing blocks and nearly eliminating the ger from the city. But, with the fall of the Soviet Union, that funding ended and the population was forced to revert to the traditional housing, if they could afford even that. The dirt streets of the city are now littered with homeless children and hypodermic needles, and as the friendly host at our guest house said, "there are some good things and some bad things," about the end of communism and the acceptance of capitalism in Mongolia.

But Mongolia was in a celebratory mood when we were there. It seemed the whole country was high on the olympcs. Mongolia won 4 medals, including 2 gold, making 31st place overall. The night we returned from our outing to the national park was the night of the homecoming of the Olympic medalists. Each gold medalist recieved the equivalent of $1,125,000 in a combination of private donations and government rewards. As our guest house host also told us, hopefully this will symbolize a new beggining for Mongolia and the end of the hardships brought on by the transition from communism.

We left Mongolia wishing that we'd had more time to spend there. It seemed like we were some of the only people who weren't planning on staying for a few weeks or a month. The country is so vast and the land so undeveloped that it takes a long time to get any distance. Thus, though we would have liked to see the unbelievably vast plains of the steppe or the camels wandering the Gobi desert, the furthest we were able to make it away from the city was about 70 kilometers to Terelj national park.Terelj is situated in a mountaious river valley and filled with gers for tourists to stay in. It's supposedly the birthplace of Ghengis Khan, Mongolia's national hero. We stayed for two nights and three days, more than is necessary to appreciate the park. The highlight of our stay was the six hours we spent on stubborn Mongolian horses trying hopelessly to get them to go anywhere faster than we could have gone at a slow walking pace. Or trying not to have them stop and lay down unannounced.

At the moment, we're sitting on a bus to lake Baikal. We left Irkutsk early this morning to go to Olkohn island which is situated approximately half way up the eastern side of the lake.Lake Bailal is the planet's largest fresh water lake, containing 20% of all the fresh water on earth. If all other sources of fresh water were to dissapear tomorrow, the water in lake Bailal would sustain the worlds needs for 40 years. It's nearly a mile deep and it's said that taking a sip from the lake's drinkably clean water adds 5 years
to your life.

And finally, my first impression of Russia: cheap cologne does not adequately conceal the odour caused by never washing one's clothes.

--Richy