Since we didn't really want to spend 6 days non-stop on a train, we
broke the journey up at a few places:
1. Suzdal - this is a little town not far outside Moscow, so our 2
hour train there didn't really feel like part of the epic
trans-Mongolian trip. It was an important town in medieval times,
being the seat of one of the principalities that were the cradle of
Russia as it later became. Like the other principalities, it
eventually got eclipsed by Moscow, and as it was not on a major trade
route (even now it's actually 20 miles away from the railway), it
became a sleepy backwater, and various invasions, plagues and fires
reduced it still further. At one point, it had a church for every 12
inhabitants. This misfortune is now a positive point in its revival as
a tourist town - as it's small, the sights are all clustered together,
and there are no tower blocks to spoil the rustic charm. Much of the
town has had a facelift in the last couple of decades, and it's now a
charming place to stroll around for a couple of days, investigating
churches and monasteries. The cathedral especially is a popular spot
for wedding photos, and we saw plenty of brides and grooms around the
place. A real antidote to the cities we'd stayed in in Russia until
now.
2. Yekaterinburg - in the Urals, this is the closest city to the
Europe-Asia dividing line and has a rather cheesy monument just
outside the city that we went to in order to have one foot in each
continent. Perhaps more importantly, it is the city in which the last
Tsar and his family were held when they were shot and buried. The site
of their burial a forest outside the city is now being developed into
a religious centre, with seven wooden churches being built - one for
each member of the family. The choice of wood, and of old-style
iconography inside suggests that the Orthodox church is intent on
rolling back the years to before the revolution. For example, women
visiting the site must wear skirts (they have some wrap-around ones
there that you can put over trousers). Similarly, in the city centre,
over the site where they were held before being shot, a new cathedral
has been built - even though there's a perfectly good one a few
hundred meters away, that just needed a bit of renovation. Inside the
Romanovs are painted in a traditional style with haloes- for all seven
of them have been canonized. I found it all a bit odd - whilst they
were a very symbolic family, they were unfortunately seven amongst
millions who were killed for being too rich, too intellectual or too
aristocratic, or because they were accused of made-up crimes, or even
just who were caught up in the civil war or the famines of the early
soviet period. A memorial to all the victims of Communism might be
more appropriate. However, the tsars were heads of the orthodox
church, and were accorded semi-divine status in past centuries, so
perhaps it's the logical thing within the beliefs of the Orthodox
church.
3. Lake Baikal - we didn't do a lot here, just pottered along admiring
the lake, and the snow-capped mountains on the far shore. Again it was
another good place to just relax for a day or two. We made sure we
tried the local fish (Omul, and also Sig) as they are unique to the
lake, so you won't see them on restaurant menus anywhere else. They
are just two of over a thousand species unique to the lake, which as
well as being the world's largest by volume (20% of the world's
unfrozen fresh water) is also the oldest, having been formed 70
million years ago. Anyway, they were delicious.
4. Mongolia - as we only had 3 days here, we'd arranged a tour. so we
were whisked straight out of Ulan Batur and spent 2 nights in a ger
(traditional nomads' tent) in a very pretty national park. It was
pretty soft ger living - we had proper beds, a TV and toilets and hot
showers were a short walk away. But it still got pretty cold at night
when our fire died down - our neighbours had a little thermometer with
them and recorded a low of 4 degrees inside their ger! we explored the
area and tried our hand at the traditional Mongolian activities of
horse-riding, archery and er, table tennis. Our final day was spent on
a whistle stop tour of ulan batur, which is developing pretty fast by
the looks of all the construction and the gleaming new tower blocks.
Unfortunately, one of the developments is apparently taking place on
the site of what was the last public kid's playground in the city. We
finished with a variety performance of traditional Mongolian arts-
dancing, music , singing and acrobatics. The throat singing, has to be
heard to be believed. It starts out like a didgeridoo and then the
singer manages to make both a whistling sound and sing some words at
the same time. The two young contortionists were pretty amazing, too,
balancing on each others' elbows or hips and then doing handstands.and
bringing their feet round to their ears.
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