Harbin Ice Festival

Continuing the trend of new year travels, another weekend, another trip. This time to Harbin. Ever since hearing about the Ice Festival at Harbin, it's something that I wanted to see. Being comfortable in tropical climates, snow, ice and cold in general still fascinates me. So I wanted to head to somewhere cold... colder than Beijing cold. Harbin was supposed to be the answer. In this respect I was a little disappointed. Sure it was cold, but it wasn't thaaat cold. I think it went down to about -15, but with copious layers of clothing, it wasn't too much trouble to handle - I was expecting much worse (apparently I missed a big snow storm by a day!). It was kind of like eating a KFC Zinger after seeing the ad on TV - sure it's a little hot, but there's no flames coming out of my mouth.

Anyway, you shouldn't write off Harbin as a warm place based on my detailed one weekend study of the meteorological conditions of the area, it's been a warm winter this year. Harbin itself is an interesting place worth a visit. The city has a reasonably strong Russian influence which is apparent. The city also seemed friendly enough and was easy enough to get around. I wasn't there for long, and I was there for one reason really, to see this Ice Festival - so that's what I did. Before going I was given a tip to go the the Snow Fesitval during the day time and head to the Ice Festival (basically next door) in the evening (because it's more spectacular at night with lights on). This is what I did, and it turned out to be a very good tip. The Snow Festival was pretty good, albeit quite expensive. Basically you walk through a park which has many giant sculptures made of snow. Kind of a nice way to spend an afternoon. There are also some (expensive) activities you can do in the park like taking a dog sled (on dogs that have no idea what they are supposed to be doing), driving a go kart, sliding around in a tube etc, which can be done - but honestly they looked pretty lame for the most part. So after a couple of hours walking around and snowball fights in the park we headed off to the Ice Festival - what I was really looking forward to. There was nice lady out the front of the Snow Festival who offered to drive us for free to the Ice Festival so long as we bought the tickets off her. We did. She delivered as promised. Everyone was happy. Although, somthing dodgy was definately up. We were escorted through the entrance, not in the same way that the regular people were. But anyway, it worked out well for us, and cost the same price (and we got a free lift included!). So, now that I have gotten past explaining the details of entry, I can now explain the Ice Festival itself. Imagine this: a large, cold outdoor area full of giant stuff made out of ice. Well, that's basically it. There are castles, and temples and slides and fish and wind mills and towers and all sorts of things made out of ice. Some of the ice buildings you can enter and even climb. It's damn slippery though climbing ice staircases. As with all Chinese tourist attractions, it's also quite crowded. So basically, if the guy at the top was to slip and fall over, then he would take the 200 people below him out too. Which would be quite comical. Nevertheless, during my brief stay (un)fortunately, I didn't see this happen. The Harbin hosptial must be kept very busy dealing with ice fall related injuries.
I arrived at the ice festival a little before sundown and walked around a bit. Then the sun went down. The temperature dropped a few more degrees. The lights came on. That was nice. The ice sculptures are lit up in various coloured lights, which gives a nice effect at night. So overall, yeah, the place is better at night. Aside from one thing - you need to watch out for the horses that runaround with tourists following in carts behind them. The horses go pretty fast and don't seem to care if there are people in their way. These horses become a little more difficult to dodge when it gets darker. Another facet of Harbin life that keeps the local hospital busy I'm sure. So the Ice Festival was certainly worth the visit, but I couldn't help feeling the same as how I felt when I visited Legoland: "This is awesome, but it would be so much more awesome if I was 10 years old!" So that's pretty much my experience of Harbin. The following day I had two choices 1) visit the tiger park, 2)laze around the city. I chose 2. I sort of regret not going to see the famed Harbin tiger park, but at this point I'd had my maximum dose of Chinese tourism for the weekend so I decide to relax instead and see what the new city had to offer. I also discovered what the city doesn't offer - tissues. In the room I stayed in there were no tissue (not even toilet related) and also in every single restaurant I went to, none pro

vided tissues. You had to buy some (they were on the menu), and when you did you get a whole box of them. I guess every city has its weird quirks. Overall, Harbin is a good place to visit if you enjoy ice related amusements the way ten year olds enjoy Lego.

Shangri-La

After the two days of walking we were ready for some rest. Shangri-La is an ideal chilled out place for a rest. A really interesting place, with a few different names, but i'm going to stick with Shangri-La for the purposes of this post. The Shangri-La old town - which wanted to be like Lijiang's old town, was burnt down a year ago. I'm not sure if it's because of this, or just because it's quite hard to get to, there seemed to be no tourists there. A very nice place to relax and walk around. There is a monastery just outside town to go see. We rolled along on a bus to go and see it. It's pretty expensive once you get there. Still probably worth seeing if you've never been to Tibet (like me). There is a large Tibetan influence in Shangri-La - we tried some yak, and various other Tibentan foods. It was strange and unlike anything I'd ever eaten before - but it was still quite nice. Yak butter milk tea was a bit too rich for me though! For those wondering, yak tastes exactly like beef. After all this relaxing in Shangri-La, we needed something to do. We searched the town high and low for Yak wool jumpers. The closest we could find were outrageously coloured hoodies. They were promptly purchased.

Other than that, there's not that much to say about the place. It's cold. It's pleasant. I thoroughly enjoyed my time there.

Tiger Leaping Gorge

This has to be one of the most beautiful places in China. Just a naturally beautiful location that China hasn't managed to interfere with too much yet with its unique brand of tourism. I think the main reason is it's a little tricky to get to, but not too tricky luckily! We took a flight from Beijing to Lijiang. Lijiang is one of those towns that suffers from the aforementioned problem - naturally beautiful, surrounded by snow capped mountains, but completely destroyed by local tourism. There is a "old town" which is apparently UNESCO heritage listed. I'm no expert, but most of the buildings seem newly built to look old and they are all just shops and restaurants anyway. Since the old town of Lijiang was so disappointing, we ventured to the "ancient town" of Shuhe, which was not far away. This was even more commercialised than the old town - essentially an ancient looking shopping mall. So after seeing what Lijiang had to offer we decided it wasn't for us. Time to get out to some of those surrounding snow capped mountains I say! Since hearing of it, the High Trail of the Tiger Leaping Gorge had been high on my todo list. The Gorge (or "George" as one traveler from Sydney insisted it was pronounced) is a 2hr bus ride from Lijiang. This was amazing. Not the bus ride, the hike. One of the best hikes I've ever done. The best part of two days walking, and constantly faced with epic views. The main thing that struck me is how big everything is. There is no hope of capturing it all in a photo. Even standing there looking at the gorge, the surrounding mountains, villages and farmland you have to look around constantly to capture it. There is just so much to see. And this is how it is for the entire two day walk. It's not like some other walks where you might walk for a long time to see the view... no... the view is always there, by your side, as you walk. Outrageous. The walk itself is almost "choose your own adventure". There are so many trails crisscrossing the mountain. Initially we were worried that we might get lost by taking the wrong trail, but it soon became apparent that they all headed vaguely in the same direction, so you'd get to the end, but maybe a bit later. Alternatively, you can try to determine which is the "main" route by trying to analyse which path contains the most donkey shit. We started the hike in a village and walked through some farms, precariously avoiding goats and cows as we climbed to what we thought was something near the peak of the ridge. This is followed by a merciful stretch of flattish land through some forest before the "28 bends" starts The 28 bends was supposed to be the hardest, but it wasn't too bad. The main problem with this section was that it exposed us to the sun!! We prepared for cold (we went in winter), but totally forgot about the sun. The result? We got burnt to shit. It's very sunny up there above the clouds, and the damn sun gets reflected in all directions by the surrounding snow capped mountains.  
We thought we were hiking pros. We thought we could have the two day hike done in a day if we pushed it. But since we were such pros we thought we'd take it easy and get to our night's accommodation in about four hours. It turns out we were not pros. The first day we walked about 7 hours and reached the "halfway house" guest house just before sundown feel cold, tired and very hungry. The "halfway house" is pretty poorly named as we discovered the next day, as there was only a couple more hours left before we reached the end of the trail. The next day we got up and armed with a hello kitty guitar and local Yunnan drum we completed the walk making many friends and terrible music along the way.
A great thing about this walk is that there are guest houses dotted along the trail where you can stop for the night or just for a rest. The guest house we stayed at was comfortable enough. The trail seems to end at a guest house called Tina's. Tina is apparently a very good business woman and seems to dominate all else in the region - she makes things quite convenient for travelers, with shuttle buses, hostels in neighbouring towns and shitty hand drawn maps. But my advice to potential travelers is that there is no need to rely on Tina's services. She's a bit expensive, and there are a myriad of other (friendlier) accommodation and transport options available. After we finished the trail we After we finished the trail we headed down to the gorge itself. This is done by climbing over a series of sketchy ladders and footbridges as we made our way down the almost shear cliff face. This is not one for the "scared of heights" persuasion. But it's definitely worth it. If you rush you could do it in 2 hrs, but we did it slowly in 4, taking time to stop for pictures and take in the power of the river flowing through the gorge. Amazing. Again, the size of the thing is unimaginable. As a small observation made on this trip, travelling with small pink Hello Kitty guitars is extremely entertaining.

Mongolia - Terelj National Park

We didn't spend too much time in Ulan Bator.  It's a busy city with constant traffic jams and power stations built far too close by causing a permanent haze over the sky, in what is otherwise a pristine country.  The city is interesting enough, but only a quick stop while we purchased some of Mongolia's fine cashmere (it's expensive!).

The last part of our trip was mainly spent at Terelj National Park, a national park only about 60km away from the capital.  This park is quite a sight in the autumn time.  I spent many hours aimlessly hiking around, and really enjoyed taking in the scenery.  On one of the hikes a friendly cat joined me, following me around for about two hours before deciding it was bored.


Our first night there we spent with a nomad family.  Again no running water, but satelite TV.  Lhama, our host, wore makeup, jewelry and high heels as she shoveled shit around and milked cows - quite a site. We helped her make dinner, tsuivan, a stir-fry stew thing with vegetables, flour based noodle like things and horse meat.  It was quite tasty, and pretty easy to make.  We drank plenty of milk tea, and watched as she made an uncountable number of things out of milk - my favorite being butter, which was the tastiest I've ever had.  We slept the night in a ger, and woke up freezing cold as out fire had died down over night.  This was the first time this family had tourists stay a night, and I think both we and the family were pretty happy with the result.

The next day we stayed in a ger camp, also in the national park and quite nearby.  It was more comfortable, but definitely didn't have the same feel as staying with the family.  As with the Gobi, we didn't really "do" a hell of a lot at Teralj National Park, but had a great time absorbing in the quietness and peacefulness of the place.

The last stop on our trip was a visit to a Kazakh family in the burbs of UB, because we could. Again this was the first time that this family had a tourist visit.  They were a very nice family.  So nice in fact that they had won "family of the year" a number of times.  Again we peeled and chopped and helped make a noodle soup for lunch.  At one point the man of the house walked in with traditional Kazakh costumes and told us to put them on for some reason.  He was having a good time at least.

I left Mongolia very happy and relaxed.  This was a place that was not only a beautiful landscape, but unlike many places in the world, it's occupants also knew that.  The Mongolians take great pride in their country and are always looking to protect it and its inhabitants.  Luckily for me, they are more than happy to show you around too.

Mongolia - The Gobi

The Gobi

Thee Gobi desert was not what I expected.  It wasn't the sand dune covered desert that you imagine.  This part of the Gobi was more like a gravel covered car pak.  There was a bit of sand here and there, but not that much. Our guide took us to "the sand dune" which was the only decent sized mound of sand I saw. Oh yeah, and the desert wasn't hot either.  It was damn cold, probably why the Chinese didn't want to go there.

Eating food made from milk, flour and meat

To be fair we didn't "do" that much in the Gobi.  It was just an awesome experience being there are seeing the emptiness of the place.  Despite the apparent hopelessness of the place, it turns out people, plants and animals live there quite happily.  We visited a nomad family who claim they have about 800 animals, all wildly roaming the desert.  I'm not exactly sure how they look after all these animals, but apparently Mongolian herders are very in touch with their animals.  The nomad guy was nice enough to find some of his camels for us and let as go for a ride on one (although the camel wasn't so happy about this).

Our driver (who turned out not to be an ordinary driver, but quite an extraordinary person) showed us "Gobi Desert spring onion", which apparently the camels and sheep love eating.  It's because of this unique type of food that the animals of the Gobi eat that makes the animals more delicious (or so I'm told).  Apparently, the Gobi has the tastiest mutton, and I must say, it was quite tasty.  It's a good thing its tasty too, the nomads who live out there basically live off a sustenence of meat, milk products and flour based products.  There's not a lot in terms of vegetables and fruits avaialble to them.

Camels just chillin

The resourcefulness of the people living in the Gobi is quite amazing.  Not only do they eat their animals, their animals have many uses.  They wear their animals (it turns out animals are quite warm), they build with their animals (turns out animals provide good insulation), they can turn their animal's milk into almost anything you could think of, and they even use the shit of the animals as a fuel source.  Yep that's right, since there's not many trees in the desert, nomads use camel shit as firewood - and you need a lot of fire to keep warm in that place at night!

A nomad and his kid

Nomads are pretty cool folk.  They live the simple life.  They live in gers (round tents that you could imagine Ghengis Khan in) and have no running water.  Inside the ger, in the middle is a stove (as previously mentioned fuelled by camel shit).  The stove has a multi-purpose function in being used for cooking and heating.  Cleverly, there is a chimney so the ger doesn't get smokey. Around the outside of the Ger are usually beds where the family sleeps.  Pretty simple.  The more hi-tech nomads use solar panels for power in their gers, while the simpler ones rely on car batteries.  Power is important, not only for lighting, but a power source is required for the satelite dish and TV and to charge mobile phones. Yep, nomads don't need a toilet or shower, but they can't live without TV and phones.  I guess with out a mobile phone, how do you find a nomad? Interesting how the basic human needs have been redefined. Maybe Maslow got it wrong. It also turns out nomads don't constantly move around, they only move their gers about 2-3 times per year, usually dependent on weather conditions.

In the Gobi, I stayed in a tourist ger camp.  This is like a high school camp, expect the cabins are replaced by gers and there are much fewer activities to do.  There's comfortable bathroom facilities and a dinning room for meals.  All in all a nice place to stay to feel like a Mongolian nomad, but actually be reasonably comfortable.

A ger camp

The desert omens were quite good for us on our trip in the Gobi.  We climbed Wish Mountain and from the top we were able to see about 7 Gobi Ibex (some kind of rare wild sheep).  Apparently, the locals believe sighting these animals to be extremely good luck.  When I came back down the mountain, some people asked to see my photo, and even took photos of my camera's screen.  Our incredible driver says he has seen them many times, but this was the closest he has ever seen them.  In addition to the ibex, but we also sigthed a snake on the way down the mountain - apparently also a sign of luck.  These signs of luck came after we visited a temple and were proved to be super lucky by playing Shagai (rolling animal knuckle bones) and rolling in the right combinations. At this point it was becoming apparent that we were the walking deities and the Gobi was bowing to our every need.

The Gobi Ibex

In the Gobi we visited more temples, encountered more luck and finished our visit at the Danzanravja museum, where we encountered our most lucky moment yet, learning that our driver was actually the grandson of Tuduv, the monk who was the custodian of all the historical buddhist relics which were hidden underground during the Mongolian purge which started in the 1920s.  This link gives shows the recent unearthing of some of the relics. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=drZJc4Uy8jY Our driver was able to give us some special insights into the museum, which I would have otherwise found relatively uninteresting.

The Gobi desert has a basketball court

With the Gobi part of the trip wrapped up, it was time to bid farewell to our amazing driver and get on an overnight train to head north to Ulaan Baatar.  The train ride, although this time not completly empty, was still quite comfortable for a shitty old russian train.

Mongolia - where to go on a Chinese public holiday

The train about to leave Beijing

The Chinese National Holiday was upon us.  Cue a week on holidays and millions of Chinese traveling around the country.  With no work to do, there was no point staying in Bejing so I decided to go somewhere for the week.  But where?... anywhere in China would be tough, with train and plane tickets being both expensive and selling out fast.  How about that neighbour to the north who I know nothing about... Mongolia?

It turns out that Mongolia was the perfect destination to visit during the National Holiday.  In the week of public holidays I was able to travel by train from Beijing to Ulaan Baatar (UB), manage a few days in Gobi Desert and explore some of the nature just outside the nation's capital before flying back to Beijing.

I left for Mongolia the day before the National Holiday started, supposedly the peak travel day. The Beijing Railway Station was fairly busy as expected.  However, when I got on train 23 to UB I noticed something strange.  The crowds were gone.  In fact on my train carriage was only myself and my travel companion.  There I was worried about having to share my train berth with others, when I realised I wouldn't even need to share the rest of the carriage.  After exploring the train briefly, I found that there were 14 passengers on a train with 12 carriages. Seems like Mongolia was the right destination after all.

The view along the way

The 19 hour train ride on an old Chinese train actually passed quite seamlessly.  The views from the windows were interesting enough ranging from wind farms, to picturesque hills, to Chinese ghost cities, to agricultural fields and even industrial wastelands.  The restaurant cart was just as interesting with a humorous waitress and chef.  I was actually not bored the whole trip.  The most frustrating part was the border crossing to Mongolia, which takes hours.  First, on the China side (Erlian), you need to wait about 2 hours while the bogeys on the train are changed (the Mongols use the Russian gauge which is different to the Chinese folk).  This was an interesting experience.  First the train goes through a series of complicated manouvers before it gets jacked up by a number of giant jacks while the wheels are just swapped.  Pretty cool actually. The Mongolian side of the border also takes some time while the James Bond villain looking immigration officials complete with slimline briefcases do something with your passport.

But finally we made it through the overnight train ride, with about 2-3hours of sleep we arrived at Sainshand, our first stop, in the Gobi Desert.

More to come.

Erlian

The bogeys being changed

Sainshand

Cave dwellings in the Ningxia Province, China

It's been quite a few years since my last post on this.  I've been travelling quite a bit in this time, but haven't really felt the motivation to write about it.  However, I came across a pretty unexpected discovery in my recent travel in China, so why not write it down.

I spent a couple of days last week hiking around the Ningxia Province in China.  Ningxia is an autonomous region located somewhere in the middle of China (towards the north), bordering on Inner Mongolia.  Much of the terrain feels a lot like desert.  Many of the areas I was walking around were supposed to be "protected" meaning that bushes have been planted and farming and grazing of animals is not allowed, to try and stop the landscape eroding into complete desert.  That apparently doesn't stop the local shepherds, from walking around with their flock of sheep.  I'm happy to cut the shepherds some slack though - if your job is to walk around watching a bunch of sheep all day, every day, for your entire life- in a place that's -30 in winter and +30 in summer - I say walk wherever you feel like it!

The terrain is quite amazing.  It's made up of a series of sparsely vegetated steep rolling hills.  The tops of the hills are pretty windy, so that's inspired the development of a very large wind farm in the area.  I'm no geologist, but there appears to be no rock in the area. meaning the landscape is made of soft dirt.  When it rains, you can see that this dirt just washes away, changing the landscape dramatically.  There are many trenches and valleys that you can see have been made because of the erosion of soil.  This makes for a bit of a challenge when walking around the area, trying to find the best way to avoid the steep cliffs that have formed.  I would imagine those wind turbines have some giant concrete foundations to keep them upright in the soft ground.

But the soft earth seems to have created a housing opportunity for people in the region.  The locals live in cave dwellings called a yaodong, dug into the side of the mountains.  This took me by complete surprise when I first saw them.  "Do people really live in those?".  Apparently, "yes" is the answer.  Some later research on Wikipedia tells me that 40 million people in China live in these style of dwellings.  Cool. I feel like quite the fool for not knowing they existed. Apparently, even Chairman Mao's revolution is famous for having started from such caves.  The caves, cool in summer, warm in winter, appear to be very practical places for people to live.

The caves vary in their size and grandeur.  Some are just holes in the side of mountains, some have decorative archways and I imagine would be quite comfortable inside.  It seems most also have electricity.  We were standing out the front of some of these caves, marveling at how people could live in one of these when a local lady approached me and my travelling group.  After a short conversation (of which I partook in only by smiling and nodding), she was very happy to show us around her caves.  She pretty much had a farm built around a few caves.  A couple of small caves used for storage of vegetables (basically fridge caves), a cave for the dog, a cave for the pig, a cave for the lambs (Ningxia is said to have the best lamb in China - can confirm lamb is tasty).  She had a vegetable patch growing out the front, and a well where she collected rainwater that washes down the side of the hill she lives under.  Her living cave was very simple - basically a single room with a bed inside...but... I did notice a massive satellite dish out the front, so all I can imagine she does is farm all day, and sit of the bed watching cable TV all night.

Words (my words at least) can't really describe this place, these people and the way they live very well.  I took some crappy photos on my phone, but hopefully they can convey one of the lesser known curiosities of China.

The dog and the pig

The lambs with dig daddy looking down from above

Lambs and their cave

Satellite TV

Inside the cave