I know, that’s a really stupid sentence – but what can you expect from Mao?
The border crossing was relatively uncomplicated. For 10€ we hired a jeep which should bring us over to the chinese side. Our driver was a true character, pretty stressful but still nice. A funny situation occured when the border police at first didn’t want to let him (and us) pass because he was queue-jumping but with some nice words and probably some money (what he paid, not us) the problem was solved easily. The attention we got from the chinese customs was a little bit more than normal, we had to pass a medicine check (because of the pig flu) and were pulled out of the mass to get “further examinated” where we had to unpack our backpacks. But finally we arrived in the first chinese city after the border, Erlian. From there you have the possibility to take a sleeper bus to Beijing or to find some companions and hire a small van by yourself. We found one finnish, one dutch and one chinese guy so we went with a minivan to Beijing. Usually that takes 7-8 hours (the sleeper bus needs 11) but today we had pretty big bad luck. You should know that the “People’s Republic of China” celebrates its 60th birthday at the 1st of October this year and the government really gets paranoid about that. So we got into a massive 7 hour traffic jam on the motorway because the police checked ALL cars on ALL streets to Beijing for security reasons. That was a pretty good first impression we got from this surveillance- and spy state. Anyway, we arrived in Beijing in the middle of the night at 2.30am, got into a taxi and went to Zack’s place, a couchsurfer who offered us to stay at his place for some days. Thank you very much for that and sorry again that we kept you up so long!
The next day was our only real full day in Beijing at all but we didn’t know that when we got up in the morning. What to say about Beijing? It was damn hot and humid at that days, the air is the most terrible you can imagine, even when there are no clouds in the sky, the sky has a grey-blue colour (the most air polluted city in the world!) and additional to that the city is unbelievable noisy and it really seems that theres no place anywhere to have a minute for yourself and to relax. I still was more or less fine with the idea to stay in Beijing for two or maybe three days to see at least some of the sights but for Annika this monstrous 15 million city was maybe a little bit too much and she felt very uncomfortable there and in the evening we decided to head to the small town Shanhaiguan, 300km northeast of Beijing, the next day, what was pretty fine with me too.
Originally we planned to stay at Zack’s place for four or five nights but now the next morning was already our last so at least we wanted to have a nice breakfast with Zack. In the supermarkets in Beijing you can find almost everything you find in Europe, too, plus some nice additional goodies like tofu in all imaginable kinds and strange but interesting fruits. The only big minus in China is the absence of good bread. You can just find very soft white bread that most of the time is terrible sweet, as well. But we were good nurtured when we entered the train out of the capital.
Shanhaiguan immediatly was a total different thing than Beijing. It’s a wonderful town of about 150000 inhabitants directly at the Pacific Ocean with a very nice old town and an impressive city wall. The best of all was that there were really no tourists
except us in the city. Somehow strange because the city really has something to offer. For example the Great Wall hits the ocean just a couple of kilometres away, passes the first big mountains (known as “The first gate under heaven”) and the already mentioned nice old town and city wall. We found a small unofficial guesthouse were we booked a double room for 35Yuan each for the next days. The facilities all were a little bit shabby but our demands aren’t very high so it was totally okay. In the first evening we found a nice restaurant that served the best food for unbeatable low prices – our first real experiences with the great chinese kitchen. A dinner that was so big that it was hard to finish for two persons was something like 40Yuan (10Yuan = 1€) inclusive beers, it really was no surprise that we visited this place three times during the three days we spent in Shanhaiguan. Another big surprise for us was that there was really something going on in this town. Every evening the main square turned into a open air disco with some stylish chinese techno music or traditional western songs like “Bella Ciao” in techno versions. And really everybody meets there. Old and young, women and men go there and do whatever they like. The younger people very often play a game that I would call “feather hacky-sack” and the older people dance in order to the music with studied simultan moves or do some traditional dances at the other side of the street. Very cool. It took not really a long time until we were involved in the “feather hacky-sack” thing as well and at the next day we bought our own 
It was hard to get bored in Shanhaiguan. We spent the second day at a beach where we had 
our first swim in the Pacific in our life and visited the “Old Dragon’s Head”, the place where the Great Wall clashes with the waves of the Ocean even if we saved the 30Yuan (each!) and did not climb up. At day three we finally climbed the Great Wall. The entrance gate (again, it’s 30Yuan each to enter the wall) to the wall is approximately 2km north of the city and the wall really gets steep here for the first time. With no doubt, the wall is 
an impressive monument in the history of mankind and I think it’s one of the sights in the world everybody who maybe has the possibilities to see it should see it. Unfortunately it was a pretty dizzy and foggy day when we went up but for that we nearly had the wall for ourselves – we just met a handful chinese tourists during the couple of hours we spent there. It actually was a good legwork as well – it was not a big deal to sleep this night
At the next day we had to get up early because we went back to Beijing and in the evening on to the southwest of China. Our plans were to arrive early, meet up with Iannis and David to pick up our train tickets they organised for us (it was not possible to buy train tickets from Beijing to Guilin in Shanhaiguan, so thank you very much doing that for us!) and to visit the Forbidden City in the afternoon but once again we had no luck in this city. The communist party choosed this afternoon to have a rehearsal for their big 60th anniversary military parade and just closed the whole inner city. The subway stopped running at 1pm and we somehow made it that we found us in the middle of the inner city where usually nobody was allowed to go at that day. Just soldiers, policemen with machine guns, security guards, tanks and us two with our big backpacks beside some people who live there… A really dodgy feeling. We tried to get out of that area as soon as possible but the nonexistance of any public transportation forced us to walk out and Beijing really really is a big city. During our walk we passed policemen who took pictures of us, x-ray scanners (these ones that you usually find at airports to scan your luggage) and hundreds of still standing soldiers. What a crazy country!
Finally we made it to the West Railway Station and met David and Iannis and boarded our train to Guilin, which is 2200km south of Beijing in the southwest of China. The train journey took 27 hours but it was totally worth it. A tropical climate and one of the most stunning landscapes of China was waiting for us…
food you find in Mongolia and afterwards I had a small party with a nice round in the cellar of the Golden Gobi Hostel with people from a lot of different countries but actually the early getting up to pick up Annika at the train station made us go to bed pretty early.
crowds). Usually, in summer time, there are two busses running from UB to the tourist valley but the beginning of September is already the middle of Autumn for the Mongolians, so theres just one bus a day to the National Park anymore and this one leaves in the evening. Beside us, there was another girl heading to the Park (she just went there for a day-trip) so we shared a taxi with her for 5€ each, still pretty alright for an 80km drive. The bigger problem was to explain to our driver that we don’t want to go to the tourist valley, where he drove us to at first but finally he understood and we arrived in the small village Terelj from where Annika and me 
started our hike along the Tuul river for the next three days. It was just cool and we enjoyed it a lot, the only annoying thing were the river crossings. We probably had to cross the river 10 or 15 times because the trail (oh, i’m sorry, there was no real trail directly at the river so we had to find our way by ourselves through thick scratchy bushes, high-densed birch forests or across steep and high rocky mountains) was just impassable at the side where we walked. In the evenings we always looked out for a nice camping spot with enough of wood around (that was the smallest problem) to make a bonfire. The nights became very cold, it probably was around 0°C but well equipped as we were (we had three extra blankets with us + our sleeping bags, warm clothes and we put stones, that were heated up by the fire in 
our sleeping bags to warm our feed) it was still bearable. At the third day we decided to slowly head back to UB and to use more designated paths to be a little bit faster. The reason for that maybe was a weather change from very sunny 24-25° to maybe 15° and occassional rain, so it got pretty uncomfortable there. With this weather the crossings of the very chilly waters of the tuul river were not just annoying anymore, they became a real pain in the ass. I thought it’s enough if just one person of us gets wet and made the river crossing mostly three times: the first time I brought over the bags and then I went back to the other side and gave Annika a piggy ride to the other side. Ain’t I the greatest gentleman in the world? The last two river crossing were just not possible to do at all because the water was maybe 1,50m 
deep and the stream was very strong. But we had good luck and both times local mongolian riders saw us and our misery and helped us with a lift on the back of the horse through the river. Many many thanks for that. BTW: before we came back to the designated paths we saw just 5 or 6 persons during the three days. Anyway, at the end of this day we came to the main path which let to the main paved road to UB and we were pretty happy to catch a catch a car ride back to the capital with the 2nd car that passed us (but we still waited an hour). We booked the Golden Gobi again for a night and moved to Nikolas place (a couchsurfer from France who lives in Mongolia for job reasons now) the next day for 
our last night and just relaxed a little bit before we took the train to the chinese border (the train to the border town was very cheap, just 8€ for 500km in the hard sleeper category) on saturday evening and crossed the mongolian-chinese border at noon on sunday by jeep. This day was already the last day of my mongolian visa so I really had to cross the border, too. How fast 30 days are over, unbelievable. Bye bye, Mongolia!
as well. Mongolia has the nickname “the country of the blue skys” and most of the time it’s really like that. There are hardly any clouds and it’s just an amazing thing to put up the tents in the middle of nothing with not even the smallest kind of lights (and light pollution) around you for next maybe 20km. The sky above you with millions of visible stars and the easy to see Milky Way is just indredible amazing. Mongolia is the country with the smallest population density in the world. With a more than 4 times bigger than Germany it counts just 3 million inhabitants – half of them living in the capital Ulan-Bator so the rest of the country is almost uninhabitet (just some nomads live there in their so called “Gers” [round tent houses where the whole family lives in] you can see sometimes in all parts of the country). At the second day in the evening hours we arrived´in the desert city and Aimag-capital (an aimag is something like a state) Dalanzadgad where we found new (brand new!) dampers for our jeep and bought some food to prepare the vegan curry dish in our 2nd camp, again in the middle of nothing in stony desert. Day three began with some work. We helped some guys from UB out of a shitty situation. They drove with their jeep into a small canyon they didn’t see. They really were stuck and it 
took some time to get them out there but finally we it worked with the help of a lot of stones. We built something like a bridge in the canyon, hard to describe how. The stucked stucked guys were very thankful and invited us for dinner and beers back in UB. In the afternoon the first major sight of Mongolia waited for us, the Jolyn Am. In the middle of the desert a mountain range raises to a high of nearly 3000m and inside there you find a gorge which is up 
to 500m deep (or high, that depends on your viewpoint). Populated with a lot of eagles, falcons and milans (where it got it’s name from – “Jolyn” means vulture) it’s a very scenic and beautiful place. Usually the gorge holds snow inside all year round but thanks to global warming there are a few days in late August and September you can’t roll snowballs anymore and yes, we were there just in that time. But even without snow it was impressive. After this we drove further on in the direction of the sand dunes of Kongurin Els where we arrived in the evening. The probably most scenic spot you just can imagine to put up the camp was found at a dry river bank with the golden sand dunes and the southern Chengai mountain range in the back 
of them. Just gorgeous, look at the picture. A small surprise waited for us in the next morning because Mogi, our Vodka-loving, hard-joking, good-wrestling and mellow-mood driver was afraid to drive closer to the dunes. The problem was that we could get stuck and the risk was just to high for that. So we walked into the dunes which took around one hour, enjoyed 
the silence in there (or just rolled down the dunes) for some time and went back to the car to start the second big stage. It was a way around 400km north-west through an even more remote and less-populated area. One day we just saw 8 cars at all making this way (one of them from Spain). But at least our dampers were fine, still. The time in the car, which sometimes was a little bit too long (if I would plan the trip again I would plan 12 or 13 days for it, 10 days was just a pretty tight schedule with a little bit too much driving on too worse “roads” between the stations) but most of the time it was funny and interesting, with some card or other games it was pretty alright. To navigate in this area a GPS system is very very helpful, as well as at least one person in the car who speaks mongolian to ask the locals for directions due to the not-existing street signs. Most of the times there are a couple of tracks and paths beside each other leading through the country without any marks or signs which path to take to get to the place you want to go to, so you just have to ask local nomads who (probably) will know it. Again, it took two days for this 450km drive (but with a big rest in Arvaikheer at a bathhouse to spoil down the desert-dust which covered all our skin [we looked sooo tanned!] since five days) until our next destination, the Naiman Nuur lake area. This area is of vulcanic origin and driving there is simple a pain in the ass for all – for the driver, the car and the passengers. It’s hard to find a way to the lakes though there are millions of big rocks on the path. Sometimes it is even hard to see something like a path so you have to find your way through this rocky area by yourself. The last ten kilometers are simply not passable by car, you have to use a horse or use your own feet. This day was Max birthday as well so we decided to stay in a local family Ger (the family moved out for us into another Ger so we had the Ger for ourselves – but no worries, they were happy with that and officially rented their ger for tourists) for a decent party, what was a little bit unfavourable the next day when Leon and me went for a hike up and down the surrounding mountains (up to an 3000m altitude) to the lake while the other four guys went there on horsebacks. It was exhausting, yes, it was very exhausting and we probably underestimated the way and the area itself 
but nevertheless it was the best day of the whole trip for me. So many huge eagles to spot, breathtaking views (and ways up) from mountain tops into the valleys and a great sunset at the end was worth the 25km of hiking. We came “home” to our Ger when it was already dark and were not really able to do anything except to eat some of the great Iannis-made fried potatoes before we went to bed.
he ran away like crazy and was not seen again. I was very concerned about that but good luck, the dog was back at the next day). Another, this time sad, story was a small wolve who lived not far away from the ger alone in a cave. We think the locals maybe shot his parents to protect their sheeps. It was just depressing to see this small, maybe a couple of month old wolve living there alone with no real chance to survive the winter (and the winter is coming soon there!) on it’s own…
burnt down from chinese warriors a few hundreds years ago. There’s nothing left in the city which reminds you of the big heritage it has but now the mongolian government is planning to switch the capital from UB back to Karakorum in 2027 for ten years to honour Djengis Khan (as if they wouldn’t honour him enough already today!). The only historic sight in the city is the buddhist monastery Erdene Zuu which was the most important and maybe most beautiful monastary until 1933 when the communists with 
their anti-religious campaigns destoyed it nearly completly. That’s really a pitty, nowadays there are just 3 temples left and the big wall that surround the monastery and just something like 50 monks live there today. In the good times the monastery had more than 100 temple and up to 1000 monks lived inside the walls. The way back to UB was a relaxed 300km or 7-hour drive on the only long-distance paved road in the whole country, we just had to stop once for a little bit longer because one tire bursted (but Mogi, our multi-genious repaired it quickly).