Rambling Robert's Travels

This blog chronicals the travels of myself, Rambling Robert, on my next adventure to South America.

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I am a world traveller. I do not work as such. I have been homeless and unemployed since 1October 2003. I worked as a chef for 30 years in America.

Saturday, August 06, 2011

travel update: leaving Mongolia

Hello Everyone,
Well i am just about ready to get back on a train. This time i will be going from ulaan Baatar to Erhan China. I will only be in Erhan long enough to catch a bus to Beijing. I have been staying here In Ulaan Baatar for the last 5 days and once again i have retured to stay at mongolian steppes guest house. When I got back here, the two French artists (Mario and Mathieu) and the American Marathon runner( Herb from Minnesota) were also back at the Hostel! All had been out tramping around the countryside and we are all back now. So we have been kind of hanging around together having a few beers at anight and sharing a dormitory and even cooking a few dinners together.
I split from Ulaan Baatar for a week and went to Harkhoran. This is the ancient capital of mongolia. It is where Ghengis Khan made his capital and remaind the capital for a long time like 40 or 50 years, until his son moved the capital to present day Beijing. Kharkorum is also the home of mongolias first and oldest Budhist monastery.
Today it is a rather ugly little city of 10,000 people in a rather beautiful location. It is far from anywhere and not so easy to get to. There is one bus per day to U.B. and no bus to anywhere else! if you want to go somewhere else, you can take a horse or hitch hike. I spent a day exploring the budhist ruins with Alex, a traveler from Roumania whom i met on the bus going there and the rest of the time I spent by myself. The first day there it rained like crazy. After this, ther river overflowed ant my Ger ( a big round tent, like a Yurt ) camp was flooded. There was no electricity for a day and it was rather drizzling and miserable.
The owners of the camp, performed quite a civil engineering miracle by putting a dam between the camp and the overflowing river, and then using an gasoline powered pump to drain the camp of the flood waters. The waters had gotten up to my Ger and I had repacked my backpack and was all ready to move to higher ground somewhere when Suvd and her family stemmed the tide of the flooding river and I was able to remain there. I was the only guest for the next 4 nights and it was very tranquil. I spent my time reading and meditating and taking long walks out on the (still soggy) steppe.
Suvd's (the Ger Camp owner) brother is a Shaman of the old Mongolian religion, which is similar to BON religion from Tibet. He was there in town to do some ceremonies and to bring luck to the "faithful" . I tried to arrange a meeting or at least to be allowed to sit in on a ceremony but alas, it was not to be... I was a little disappointed but I respect the fact that they do not want their religious beliefs to be a spectacle or a tourist attraction. A source of "amussement" for foreigners.
So I returned to Ulaan Baatar, and it is from here that I am writing this. Tomorrow, August 8, I will take a night train to China. I have a ticket to take an over night bus from the border to the capital and I should arrive in Beijing on the morning of August 10. I am going to stay at Hostel Leo where I will meet Mario and Mathieu, two French artists that I know from here in Mongolia. I expect to be in Beijing at least a week, so I will write the next update from there.
Peace and love to all of you,
Robert

"There is an 'I', a potential soul. If we can say with the same simplicity 'I have a body' as we say 'I have a car' we can begin to realize that this body is a transforming machine which 'I' have. 'I' have a machine to use, does not mean 'I' am a machine. 'I' have a body, a mechanical organism whose function it is to transform substances and energies."
A.R. Orage
" We attract forces according to our being." Gurdjieff
"I believe that our Heavenly Father invented man because he was disappointed in the monkey." Mark Twain

1 Comments:

Anonymous Bucharestian said...

Hi Robert! I eventually made it to Tsetserleg that day on two vehicles (car + truck) plus a few hours' break while the truck driver helped a mate with a cracked lube and flat tyre. And then it all worked pretty well to Olgii, only hitch-hiking. As always, I relied on people and it paid, including my reaching Khuiten Peak (even though through a blizzard). The full (i.e. long and Baroque) story lies at notrails.info.
All the best to you and have a good trip through China!
Alex

10:55 PM  

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