In the land of Genghis Kahn

It rains all night. The next morning we are worried about sinking into the mud, but we are pleasantly surprised. Yesterday’s still dust-dry soil consists of pure sand, so that the rain has simply seeped into it. We leave our last camp in Siberia without any difficulties and push our road trains onto the road. Today we immediately climb up to almost 900 meters in altitude, which is why we are happy about our decision yesterday not to continue. “I think the mountain range would have given us the rest,” says Tanja. The sun is shining from the firmament again today and the little flies have conquered the road. As in previous days, we are forced to pull the fly net over our helmets. This is the only way we can breathe freely and not incessantly swallow small flying insects.

It is 11:00 a.m. when we let our bikes roll down the hill to the border town of Kyakhta. “Hooray! Hooray! Hooray!” we shout, waving to the many soldiers stationed here who are holding marching drills by the roadside. They return our greeting in a friendly manner and seem to reflect our happy energy. We park our bikes in front of a restaurant. Then, for the last time in Siberia, we order a borscht (national dish ? vegetable soup) and blinis (pancakes) for dessert. As my cold is at its peak at this point and I’m constantly sneezing and blowing my nose, Tanja goes shopping on her own. I hold down the fort in the café for so long. I think back a little wistfully on the past few months and leave this adventurous country, which has a different surprise in store for travelers every moment, with a smile and a tear in my eye. Who knows if we will ever come to Russia again? Now that we understand the language better and better. Where communication has become easier and we are beginning to understand the culture and the people. “We can go Denis,” says Tanja, who enters the café carrying two bags. “Da ßwidanja” (“goodbye”) is how we say goodbye to the lovely women. “Da ßwidanja. Chasliwa Buti”, (“Goodbye. Have a good trip”) they wish us. We push the bikes over the last mountain in Siberia. “Gdje nachoditza Graniza?” (“Where is the border?”) I ask a driver because the road forks and there is no sign for the border.

We slowly roll past the waiting cars. We want to place our bikes at the border fence to ask when we can cross, when a friendly official waves us over, opens the gate and lets us drive into the inner border area. A quick look at the passport, then we are allowed to go to the checkpoint. The officials are not the least bit interested in our luggage. Nobody wants to control us. As on arrival, everyone is extremely friendly and courteous. There is no longer any sign of an iron curtain or disgruntled officials. These are apparently only scenes from bad movies. “What, you’re from Germany and you cycled all the way here? Malazee!” say the officers in their uniforms. Because we couldn’t find a Russian flag in Russia to put on our flagpole on the trailer like all the flags of the countries we have traveled through, the ladies give us a Buryat flag. “Unfortunately, we don’t have a Russian banner, but they have also crossed Buryatia,” they say with a laugh. At a little house, another civil servant stamps our passports, then another “Da ßwidanja” (“Goodbye”) and Siberia and the summer we spent there are a thing of the past for us. We don’t have much time to think because the Mongolians are already greeting us. A completely different energy, which we cannot categorize at the moment, welcomes us here. “Sain baina”, says the first Mongolian guard and lets us push the bikes into his border area. We assume it means hello or good day and answer “Sain baina”, to which he smiles at us in a friendly manner. From now on, and this really is almost like a shock for us, we no longer understand a word. If we thought our Russian was very poor, we realize within the first few minutes how important it is to understand and speak the local language at least rudimentarily. From now on, we draw on our large pool of gestures and sign language and find ourselves at passport control. The entry form is in English for our convenience. The officer in his glass box even speaks passable English. He checks my passport for at least ten minutes. Again and again he looks at me critically through his window and compares my face with the passport photo. “Have I changed that much? Maybe my thick and swollen nose? The cold has disfigured me?” I think, and if I wasn’t so positive, I’d be asking myself if I’ve either aged terribly or if there’s something wrong with my visa. Then I hear the “Tock! Tock” of the stamp and I am relieved. “He probably just wanted to enjoy the rare moment to talk to a Western European for longer,” Tanja says later. Still in the border building, we are able to exchange our remaining roubles for tugrik. We didn’t always have the luxury of being able to exchange money at the border in some of the countries we traveled through during the Trans-East Expedition. A man in uniform opens the gate to Mongolia in a friendly manner. “Bajrtää”, we understand him and assume that this is the greeting form for goodbye.

“Do you want to change money?” a Mongolian asks us in English. “How much Tugrik do we get for one euro?” I ask. “1,200,” he replies kindly, holding a thick bundle of banknotes in front of us. “Thank you,” I reply and drive on. As is so often the case, it proved to be a good idea to change at the border bank despite the poor exchange rate. There we got 1,763 Tugrik for one Euro. Later we learn that the official exchange rate is currently around 2,100 Tugrik for one Euro. In other words, the friendly black marketeer had just ripped us off.

As soon as we cross the border fence, we find ourselves in a completely different culture that has nothing to do with Russia. People laugh more, speak a language we don’t understand, are dressed strangely, look different and behave in a way we are not used to. When we see a saddled horse parked like a car in front of a pub, we have to smile. In fact, we are in Mongolia. A country that borders Russia to the north, China to the east, south and west and, at 1,566,500 square kilometers, is about four times the size of the Federal Republic of Germany, making it number 18 among the 193 countries in the world. With 2.8 million inhabitants per km², Mongolia has the lowest population density of any independent country in the world. This means that there are only 1.8 inhabitants per km². In Germany, there are 285 people per km².

Even the first few kilometers tell us that we are no longer in Siberia. As soon as we cross the border fence, the taiga has retreated to the distant mountain hills and the large valley in front of us opens up into an immeasurably wide steppe landscape. The former forest stands have been significantly reduced by logging and man-made forest fires. Almost 90 % of Mongolia is now threatened by desertification. Another problem, as we have read, is the total overgrazing by the nomads. There are currently around 30 million farm animals that feed on pastureland.

Although we didn’t fly here by plane, but worked our way slowly, kilometer by kilometer, over all the mountains, through all the countries, we still can’t really comprehend that we are suddenly in the land of Genghis Khan. In the land of the former world ruler, the Kahn der Kahne. Our emotions run riot at this moment and are hard to categorize. The mood fluctuates between euphoria and mental fatigue. Suddenly our eyes no longer bump into anything. They glide over the steppe valley, the home of the great warrior who was also known as the Oceanic Khan and whom the Muslims called “the punishment of God” and the Europeans “the terror of the nations”. A warrior who ruled over the largest land empire that has ever existed in history. We cycle past herds of cows, sheep and goats. The first dead cattle skulls lie by the roadside, having decomposed in the grass some time ago. My thoughts are churning and the founder of the Mongolian empire, who lived here between 1167 and 1227, is taking on more and more shape for me. What kind of person was it who, in just 20 years, forged an empire that stretched from the Pacific Ocean to the Caspian Sea and from the taiga to the foothills of the Himalayas? His military expeditions reached Iraq, northern Pakistan, the Black Sea and the Russian principalities between the Dnieper and the Volga. The ruler’s armies were like a devastating tsunami, conquering Poland and Hungary, reaching the coast of the Adriatic and causing the European armies of knights to tremble. Only a hunting accident, from the consequences of which the ruler died in 1227, was the salvation for Europe. After couriers brought news of the barge’s death, the Mongol armies, who were about to incorporate Europe into their empire, retreated to Mongolia. By the standards of the 13th century, the Mongols’ highly efficient war machine was unbeatable. The fighters were well trained and motivated. They were self-sufficient and equipped with the most dangerous ranged weapon of the time. The reflex bow, made of horn, bamboo or wood, had an enormous range of 275 meters and great penetrating power. Then there were the war tactics, the high fighting morale, the horsemanship of the nomads, the well-constructed legal and tax system and the sophisticated and efficient postal and communications system. Temudjin the blacksmith, Genghis Khan’s birth name, was a genius. Undoubtedly a cruel, insatiable, power-hungry man who wanted to bring the entire population of the earth under his control. In Europe it was said that the Mongols showed no consideration for women. That they showed no compassion for the young and no mercy for the old. “They are a vile, man-killing people. Not people, but devils. Like wild animals, they thirsted for human blood”, it was reported.

Just a few hundred meters next to us we see a shepherd driving his flock of sheep and goats towards the road. There is something peaceful about the scene. However, if I squint my eyes, I can imagine the many animals as horsemen, galloping across the steppe in units of ten men, hundreds, thousands and tens of thousands with terrible war cries. (The Tümen Zehntausendschaften were the most important combat units) “Let’s take a break!” Tanja calls out, which is why we put our aluminum steeds up against a post and rest for a while. We eat a Rapunzel muesli bar and look out over the nearby grassy hills. Over the Siberian taiga to the north, the master drives dark storm clouds in our direction at considerable speed. We have to hurry to reach Sühbaatar before the inevitable thunderstorm. There, we hope, we can rest a little from the last extremely strenuous days.

Today also demands everything our bodies have to offer. As if the Mongolian hordes were following us with a force of one tümen (ten thousand men), we flee from the threatening-looking thunderstorm more than ten hours after our departure this morning. “We can do it!” I shout to drown out the wind. Our cranks race in circles at high speed and let the Rohloff chain whir over the sprockets. On the mountain ridges next to us, lightning flashes and tears apart the cloud formations with its glistening light. Like long fingers of gout, tubular formations stretch down to the steppe floor and show that cold water is plunging into the thirsty ground. The reawakened master raises his sceptre and drives into our side. As if our bike frame were an instrument of a long-forgotten time, a strange wailing sound is heard. “Go faster!” I motivate us. My knees are screaming. They finally want to rest, but my spirit drives them on. Push them down like the steam-powered drive linkage of a locomotive to transfer the concentrated force to the pedals. Two kilometers before Sühbaatar it starts to drizzle. We stop and tear the rain gear out of our front Ortlieb bags. “Even the overshoes!” I shout to Tanja. “Do you think it will be that bad?” “Well, look over there!” I reply, pointing to the mountains. I quickly take a few more pictures with our Leica, then it gets wet. The gates open before I can even zipper up my rain jacket. Within seconds, we find ourselves in a thick soup of clouds and become the plaything of the forces of nature. There they are again, the Mongolian storms. When we crossed Mongolia on horseback in 1996, covering 1,600 kilometers from west to east, these thunderstorms gave us the creeps. Well, just 20 kilometers into the land of the big barge and we are already duly welcomed by the storm. The temperature plummets from around 26 degrees in the sun, which had just been there, to perhaps two degrees. Hailstones hit the grass and the road left and right, in front of and behind us. “Plong! Plong! Plong!” it clatters on our helmets. The master suddenly grabs us with an icy grip and moves our bikes a meter or two into the middle of the road. Thank goodness there are few cars here. We roll down a hill to the village. We seek shelter from the approaching gusts behind a dilapidated stone house. “Phew!” Tanja blows with relief. There is a loud buzzing in the power cables above us. Only a few minutes after our bodies come to rest, we start to freeze. The icy breath of the wind gives us an idea of what it might mean to have to endure minus 50 degrees in winter here in the north of the country. “There’s no point in waiting. The storm will continue for a while yet,” I think, which is why we get back on the wet saddle and cycle further into the icy roar. Weather-beaten people come to meet us. They walk along the side of the road and lean against the aggressive master. It seems as if he is shouting out all his anger at having discovered us only now.

We reach a traffic circle in the small town. “Where’s a hotel here?” we ask a woman who looks at us in surprise before pointing in one direction. Very slowly, we let our tires bump over the worn-out level crossing of the Trans-Siberian Railway. It is difficult for us to see where the deep, dangerous holes are under the puddles and small pools of water. On the other side of the tracks, the master suddenly blows us out of the village. “That can’t be right. I think the woman sent us in the wrong direction!” I shout and stop at a petrol station to ask again. “You have to turn back,” we are pleased to find a man who speaks Russian. Now against the master back in the city, we ask a policeman. “There’s a hotel over there,” he points to a wooden building. “No, there are no rooms here,” replies a man outside the door. We cycle past the policeman again into the dreary town in heavy rain. “Hotel Voyage”, we read on an ugly box building. The very friendly girl at the desolate reception desk speaks no English or Russian. Communication is initially a disaster. I can’t even make it clear that I need a room with two beds because I don’t know what a bed or the number two means. The fact that our bikes have to go into the hotel and can’t stay outside can’t be made clear to the girl without any means of communication. It takes ten minutes for the Mongolian woman and I to find a level of rudimentary understanding with lots of laughter, arm-circling, finger acrobatics and facial expressions. When the owner of the house suddenly appears, who understands some English as well as Russian, all difficulties are thankfully completely resolved. Phew done. For 45,000 Tugrik (21.60 euros) we get a luxury room without hot water with a double bed and our bikes are stored in another hotel room free of charge.

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