Home Sweet Ger

Near BALGAI, MONGOLIA — Preparing for bed on the steppe is a strange ritual. First I take off the clothes I wore to keep warm during the day: the fuzzy brown sweater, the two layers of long underwear, the smoky pair of Gap cargo pants. All of them are covered in sweat, sweat that will freeze in the night and lower my body temperature. I rummage through my bag for new set of clothes: another layer of long underwear, blue sleep pants, a T-shirt and a hat. I put on the sleep pants and the T-shirt, but keep the long underwear tucked under my shoulder, to hide under my pillow for later. Only then can I put on a fresh pair of wool socks and tuck myself into the Mummy sleeping bag.

Maintaining the appropriate body temperature during the night will take balance. I must weigh the heat of the fire against the icy winds of the steppe outside. It's four hours after dark and already Bobby's pocket thermometer reads -20 on a quick trip outside. Getting through the night, like everything else out here in the Mongolian countryside, requires careful planning.

Thankfully, I don't need to invent a way to survive out here. Our hosts, with decades of experience and the wisdom passed down from generations of nomads, are experts. The most important line of defense against the elements is the ger. The ger, usually called a "yurt" in English, is a specialized tent with features even the most advanced North Face structure can't match. The base of the structure is a circular lattice of wood, about four feet high. At the top of the lattice, several dozen wooden poles are angled inward so they meet in a small circle. This opening is the chimney, and it is supported by two thick beams that drop to the floor. These wooden pieces (which aren't found out here on the steppe, they come from distant forests) are wrapped around the outside in a thick layer of white canvas. In the winter, wool felt blankets are hung around the insides of the tent to keep out the howling winds.

The felt is less than an inch thick, but it's throughly windproof. On this cold night I can hear the wind howl, but it doesn't penetrate this warm space. A small iron stove is the only source of heat, and it's placed right in the center of the structure.



Our party arrived an hour after an awe-inspiring sunset with empty stomachs. Tonight, our hosts are the family of Battir, who Bobby has hired as our van driver. We've only met a day earlier, but Battir's mother, father and sister are very welcoming when we haul our still clean bags from the van. They implore us to take off our coats, and start feeding us bowls of buuz, a fatty mutton dumpling, and airag, fermented horse milk. Vodka comes out later, and we do several shots to honor our hosts.

By 9 p.m. the bottle is put away, Battir goes off to an adjoining ger where Bobby and he will spend the night. Bobby then begins to figure out sleeping arrangements. This ger, like all others, appears cylindrical from the outside, but in reality is five-sided. One side is the entrance, another contains a small armoire, and final three sides have thin mattresses that serve as chairs during the day, beds at night. Battir's mother and grandmother take one bed, Jin and Myriam squeeze on another side, while Battir's father has the smallest bed to himself. Caleb and I are placed on the floor on opposite sides of the fireplace.

Maybe it's the heavy dinner, or the excitement of beginning the journey, but I'm not tired after getting in my sleeping bag. I scan the surroundings. Grandma is already asleep. Husband and wife, sleeping in separate beds, are conducting conversation in whispers. A portable short wave radio is quietly playing an Old Mongolian folk tune. Then I return to the ger. The outside seems so plain, just a circle of off-white fabric, but inside it is colorful. A ring of hand stitched flowers has been carefully sewn and placed at eye level. The wool blankets that provide insulation are colorful scenes from nomadic life: a strutting ram, a picturesque sunset. In between one bed there are a few family photos, one of Grandma on a visit to Ulaanbaatar many years, another of a young Battir in front of his home. Opposite these is a small altar, where Buddhist prayers can be performed. Although the interior of the ger is wide open, each bit of space has been carefully compartmentalized, to ensure that all basic life functions can happen in this small space.

After the radio is turned off and the married couple stop chatting, I take stock of where I am. As the dateline suggests, I'm not entirely sure. We are somewhere "near" Balgai, a town of a few dozen, several hundred miles from anywhere. All that separates me from that nothingness is a couple of layers of felt and canvas. The mind wanders: If my heart stops, there is no defibrillator to restart it. If a piece of an old Soviet Military Satellite falls on me, there is no government official to report it. If quicksand swallows the ger whole, there is no one to pull us out. But I've already let these worries go. My eyelids are closed and in my dreams I head toward the stars.


Previously: "Welcome to Our Home"

Sun, Moon & Stars

TÔV AIMAG, Mongolia — Life happens in seconds, seconds that turn into hours and then days. Sometimes, though, a moment yanks us from the dreary tick of the clock and lifts the ordinary into the sublime. Today, incredibly, featured two such moments.

I'll start with the second. It was around 9 p.m: I stepped out of our ger with Cing, Caleb and Myriam. We told our hosts we were going for a walk, which Bobby translated into Mongolian only to receive a puzzled grin in response. Why leave the warmth of the fire, their faces said.

The night is chilly. It touches my face even though my scarf covers most of my cheeks. Caleb lights a cigarette. He quit in America, but after traveling through Russia and Mongolia, he's back to the habit. We set off in no particular direction, wandering a few steps to the west, then back toward the east before settling on the north. We stumble around for only a minute and then stop. There's no point in continuing. I look around, and in each direction there is nothing — only the faint glow coming from inside the ger. I strain my eyes in all directions, scanning 360 degrees to the limits of my near-sighted vision. I cannot see a thing — no other source of light.

For many city slickers, a formative childhood moment occurred during an early childhood vacation, staring up at the clear, dark sky. I signed up for the astronomy merit badge two years in a row at Scout Camp, so I could stay up late as a teenage counselor picked out constellations with a laser pointer. Tonight is ten times more intense. There is no faint glow of the city on the horizon, no summer cabin on the other side of the lake. This is a pre-civilization state of darkness.

The unobstructed sky is overflowing with points of light. The Milky Way rips a broad swath through the center. There must be several commercial airliners and 100 satellites high above. And I then realize then the night moves, flows like a body of water. I don't go back inside until my nose is frostbite white.

But before the stars can rise, the sun must set. Today the sunset made the van stop, even though Bobby wanted to reach the first camp by nightfall. The brilliant orange rays shone directly through the windshield. When they started to mix with deep pinks and rich shades of magenta, Cing suggested we pull over. Everyone rummaged desperately for a camera, to capture the last rays of light. In the foreground, the rolling hills of steppe went on and on until they covered the horizon. The thin, hard layer of snow sent the light bouncing off and toward our eyes.

The sun sets everyday, and the stars are always shining. But today something beautiful happened: the inevitable became incredible.

I don't post many pictures here, mainly because I believe this should be a place to practice my writing, to put my travels into words. I'm reminded of something the author Paul Theroux says in his essay collection, "Sunrise with Sea Monsters." Young Theroux explains that he doesn't carry a camera, because he's afraid the technology will make him lazy. Instead he pushes for the right words to describe the experience. At the time of the writing, Theroux wonders if he'll ever have the skills to capture a moment in Paris when a group of pigeons took flight from a spire high on Notre Dame. He'd been three years trying to find what to say, and hadn't succeeded. Maybe someday I, too, can present this post without images, but for now I think the image below helps one appreciate the awesomeness of that sunset.

A Hasty Assembly

ULAANBAATAR, Mongolia — We were four, six if you count Bobby and Battir, but they do this for work and can't be counted among the adventurers. Fate brought us together, plus a common belief that costs should be kept as low as possible.

There is Cing, whose actual name might be Qing, Jin or Elida. There is Myriam, who favors a black bandanna around her neck, and finally Caleb, who knows a dozen Mongolian swear words.

The girls were expecting me. They had seen my e-mail sent from the small town near the border, indicating that I would stay through Lunar New Year and wanted to get out of the capital. I wouldn't go so far as to say I was their only hope, but their options were slim. Most people had just a day or two between trains, enough to sneak out to Terlej National Park on the outskirts of the city, ride a tame horse for 45 minutes, sleep in a ger and make it back by noon the next day. But the girls wanted more, someone with more time and up for a bigger challenge. I was their man.

Bobby, co-owner of the guesthouse, knew that she had to move quickly, so she started pushing as I filled out the hostel's registration forms.

"You said that you might be interested in going to the countryside?" she said.

I demurred. I woke up that morning before dawn, and had entered the country less than 24 hours before. I wanted a hot shower and a catnap before making any serious decisions.

"There are two women here," she continued. "They want to leave tomorrow."

She explained the itinerary. We would leave Ulaanbaatar midday, and begin the two day journey to the White Lake. The first night would be spent in a ger along the way. At the lake there would be horses, a ger family and climbing. Then we would swing through the town of Tseterleg, stopping there to refuel and then make our way to Kharkhorum, the old capital for the final night. On the fifth day, we would be back in the capital.

White Lake, Tseterleg, Kharkhorum. These places meant nothing to me. I knew Genghis Khan, Soviet Colony and yurt. That's it. I needed a nap.

Bobby pushed further. "I would come along as a free translator. These people are my friends. We stay with nice families." She promised an "authentic experience," by celebrating the second most important Mongolian holiday in a traditional way.

Then she brought out the calendar and started crunching numbers. The fee for the driver, petrol and the car would be $340. An eye-popping figure for someone of limited means, but then Bobby started dividing. Split over five days and four people, the costs would be well within the budget range. She promised two-dollar accommodation and one dollar meals during the trek.

Everything sounded fine, and I realized that I wouldn't be allowed a respite without making a yes or no decision. I was on board.

We had three, but the numbers were based on four. I found him in the hostel's small pantry, which is stocked with complimentary strawberry tea, bread and condensed milk. His name was Caleb, and he didn't seem to know what he was doing. He might come on the trip, he might stay here in Ulaanbaatar. He possibly could be leaving for China in a couple of days, or the embassy could take another week to issue his visa. He teeter-tottered, and he did it very well. But he did know the area and offered to take me out to lunch and to scout out a couple of record shops.

By the time we finished our Cuban sandwiches, the hesitation in his voice had died down. We swung back to the hostel for a credit card, and went to Mongolbank for a withdrawal. Mid-afternoon I slapped several dozen turgik bills on Bobby's desk, which made it official. In under a day, I'd be headed into the wilderness with five people I didn't know, to places I knew nothing about.

The future was wide open.

I (Not Him) Have Been Expecting You

ULAANBAATAR, Mongolia — The sharp tug on my checkered sleep pants means it's time to wake up. My eyes open but nothing changes: It's pitch dark in the train cabin. Why did my bunkmate wake me up? I fumble for my glasses, and after locating them, peer out the window. The sky is still monochromatic, but I do see a smattering of white lights illuminating empty blocks. This must be Ulaanbaatar.

At the station I perform what is now routine: awkwardly gather my belongings and bang the rolling suitcase on the train as I exit. The station is long and narrow; there is only one set of tracks, and the sole platform is now full of scurrying passengers from the biggest arrival of the young day. I am conspicuous in my puffy green down jacket and internal frame pack. But I'm not the only foreigner in this crowd: I see, for the first time since Moscow, obviously Western European faces.

And where there are multiple people from developed countries in a developing one, there will be people trying to give them service. An aged man approaches me as I shuffle toward the main exit. His coat is worn at the shoulders and the hair on his uncovered head frizzles out like bolts of lightning.

"UB Guesthouse?" I ask him. He nods and I start walking in tandem.

I booked a room at this particular guesthouse on the advice of some westbound Siberian passengers. Through an online reservation service, I secured a bunk bed for the night of February 14. Fate intervened, I missed my direct bus to Ulaanbaatar and was forced to rely on a couple of beat up vans and the slow local train to make it to the city. This put me 12 hours behind my original schedule, so instead of spending Valentine's Day in a six-person bunkroom in the hostel, I was in a four-person bunkroom on wheels.

When I checked my e-mail just over the border in Sukhbaatar, I had a message with the subject line "Hi From Mongolia." It read as follows:

"Dear Johathan,

Thank you very much for your reservation through the Hostelworld.

We would like to know how would you like to come to Mongolia? By train or by air? Because we arrange a pick up service. Our charge is $10 from the airport, but free of charge from the train station. If you like, please send us your arrival information such as train and carriage number or flight number etc.,

With kind regards,
Bobby"

I responded by explaining my situation, and requesting a pickup the next morning. And here, apparently was my man. He spoke no English, but led me out the station to a vast parking lot. Taxis, vans and motorcycles were shoved into a tight space, arranged in positions that ensured more than half the cars had no chance of exit. As we made our way through the third row, a voice yelled my name.

"Jonathan? JONATHAN!" It came from a few cars over. A tall Mongolian with a western-style coat and a red beanie gestured when I turned my head. He then ran over and started berating the old man in Mongolian. "Come with me," he said, and dazed, I followed.

"That man isn't from the guesthouse," he said. "He tried to trick you. I am from UB Guesthouse." To prove it, he took a business card that showed the guesthouse logo identical to the one I saw online. The man seemed legit, and when we arrived at his late-model van, I could see a couple of white faces already inside. I let him take the rolling suitcase and toss on top of the other rucksacks.

The man who rescued me was Anbar. As we pulled out of the parking lot he explained in excited tones about how I'd almost wandered into a strange car. He grew more and more animated; I cracked a smile at my stupidity. I've been traveling on this lonely winter route for so long that I forgot about touts. With no tourists in Siberia or on the train, there's been no one to try to trick me. This encounter also happened before dawn, and I'm typically useless before noon.

So, Mongolia, you got me once. But now I've activated my anti-virus software, and I won't let anything slip through the firewall again.

Previously: "Straight Outta Ulaanbaatar"

We're Out of That

SUKHBAATAR, Mongolia — From the outside, the place is the spitting image of the bar from the "Dukes of Hazard": a wooden porch, window shutters with peeling paint and a big sign over the door. The parking lot is unpaved and full of small boulders. A weak gold light shines out from the two front windows.

But this isn't Nashville, it's Mongolia in winter. Rather than facing a room full of rednecks, I find this place deserted when I walk in the door at 7 p.m.

The restaurant is quite simple, but there has been some effort made to decorate. Pictures of the short Mongolian horses are on display along with a couple of small landscape paintings. The wall is painted salmon, and is lit up by mood lighting. The bathroom is a squatter, a porcelain hole with a hose that only produces a dribble on the side to flush it. But it is clean and the light inside works. Considering that the equivalent establishment in China would only have three walls and harsh fluorescent lighting, I'm impressed at the level sophistication.

The sole waitress leads me to a back room, a ten by ten foot cube connected to the restaurant's other small room. She brings a menu, which runs four pages and lists dishes in Mongolian, Russian and English. There are Russian specialties, including borscht and other beet dishes, several kinds of meat and even french fries. After much debating, I select a chicken and rice dish and call for the waitress, who is back at her desk, staring into space.

I point to my selection. She shakes her head. They don't have the chicken.

I slide my finger down a couple of spots to a beef stew. She shakes her head again. I'm beginning to see a pattern, so I ask the waitress what they do have in stock

"Noodles," she says, and moves her fingers around in a circle to show a bowl. "Noodles with meat."

"Anything else?"

She doesn't seem to understand the question. I go with the noodles and an order of bread, which the menu indicates comes with the meal.

Of course, beer was in stock and I ordered a bottle. I never used to drink alone. I was so against non-social drinking that I had a rule: If you're not going out, you're not having a drop of alcohol. But a glass of beer seems necessary after a long day in these far-out places, relaxing the mind and dulling the body's temperature receptors during the walk back to the hotel in the frigid outdoors. Being in the former Soviet Bloc is threatening to turn me into an alcoholic.

The waitress brings over a Tiger Beer, which is from Singapore. How the beer from this equitorially-based company made it all the way to the top of Mongolia I'm not sure, but the crisp taste is a reminder of tropical days past. It warms the body, and not just because it opens capillaries.

The food arrives all at once. It's a huge plate of noodles, thick and yellow, covering an entire oval-shaped serving plate. There are strips of mutton mixed in. Garlic and oil are the obvious seasonings, and they have been applied generously. It's good: hardy in the best sense of the word. I'm barely able to finish half the dish. I mourn the fact that the "doggy bag" probably has not yet come to Mongolia.

I also used to be intimidated by the prospect of eating alone - I certainly would never do it at an Olive Garden or TGI Friday's, or the high school cafeteria - but it's something I do now with being self-conscious. Tonight I am the sole diner, and I interact little with the waitress. Instead I fish around in my pack for Lonely Planet Mongolia, and start researching possible adventures. Eagle hunting in the Altay Mountains, camel trekking in the Gobi. It's all imagination, with no need to ruminate with a tired companion about the challenges faced during the trip here. Instead I'm able to just forget them and move onto a more smoothing place.

Eventually two Russian men interrupt the quiet and take a table on the opposite side of the tiny room. They demand menus and glasses of vodka. I demand the check. I spent 3,800 tugriks on the meal, which after struggling with a new conversion rate, I realize is about $3.50. At least the sole dish on the menu is not an expensive one.

Clusterfuck!

SUKHBAATAR, Mongolia — I love the word "clusterfuck."

It's a wonderful piece of slang, a precise word to describe the epic, swirling disasters that appear so often in the comedy of life.

My father adores the word, and uses it liberally: The mall in December. The post office on tax day. Pretty much every part of an airport. They're all clusterfucks. Coming out of my father's mouth, it's not a compliment.

Especially egregious situations - perhaps a five-mile backup on the Interstate during a rainstorm - require a modifier. In his lexicon, these are not merely clusterfucks, they are Mongolian Clusterfucks. Growing up I knew whenever the words "Mongolian Clusterfuck" were put together, it was time to shut up and give my father some room to vent: we were in a bit of mess.

Until this very moment, I never thought about why the word "Monoglian" was used to emphasize the worst type of clusterfuck. Now, after only two hours in the country, I realize that the slang-coiners were dead on this time.

I needed a train ticket to the capital city, Ulaanbaatar. The crowded van I took from the border dropped me and my rolling suitcase right in front of the gray, Social-Realist train station. I rolled into the waiting room, a box filled with two rows of decaying plastic seats and an ugly shade of lime green paint peeling off the walls. It took much of my concentration to stay awake. I'd been traveling for 12 hours, difficult ones punctuated by yelling at various customs officers and bank tellers.

I focused on the occupants of the room. They're weren't many, and the few people were huddled in the corners, guarding their bags. The faces here are sadder and thinner than the faces I had seen over the border in Buryata. These people, in their tattered clothes, with their dust-covered possessions, wear their poverty as an outer layer. Yet they also seemed stoic, as if showing that years and years of abuse and hard conditions wouldn't crush their will to go on.

A small movement broke the peace. A young staff member removed a sign that was next to one of the ticket windows; pandemonium ensued. Every person in the station went toward that window at a full sprint - mothers grabbed their kids and forced them to lunge, an old man abandoned his bag of dirty vegetables - and they formed a massive huddle. People from the outside streamed into the station, and soon a dozen became nearly a 100.

Being mostly British, I made a move toward a shape to the right of the window that somewhat resembled a line. A uniformed train employee arrived and an attempted to make the line mandatory, with little success.

It took 15 minutes to get in front of that window. I was next in line three times, but each time I went to make that final step a skinny Mongolian wiggled his way around me. The fourth time I felt someone behind me attempting the same maneuver, but I'd had enough. I threw a right elbow out and blocked the deviant. Then I turned around to discover that I'd just hit a young mother in the side of the cheek, and come within a foot of giving her young son brain damage. But after fighting through that sea of humanity, I didn't feel guilty. I bought my ticket, one first-class upper berth, and ran out of the station.

It was an awful, awful time; the worst ticket buying experience ever. This is why a really bad clusterfuck is called a Mongolian Clusterfuck.

The Exile

KYAKHTA, Russia – On the road out of Russia, I passed only a single vehicle: an aging brown tank driving on a dirt road parallel to the main highway. As my rudimentary taxi got closer, two heads popped out. They wore the Russian army uniform, had shaven heads and couldn't have been older than 19. The tank operators had to stop because their mode of transport got completely ensconced in mud. The tank moved feebly forward and backward, but as my car drove into the distance it wasn't going much of anywhere.

That tank neatly represents what I will take away from two weeks in the Russian Federation. Russia is a powerful country, one that is becoming even more powerful with surging energy commodity prices and new mineral discoveries in remote areas. It is an important actor in global geopolitics, one that can still make waves in international affairs. But I'm not sure that the person driving this heavily armored tank is qualified for the job. Instead this lumbering giant might just be piloted by a scrawny, inexperienced teenager.

I didn't see Russia; I saw Russias. On the streets of Moscow I peered in restaurants where oligarchs and their progeny snarf down $100 mayonnaise-covered salads and saw one country. I saw that place again in the Sony store, where everything costs twice the price in the United States and there were two salespeople for every customer. To dodge the cold, I wandered through the GUM Department Store. Once a few mostly-empty Communist shops, the turn-of-the-century structure has been renovated and subdivided into dozens of fancy boutiques. This is the fanciest mall I have ever been to, anywhere on the planet, and inside the shoppers were privileged, mega-spenders with $2,000 clutches and matching designer boots.

Then there is the Other Russia, the one I saw mostly on transport. It was in van taxis, long-distance buses, on the subway and that epic train ride I came elbow-to-elbow with those not doing so well. The ones with cheap Chinese T-shirts and faded designs, carrying old backpacks back and forth from a block flat in a small suburb. They live lives without flash or glamor, eating out infrequently and . Dying early from poisonous liquor and poor working conditions. Subsiding on a pension that wouldn't be adequate in Sub-Saharan Africa.

Then there are the have-somes, the Sergeis and Vasilys that are doing O.K. Things are better than 1998, when the currency collapsed and the International Monetary Fund forced economy policy down Yestlin's throat like he was in charge of Sierra Leone. Their lot's improving, but life is still a slog.

These Russias should be in open conflict, with daily protests as the poor try to institute the Orange Revolution on a massive scale and those with a stake in the current system fight back with their superior resources. Instead, people from all walks of life accept Vladimir Putin as the driver of the country. He and his cronies get to decide where to point the tank, at defiant ex-Soviet Republics and democratic elements in the West.

I personally believe that the people with grapes should take them up with the driver. Make him pass a more difficult test before renewing his license. Try someone else at the wheel for a while.

But I'm no longer in the car, I just came for a test spin. I couldn't buy Russian. For all the friendly people I met here, meals I shared and wonderful literature and art I exposed to, I could never live here. The Russian deposition is too solemn for my extroverted personality. The skies are too gray and too cold someone who loves the beach. The quality of life is shit. It's a police state, somewhere where I had to worry about being written up for small infractions by an underpaid man in uniform. Most services are corrupt, so if I got in real trouble I wouldn't know where to go.

Russia is lurching in three directions. It may explode or prosper; I'm not sure. After spending some time here, it's no longer a black spot on the map. I'll be closely monitoring how things develop here – from a safe distance.

Previously: "Do Svidaniya"

The Best of 2007

ALBANY, N.Y — Blogging every day, or the majority of days in a year, produces an incredible amount of text, a virtual avalanche of verbosity. This year I wrote 180 entries, each with about 600 words (things got longer as the year went on). After mashing on a few buttons on the Windows Calculator application, I can claim to have written 108,000 words on this Web site.

That's a lot to wade through, especially since Blogger is blocked at many places of employment. As an introduction, I've selected a dozen entries which I feel represent the best of what I've written this year and provided links and a short summary below. In the newspaper business, or at least the corner of the newspaper business I used to operate in, this would be called a "Clip 'n' Save" post. Feel free to print it out and send it to your grandmother in Arizona.


"Monika"
I meet a sharp-tounged fellow student while staying in a claustrophobic hostel.

"Standing Up to A Bear"
A Lithuanian student of politics explains why Russia is really, really scary.

"Do Svidaniya, Russia"
Sneaking out of Russia with a vanful of Mongolian sheep herders.

"Please Observe All Signs and Regulations While in the China"
A friendly police officer defends China's draconian penal code.

"Straight Outta Ulaanbaatar"
Mongolian gangsta rap brings tears to my eyes.

"Two Bombs, One Song"
I check out Qinghai's newest tourist attraction: The Nuclear Weapons Testing Bunker.

"Celvin"
A chicken-wing salesman falls in love.

"Running the Border"
The monsoon ruins a dubious plan to run the border into the closed kingdom of Bhutan.

"Bandages, Thermometers, and a Spider"
My Chinese comes in handy when a friend gets sick in a small town.

"The Ladykillers"
I'm robbed in the night and the prime suspects are Thai transvestite prostitutes.

"Man-Meat"
A Kazakh pimp wants me to "entertain" rich Beijing women.

"The Capture of Jiang Zhendong"
A criminal case in Beijing brings back memories of a tough assignment several months earlier.

Two Plates of Dumplings

ULAN-UDE, Russia — At a dinner party, when a new acquaintance discovers I live in China, they usually smile and rack their brain for the easiest line of inquiry. Inevitably, "How is the food there?" comes out. Then, to show that they've been to college and know a bit about the world, this caveat is tagged on: "Of course, the food is nothing like the Chinese food we have here..."

I stumble to answer this question, regularly not getting much more out than, "it's good," and mumbling something about there being plenty of culinary variety inside China. Sometimes this turns into a total meander, as I start listing off the tell-tale flavors of Cantonese, Sichuan, Fuijian and Heilongjiang schools of cooking. Then my inquirer's eyes begin to glaze over and their feet start shuffling toward the hors d'œuvres table.

The problem is party-goers believe they're asking a simple question, when instead they're stumbling into the complicated field of Chinese food around the world. There are many, many restaurants that serve a over-salted, watered-down version of Chinese food. But at the same time, the constant flow of immigrants from the Old World to the new ensures that more authentic tastes usually aren't hard to find, no matter how far from the Middle Kingdom.

Here in Ulan-Ude both flavors are easily available, and in the spirit of investigation and a rapidly diminishing tolerance for Russian food, I checked them both out.

My visit to the Siberian-Tibetan Temple awakened my hunger for Chinese cuisine, so after getting back into town I went looking for a Chinese restaurant. I didn't need to look far, as I saw Chinese characters on the building just beside the Hotel Udon. I went inside, down three stairs to what I expected to be a dining room. Instead I found a low-grade dance floor, complete with spinning yellow, magenta and blue lights and a tiny Mirrorball. The couple tables remaining were pushed to the side of the room, and were empty. Bad disco music blared from a very loud sound system. A busty woman in a tank-top and too much eyeliner motioned me toward the dance floor. Instead I went for the exit.

I grabbed chips, dried apples and a Coke from a small grocery store and went back to the hotel for a cold dinner. As I passed through the lobby, I saw a sign posted next to the desk. It was in Chinese, and said there was a restaurant on the hotel's top floor. I didn't even bother to drop off my fake dinner before going up there.

The restaurant was heaving with people, all Chinese. The restaurant's dining area wasn't much bigger than my single room, but the owner managed to cram a half-dozen oblong tables inside. Christmas lights and prints ripped off Russian Orthodox calendars hung on the walls. Each table was full, except for a tiny one near the kitchen door, which had a half-eaten bowl of fried rice on top. A waitress, a middle-aged Chinese woman gestured for me to sit down. She then cleared the bowl, wiped the table down with a foul smelling rag and placed a menu entirely in Cyrillic in front of me.

"I'd like to see a Chinese menu," I said, in Chinese.

The waitress did a strange thing: nothing. Didn't blink that I spoke in her native tounge, rather than Russian or my native English. Instead she got a Chinese menu to replace the Russian one.

I ate a very standard Chinese meal: kung pao chicken, fried rice, and a bowl of dumplings in soup. It was all quite tasty, and when the chef came out in the middle of my soup, I complimented him on the food. Were there many people in town, I asked.

Yes, the chef said, quite a few traders. Then he thanked me for coming and asked if I could make way for the next diner.

It was a completely normal Chinese dining expierence. Replace the Russian kitsch on the walls with some posters of Guilin and Lucky Cats, and I could have been in Sichuan Province. There is really is authentic Chinese food outside of the country.

The next day I woke up late, still suffering from a strange form of jet lag caused by my irregular schedule on the Trans-Siberian and the nosy comings and goings of the businessmen and hotel guests on the hall. I started walking the rough sidewalk toward the train tracks and downtown Ulan-Ude, not really sure of a destination. At a corner where I needed to turn right, I saw something that I'd walked by on my previous trips: a mostly-underground shopping plex, a concrete building designed based on what must be stolen blueprints from the Montreal Olympics. It was all gray, irregular slabs, topped off by an ugly cone rising from the entrance. I went inside.

The mall had two largely open levels. Most stores were filled, with music shops and places hawking cheap Chinese clothing. On the bottom level I noticed a small restaurant jutting into the atrium. The restaurant's name was in Cyrillic, but on either side were large Chinese dragons.

It was a mall food court restaurant minus the court. Food was ordered and paid for at the counter, and then customer brought it to an open table. At the counter I was presented with a Cyrillic menu.

"Do you have a Chinese menu?" I asked the woman behind the counter.

This time she stared at me blankly. I studied her features: flat face, pale skin, thick eyebrows. This woman wasn't Chinese, she was a Buryat, and didn't know Chinese from Martian. Thankfully the dishes were being prepared in the front of the stall, and I pointed to a few dumplings and some rice.

My first bite was strange. The dumpling wasn't wrapped in rice, instead it was fried in a thick dough. Inside wasn't pork, but instead a thick beef stew. This was Chinese food for Russian people. All the customers appeared to be citizens of the Federation, a typical Siberian mixture of Buryats and the Rus.

The food wasn't bad, just a bit bland; it was actually hardy in a way that traditional Chinese food is not. The lesson I draw from these back-to-back meals is that the Chinese adapt the menu to suit the audience. Not a terribly profound moral to this tale I know, but it makes a quick and easy answer at a dinner party.

Sad, Sad Jazz

ULAN-UDE, Russia — I'm a bit homesick.

That can happen during dinner at a place called the Fast Food Café, a Russian establishment that specializes in bringing America to the cold, dark taiga.

I wound up here because I couldn't find any other tasty-looking options in Ulan-Ude's main area - other than a giant Lenin head.

At the Fast Food Café, food is ordered cafeteria-style. The diner takes a tray and pushes it down three parallel metal rods, stopping to take any food that looks edible. On offer are Russo-ifed versions of American favorites, including fried chicken, hamburgers and hot dogs. Healthy dollops of Russia's national condiment and spice, mayonnaise, is sprinkled on top of everything, including the fruit and Caesar Salad. I have to request a custom order, which is difficult when your Lonely Planet Russian Phrasebook is back on the Trans-Siberian, speeding toward Vladivostok.

"Nyet mayo," I say, hoping for cognate. The kitchen worker, about 18 with her hair in a messy ponytail, doesn't get it. I point to a hot dog with three huge kosher pickle slices and a thick squirt of mayo on the top. "Nyet, nyet, nyet," I say. This time she starts to move, although shoots me a look that seems to say that she can't understand why I'd desecrate an American treat by eating it without sauce.

I grab a bag of chips, pay for my food and then go to the bar, where there's Budweiser, Heineken and Baltika on tap. I choose the native brew (#7), and look for an open seat. I find a line of empty stools facing the street windows, and take one in the middle.

The café is obviously a popular weekend hangout for the city's teenagers. And why wouldn't it be? The food is reasonably priced, and minus the mayonaise, pretty tasty, there's bunches of Ikea-knockoff tables in various sizes for small, medium and large groups and friends, and an attached movie theater and video arcade. As I take my third bite of processed pork, the house band starts to play. It's a jazz-quartet of balding middle-aged men in black T-shirts and leather coats.

They play the theme to "Titanic," then "The Bodyguard." The young patrons keep chatting away, but I stop doodling in my brown trip diary. The music choice is mawkish, but it's redeemed by the incredibly tight playing in the group. And here, in this artificially American environment, my mind turns to schmaltz. I'm 9,000 miles from home, in an incredibly foreign city. I haven't had a proper conversation in 10 days. The Internet Café blocked Skype, Gmail and AOL Instant Messenger, so I can't have even an electronic conversation with my friends and relatives. I'm cut-off, on assignment far away from my former life.

Eventually it's time for "Young Hannibal," the third sequel to "The Silence of the Lambs," in the attached movie theater. The film is slow, suspenseful and punctuated by random acts of violence. The atrocities on screen are horrific, . Lecter's enabler is Gong Li, the ravishing Shanghainese actress who made several key Zhang Yimou movies, including "Raise the Red Lantern," "Ju Dou," and "The Curse of the Golden Flower." A key section of the narrative takes place in Kaunaus, Lithuania, a town I passed through just a couple weeks ago. The film is dubbed into Russian, and with no recognizable dialog I stay stuck on the remembrance of things past.

After the film I grab another drink from the Fast Food Café bar. I scribble a few postcards, feigning being excited by my adventures when tonight I'm worn down. The band is between sets and a DJ is spinning songs popular during high school. Aalyiah's "Try Again." Pink's "Lady Marmalade" cover. Eminem's "My Name Is."

In China half the bar would come up to the strange redhead and practice their English. Russia is not China, here they leave the tall man writing in a worn, stained brown notebook alone, and don't ask if he needs help getting home after three beers and an equal number of hot dogs.

It's a cold, uphill two kilometers through half-lit streets back to the Hotel Udon. I don't want to risk riding a bootleg taxi at night in this foreign city, so I pull up the fur lined hood of my down parka and start the trudge. As I walk the jazz music echoes through my head, and eventually the cold is replaced by melancholy for things left behind on the road.

Model Minority

ULAN-UDE, Russia — Pity the indigenous Siberian.

Ruled by a government five time zones distant, the native population has had its religion muzzled, culture destroyed and witnessed mass migration of hundreds of thousands of Europeans.

It's hardly unique to the people in Siberia. Native Americans, Outback Aboriginals, and the Incas didn't have so easy, either. But here in the capital of Buryata, one of Siberia's largest ethnic minorities, the population is a taking an interesting turn from the type indigenous tale of woe and mistreatment. I don't want to say this to loudly, but the natives here appear to be doing just fine.

I saw my first Buryat on the Moscow Metro, a young woman with long, skinny legs and a slender frame. Her face was a revelation – a completely new type of visage. She had a long, very flat forehead, a broad nose and very small eyelids. She looked almost Korean, but her skin tone was much lighter, just a shade darker than a pale Russians. At first it seemed to be an impossible look, and I thought that this person must be an Kazakh Albino or just exceptionally light-skinned. But every day I would pass a couple people with the same features, and I realized there wasn't anything unusual about her look, just that there are very few Buryats found outside of Russia.

In Moscow that distinctive face can be dangerous. Right-wing, nationalist street gangs prowl the night, taunting, beating, and sometimes permanently disabling Asian faces in the city. The primary target is illegal migrants from Central Asia, Uzebks and Tajiks who come to Moscow to escape dire living conditions at home – conditions exacerbated by Russia's stranglehold on these countries' economies. There's a jingoistic undercurrent to this violence, and anyone who doesn't look Russian is a possible target.

A Moscow Times story describes what happened to a young Buryat, Yury, coming home to apartment one evening:

"About six teenagers, smaller guys, jumped me on the metro. I managed to throw them off me and it wasn't that serious at first," he recollected during an interview in his dorm room. "Then one of them yelled 'What are you waiting for?' and another stabbed me as they ran out of the car," he said, displaying a three-inch scar near his left kidney. As Yury, who declined to give his last name for this story, staggered around the metro station looking for help and bleeding profusely, the police stopped him for a document check. They helped themselves to all his cash and then decided to call the paramedics.

There are only 5,000 Buryats in a Moscow over 10 million. Here things are different. Buryats make up more than a third of the population, with more than a quarter-million in the Republic. That proportion seems low in the capital, Ulan-Ude, where most people have the distinctive face.

I spent most of the day passing those faces, walking the streets of the city. Ulan-Ude is in the middle of a cold snap, which in the middle of Siberia means it's really, really cold. Temperatures were more than a dozen degrees below zero during the day, and quickly plunge to -40 once the sun is down. There is no humidity in the dry, crisp air, so everyone must cover up to avoid the cold. This makes Buryat spotting quite difficult, as there is little difference in the way the two groups dress outside. Everyone wears a long fur coat, men in dark brown or black, women often in a cream. On the head women wear more fur, usually a peaked hat. Men sport something resembling a thick wool beret, which seems to keep the head warm but I'm not sure offers the ears any protection. Shoes and pants are muted colors, and draw the eye up to the dead animal warming the person above.

Fancy wool coats are a mark of luxury in America, and while they are less expensive and more of an essential here, hopelessly broke people don't own them. And the coats look rather new and well put together.

At the post office, mailing some postcards that say "Moscow" and "Warsaw," I wait in line behind several, uncovered women. The one in front of me is especially attractive, hair recently curved and her pale face covered with a layer of cover up. She wears a fire-engine red shade of lipsticks, and carries a fashionable black handbag. She appears to be off to a party after dropping some bills in the mail.

My winter stroll left me hungry, so I stopped into several restaurants looking for food. I found the offerings too upscale for my taste, including a sushi restaurant in a hotel lobby; a Russian restaurant, located underground and down a steep, winding staircase; and a tapa bar that also served sushi. At each place a dinner would be over $20, but the restaurants were all mostly full, primarily with Buryat customers. These middle-class patrons are served by an almost exclusively Russian wait staff.

Buryats run the convenience stores, the hair salons and the travel agencies. On the pedestrian shopping street, Buryats mingle with rusting Socialist statues celebrating the Double Helix and scientific progress, carrying bags of new clothes from the post-holiday sales. I go to a music store to find cheap, bootleg Siberian music and instead find fancy cell phones and iPod Nanos at nearly double their American price. There is a line at the register.

A consistent theme of Russia journalism in the Western Media is the presence of "Two Russias," Moscow and the poor countryside. Here in Siberia the capital's wealth appears to be spreading, impacting people in provincial cities and historically-repressed minorities. It's amazing and completely unexpected. I wish I had the services of a Russian guide, and could look up at academic at the local Buddhist university. I want to know why things seem O.K. here, and if this model could help the fractious relations in the multi-ethnic republic to the south.

I'm not naive enough to believe things are fine here; life for the Buryats is not easy. The countryside is still very poor, the birthrate is not high, corruption is widespread, costs are increasing for everyday items with the surplus of foreign currency. But these are problems of the entire Russia, not just the minority populations. In this world, that's a real sign of progress.

The Arrival

ULAN-UDE, Russia — Daylight comes quickly and painfully. Sergei wakes the rest of the cabin up, and demands that we all look out the window. Outside there is blindingly white nothingness. It is the southern end of Lake Baikal, the deepest lake in the world. Now completely iced over, the lake reflects the bright winter sunshine, ratcheting up the pain of my hangover headache.

It's monotonous and strangely beautiful, a vast, empty expanse. The other side of the train hugs steep mountains, their slopes covered by wispy mounds of snow blown by the wind and then frozen into shape. The scenery is other-worldly, a huge contrast to the endless stubby pine trees and rolling hills that I've seen unceasingly since Moscow.

I begin to gather my belongings, taking back the iPod from Vasily and stuffing the remaining pieces of bread into a pink plastic bag. I find five socks on the end of my bunk, and a sixth on the floor under Olga's mattress. The large rolling suitcase is removed from the storage place and put into the hall, along with my overstuffed blue pack.

As the Baikal fades into the distance, the carriage attendant comes over with my ticket stub. I thank her, but realize that I don't even know her name. She's been two doors down for five days, but I can't say I've learned a single factoid about her life on the rails. It must be incredibly monotonous, slowly rolling from Moscow to Vladivostok endlessly. I suppose this must be a prestigious position in the railroad company, something that requires slaving away on tirgid local lines for several years before getting the assignment. But this endless travel must get boring.

Suddenly I realize that my journey is almost over, and that I probably won't have the luxury again of taking a week out of my life to travel the rails. I feel a deep sense of regret about the things I didn't do: I never went to the restaurant car, took a makeshift train shower with two cups of tea water, spoke with the young family three cars down or bought mittens from the Tuvans selling them compartment to compartment.

Instead my Trans-Siberian is in the tiny compartment. Olga issuing dietary commands. Vasily bopping his head side to side because of hip-hop. Sergei and his expressionless face, not moving.

If this journey was just a three-hour flight or an overnight hop, we would have parted as strangers. Instead the trip went on much, much longer, and they had the opportunity to slowly reveal their personalities.

For them the Trans-Siberian is a means to an end, the most practical way to get to another place. Times are good, but not too good. They can travel, but it takes a long time. They have enough money to visit family (Vasily), to go on a vacation (Olga) or commute to a new job (Sergei), but not much. They don't have to travel third class, platzkart, with its stained sheets and lack of curtains. But there's not enough money to avoid this taxing trip, which seems to carry little novelty for the three of them. On my first day, Olga asked me why I didn't fly to China. I wanted to see Russia, to have an adventure, I said, and then asked her why she didn't fly. "Money," she said, and Vasily, sitting next to her nodded.

For me there was romance on this train. Flying is soulless and uninteresting. The most I can hope for on a flight is a couple hours of banter with someone about their condo in South Florida. Here I got to know three people, somewhat intimately, and all the while I was headed toward somewhere. I wouldn't have taken a plane if it was free.

The Rossiya lost time during the night, and Ulan-Ude is not in sight at the scheduled arrival time of 10:18. The endless taiga returns, with its uniform hills and occasional painted wooden cabin. An hour and a half later, the city finally comes into view. Ulan Ude occupies a wide, bowl-shaped valley. The train snakes around the bowl's lip, hugging a frozen riverbed and a string of rusted, shuttered factories. The city is in a beautiful location, but the skyline looks the same as all the sad Russian towns we passed the last four days.

The train decelerates and stops. I throw my pack on my shoulders and grab the rolling suitcase, and head down the narrow hallway. As I begin the turn around the carriage attendant's cabin, my suitcase bangs the side, just as when I boarded. But this time Sergei is right behind me, and he takes the back and goes around smoothly.

Outside the three stand beside our car in a ragged line. We hug; I hug Olga twice.

"Dasvedanya!" I shout in a Zhivago moment, then I turn my back to the train, walk toward the station and don't turn around, not even once.