Update to webpage

Hi all,

I'm off tomorrow for another two-week drive around, for work this time so can't tell you where...

Photos from the last road trip around south and central Mongolia are now up on my webpage, though I haven't had the time to add the text and they are in fairly large (up to 900kb) 'flash' slideshows, so sorry to those of you on slower links.

Have a look now at:
http://www.geocities.com/thomaspsant/dispatches/julroadtrip/julroadtrip_dispatch.htm
for a trip map and links to day by day galleries of photos.

T

Rainy Friday Evening

Just about to head out on Friday evening but it just started chucking it down so a few more minutes at the desk…

Not really managed to get much dome with photos from the last trip yet, plugging through them slowly but shooting 10Mb raw files really slows things down – slowly I’m getting to know the batch file capabilities in Nikon Capture software but it’s a bit of a change from dealing with jpegs in Photoshop.

Tried to buy some laptop speakers today and had a typical UB shopping experience. First minor irritation was not having the price written anywhere near anything and then, maybe it’s being a foreigner or maybe it’s standard practice in computer shops here, being told a price in dollars.

Now don’t get me wrong. Even though I like the feel of a quality English tenner there is something specific about using greenbacks in developing countries that lets you know they are, well, still developing. Locals not having faith in their own currency is unfortunately a sure sign that something, somewhere is not right in the system.

Anyway, my standard practice (and the fact I don’t carry dollars on me) when told a price in dollars is to ask for one in tugrug. After a while the spotty youth behind the counter got on his phone and started tapping out a SMS to get the exchange rate. At least that’s what I though, after a few minutes I though maybe otherwise…

At this point the electric had gone off so the chance of anything happening was going down-hill fast. I left, not quite speechless but certainly speaker-less.

Rain has finished now. Time to go.

Cheers

T.

Back in UB... Confluence hunting game...

Been back in UB for the last few days busy at work and trying to find time to deal with 18Gb of raw files from photos taken on the last trip.

In the end I got around 3000 km of Mongolia heading to the far south and then cross-country (is there any other way in this place?) to Bayankhongor in the centre. After that a route was pushed through the Khangai Mountains which was the highlight for scenery but the lowlight when offered a snow leopard pelt by some herders who had recently killed one of these highly endangered animals. After a bit of a break down (half a day wait for a new suspension spring assembly and mechanics from UB) and a brief tourist stop at Mongola's old capital a return to UB was made on the 20th.

When the photos have been sorted they'll probably go up as a written dispatch and maybe a gallery on my main website - watch this space for more details.


Confluence hunting - a great game for those with time on their hands in a big open country...

Basically a confluence is an imaginary point on the earth's surface where a line of latitude and longitude cross. There's been an internet project for the last few years to visit all the confluences on the earth's surface and get a photographic record of what that place is like. You get there, take a photo of the site, photos north, south east and west, one of your GPS and add any others you want to.

On the road-trip I got my first confluence and two more. If you visit the confluence website soon they are the top 3 on the most recently visited list at http://www.confluence.org/index.php

Otherwise you can see them at:
http://www.confluence.org/confluence.php?visitid=10861
http://www.confluence.org/confluence.php?visitid=10860
and
http://www.confluence.org/confluence.php?visitid=10859

They'll give you a feel for what 3 random areas in southern and central Mongoia look like (empty is the main theme...).

T

Kevin and Karen, Kanadians kurrently in Korea

Well that didn't take too long. Kevin and Karen have opted to join me for the trip in June so no more offers please.

Updates of preparation will go up here before the off and watch this space for images from the trip in a few weeks time (if we make it back alive).

T

Mongolia - Dlanzadgad, Naadam, Gobi, Altai. Come along for the ride…

I’ve got one or two seats free during July when I’m driving myself on a photo-tour for 10 days. This is not a commercial trip – I’m looking for someone or two people as travel companions, not as paying tourists.

I’m planning to leave UB by landcruiser on the 9th or 10th July and get to Dalanzadgad for Naadam on the 11th and 12th. I went here 2 years ago and it’s a great place to see Naadam as you can get right up to the action. After Dalanzadgad I’m looking for good places to take photographs (countryside, country-life, wild-life) and as long as it’s somewhere photogenic the route is open to suggestions, but at the moment the plan is to head up to Altai (passing Bayanzag, Khongoryn Els, Yolyn Am, Ikh Bogd and some of the lakes) before returning to UB sometime around the 20th. I work in Mongolia and have driven some of this route a few times in the last year or two so know what to expect.

I’ll be in and out of UB until a day or so before the trip but would like to meet anyone or any two people who are seriously interested in joining me for this trip. I’m thinking of people who are fairly active, fit and healthy so they can stand up to the bumps on the road, nightly wilderness camping and camp food. If you only have 2 weeks in Mongolia then this isn’t for you, but if you’re able to take other trips later, or already have done, then this could be something a bit different. If you came to Mongolia specifically to take photos then we’d be in a similar frame of mind.

If you are interested then drop me an e-mail on trip2005jul@tom-sant.com telling me who you are, what you have done/want to do in Mongolia and what you do and have done in the real world. Let me know any background that may contribute to the trip (specialists in Mongolian history, flora and fauna particularly welcome!). Finally ask any questions you have about the trip and suggest a route after Dalanzadgad if you have one in-mind. I’ll reply to all the relevant e-mails as soon as possible and can meet any likely candidates later next week in UB.

The Upside:

• You get to be driven around Mongolia for almost nothing (we’ll just split the fuel and food costs, fuel will be around 300 to 400 USD total so you pay half if one person or 2/3 if 2 people).
• The vehicle is well maintained and has just done a 2350km Gobi trip as a shake-down with no problems.
• The driver (me) has 10 years of off-road driving experience, the last 3 years spent in Mongolia.
• We’ll be exploring places at a more leisurely pace than the normal tourist jeep trips.
• Photographic advice is free and I’ll probably bring along a laptop for photo downloads and reviews.
• An ipod with 5000 tunes on-board playable through the radio.
• You can jump out anytime though I’d prefer company for the whole trip if we are getting on ok.

The Downside:

• I’m not using a local translator/guide so any interaction with passing nomads will be by sign-language.
• I’m not into staying in local gers and intend to camp each night somewhere photogenic and in the middle of nowhere, or 5-10km away from the big towns.
• This is currently a one vehicle journey. If it does break down it could be a real adventure getting back to UB (I will have a sat-phone, spare water, first-aid etc just in case). VERY interested in hearing from anyone else who would like to tag along in a second vehicle)
• I get the over-riding say in the route and timing (but I’m getting mellower these days).
• You will need your own tent, sleeping mat and sleeping bag.
• An ipod with 5000 tunes on-board playable through the radio.
• I can leave you in the centre of Dalanzadgad, Altai or Bayankhongor if we are not getting on ok.

Pictures#2 for the 2350km story below

Pictures#1 for the 2350km story below

2350km UB-Bayankhongor-Dalanzadgad-Mandalgovi-UB

Briefly back in UB after a couple of weeks of not showering in the Gobi. I drove out to Bayankhongor to start with, taking about 11 hrs. The first couple of hours from UB the asphalt has so many pot-holes you can’t do much more than 60km/hr, then you get on a couple of hundred km of good black-top until Arvaykheer (410km from UB) where you can roll along at 100km/hr quite nicely. After Arvaykheer the asphalt goes bad again and soon you’re on a mix of field tracks and unsurfaced road-bed, back to 60km/hr if you are lucky. Considering it was the start of June it was amusing to be in a mini blizzard between Arvaykheer and Bayankhongor where the road goes up to around 2000m.

A grey-crane or two, many birds of prey, lots of locals herding animals and a total of five foreign cyclists (cold and struggling in a strong headwind) were passed en-route.

I then spent most my time doing fieldwork somewhere in Bayankhongor province (could tell you but then I’d have to kill you). The cold weather was replaced by warm to hot stuff within a few days. The heat of an unrelenting sun was tamed by persistent winds but at least the wind kept the mosquitos away most of the time.

After work was over I did a mega-drive of around 680km taking 14hrs to cross some of the Gobi and move on to our company’s base in Omnogov province near a local town called Manlai. A good journey as the tracks in the Gobi are some of the smoother ones in Mongolia – the only black-top during the whole ride was in Dalanzadgad town where I stopped of to pick-up some snacks from the biggest shop in the Gobi, a branch of Nomin that opened up last year. If you want a TV, carpet or electronic organ in the south of Mongolia then this shop is the place to come. They even had Irn-bru there last year but I was sadly disappointed not to find any this time.

After a few days around Manlai I carried on back up to UB. The night before a huge dust-storm had blown in for a few hours. It had a sharp 500m high front of muddy cloud and came in at around 50km/hr. The road from Manlai going north goes over a series of hills and wide shallow valleys and the going was slow for the fires 150km because the storm had left a lot of standing water behind it. As soon as water hits gobi the ground can go treacherously soft and finding a way to thread between the water-holes was quite fun. On the edge of each wet area was a parked up truck with a driver sleeping off the wait for the ground to harden up again.

A few hundred km of dirt later and a power-nap later I reached Mandalgovi, a province centre in Dundgov. It’s a depressing place to drive into from the south as the track goes next to the town’s waste dump. Getting rid of the waste just involves trucking it out into a flat area and dumping it. There are no dozers to push the dumps together, no pit to push waste into and nothing to stop shit blowing all over the local countryside. Against a backdrop of a abandoned hulk of a coal-powered factory it was not the most picturesque sight in the world. I’d flown into Mandalgovi several times before and the thing that always struck me from the air on a sunny day was the several square km of sparkling broken glass reflecting the sunlight from this area of waste.

Someone a year or two ago made the effort of laying a road-bed from Mangalgovi to where the asphalt starts near UB. Unfortunately they never got around to surfacing it and most drivers are again resorting to the field tracks running parallel on either side of the main road due to the number of deep pot-holes and long sections of ‘wash-board’. This was probably the worst section of the whole trip and slowed the day right down to give an average of only 40km/hr for this 475km. I was glad to see the tourist ger-camp (Ondor Dov?) marking the southern end of the asphalt from UB come into sight and let me know the drive was almost over.

On, and off the road again…

Sorry for the gap. I’ve had another brief foray outside Mongolia – the second this year already, and possibly the last for at least the next 6 months. Most time was spent back in the UK and a big shout goes out to everyone I bumped into with special mention to: Becca for the lift and discussing life (as always, it seems), Mum and Dad for another lift and being there, Neil and Sorrel for the wedding, Andy B for putting up with me (again), sharing the Quantox mud and rain and being daft enough to let me steer the kayak, my big Sis for yet another lift and feeding me, Jonesy for beer, dodgy tales and toothpaste (and a short lift), Greg for a great Polish evening and many toasts.

On the way out and back I enjoyed stops in Beijing taking in some favorite temples and hanging out to photograph Wangfujing’s night market - a great introduction to meat-on-a-stick cuisine (roaches, snakes, starfish, water-beetle, scorpion, centipede etc. etc. etc). It’s one of the best evenings out in the city and comes with a full stomach for a cheap price.

So, now back in Mongolia. It’s heated up a little since I left but seems to have entered the rainy season along with the normal dust storm or two blowing through. My favorite poster of a leggy Russian girl in a pink cocktail skirt hitching up her stockings on the bonnet of a Porsch has been covered up (it was by the old Russian Tank traffic island, don’t worry, I’ve got a photo of it) but on the bright side we’ve found a new café (aka ‘The Green One’ because we forgot its name) and a new restaurant (Emerald Bay) which get 6/10 and 7/10 respectively on the UB scale. You need to really impress me to get a 10 – so far nowhere in UB rates more than an 8.5…

The planning is still on for a Mongolian road-trip in July. I’ve decided probably not to take a translator and instead rely on a sat phone for emergency translation use. The route is still open, I’m thinking of taking in Naadam at UB cause I’ll probably be a bit too late ending work to get down to Dalanzadgad for it. Then I’ll have around 10 days in which to drive out somewhere photographic, chill for a day or two, and drive back. Some offers of interest have been received but I may have an extra seat or two if not taking a translator… Be warned – I’ll probably be taking a load of digital video during the trip, maybe even try to get enough stuff to make into a 20 minute video diary of the trip.

Hmm, sitting in UB waiting for photos to print. The pain of a high mega-pixel camera with a decent printer.

Came back from Vancouver to here and it was warm and sunny, a few days later it was snowing again. April in Mongolia is one of the most variable months of the year. The green is slowly coming out in the countryside and the muggers out onto the streets of UB. The US embassy here issued a warning this morning about targeted muggings around one of the central parts of town. The scary thing is the muggers don’t demand money, they just strangle you unconscious before going through your pockets – nice. Mental note: check the ‘use-by’ date on my canister of mace…

Mongolian Photographic Expeditions

This may be of interest to photographers visiting Mongolia later this year. When I get back to UB I’m hoping to buy a four-wheel drive to do three road trips around the country. The trips will be of around 10 days each and will probably be in July, (possibly to the south Gobi and to see the Naadam festival at Dalanzadgad), during mid-September (possibly to the eagle festival in Bayan Olgi) and a final trip during early November. Each trip will stop whenever there is something good to photograph though most days will also involve at least 8 hours, bumpy, tortuous, dirt-track driving.

I’d be interested to hear from people who may be in Mongolia during those times and would like to come along for a photographic adventure. You’d need to bring your own camping kit (except a stove and cooking kit) and pay all fuel costs (a few hundred dollars maximum).

Time out, 2005, mk1.

Wow its hot. Well, relatively speaking. I’m taking a sojourn away from Mongolia for a while and after a night in Beijing I got here, to Vancouver. The mission is to pick up kit for the next year and possibly do some snowboarding, though the way the slopes look maybe I was being hopeful bringing my board with me. Anyway, have the camera as well so maybe I’ll get another gallery for the web site.

I’m in that state of not quite being jet-lagged but not yet being totally ‘there’ at the moment. Popping a travel sickness pill on the flight had the desired side effect of sending me to sleep for five of the nine hours in the air and got me into time with western Canada, at least it has for my head and my stomach. There just seems to be 12 hours missing between, how should I put it, ingestion and excretion, not helped by the dubious sandwiches in the airport lounge at Beijing…

Web-site updates

If you have come to my blog without visiting my homepage then you won’t have seen a new gallery that has just been added. This one features a selected sequence of photos from my last visit to Turkey, now way back in 2003. The photos are slightly disjointed so are arranged from the cool of a morning sunrise in Istanbul to the baking mid-day heat of the Mediterranean. Take a look, let me know what you think.

The contact page has also been changed. Now you can read an e-mail address hidden in an image and get in touch with me directly rather than using the previous form. If you can’t read the e-mail address the form is still there, and has also been simplified. Using the form and disguising the e-mail address in the image is a way to avoid spam generated by trawling web-bots, not just me being difficult on purpose.

Taxi driver's 14 commandments

OK, not many taxi drivers in Ulaanbaatar will probably find this page but if one of you does, please spread the following words of enlightenment to your colleagues…

1. Your meter should not be counting down the distance when the taxi is stationary.
2. Should your passenger vomit, or leave any other bodily product in the car, kick him out and clear up the mess before it freezes solid.
3. I travel the same route to work every day and know it is exactly 4 kilometres, not 6.
4. Start your meter when I get in the car and not before.
5. Carrying a passenger does not give you the right to try and get to the front of every queue and overtake every other car on the road.
6. If you almost have no gas in your tank then go and fill up before picking up a passenger, especially if you have to add a kilometre to your route to go round a one-way system to the filling station.
7. When I’m talking to someone else in the cab then do not turn up your CB or hip-hop music to drown us out.
8. Should you tout for fares from the airport your customers are likely to have some baggage – it’s best to empty your boot of the assorted crap you carry and wipe out the remains of the last slaughtered animal you took home.
9. If you have to smoke then open your window a little.
10. It’s not acceptable to pick up fares when drunk.
11. At seven in the evening, after picking up fares all day, you DO have change for a 5000 tug note.
12. It is customary for the front seat to be securely attached to the car.
13. Do not break off all your inside door handles and replace them with pieces of string or coat-hanger wire.
14. Racing your mate in his taxi is best done when I’m not there.

Thanks.

Nazi Taxi

Only in Mongolia could you get in a taxi decked out with stickers of the Nazi flag…

When it is minus 25 in the morning you jump in the first car going your way. Fortunately almost anyone in UB will stop for you if they are driving alone and it’s fairly safe to jump in as long as you check no-one is in the back and you don’t mind being chauffeured by someone whose only driving skill was probably learnt on the back of a horse. The number of bumpers held together with ‘scotch’ (the Mongolian generic term for sticky-tape) and the number of cracked windshields tell the story all too well.

Anyway, this was the first time I considered waving a car on despite the cold. Maybe it was the blacked out windows, a dodgy eagle hood-ornament, a CB aerial sticking out aggressively from the bottom of the windshield at forty-five degrees or possibly the four or five swastikas stuck on the door panels. As one of my friends later reminded me the swastika was taken from an ancient Asian symbol but there was no mistaking the red, white and black stickers on this car. The driver, a forty-something man in leather trousers and jacket seemed a reasonable guy. He actually drove the distance to work without giving me too many scares, tuned the radio in to a Russian station and tried to start up a conversation. My Russian being a tad worse than my Bulgarian (well, they are almost the same aren’t they?) the poor chap didn’t get too far and I couldn’t find out where his fondness for the Third Reich stemmed from. In all likelihood he wouldn’t have even known the relevance of the flag…

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A few late nights this last week. Not for the normal reasons I hope you understand, finally the web-site has been coming together as I get my head around some basic java-script behaviours for swapping images (yeah, I know, sad isn’t it). Anyway the stubbed toe is still a nice shade of purple and the start of a cold has put paid to any hope of getting to the gym so there is not much else to do.

The website (follow the link at the top of this page) now has three portfolios up and running. One features the Naadam festival, a Mongolian summer event of the ‘three manly sports’. The second gallery has selected images of a trip I made through SE Asia at the start of 2004. The final gallery is probably a ‘like it or loath it’ collection of some abstract city shots – I’ll let you decide for yourselves which way you want to lean.

2005 - Back to work, new blog...

2005 and a new blog. After a month off to avoid some of the Mongolian winter I'm now back in UB (Ulaanbaatar for the un-initiated). It was minus 39 Celsius at the airport when I came in a couple of weeks ago, it's now slowly starting to warm up (minus 15 to minus 25 these days) and get much lighter - I no longer go to and from work in the dark - nice!

After work I'm slowly trying to rebuild my main web-site after deleting it from the host server and then loosing the whole working folder from my laptop (thanks a lot Dreamweaver). Fitting that in while working 8 till 6, seven days each week, isn't proving to be too fruitful, give me another week and there may actually be some photos up at last.

Late December and most of January was spent in Europe relaxing and playing, so no new photos. A Welsh Christmas, a Scottish New Year, a English road trip with an good friend visiting babies, and then a couple of weeks in Chamonix, France, on the snowboard. As usual, poor off-piste condition for most of the time until just before I left when it started to dump down with snow.

A couple of set-backs during this last week. Firstly my D100, a previously trusty camera, has started having problems with the first shot after power-on. Could be the 25,000 photos in the last 2 years combined with the dust, temperature and vibration of travelling in Mongolia I suppose. Second problem is that last night I think I broke a toe on my fantastically socialist-style 'sofa'. It's made of 3 wooded box-like chair sections joined together with nailed on nylon carpet (yeah, as comfortable as it sounds...) and I now know the central section sticks out half an inch from the other two.

TPS, Ulaanbaatar.