Guest blogger!

As we have many like minded travel friends, we thought it would be fun to share some of their adventures. To kick off; our very first guest blogger is Mathew Stein aka the legendary Steiny!

I should have gone to jail!

As the pack of dogs encircled me, barking viciously and uniformed men mounted on horses berated me in short impenetrable sentences, I remembered having two clear thoughts. Firstly, we should definitely not have squeezed through that chain link fence an hour ago. And secondly, I wonder if we’ll get to see the Mongolian President’s house.

Distressing as the dogs might have ordinarily been, on this particular day they were oddly farcical. This was partly due to the fatigue I was feeling having already walked forty kilometres and partly due to the inevitability of the scene now before me.

Eleven hours earlier, while drinking some particularly milky and even more salty, tea, I sat down with my hiking guide to speak to her about the day’s route. We were not far from the summit of Bogdkahn Uul in the Khentii Mountains just outside Ulaanbaatar and my pre-trip research had revealed that the hike to and across the rocky summit (about 2500m) was a dramatic one. We had been walking for the last few days and had agreed to summit the mountain on our final day before descending into a valley that would lead both to the capital and into some well-deserved rest and relaxation time. As I finished the salt lick that was my tea, I was excited by the dramatic peaks and valleys that were ahead. Prayer flags, tiny Buddhist shrines perched impossibly on rocky outcrops and pure streams of mountain water lay in wait. I closed my eyes in silent reverence for this place. I was beginning to understand why Buddhism had spread so quickly through this nation. Both the religion and the region radiated tranquillity.

My moment of tranquillity was short-circuited however, by memories of the rest of my pre-trip research which had warned hikers that upon reaching the summit of Bogdkahn Uul, numerous valleys radiated out like fans and a few of them are the private grounds of the President of Mongolia. Hikers should carefully select the ‘right’ valley to drop into after summiting less their descent will end with a chain link fence, signs in Cyrillic sternly reading “Prohibited” and “Trespassers will be fired upon” and a return hike up the summit of the mountain to select a different valley.

I did not know which valleys belonged to the President, and as it turned out, neither did my guide. I did not know how far we had to hike in order to reach the summit, neither did my guide. Evidently in Mongolia the vagaries of travelling overland such as distance and direction are routinely left to the horses people ordinarily travel on - a legacy I suppose of the fearsome Mongolian hordes that routed and conquered great swathes of the world in the thirteenth century on nothing more than horseback and a fearsome reputation. Unfortunately, we did not have any such noble steeds.

As the morning wore on and our hiking boots wore a path through the shrubs, I reminded my guide that we needed to be careful after reaching the peak. Maybe it was her stubborn hospitality that caused her to casually wave her hand in my direction as if I was being unnecessarily anxious or maybe it was her genuine lack of knowledge about exactly what was coming in the next hundred metres let alone what might be coming in the next few kilometres, either way, we both hiked nearly forty kilometres over the next ten hours and we were both walking this route for the very first time. Sometimes we were actually on a path; this gave me hope that at least someone had once been this way before. Most of the rest of the time we were up to our hips in dense bushland, walking where I doubt any other living soul had ever stepped before.

Upon reaching the top of the mountain, exhausted after a challenging hike, we debated at length which direction to head and therefore which valley to drop into. I was now plainly aware that I had about as much experience hiking in this environment as my guide did; that experience being exactly equal to zero, so I was confident in asserting an arbitrary downward direction and pressing forward.

 It was with some inevitability then, that a few kilometres down the mountain we were met with that exact chain link fence, foreboding barbed wire and Cyrillic “Prohibited” sign that I had read about just months before. What happened next however completely surprised me. I had already turned around and begun the slog back up to the top of the mountain when I spun around and saw my guide produce a pair of small wire cutters from her backpack and begin to snip open the chain link fence. I raced over to her gesticulating wildly in the direction of the signs in Cyrillic and repeating the word “prohibited, prohibited” as though I had a commanding understanding of the complex symbols and she was the naïve tourist.  

She told me bluntly that she was not walking back up the mountain. At worst, she hoped we would be arrested and taken to prison back in the capital. At best, I suppose she hoped to blame it all on the stupid Australian tourist who made her do it. Either way, she was done walking. If I’m honest with myself, so was I. It was a very hot day and we had run out of water quite some time ago. Capitulation is easy in the end.

And I laughed. I actually laughed as I pulled apart that gap in the chain link fence, squeezed myself through it and trespassed into the President’s private compound. No alarms sounded. No shots were fired. I thought, as a fool does, that we might actually get away with this.

I heard the dogs before I saw them. This is actually far more terrifying as you know they are coming but you don’t know which direction they are coming from, or how far away they are. As it happened, they arrived from every direction and formed a circle around us.

In my mind, the guide and the guards would simply exchange words to explain away the unfortunate series of events, they would purse their lips in my direction, I would look suitably chastised and they would escort us off the property. I was less than thrilled, however, when my guide simply pointed at me and burst into tears. This was not ideal. Every second that passed, I looked less an innocent and playfully mischievous tourist and more a kidnapper, emblematic of the brutally oppressive West.

Cometh the hour, cometh the bribe. I decided that nothing signposted unlucky tourist quite like photographs from my travels. As a tactic, it certainly wasn’t as blatant as offering money, but I did think it was a lot less likely to offend anyone and it just might be sweet enough a gesture that the guards would wave the whole thing off as an unfortunate event. With that I grabbed my camera and showed the guards the photographs that I had taken a week or so earlier in an orphanage I had been volunteering in. The very same orphanage that one of the guards, who had now dismounted from his horse, had grown up in.

 Belly laughs now filled the Mongolian President’s valley and the dogs, which moments ago were frothing with rage, were now panting and playing on the ground. The guard spoke animatedly with the other guards, hopefully about how lovely and charming I was, but more likely about his experiences growing up in the orphanage. My guide was now seeking to remove the knife she had placed firmly in my back just moments before by hugging me and slapping her thighs with laughter. I decided in that moment that I would not tip her.

As I sat in the back of a secured vehicle bound for down town Ulaanbaatar, I recalled my two earlier thoughts. Yes, I’m glad I squeezed through that chain link fence as I received a priceless and frankly unbelievable tale in return and; Yes, I did see the Mongolian President’s house, in fact, I got driven through his front gate!