Don't be fooled by Mongolia

No matter what they tell you, it really doesn't seem like a proper country, more like a corner of Russia

By Jeremy Atiyah

Published: 22 October 2000

Just got off the train again - in an alleged country called Mongolia. But I'm not falling for it. I'm pretty convinced that I'm still in some little-known corner of Russia. According to my map, after all, Mongolia's capital, Ulan Bator, doesn't look like a place you should be able to get to by train, even if it did exist. Why would anybody build across a country a railway which will take you 24 hours to ride but contains only this one stop worth speaking about?

The whole thing looks to me like a put-up job, to persuade the few tourists who choose to ride this train that they have come to the remotest place in the world. Take the shenanigans at the so-called "border" between Russia and Mongolia, for example.

It's the same old show, every night. A group of men looking like Samoan wrestlers - who pose as passengers - suddenly materialise to hide electronic goods, powdered milk and ladies' boots in secret compartments under corridor carpets up and down the train. Russian drunkards called Boris and Ivan look on, bewildered.

Everyone is then made to wait half the night while a sequence of uniformed actors take it in turn to investigate the smugglers. (These include the man who checks our customs forms who, as I recall, wears a wing collar and a monocle.) Occasional shouts and the sound of running and dragging interrupt our sleep. And in the end, to make it all seem more plausible, the most respectable people on the train get evicted.

But once you are inside, Mongolia - as a country - becomes no easier to believe. Its countryside makes Siberia look like the Garden of Eden. Before you get to Ulan Bator, all you see for hours is dead grass, ice, goats, nomads' tents and occasional distant horsemen riding to nowhere. And Ulan Bator itself? Well, it is the kind of place where the building that looks like your old primary school turns out to be the ministry of foreign affairs. As for that old ice cream parlour next door - that will be the state bank.

The other thing worrying me about this place is its recent history. Despite the (supposed) throwing off of the Russian yoke nearly 10 years ago, no Mongolian has yet got round to removing the statue of Lenin from the square in the middle of town. And why do the people still use the Russian cyrillic alphabet?

It's no use. I have even been out on to the steppe to stay in a nomad's tent (for tourists), on the grounds that the only fact any foreigner knows about Mongolia is that Genghis Khan rode out of here on a horse faster than the wind. Perhaps I could find there the proof that this was the country it purported to be.

Well, the tourist tents are certainly in a wild and remote place. But then again, mine did have an electric socket, and heating, and a shower block round the back. Later I was put on a horse, after being warned that it was liable to fly off faster than the wind at the slightest shock or provocation. In the end, no matter how fiercely I kicked and bellowed, my horse refused to do anything faster than a slow trot in three-second bursts. I did not have the sensation of following in the footsteps of Genghis Khan.

Don't get me wrong. This country's people - whoever they are - are charming. It's just that I haven't found out anything verifiable about their country yet.


Mongolia is excellent as a bench mark for remoteness. But I don't think it is the kind of place you'd try to go to.