Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
'Children!' I burst out as the present snapped into focus. They were children!
There must have been about a hundred of them. The girls wore black dresses and
white tights with frilly ribbons in their hair. They walked hand in hand with their
mothers and clasped gigantic bunches of flowers. The boys, no older than eleven,
wore bow ties and also carried flowers. Their crewcuts had grown out to thick tufts
of hair and had been slicked back meticulously. The vision contrasted starkly with
the kids we had seen over the last months just lolling casually by rivers and play-
ing games on the street. There was something familiar about this sudden change in
tempo, but we remained stumped. It was Chris who clicked first.
'It's the first of September, the first day of school!' he shouted.
But the haircuts and long pants had a greater significance than the first day of
school - summer was over and autumn had begun. With the warm weather behind
us, it was clear that there was no time to waste.
We had things to do before we left the world of vodka, babushkas, taiga and
pryaniki
behind. The first was to call Baba Galya. The second was far less signific-
ant, but equally as satisfying: stuffing ourselves with a final meal of
pelmeni
at the
local
stolovaya
.
With the camera rolling on a tripod fixed to the back of Chris's bike, we pedalled
off in the direction of the border. Eight thousand kilometres of cycling down, I fo-
cused in on the final stretch.
Our hopes of surging through the border were short lived. I pulled on the brakes
in a panic. The road ahead was locked off by giant iron gates. Traffic was banked
up and truck drivers sat at the wheel chewing sunflower seeds. Nearby, Mongolians
sat around piles of bulging striped bags. A lady wandered about, desperately trying
to sell ice-cream from a milk can. Where was the road? Where was Mongolia?
The crooked door of an aluminium shack eventually swung open and slammed
backwards into the wall. A soldier in a fading khaki uniform sauntered out. He
smiled and spat out sunflower shells on the ground. 'Sorry, you'll have to wait. We
are closed for lunch right now. We will open at two,' he said, before returning to
his shack.
We waited for two hours before a soldier returned with our documents.
'Sorry, guys, your visas are good, but there is a problem. Do you have permis-
sion from the general in China or Moscow? Because we only accept three nation-
alities at this border - Russians, Mongolians and Chinese.'
'No, we don't have permission. How do we get it? Do you have their contact
addresses? Can you possibly give them a call?' I asked, hopefully.
