On second thought, everything is going really well so far, it's pretty much in the bag, I tell myself while drinking my coffee that morning...
I ask the countless women who work here, it seems for the bus station. I have to go to Bulgan, the nearest town to the border. If I believe the information I have gathered so far, I have to spend one night there. I’ll just have to find a jeep that will take me to the border post: passport-stamp for the exit – a hundred meters on foot – passport-stamp for the entry in China. Then it’s a twenty hour bus ride to Kazakhstan, passport-stamp-entry again, super easy.
I struggle for a while with the receptionist to get her to help me write a few sentences in Mongolian so I can buy my ticket. It’s in these moments that you really test your own patience and tolerance threshold.
It will take me a while to get I want to go to Bulgan, Chinese border post in Mongolian. For the less erudite, Mongolian uses the Cyrillic alphabet, which doesn’t allow us poor guys to understand any word.
At first, she writes under each of the words yes. Then she takes a good fifteen minutes to understand that I want a paper to show to the drivers.
There are countries like that, the communication problems go far beyond the language barrier, it’s more a question of logic, of mentality
I often use a paper written by a local to find my way. Sometimes it works very well, the person reads it and gives me directions. But sometimes it doesn’t, they start to read what’s written on the back, which often has nothing to do with it, or they are so embarrassed by my request that they ask other passers-by and my request turns into a national assembly. It ends up as “don’t go there“, or “it doesn’t exist“, or at worst they give me the wrong direction or the wrong bus and I turn in circles.
There are other countries where they understand before you ask them, that actually, yes, we go to a restaurant to eat something and not to play tennis as a famous comedian would say. In two seconds you are sitting at a table with a menu in your hands. It sounds like a no-brainer, but believe me, it’s far from obvious everywhere. After asking at the entrance of a restaurant if they served goulash, receiving an affirmative answer, asking for the menu, sitting down and calling to order, the waitress announced that the kitchen was closed.
Where travellers are rare, sometimes they only wonder what we are doing there, with our house on our back, far from home. They are intimidated, helpless, hurt in their self-esteem for not knowing how to answer us or understand us.
They sometimes feel judged, in spite of us. They imagine that we are so rich, so used to luxury that our presence alone is insulting, disturbing. Sometimes it’s just a notion of effort. Serving strangers is more complicated, that’s all.
Today, the heat is overwhelming and the sun dazzling. I find the place where all the minibuses leaving for Bulgan are parked, each one as decrepit as the other
I take the first one that comes along, a young man accompanies me to the ticket office where I pay my ticket. He gives me an appointment at three o’clock sharp.
That’s great, I’ve got plenty of time, I’ll find a connection, pack my bag and get ready for this eight-hour journey, in the best case scenario.
I have plenty of time to observe the employees of this really run-down hotel. I still don’t have water in my bathroom but nobody cares. That’s just the way it is. So I take my toiletries and test all the bathrooms of the rooms on the floor.
I am barely given a glance when I ask for my plastic bag containing my bread, butter and honey pot which has mysteriously disappeared. I get a resounding NO! in the face, Mongolian style. I have to get really so that these ladies, who are looking through a catalogue of cosmetics, stand up and it finally appears again. It’s normal, this is Mongolia.
At a quarter to three, I introduce myself to the driver, Mongolians are lying on the seats and playing cards. Now I’m used to it: we won’t leave immediately
The minibus will only leave when it is full, three hours later we are still in the car park. I don’t try to understand the multiple trips from one house to the other and why we fill up with petrol at the last moment. I share the back seat with a lady, I think to myself, it’s great, I’ve got room, as long as nobody shows up. And for once, I’m lucky, we end up leaving, nine people share the seats, I can even lie down, bent over.
The road is terrible, sometimes it jumps so violently that I hit my head on the ceiling. To top it all off, the driver stops all the time, to chat with the other buses, smoke cigarettes, race with the other cars.
I spend a good part of the night shouting in English Music please! so that they turn down the music. I sit between the only two rear speakers the size of washing machines. In order for the driver to hear something, he turns the sound up to the max. Once, maybe twice, should be enough for them to understand… but no, I’ll be screaming every half hour! And they laugh! Later they will explain to me that they were waiting for me to fall asleep. Super logical, you have to wait for people to fall asleep before you can turn up the sound system? Really ?
I also yell for them to close the windows because it’s very cold outside. Between the draughts running down my spine, the Mongolian vocalisations, the shaking, the smell of overheated tyres, at about two o’clock in the morning, I’m ready to challenge Genghis to a duel.
Okay, it’s almost three o’clock when we arrive. I say sleeping with my head tilted on my hand and then join them above my head, a roof
Okay, okay! The car stops in front of an unlit hotel, the driver calls, no answer. I sigh, discouraged, tomorrow, Takeshiken, bye bye Mongolia.
Takeshiken ? They all look at me as if I were announcing a vodka shortage. They are going to Takeshiken right now! It’s only ten times I’ve told them China border. I get back on the bus.
I lie down on the seat because my neighbour got off. Ahhhhhh, finely… and get up straight away immediatly. Where this lady has been resting her august posterior for twelve hours, it doesn’t smell like Marseille soap.
A few more kilometres and everything will be fine, a tea or coffee is waiting for me somewhere, a chair, a bench. A few more hours and I’ll be there. Take heart.
The bus stops in the middle of nowhere. It’s not a yurt, nor a house, nor even a tent
It’s a square, low plank building, all stretched out with advertising plastic sheeting inside. Inside, two large spaces on which stale and filthy carpets are laid serve as beds, grated and stinking duvets are waiting for us, wisely folded. A woman, crumpled with sleep, lights a fire in a stove and prepares us a tea with salted milk.
They chat in Mongolian, everyone laughs at me, the jokes get a bit dirty, it’s time to go to sleep
I take a walk outside to visit the toilet in the field. The wind blows strongly on the plain and the spectacle of the starry sky literally scotches me on the spot. I stand there with my toilet roll in my hand, shivering under the icy gusts. A show like that is worth taking a few minutes of cold, in silence, without moving an inch.
I return to the hovel where my duvet and mattress are waiting for me. The driver invites me to take a rest. All in a row on the floor we fall asleep like soldiers in the trenches. I take a last look at the plastic clock, it is three forty-five.
