In 1220, having slaughtered their army, stripped them of their riches, and burned down most of their homes, Genghis Khan told the people of the once-great city of Bukhara that he had been sent to them by Eternal Heaven as a punishment for their sins. If they had not been guilty of such vanity, Genghis said, then such cruel humiliation and misery would not have been visited upon them. But by crushing all such vanity, he would fulfill destiny and bring about Heaven's will of equality and harmony for all the people of the world.
I don't know if Genghis was directly involved in the development of the bus service from Ulan-Ude in Russia to the Mongolilan capital of Ulaan-Baatar, but he certainly would have approved.
12 hours it takes, without air-conditioning or toilets, on the heaving bus, over crumbling roads, with two torturous border crossings thrown in.
First off, we must get out of Russia - even more time-consuming than getting in - and they won't let us go before we've answered a series of taxing questions.
"What's in the bag?" a burly woman asks me. "Guns? Drugs?"
"Yes, just the guns and drugs today," I want to say. "Nothing else. Can I go now?"
But I don't have the balls. Instead I say "Clothes." She looks suspicous, but obviously decides nobody would have sheer nerve to just make up a hare-brained story like that, and lets me go through.
Outside, after various other lengthy routines, we're herded back onto the bus and driven a few hundred metres through no-man's land before we all have to get off with our bags again to face the Mongolian procedures. These are based around ritual humiliation of the enemy.
We're all marched inside the building then a female soldier chooses to six of us to march back outside. After 20 minutes standing she takes us back in again. I knew Genghis was a military paragon out here, but I didn't realise they also borrowed tactics from the Grand Old Duke of York. Eventually she hands us over to a male counterpart, who arranges us into changing formations and combinations, sends various people to the front and the back, forcibly moves us around with his hands, and does everything except demand we take our pardners by the hand and do the dosey-doh.
When I finally get to the front, the man on the passport desks stares at my photo for a long time, instructs me to stand facing him exactly, scrutinises me doubtfully alongside the passport likeness, and finally points at me, says "Your hair... very different!" and bursts out laughing.
After that we get to stand around being pestered by hawkers for a while, a quick introduction to the local toilets, which throws us in at the deep end, so to speak, then it's back on the sweatmobile for the seven-hour slog to Ulaan-Baatar.
It all seemed so different last night. Our final night in Russia was spent in the combined bar and sauna of our hostel on the outskirts of Ulan-Ude. Vladimir - who may have been the hostel manager or maybe a taxi driver, it never became clear - insisted all the guests joined him for this "Russian tradition". As soon as we agreed two more semi-naked Buryat sauna men appeared out of nowhere and became very excited. Everyone got in the wooden sauna cabinet, Vladimir started throwing beer and boiling water on the red-hot stones and the naked men started whipping each other with birch sticks and grunting ecstatically. The fatter and sweatier of the two was the local police chief, apparently. It was so hot I thought my eyeballs were melting.
Once our skin started peeling off in layers we were allowed outside to have buckets of cold water thrown over us and play a game of drafts; quick swig of beer then back in the sauna. "Fifteen times!" cried Vladimir as shoved us in, "Russian tradition!" By this time he was wearing a Red Army civil war hat and wielding a shower head as if he meant to whip the fat sweaty police chief with it.
This went on till 2am, when most of the guests had escaped and the rest of us looked like shiny old men's testicles. We left Vladimir and the naked policeman scrubbing each other's back and sneaked off to pack for our 7am bus journey.
Now, crawling through the rubble of tiny Mongolian towns on a packed bus, dehydrating ourselves with beer and saunas till the middle of last night doesn't seem such a good idea (though it does make the absence of a toilet more bearable). Eventually the towns themselves dry up and there's nothing but hills and grassland as far as the eye can see. No trees, no rivers or lakes, just the odd cluster of nomad tents and the dots of horses and cattle. The views haven't changed since Genghis went on the rampage, or long before then.
Eventually, famished and dry, we reach the outskirts of Ulaan-Baatar. The streets are thick with rubble and dust and the city looks like it's been devastated by a recent war, although there hasn't been one. We wonder what we've let ourselves in for. Maybe Genghis wasn't delivering righteous retribution after all. Maybe he just liked bringing a little bit of home to every place he visited.
I don't know if Genghis was directly involved in the development of the bus service from Ulan-Ude in Russia to the Mongolilan capital of Ulaan-Baatar, but he certainly would have approved.
12 hours it takes, without air-conditioning or toilets, on the heaving bus, over crumbling roads, with two torturous border crossings thrown in.
First off, we must get out of Russia - even more time-consuming than getting in - and they won't let us go before we've answered a series of taxing questions.
"What's in the bag?" a burly woman asks me. "Guns? Drugs?"
"Yes, just the guns and drugs today," I want to say. "Nothing else. Can I go now?"
But I don't have the balls. Instead I say "Clothes." She looks suspicous, but obviously decides nobody would have sheer nerve to just make up a hare-brained story like that, and lets me go through.
Outside, after various other lengthy routines, we're herded back onto the bus and driven a few hundred metres through no-man's land before we all have to get off with our bags again to face the Mongolian procedures. These are based around ritual humiliation of the enemy.
We're all marched inside the building then a female soldier chooses to six of us to march back outside. After 20 minutes standing she takes us back in again. I knew Genghis was a military paragon out here, but I didn't realise they also borrowed tactics from the Grand Old Duke of York. Eventually she hands us over to a male counterpart, who arranges us into changing formations and combinations, sends various people to the front and the back, forcibly moves us around with his hands, and does everything except demand we take our pardners by the hand and do the dosey-doh.
When I finally get to the front, the man on the passport desks stares at my photo for a long time, instructs me to stand facing him exactly, scrutinises me doubtfully alongside the passport likeness, and finally points at me, says "Your hair... very different!" and bursts out laughing.
After that we get to stand around being pestered by hawkers for a while, a quick introduction to the local toilets, which throws us in at the deep end, so to speak, then it's back on the sweatmobile for the seven-hour slog to Ulaan-Baatar.
It all seemed so different last night. Our final night in Russia was spent in the combined bar and sauna of our hostel on the outskirts of Ulan-Ude. Vladimir - who may have been the hostel manager or maybe a taxi driver, it never became clear - insisted all the guests joined him for this "Russian tradition". As soon as we agreed two more semi-naked Buryat sauna men appeared out of nowhere and became very excited. Everyone got in the wooden sauna cabinet, Vladimir started throwing beer and boiling water on the red-hot stones and the naked men started whipping each other with birch sticks and grunting ecstatically. The fatter and sweatier of the two was the local police chief, apparently. It was so hot I thought my eyeballs were melting.
Once our skin started peeling off in layers we were allowed outside to have buckets of cold water thrown over us and play a game of drafts; quick swig of beer then back in the sauna. "Fifteen times!" cried Vladimir as shoved us in, "Russian tradition!" By this time he was wearing a Red Army civil war hat and wielding a shower head as if he meant to whip the fat sweaty police chief with it.
This went on till 2am, when most of the guests had escaped and the rest of us looked like shiny old men's testicles. We left Vladimir and the naked policeman scrubbing each other's back and sneaked off to pack for our 7am bus journey.
Now, crawling through the rubble of tiny Mongolian towns on a packed bus, dehydrating ourselves with beer and saunas till the middle of last night doesn't seem such a good idea (though it does make the absence of a toilet more bearable). Eventually the towns themselves dry up and there's nothing but hills and grassland as far as the eye can see. No trees, no rivers or lakes, just the odd cluster of nomad tents and the dots of horses and cattle. The views haven't changed since Genghis went on the rampage, or long before then.
Eventually, famished and dry, we reach the outskirts of Ulaan-Baatar. The streets are thick with rubble and dust and the city looks like it's been devastated by a recent war, although there hasn't been one. We wonder what we've let ourselves in for. Maybe Genghis wasn't delivering righteous retribution after all. Maybe he just liked bringing a little bit of home to every place he visited.
