Plans for a Birthday adventure

[fluffymark]

Adventures are fun. Yay adventures!! Despite already having a Polish adventure booked for a months time, I’m still far from sated in my travelling urges. Soooooooooooo without further ado.....

My Birthday is in mid-February. It appears to now be traditional to go travelling on a short cheap break for it, and to drag as many people as possible along. snow_leopard is getting things organized, so if anyone is even theoretically interested in going, please please PLEASE fill in her (publicly accessible) I want to go on fluffymark’s birthday holiday poll. Filling it in doesn’t commit you to anything, I just want to know who’s potentially interested. Riga is top of my list of places to visit, as I’ve been drooling over mal1‘s photos of Riga all week. Pretty pretty pretty. An explosion of Art Nouveau. *swoooons*

ALSO even after Poland, I still have a whole half of my holiday allowance left for this year (until end of December). Unbelievable. What to do with it? Am most annoyed that just when I find myself with the money and time to afford a dirty weekend abroad, I find I’m still Single. Grrrrr. Any Ideas?

Also have even BIGGER plans for next summer. Trans-Siberian railway from Moscow->Beijing, via a million fab places in Siberia, Lake Baikal, Mongolia and the Great Wall of China. Will require mega amounts of planning, and I’m hoping to find others to go with. Anyone up for a real adventure?

*hopeful bounces*

Comments

[squirmelia.livejournal.com]

Mongolia and stuff, yes, indeed, although it may depend on when exactly. I have a Mongolian phrasebook now, and have been reading the Mongolia Lonely Planet guide and also that BBC book Underneath a blue sky, or something like that. I am becoming a bit Mongolia obsessed.

In a few weeks, I am starting Russian classes, which hopefully will be fun.

[fluffymark]

Tell me all about Mongolia (other than the odd "cheese" I remember you telling me of before). I need to know. I wish to know. :)

Have not even remotely fixed a date yet, vaguely sometime next year, when it's not too cold to do it. So anytime really.

Best of luck with your Russian classes. I did attempt to learn it once when I had lots of time, but sadly I've lost most of that now. :/

[squirmelia.livejournal.com]

The only Mongolia-related LJ (in English) I've really found so far is:
whatisit

Lonely Planet guide thinks that the best way to see Mongolia is to go in a group and hire a jeep with a driver. You can camp for free in most places, even within Ulaan Baatar. Going in the summer is definitely better because dairy products are frequently eaten, as opposed to just meat. Sometimes marmots are eaten, although they've been known to carry bubonic plague.

I think summer is between about July and September (can't quite remember - shall check later), but it's also the time when there is the most rainall. Nadaam festival is in July, and unless you want to go to the festival a lot, it's best not to go at that time, because everywhere gets really busy. I'd prefer to go late August or September, but that's just because that was when I was planning to start travelling, and will have no ties after that. :)

Edge of Blue Heaven: Journey Through Mongolia by Benedict Allen
is the BBC book I'm reading. It's very easy to read, but is still interesting and has some nice pictures. Apparently it was to accompany a documentary that was on BBC2 in 1998. Shame I didn't see it.

In Mongolia, the written language mainly uses a modified cyrillic alphabet, but the traditional Mongolian script is being reintroduced.

Blue is the special colour.

A lot of the population is nomadic, and sometimes people move about 10 times a year.