Well, in short, yes! And in fact the newly formed Local Travel Movement is showing that there are a whole host of like-minded travellers and organisations out there that not only recognise the importance of authentic local travel, but are prepared to put their name down in support of it.

In less than a week the Local Travel Movement has snowballed, and there are already over thirty partners in the tourism industry who are entering into long overdue dialogue about how responsible tourism affects us all. From Couchsurfing, whose ethos of cultural exchange, friendship and a place to rest your head has long been awarded our respect, to Ger to Ger, whose Mongolian expeditions showed me that authentic travel sometimes means eating an offal lot of goat, it is already clear that going local is becoming global.

Here at Loco2 we’re not just about conserving CO2, and while we’re prone to a little soap-boxery when it comes to opting for lower emission transport, we’re also keen to emphasize that overland travel makes the journey itself part of the adventure. There’s no better way to engage with a country than travelling through it: be that on foot, bus, bicycle or train. From my own experience of surface travel through three continents I can tell you that you’ll never get a clearer perspective on a people, their culture, humour and eating habits, than by being with them every step of the way, not just at the airport and hotel check-in.

Think sharing walnuts with a Mongolian poet on a train in the middle of the Gobi desert, getting a percussion lesson from a band of toothless Tahitian buskers while taking a break from hitchhiking, or sharing photos of your family with a Vietnamese cyclo rider, these are the experiences that travel should be made up of. Forget finding yourself at a Thai beach party. It might be fun, but once the glow paint wears thin you’re left with nothing but a hangover.

The Local Travel Movement means engaging with people and places in a more meaningful way. We believe that travelling overland is the best way to embrace this great concept: share food and drink on a train, hop on the bus, walk through markets, rent a bicycle and get stuck in a traffic jam. Forgo the in-flight meal, and air conditioned taxi; talk, sweat and laugh with the real people of your destination and you’ll not only be going Local, but you’ll be going Loco too.

The bustling shopping malls of China quickly seemed a world away, and it soon became clear that this was going to be a trip like no other. Milk derivatives and offal jokes aside, our fortnight in Mongolia was one of the most memorable parts of our jaunt across Asia.

With dehydrated camping meals, fake North Face jackets and woefully inadequate sleeping bags we ventured 360 miles South West from Ulan Bator to Tsetserleg, the capital of the Arkhangai province, to begin a two week venture into the interior. We had booked ourselves onto the most genuine nomadic life experience we could find. This sounds like an oxymoron doesn’t it? But we had done our research. In the past twenty years numerous nomadic experiences have popped up all over Mongolia, bringing daft tourists into the heart of a fragile community and lining the pockets of foreign tour operators. We were determined to do this properly, and had picked a sustainable geo-tourism, socially responsible type organisation. We were ready for a real Mongolian experience, or so we thought…

We put up our tent, indulged in a little airag (vodka made from the milk of a female horse) and pulled out the trusty phrase book. As with most countries outside of Europe the conversation revolved around Vicki and I being in our twenties, not being married, and not having any children. Curiously, in Mongolia they were also astounded to hear that we didn’t have any animals. Horses? Goats? Yaks? Really…where are your children? Cue puzzled facial expression. We would have this conversation many times. And as the days wore on Vicki miraculously conjured up a couple of kids, a husband and a smattering of livestock, while I remained a lonely spinster with Vicki for a sister and about 7 other siblings. The disappointment in their faces was just too much to bear.

Back in our tent we congratulated ourselves on our authenticity. A little white lie never hurt anyone, besides it gave us something to talk about. Let’s get back to being authentic; where’s the toilet? This question was answered with a smile and a large sweeping arm gesture. When in Mongolia, do as the yaks do… No complaints from me, some of my most memorable toilet visits have been open air – under a starry sky in Egypt, atop a volcano in Nicaragua. So off I wandered into the treeless landscape in search of something to hide behind. Nope. No rocks for you Kate. Not even a shrub. I was forced to hide my derriere behind a yak. This would become a regular occurrence, though be warned that unlike a rock a yak will sometimes wander off.

That night I awoke at 4am to the sound of wolves howling somewhere in the distance. I was shivering, and despite donning every item of clothing I owned I couldn’t get warm. I consoled myself with the fact that this was a very authentic Mongolian experience, and managed to drift off to sleep. The next night I was awoken by a goat tripping over our tent and falling face first into my feet; the night after that a yak had a coughing fit a few metres away; the night after that, wolves scared the herd and four hundred goats ran directly though our campsite. -4˚C at 4am and these things don’t seem quite so funny, and we were not much consoled by the authenticity of the experience. By day fourteen our enthusiasm was severely eroded. The wooden saddles and insane horses had given us mighty bruises, I could barely look at yak milk let alone drink it, and I’d eaten enough offal to put me off meat for life.

On the other hand we had ridden horses through extraordinary landscape, scrambled up rock faces, rolled down hills and fallen off a motorbike. We had a bash at archery, got pretty good at anklebone shooting, made some cheese and used a shotgun. Vicki tried to milk a yak. I tried to ride one. We were both unsuccessful. We had a dance off with a local family, and watched with some extremely homoerotic wrestling. I helped to gut my mate marmot – the obese cousin of the guinea pig, not even remotely similar to marmite – and made sausages out of the intestine and semi-congealed blood of a goat, (delicious?) But most importantly we’d met some real Mongolian characters, good and bad.  Beautiful and sweet children, hospitable and hard working women, hard drinking  old men and everything in between, including my pick for best beard 2009 (see inset).

On the final day of our trip I must admit that we were pretty eager to get back to civilisation. Our faces were wind-burnt, we hadn’t washed since leaving Ulan Bator and Vicki was starting to get a scurvy look about her, but frankly, we were very, very authentic.

We came back to civilisation a few days ago – to beds, running water, toilets and pickpockets. Beer and vegetables were our diet for the next few days as we waited for our train across Russia. We played expats in Ulan Bator, a favourite game of ours that was well honed in Tonga. We hosted a pub quiz and rescued a kitten from the side of a busy road. We did things like cook risotto and make friends with the street vendor who sells boiled eggs. We went to an impromptu party and got our names on the wall of fame for successfully sliding under a chair in under 10 seconds. So you see it’s all very worthwhile stuff, and excellent preparation for a five-day train journey. Roll on Russia.

An unmarked van dropped us at the border; we stayed in an empty hotel above a bus station, and in the morning we were driven by a toothless maniac, through no-mans land to the edge of the Gobi desert. We were glad to see the back of Mao, and even happier to wave goodbye to a billion queue jumpers.

Mongolia was our heart of darkness. Yaks, gers and Genghis Kahn had been the topic of our conversation for months, and this portion of our trip had been booked far in advance. From one extreme to another: overnight we passed from one of the world’s most densely populated countries to one of it’s most barren. Mongolia’s vast countryside is home to fewer than 2 million people and the horse to human ratio is 13:1.

We were to spend the next fortnight living alongside some of Mongolia’s many nomadic people, sleeping in tents, riding yaks, milking horses, and slaughtering goats. So of course we were terribly excited. Not only that, but we’d heard that the Mongolians were great fans of cheese.

I love cheese, am fond of butter and used to carry a spoon in my handbag for the express purpose of eating yoghurts. In fact, one might say that I am a fan of milk and its many derivatives. So when I heard from a fellow traveller that Mongolians were keen on dairy products I salivated at the prospect. Cheddar, Brie, Gorgonzola; I knew I was going back to Europe for something. Kraft cheese slices in Tonga, Laughing Cow triangles in Laos, I definitely can believe that this yellow paste isn’t butter. Bring on the deli counter…

Never has a person been so misled. Don’t get me wrong, I’m not suffering from calcium deficiency, dairy products are plentiful. You might even say that the country is rife with them. That’s right, rife. In the last week I have eaten an incredible number of things made from milk; cream, fried cream, sour cream, cream cookies, hot milk, hot milk with salt, milk tea, butter, yoghurt, soft cheese, hard cheese, cheese curds, milk with rice, milk with meat, dumplings in milk, and a few questionable hard curd-like things which defy definition. In fact, I have eaten some sort of milk derivative for every meal of every day for what feels like an eternity.

Not only that, the culinary tomfoolery doesn’t stop there…oh no! There’s not only cows to contend with in Outer Mongolia, don’t be fooled. What about some delicious yak milk? Would you care to suckle that hairy cow? Or maybe you’d like some mare’s milk? That’s right, it’s a lady horse. And wouldn’t it be a nice idea to let that mare’s milk ferment so we can all drink refreshing, delicately flavoured sour milky champagne? Or shall we go totally crazy and make vodka out of milk, doesn’t that sound yummy-yummy in your tummy, with it’s totally unique gone off milk aftertaste? Scrumdiddliumptious! Sarcastic, me? Well read it as you will.

Maybe I enjoyed it; maybe I’m going to hang out near dairy farms hoping for warm weather to sour the milk so I can bathe in it. Or maybe I wanted to cry every time I approached a ger and sensed the imminent dairy coming my way. I’ll let you be the judge.

And how do you think I feel about offal? That’s the “culinary term used to refer to the entrails and internal organs of a butchered animal”. It’s probably just peachy isn’t it, since I’m a “culinary adventurer” as I have often described myself. That’s karma for you. Brag about scorpion eating, regale you with tales of snail tasting and cricket munching, and then what happens? That’s right. Offal. Insert turbo pub here: I tried to eat the goat’s organs, but they were just offal. Boom boom. That’s the sound of a comedy drum.

Just to clarify I’ve mostly been eating intestine, blood sausage, lungs, liver and a medley of others animal innards. Maybe chuck in a little face for good measure, boil it up, et voila! Goat Surprise. The surprise is it’s 100% goat. If you can get it off the carcass it’s going in. And I ate the lot. As the non-vegetarian it was my duty to take one for the team. Vicki’s not going near it, she doesn’t even like chicken flavour crisps for God’s sake.

What doesn’t kill you makes you stronger they say, so let’s assume I’m stronger. Please let me be stronger, otherwise that’s a whole lot of offal for nothing. On the plus side I have remixed the classic Peter Andre hit and have paid Vicki back for her abstention by singing “whoa, whoa, whoa, mysterious meat, I wanna get close to you…bring your offal close to mine” at every opportunity. I’m pretty sure that she loves it. Although right now she’s ignoring me so I’m not totally sure. Just kidding, it’s a hit!

Photos: Kate

NIC SETON, The Australian Youth Climate Coalition

The Great Northern Train

Having spent the last two weeks catching trains around South-East Asia, the weather hasn’t so far changed much. Hot and humid largely describes it – the start of the wet season. The longest we had spent on trains so far was two nights, with one day in the middle and only half-days either side. Now it was time to really get a handle on long-distance train travel…

So far we had taken two weeks to cross over 9000kms. Now, in one fell swoop, we would cover over 4500km over three nights, sharing close quarters with the other four travelers, and no way to escape. Would we make it out alive? This was to be considered a warm-up to the big trip, the five-night journey from Beijing to Moscow via the trans-Siberian.

Beijing

We arrived in Beijing on the 48 hour train from Hanoi, passing through the south of a rapidly developing Chinese countryside. By some estimates China is set to build as many new buildings in the next twenty years as the entire current building stock of Europe. Walking around Beijing it is easy to see this as possible – the city stretches for over ten kilometres in every direction, the majority of it medium or high-rise development. With 3 days to fill before catching the trans-Mongolian railway to Moscow, we had a rare opportunity to take a break, and explore a bit of this sprawling city.

It was interesting to talk about the development of the city, in part because of its sheer scale, but also because of the recent attempts to ‘green’ Beijing. Apparently the city was traditionally dominated by the bicycle as the most affordable and efficient way of getting around. However, the trend towards private car ownership, largely the product of an increasing economic divide, has seen pollution in Beijing deteriorate further. Of all the ‘green initiatives’ heralded at the Beijing Olympics, the single most effective was taking half the cars of the road for two months through an even/odd numberplate system. This measure alone reduced emissions by 850,000 tons.

The ‘Ulan Baatar Incident’

The highlight of the trip to date has definitely been what will henceforth be known as the ‘Ulan Bataar Incident’ on the trans-Siberian railway (which is technically known as the ‘Trans-Mongolian’ when you travel from Beijing to Moscow via Mongolia.

The train stopped in Ulan Bataar for half an hour, and all of the overland trippers got off to have a look around. When it came time for the train to leave, only Katy and Nic were on board – the other three overlanders, Jack, Ollie and myself (Anna), had read the timetable incorrectly and thought the train was stopping for an hour, instead of the half-hour time that was actually allotted. So we were wandering around the local shops, separately, thinking we still had half an hour.

Ollie had made it back to the platform, but refused to jump on and thereby leave me stranded in the middle of Mongolia. Jack saw the train leaving, sprinted up the platform and jumped onto the train as it started to slowly pull away. At this point, I was shopping for condensed milk and ramen, not noticing the commotion going on only a few hundred metres away.

With a cry of ‘It’s insane to leave someone on their own in the middle of Mongolia!’, Ollie was still standing on the platform arguing with train officials. (Thanks again Ollie!) Jack, with his wits about him, figured that he could help this situation more on the ground than from the train, so he jumped from the moving train back onto the platform, and with Ollie, watched the train pull away, before running around the shops to find me.

Nic and Katy had delayed as much as they could, and now they were left on the train with most of our possessions (not to mention all our operating mobile phones), wondering if they would see us again before we reached Poland. The Trans-Mongolian only runs once a week!

They looked pretty surprised when we jumped back on the train five hours later, US$200 out of pocket, with a story of a -1 degree Celsius Mongolian winter, and dangerous taxi driver!

Photos: cmaccubbin, Rosa