Mongolia!

Sign on the way into the city.

Sheep heads and plastic containers in the back of a truck.

We arrived in Mongolia on Saturday, November 19^th. The bus from Ulan Ude, Russia to Ulaanbaatar, Mongolia runs everyday and takes about 12 hours. It even waits for you to cross the land borders between Russia and Mongolia, which are no joke. Once at the border we first had to exit Russia, which meant taking all of our stuff off the bus, getting it x-rayed, letting the drug or bomb sniffing dogs smell our luggage and then let the customs agent stamp our visas. Then we loaded up the bus again, traveled about a half a mile, and did the same thing on the Mongolian side. The whole process took about 2 hours for our entire bus. Not bad, just a little intense.

Statue of Chinggis Khan in the main square in Ulaanbaatar

Once inside Mongolia, the bus ride was amazing. Spectacular view after spectacular view. The road was a little sketchy at times, but our bus driver did a great job navigating the icy road. We were able to sit back and enjoy the views. We arrived in Ulaanbaatar at night. Once we got oriented, we were able to find our hostel. We got a good night's sleep and were ready to take on the city in the morning. 

On Sunday, at the hostel we met some Peace Corps Mongolia folks. One of them took us to a good breakfast spot and we ate pancakes and omelets and discussed all things Peace Corps and Mongolia. She gave us some good tips and we were appreciative for her time and for American style breakfast! We had a relaxing day, saw the big central square in the city, did some shopping for supplies and took a few photos. We also booked an excursion through our hostel that would start on Wednesday.

The artist from China and us posing for a photo.

Monday and Tuesday we enjoyed the city, viewing museums and souvenir shops. We ate at some good restaurants and were surprised at the availability of vegetarian food. We went to the Zanabazaar Art Museum to view Mongolian art. There were some nice historical pieces that pleased Dad and other interesting works depicting Mongolian life. In one room, there was the opening exhibition of some works by a Chinese artist. He happened to be there because it was the opening day and so we were able to get autographed programs and our picture taken with him. Our celebrity tour continues! 

Khakhorin

Our first ger camp.

As much as we enjoyed our time in the city, getting out into the countryside was what we really wanted to do. Our excursion left on Wednesday to Kharkhorin, the ancient capital during the time of Chinggis Khan. There are no ruins now, but they built a monastery on the location and supposedly they used some stones from the ancient city. Our Land Rover (complete with driver and English speaking guide) left the city for a 7 hour drive out to Kharkhorin. Once there, we toured around the monastery and then settled into our ger (Mongolian yurt) at a ger camp for the night. It was our first ger stay and it was cool. They heated it with wood and so we were nice and toasty. Bathroom trips in the night were met with a sky full of stars because there's no light pollution out in the middle of nowhere.

Reading in the ger. 

Our jeep and a spectacular view.

View of Kharkhorin village.

Monastery ruins.

Riding a motorcycle in -4F without face protection.  Yikes!

The second day we were on the go again, saw a Buddhist religious ceremony and more spectacular views of the countryside. We also saw a monastery which was built on the grounds where a previous monastery stood, but had been destroyed during the time of Stalin. We arrived at our new ger for the night where we stayed with a local family. There were seven of us so it was a bit tight, but we made it work. The next morning their son took us out for a camel ride which was really cool. At the end of the ride, the camels started to trot a bit and I thought I might fall off. Luckily for me, I was able to hang on!

Dad and me on our camels.  I had the feisty one!

After the morning camel ride, we drove a few hours to our next destination. It was another family ger, but this time it was an extended family with four gers together. Most nomads don't usually live in groups, but they are expecting a bad winter, so they decided to band together. We were greeted with hot milk tea and some homemade fried dough. There we rode horses and “helped” the family herd some sheep. We had our own ger that night which was heated with animal dung. It burns cleanly and there was plenty of it, as they had many sheep, goats, horses, and cows. We missed the morning slaughter as our guide and driver bought a sheep from the family. 

That morning we drove back to the city. Before getting to the city, we stopped at a national park where the last breed of wild horses lives. They were wiped out in the sixties, but luckily some of them had been taken to zoos years before, where they had been bred in captivity and were re-introduced to the wild in the 90's. We were able to see some of these beautiful creatures and snapped many photos. They are doing well in the park and there are now about 200 or so.

As close as we could get to the horses.

We're back in the city now and leave for China tonight. I got my Chinese visa yesterday which we had been waiting for all week. Sad to leave beautiful, serene Mongolia, but it's getting cold here and it's time to move on.  I'm afraid this blog post doesn't quite capture how impressed we were with Mongolia and what a neat place it is, but hopefully you can see that from the pictures.  Not sure what the internet situation in China is like, so this might be our last update for a while.