Blogs from Mongolia, Asia - page 17

I am writing to you now in an absolute fury seen as I just wrote 2500 words and for some rage-inducing reason, it decided not to save what i had wrote, so if the tone of the blog is rather angry, don't take it as a reflection on Mongolia. It will probably be a lot shorter as well cos I cant be arsed now. Left Irkutsk Monday night, got the train to Ulan-Ude at about 10.30pm, arriving at 0630 the next day. Took a hike from the train station to the bus station, about half an hour, saw a ridiculously sized statue of Lenin's napper in the middle of the town. Was awaited at the bus stop by a young Mongolian woman who had our tickets ready for us, who said travelling is difficult? The bus ... read more

Grand... read more

The smoky brown haze of Ulan Bator disappeared behind us, trapped in its basin, as we headed southwards to Terelj National Park. The smooth rolling hills gave rise to fantasies of multiple blue runs on the wide treeless slopes. The snowed road unfurled before us and corralled camps of tourist gers (yurts) punctuated the clear white landscape. Eagle eyes spotted two black shapes, wolves we were reliably informed, racing along a hill's ridge, disappearing over the crest in pursuit of unseen quarry. Clumps of firs, possibly spruce, increased with the strange rock formations still visible under their snow caps. The van bucked and bounced over the rutted track as we veered off the road. A black dog wandered out of the trees, curious to see the source of disturbance in this otherwise silent landscape. The crunch ... read more

As we already finished our journey on the Trans-Mongolian railway I thought we could give it a go and summarize our feelings and experiences of it. We read a lot of blogs, articles, websites etc about the journey but I guess everybody is different and the perception of this particular train ride remains somehow very subjective. Kupe (2nd class) vs Platzkart (3rd class): We have never had an opportunity to try the 1st class but I guess it would not impress us anymore than 2nd class. After what we read about the Platzkart our intention was to go with 2nd class all the way. Only after we tried Ukrainian 3rd class we got really curious if the Russian one looked the same. We actually felt that the 3rd class conditions exceeded our expectations and it was ... read more

We spent more than we had to in UB due to my silly eye infection caused by cold wind presumably. But one thing we had to do for sure when in town was a visit to a ger camp. There is plenty of excursions available to choose from and you can be confused about what to do and where to go. If not the cold weather we would have probably gone to many more places actually. Unfortunately the temperatures went way below the typical level for November and we had no suitable clothing for Gobi or Northern region trips. We could visit nearby Terelj National Park though, situated only 80km from UB. We checked few agencies including our guesthouse and we were surprised to see that even winter season pricing was not that low ;-( 40$ ... read more