Blogs from Mongolia, Asia - page 7

Oh lorday, where do I begin??? I've been postponing this post for sometime, but as it's my last day in Mongolia I can procrastinate no longer. The problem is that I am having difficulty portraying the events in a better than negative light, but, as a side note, I want whoever reads this to know that I came to Mongolia with full expectations of becoming hardened by the time spent in the most sparsely populated country in the world, therefore, all the interesting occurances I try to look back on in a positive light. And so it begins.... As Conrad and I begin our third adventure out of UB, we arrive at the Dragon bus station at 7 am. The bus is a 10 hour ride to Tsetserleg, a beautiful town to the southwest. About 2 ... read more

Oh my, where to start? Possibly with a warning that I'm going to talk about poo and toilets in this entry. Probably a lot. Just so you know. So! After our slightly disasterous hike from my last blog we sensibly decided to do stuff with tours or at least a guide from then on. We found a budget tour agency and decided to do a little 2 day trip with them to kind of test them out to see if we wanted to go with them for our bigger trip up to Lake Khovsgol in the North West. Tours like that are cheaper if you have more people to share the cost, so in the office we managed to convinced a retired American couple, Dave and Michelle, to come with us. We went to Terelj national ... read more

Wow I haven't blogged in a really long time! So for those not on facebook, I did indeed get my Russian visa in the end, much celebration ensued. The rest of my time in Hong Kong was good fun, I went to Noah's Ark (which was as hilarious as I expected, but also a lot more interesting than I expected since it had lots of information about various attempts to find the remains of it on Mount Arrarat, and information about modern projects inspired by the story, such as Frozen Ark, which is a collection of DNA samples of every animal of the world to try and combat extinction), and I also went to several temples, including the 10,000 Buddahs temple, which as the name suggests, has over 10,000 gold buddah statues in it and on ... read more

Hello everyone from sunny Mongolia! I finally managed to escape Beijing and not a day to soon…as you probably guessed by my continuous moaning I wasn’t exactly happy there. Everything Visa related fell in to place, I got the all important bit of paper in my rapidly filling Passport and caught the train from Beijing to Ulaanbator. A wonderful journey it was too and certainly one of life’s “things to do” ticked off. I had considered flying in to Mongolia, it would have been cheaper and around 34 hours quicker but I feel entering Mongolia by plane would have been wrong. One of the reasons for coming to Mongolia was to experience the sheer scale of the place and the train yourney helped to do this. Lunch time on Wednesday you look out of window and ... read more

Diumenge, 24 de Juliol – El llac mes gran del mon Dia d’activitat avui. Despres de publicar el post d’ahir, he de dir que despres de fer una migdiada va deixar de ploure I vam poder sortir a veure una mica d’Irkutsk. Es una ciutat ‘petita’ a Siberia o sigui que no te molt a veure, pero es molt mes relaxada que Moscow or St. Petersburg, I aixo s’agraeix. A les 10 erem al llit I a les 2 del mati desperts (clar exemple de ‘jet-lag’ pero vam aconseguir adormir-nos fins a les 9. A les 10 teniem preparat un tour pel llac Baikal, el llac mes gran I profund del mon. Fa mes de 600 Kms de llarg (increible) I 60 d’ample (te forma de platan) tambe es es mes profund arrivant fins a 1700 ... read more

Hello again after just a week! Sadly our Mongolian adventure is coming to a close. Also sadly enough anyhow, with the new upgrades to this travel blog it looks like I can't upload pictures. For now, I've put a bunch on Facebook though. We came into Mongolia on the nicest distance train possible! In our 4 bed closed compartment we were the only people occupying it. The train had an excellent food car, nice tea/coffee ladies and even a shower. (I was wondering why they came around and gave us fresh towels). Our first day in Ulaanbaatar was Independence day or Naadam festival. The whole country shut down to wrestle, do archery, and horse racing. We went to the stadium and watched several wrestling bouts. Basically it is a bit like Sumo. 2 men come together, ... read more

Pat and I just returned to the town of Ulgii in Western Mongolia after an adventure in the countryside. A real adventure too.. We started in the town of Khovd, where we flew from UB. Pat's friend Mike from Flagstaff had arrived in UB just a couple days prior - so it was the 3 of us. We were met in Khovd by a small (no joke - he is tiny) 20 year old guy named Nurbal - by the way - Western Mongolia is mostly Khazak, as is Nurbal. Khazak culture is super interesting and incredibly hospitable folks. Nurbal served as our translator sort of guide type person (not guide for rivers - that's Pat's role). Nurbal had tons of energy and was super excited to be working with us. Mike taught him the expression ... read more

Hello monsters are an interesting species. They thrive in the province of Bayan-Olgii of western Mongolia. As omnivores, they dwell in packs of 2-5 members, although larger numbers have been reported. Having adapted to urban life, they emerge in the morning, waiting for stray Westerners to wander into their traps, bombarding them with "Hal-lows" relentlessly. One pack alone can shout hallo over 15 times in 10 seconds, draining the foreigners and nourishing the hello monsters for the night. Yet, during the night and wee hours of the morning, their nocturnal counterpart slithers in. The drunk zombies, unlike the hello monsters, are strictly male, their female equivalents hiding in gers, incubating a new litter of the monsters. Zombies stand approximately 3 times taller than the monsters, and have a swaggered gait. Fortunately, although they still thrive on ... read more