Day 27 - July 27 The bus to Altai was a full size charter bus. We drove through the night from Novosibirsk to Altai, first stopping at a rest stop at 1 am, where we had dinner. Then we were off again. We stopped in the morning for breakfast in some little highway town. Our guide ordered us breakfast but they ran out of food. We bought a couple of things in a nearby shop before setting off again. We started dropping off groups at various locations before coming upon our drop-off at about 1pm. It was a grassy valley surrounded by rocky mountains to the north and forested mountains to the south. There was also a muddy river snaking along in between. We started to organize our bags as they gave us an extra sleeping ... read more

Day 21 - July 21 Back to UlanBaatar, well at least the start of it. We dropped off the British couple who smartly were flying back, and made a long bumpy drive north. It was more of the same desert steppe except that it was raining so hard, it was flooding. Who knew that the Gobi desert was the wettest part of Mongolia? In fact it rained more in the 5 days in the Gobi than it had in the previous 8 months in Dalian and the entire rest of the 16 days in Mongolia. We arrived at our ger, our last night on the desert and with camels. The dog wasn't fond of us but a young girl chased him off with a volleyball. It rained. It was in the middle nowhere and yet was ... read more

Day 14 - July 14 We woke up to start our drive to a hot spring. We started our drive along the lake before veering by the volcano and the surprisingly large lava fields filled with black broken rocks and short stunted pine trees. Shortly after we were back in the typical grassy hills and we arrived for lunch at the provincial capital and the largest nearby town of Tsetserleg. We tried to go to a restaurant but it was closed. So for a town of just under 20000 there was only one open restaurant. We had to wait a while for them to get to our order and they only served fried dumplings.We bought supplies and ate lunch and were off again for another few hours, finally arriving at the Tsenkher hot springs in the ... read more

Day 8 - July 8 Finally a break from driving all day. Also the first significant activity. Horseback riding on the smaller but half-wild Mongolian horses for almost four hours along the lakeside of Khovsgol lake. My horse was a larger stallion and was easily the most wild or rebellious of the bunch. Being the biggest male of the group has some downsides He was brown with an orangish Mohawk haircut.After mounting the horses with Western style but clearly Mongolian made saddles, mine wouldn't stay still. It had been over a dozen years since I had ridden one of the beasts. They are noticeably shorter than their European cousins of which I am familiar, though shorter legs made mounting them easy for me. We started of walking them through Khatgal and over a hill pass in ... read more

Day 1 - July 1 It is time to begin the third major trip since arriving in the Middle Kingdom. First up, Mongolia!The train to Beijing was at night, so my partner and I left home after 4pm. We arrived at the train station with some time so we grabbed some chuar (BBQ) and sat down outside to eat. We headed into the station and got onto our soft sleepers. Roughly 1st class here. Our cabin was shared with a young Chinese couple. Day 2 - July 2 About 12 hours later we arrived in Beijing. We navigated to the hotel through some hutongs(read: alleyways) near the train station. My room was overlooking the train yard. No Internet even though they advertised they had it and were completely confused when we asked for it. We headed ... read more