UB City

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An early train from Irkutsk and we were soon full steam ahead towards Mongolia. The train route took us alongside Lake Baikal for several hours before the terrain turned slowly more brown & yellow and we caught first sight of small herds of animals in the distance. The border crossing, whilst smooth enough, took an age – over 7 hours. With that we said our goodbyes to Russia and after a night on the train awoke arriving at the Mongolia capital Ulaanbaatar(UB).The weather was sunny and peaked at 22 degrees on our first day, but soon dropped to minus temperatures and snow overnight – changeable was the theme of the weather during our stay!

Mongolia is an enormous place, but aside from UB it’s pretty sparsely populated. 1.5 million of the 2.5 million population live there so it’s a pretty busy place. Despite this the skyline of city buildings was in front of an incredible back drop of sandy coloured mountains. The most crazy thing about UB is traffic. It’s carnage. Everyone drives with their hand pretty much glued to the horn and crossing the road means putting your life in extreme danger. We were also warned about our safety as pick pockets and bag snatchers were busy in the centre, we were careful and managed to avoid any bother although others staying at our hostel weren’t so lucky. Despite this we both loved UB. We ended up staying for several more days than anticipated. We found the people really friendly – the food good (especially a local vegetarian restaurant with superb mock meat & fish dishes) and the beer cheap, a pound or so a pint.

We spent our days visiting museums, temples and palaces, highlights being the Mongolian National Museum, which gave a great insight into their history from Chengis Khan era to the present day, and the Gandan monastery watching the local Buddhist monks chanting (inbetween their mobile calls!) The temples we visited had fantastic artifacts and paintings although the buildings that housed them were in desperate need of some TLC. We also spent an afternoon at a local children’s charity which helped house and teach local disadvantaged kids. It gave us a better understanding of real life in Mongolia and more insight into how the country worked.

We spent 4 days and three nights on a trip out of the city which we’ll describe on a separate blog. Other quirky things discovered in UB were as follows:-

-Musical refuse collections- Korean food served with 7 side dishes -Parking here is on a par with Russia – anywhere!-Felt making is a big industry here -Mongolia has one of the fastest growing economies in the world -GDP expected to increase by 30% per year for the next 10 years-If it moves in Mongolia they stuff it and exhibit it in a museum

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