Inner Mongolia – Ulan Bator

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We arrived in UB safe and sound – the scenery on the train on the way in was pretty amazing. Lots of wide open planes, seen some camels and wild horses. We’d heard a few horror stories about the Russian border crossings and hadn’t bothered to register our visa’s but had no problems.



Navigating UB was pretty tricky our map was a few years old and already out of date, lots of construction, new roads and buildings etc… 4 hours later in the freezing cold we found our hostel and couldn’t wait to get nice hot shower … No hot water god dam it L!!



Our mission for the first day was food, arrange train for Beijing (only two go a week so wanted to get this sorted) and book a nomadic Ger stay. Got some food which was mega cheap compared to Russia and headed off to find the train ticket office… traffic in UB is insane, with in the 1^st few hours wed seen a van rolled over on the main street and a guy getting knocked over (no swapping insurance here, quick fight and on your way) this is apparently an improvement from a month or so ago since now cars with certain number plates can only drive on certain days.



When we eventually found the train ticket office we bumped into Gary who wed travelled with in Russia. He was planning on visiting the reindeer tribe who lived in Northern Mongolia and it sounded amazing so the next day we went to the black market got ourselves some camping stuff and headed for Outer Mongolia for seven days. This will be in the next blog…



After returning back from our exhausting reindeer tribal experience, wed one day left in UB so went to visit Gandan Khiid Monastery. We sat in with the monks while they meditated and took a look around all the temples. They were all beautiful and one had an impressive 26 metre gold Buddha statue .



That was the end of our short stay in Mongolia. UB was a dirty smoggy city but the Mongolian people were amazing (maybe more the country folk then the city slickers). Wish we had longer here to do more trips – the days just go in far too fast.



Lots of love to everyone back home



Phil & Alana xx

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