Into the desert!

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Well it's now time to play catch up with the travel blog and will be copying most of the following entries directly from my diary...i mean journal.

July 13th

An uneventfull day in UB with time spent hanging around the nadaan festival, one travel tip is when attempting to find out where to purchase tickets for the end parade they took it that I had lost my tickets and let me in for free, another 3000 toutoks spared. The end of the day consisted of ironing out our plans to travel the gobi and relaxing.

July14th

The day begins with a frantic chase through the city attempting to find a place for retrieving cash for the trip deposit. An eventual western union proved succes even though once we talked to the main organizer he said he trusted us to pay once we returned....no wonder everything in this country is owned by korean and chinese. The search for sophia's hostel was baffling setting us behind several hours, though we did get drive by the lone american embassy several times. Our translater named ohna, (or as best as we could pronounce it) was a 20 something mongolian though acted more like an 80 year old grandmother with a slight inclinging for the sauce. Our driver was a slightly crazy chainsmoking mongolian (we found out later how crazy when he rally raced everything on the road, with our russian mini bus and usually won). The rest of the crew included two slovenians with half their packs full with slovenian brandy, two belgians and a singaporean. The rest of the day entaled having lunch just outside the city were the roads slowely merged into dirt tracks and stopping to pickup supplies. It was the slovenians that insisted we take an equivalent amount of beer to water as the desert can be a dangerous place. Late at night we arrived at the ruins of a monastery, another great example of the wonders of communism. After hiking through the hills and paying the local tax to a man on a ancient motorcycle...how he knew we were there I still don't know we made camp for the night in a small valley. Its great to be in Mongolia.

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