Blogs from Ulaanbaatar, Mongolia, Asia

Day 27 to 30 of 80 Footsteps of Chinggis Thursday we had booked ourselves a guided tour out of the city to reach a Chinggis (Ghenghis to us westerners) Khan monument and a National Park. We wanted to make a day of it so chose a tour with a couple of extras rather than a quick out and back. Just as well really. The route to the statue was about 65 km out of town. Regrettably, though, they are rebuilding the main highway in that direction so all traffic, both directions, is being diverted onto the roughest, unpaved, rutted, gravel track - a bit like the 2 border roads we encountered in Georgia /Armenia. But with 'rush hour' volumes of traffic, many of them treating the whole width of the road as a dirt race track. ... read more

Day 24 to 26 of 80 Small mild panic on Monday morning as we arrived early at the station to find our train not listed but train times either side of ours were. Unable to find an english speaking railway person, we started to wonder whether there was something up with our train. But a more thorough search of the station showed a side room listing the long-distance trains, including ours. Phew. Ulaanbaatar is around 500 km from Irkutsk, as the crow flies. Regrettably trains don't fly so by the time it has travelled 150 km from Irkutsk to reach Lake Baikal which is only 70km south, taking 3 hours in the process, and then overshot to past midway along the southern shore for a stop at Ulan-Ude, where the Trans-Mongolian splits off from the Trans-Siberian, ... read more

The roads are completely empty when we drive from Chinggis Kahn Airport to Ulaanbaatar, the capital of Mongolia. ‘Why it is so empty’, I ask our taxidriver. ‘It’s because of Naadam’, she says. Naadam is the world famous Mongolian festival, full of horse racing, arching and fat men wrestling eachother to the ground. And ofcourse full of ceremonies and colourful exotic costumes. ‘Usually there are jams’, she says. Indeed several days later we’ll see the city in full action. So bad even that the smog takes my breath away. I’m told that it is even worse in winter, when the smoke of ger camps merge with the exhaust gasses of the cars. But now the air is clean. We are passing modern buildings, wide boulevards with six lanes, flanked by pine trees. Pine trees in the ... read more

30-31 juillet (À Oulan-Bator) Je suis plutôt heureux d'avoir retrouvé la civilisation. J'ai maintenant les recoins du corps propre et mon linge sent finalement le savon. Je profite de ces dernières journées sur UB pour étirer le temps dans les musées et voir les quelques fossiles de dinosaures recueillit dans le désert de Gobi, là où voilà seulement quelques jours, je jouais l’aventurier. ... Assis au creux d’un divan dans mon auberge d’Oulan-Bator, je feuillette les brochures touristiques éparpillées sur la table basse de la salle commune inoccupée. Perdus au travers d’invitations à des spectacles de chants polyphoniques, des visites aux musées et des promenades équestres dans la steppe, un bout de papier écrit à la main attire mon attention : North-Korean Restaurant - Pyongyang Baek Hwa y est noté, ainsi qu’une adresse. « Moogi, you ... read more

9.10pm flight from Beijing to Ulaanbaatar on Miat Airways.....bit sceptical but great airline.....served us a nice plain roll with a few filling ingredients.....suited us down to the ground after all the asian food over the last few days. Flight time was less than thought got into UB around 11pm....two drivers and guide (Chucka, Tovuu and Tseegi) there to meet us and transport us to the Kempinski Hotel.....a beautiful hotel....two nights here and our last night here on way back from safari. Chucka is our driver and ours is a big V8 Land Cruiser....glad we paid extra for these cars as the other option was a Russian van which would have taken us all....but we all laughed as we headed to the hotel and saw one....NO SPRINGS....and we have hundreds of klms through the Gobi Desert etc ... read more