Blogs from Ulaanbaatar, Mongolia, Asia - page 19

Day 6-7 (April 10-11) We set out after breakfast with first stop at a supermarket to shop for a few supplies before heading out to the local Ger camp where we would spend the night. Our local guide was very passionate about his country and freely answered any questions including those about unrest after the general election earlier in the year due to possible falsifying of results. Mongolia is a very poor country these days and has been hit hard by the global crisis. Our guide was previously a Urologist but young doctors are not paid or treated well and so he’d changed to being a guide. It's hard to imagine a situation where being a guide pays more than being a specialist doctor. We reached our camp about an hours drive out of Ulaan Baatar ... read more

Having spent a couple of chilly days in outer mongolia we were looking forward to heading to warmer climates..and offloading our siberian winter gear for good! Another day and half train journey to china with another long tedious boaders crossing...but this time we had pot noodles to look forward to instead of soup:). The train was a bit of a let down after our luxurious cabin to mongolia- but our chinese roomate made up for it.....we were quickly befriended by lian juan jiun who turned out to be our guardian angel within hours he had cured my cough and him and his friends kept us entertained throughout...english vs chinese lessons, we taught him how to use a digital camera and in exchange he taught us how to write our names in chinese. Lou also managed to ... read more

10.02.09 Der letzte Tag in Irkutsk.. Viel habe ich nicht mehr gemacht. Nochmals etwas Sightseeing und einige gemütliche Kaffees bevor es dann am Abend Zeit wurde wiedermal in den Zug zu springen und in Richtung Ulan Bator aufzubrechen. Zwischendurch habe ich noch (sorry Christian B. ich hab wirklich fast alles versucht) eine Postkarte von Irkutsk zu bekommen. Aber im Winter scheint es gibt es das nicht.. Um 21.30 Uhr fährt der Zug so durfte ich mich bei der Gastfamilie nochmals etwas ausruhen bzw. die Horizontale geniessen bis das Taxi zum Bahnhof kommt. Am Bahnhof dann stieg die Nervosität, da bis fast fünfzehn Minuten vor Abfahrt kein Gleis angegeben wurde. In der Zwischenzeit konnte ich zum Glück so gut kyrillisch lesen, dass ich zumindest die Abfahrtstafeln verstehen und entziffern konnte. Dann wurde die Gleisnummer eingeblendet und der ... read more

ok, now for the last part of this mega update, the city of ulaanbaatar. So, the drive back to the city took around an hour and 20 minutes. On arrival at the hotel we checked in and plodded up to our room, where we dumped all our gear and figured out how the TV worked (terrible I know! but we wanted the news!). Then we filled the bathtub and added our magical clothes make clean more liquid, and the dirty clothes. We left them in the hot water and went for our city tour, which was great. We saw the Gandan monestary and a shaman yurt. The shaman is basically someone who tells you about your future (which we politely refused - especially going into Russia!!!) We walked through the city for around about 2 hours, ... read more

Sorry for the massive delay in updating my blog. Things have been pretty hectic recently (in a good way) and now I feel like a schoolboy who hasn't done his homework but I'm going to try and catch up as quickly as possible. Anyway, we boarded our train destined for Ulaan Baatar, the capital of Mongolia, and to our surprise, the trains actually turned out to be the closest thing to luxury we had experienced all trip. Soft beds, spacious cabin, air conditioning and even a TV! Of course, it was typical that this was going to be the shortest leg of our train journey but still we greatly appreciated it. Whilst standing in the corridor, I met Maddie and Martin, two Swedes traveling for 3 months. We had a great chat about random things like ... read more