Kempinski Hotel Khan Palace Ulan Bator

... is so engrained in their culture that it feels realy natural.



The next day we jumped onto the camels which seemed a little less grumpy than before and wandered around the sand dunes of the ‘semi-Gobi’ for a couple of hours. Sarah was a little scared but especially when her camel decided to walk straight into a really spiky tree with her on top but we both had an awesome time and it was a good way to see the soem more of the area. The ...

... and it was a little unnnerving: the sound of the wind was phenomenal and there was dust and sand blowing at extremely high speeds, obliterating the view as I tried to hold my ground and look around me. I did begin to wonder if we had pressured the driver into a dangerous position, but, although we had to wait a few times for the visibilty to improve, in order to remain on the track, we made it safely back to Mandalgovi and checked into ...

... and blowing a small dust storm. We spent time in our Ger with the 74 yr old (horse riding) Grandfather, who had now become our very good friend after we had given him a gift of a bottle of vodka the previous night. Through our guide Emy, he told about his life.

After eating, we joined the Nomad family the in cooking Ger. More friends and relations turned up, in fact there were 13 including the 18mth old baby of the family. There we showed them our ...

... looks like a turtle, etc etc. Yeah yeah, we've got rocks
at home, show me the horses. We also passed by a temple and after a
steep, hot walk up to it were told that this was one of the things
not included. We turned the prayer wheels, which seems to me a
wonderfully efficient praying. If they put dynamos in them, they
could provide the temple's electricity as well.




After the temple the road
got rougher and we forded a few small ...

... open my purse reached in and took it. I didn't feel or see it happen but I looked down and saw a huge hole. Uya starts freaking out and grabs me and starts running toward the police headquarters. Less than two minutes later while trying to find the police station an undercover cop walks up holding my wallet with no money in it, but my debit card was still there, which was what I was most worried about.

We spend about two hours in the police ...

... the length if the train. We had upgraded ourselves to a private cabin for this final leg of the journey and we settled into the now familiar cabin and watched the steppe turn into desert out of the window.


We didn't hold out any hope that the Mongolian/Chinese border would be any better than its Russian counterpart; what we would miss out on in terms of Russian border paranoia and the crazy visa ...

... hi and wish her mother a good trip.

We finally arrive at her grandmothers apartment, which to be honest I was very surprised about. The outside of the building was very worn down and did not look glamorous, like almost every building in UB. However, once inside it looked quite modern. The building was built when the Russian's were in control of Mongolia so the apartment had a European design. Every room closed off ...

... Bound

Popping some pills, our driver feels that he is up to the drive home, and drives OVER TWO HUNDRED KILOMETERS over bumpy terrain with a bad ankle. After some minor mechanical issues, we finally make it home, relieved to once again see the city, at around in the evening.

There is more, but it's just minor stuff. Somebody needs the computer, but I hope to check email once more before leaving tomorrow night for Ulan-Ude.

... 1489;ר שתוכל לתופס 93; בגופך. יוצא איפוא שהזמן המיוח 91; ביותר עבורך, הוא השברי 12; רגע ב ...

... to do in Mongolia. And we were bloddy glad we had a warm fire in the Ger and had a good laugh at all the baby goats they had head buttin the **** out of each other. Our last day of horse riding was 30km Over and down another mountain past a few more lakes and on to finish in the flat plains. What was nice about the horse riding was that we started in the desert and 20 or 30km later we were in forest with grass and lakes, it was such a lovely contrast. All our horses had their moments and ...