Mongolia

From Irkutsk we got a train to Ulaanbaatar (or 'UB' for those of us who don't even want to attempt pronounciation!) - the captial of Mongolia! The 24hour journey south was fairly uneventful apart from the usual delays of passing through the border (about 6 hours to cross about 10km!). A friend of ours from the parachute club happens to do a bit of work with the Mongolian government and when we told him of our plan to travel through UB, he said to us: 'You must stay in my apartment there!' :-) ...and so we did.
Cheers Ollie!

We spent a week in Mongolia altogether and it was great to have a place called home again. We caught up on some much needed washing and sat back and watched old films. If you ever wondered where the 1980's 'straight to video' movies end up, well the answer is 'Mongolian TV' :-) We also took some time out of the city and spent a few days in the countryside where we stayed in a traditional Mongolian 'ger' (tent). The countryside was fabulous and because we were so far from any towns, the view of the night sky was absolutely amazing.

We hoped to get a direct train from UB to Beijing in China, but since they were all booked up weeks in advance, we had to settle for a train to the Chinese border where we could then catch a bus to Beijing. Little did we realise that our week of rest in UB would have been so necessary...