Mongolia

Mongolia was desolately beautiful.

The capital, Ulaanbaatar was freezing, contained one unfinished skyscraper (the funding ran out before it was completed) and several statues of Chinggis Khaan. We ate horse, slept in a ger, made buuz (traditional dumplings), shopped in The State Department Store, lingered in Gandantegchinlen Khiid monastery, listened to Mongolian throat singing, visited an orphanage and wandered around in -9° temperatures.

In 2010 there was a terrible drought in Mongolia so nomadic families who had lost all of their live stock (the skeletons lined the railway track) set up their gers on the outskirts of the city to try to find work. It was an interesting contrast with the concrete and brick houses next to the tradition round ger.

The highlight for me was visiting the Natural History Museum. Not only did it contain the dinosaurs found in the Gobi Desert but it also had the most interesting taxidermy with plastic goggle eyes stuck on some animals!

Next time I would like to find the worlds largest Chinggis Khaan statue. I don't know how we missed it the first time!

Chooo chooo

The first train trip was an epic adventure. Not only was it our first time sleeping on a train it also involved the border crossing from China to Mongolia as well as boogie changing.

We watched the landscape change as we chugged away from Beijing through industrial to isolated towns and spectacular mountains. Before we knew it night was upon us but we couldn't sleep yet as we had to go through immigration and customs for both countries.

The process was relatively painless although they do lock the trains bathrooms while the officals are on the train for about five hours. While our passports were being processed to leave China the train with us on it was taken to a workshop where each carriage was separated and lifted up into the air for new wheels to be placed under the carriages. A very long, involved and interesting procedure which we watched with fascination.

We got our passports back with all of the correct stamps and it was into Mongolia to go through the paperwork again. Sleep was at around 2am.