Day 395 - Rolling into UB

We woke up today in the middle of the Mongolian grasslands surrounded by hills, horses, sheep, and real Gers (not just tourist ones like we saw in China!). We had about 4 hours to enjoy the stunning scenery before arriving in Ulaan Baatar, and when we arrived we were immediately surrounded by several people wanting us to stay at their guesthouses. We tried to ignore them while we looked for some Italian friends we made on the train, and also tried to find somewhere to get money and buy return train tickets for in 3 weeks time. With things not really going to plan, we made our way to the hostel we had originally planned to go to where things started to pick up.

Idre (the guesthouse owner) is a fantastic man who helped us put together an itinerary for the next 2 weeks, and told us he could sort us tickets back into China while we were on our trip (the train ticket office is not open on Sundays, so we were extremely grateful for this). While liv charged around with a new friend Sylvie, Adam charged around with the Italians to a couple of other guesthouses making price comparisons. In the end we all met up about 3.30pm with money in hand (after a few hassles finding an ATM that took our card) and booked a 15 day tour with Idre. Over the next 15 days we will go to natural hot springs, forests, mountains, waterfalls, lakes, rivers, and the Gobi desert that Mongolia is famous for. We will sleep in Gers, travel by 4-wheel drive, horse, camel, and foot, and make our way past dinosaur fossils and flaming mountains - and that's just the beginning!

After sorting everything out we made our way to dinner for our first Mongolian meal - Liv had a boiled egg, a fried egg and rice with pink sauce, while Adam got what appeared to be fried lamb and lots of veges. Afterwards we headed to Khan Brau (on the way passing guards who are just easing up from the duty of imposing a daily curfew and alcohol ban), where we met Edeltraud (a German we met on the train) for some Khan Pilser beer - famous for being Mongolian and German at the same time. We chatted the night away before coming back to the guesthouse to pack for our monster expedition.

Adlibing Mongolia - finally!