Ulaanbaatar Mongolia

This morning we woke up to some sand storm which we can see clearly from the window. The landscape now is desert. Sand dunes and patches of arid dry land goes on for hours. There is nothing but endless dry grass and hardly any animals or people can be seen. This is the Gobi Desert. Closer to the capital we start to see Gers, yaks, horses and sheep appearing.

I headed to the dining car for breakfast and what a surprise, the dining car itself is photographic treat as it had lots of wood carving.

It is now 1.30pm and we pull into Ulaanbaatar. As we get down onto the station, we notice nothing but chaos everywhere. The guide meets us and arranges to take our bags to the hotel where we will be spending tonight. Traffic in Ulaanbaatar makes traffic in China look orderly. While everyone drives on the right, cars don’t necessarily have steering wheels on the left. Some have them on the right and some on the left. Learning to drive here must bring its own challenges.

After checking in, we head to a local restaurant for lunch. I just have to try something exotic so ordered a “Power Soup” made up on organs of beef, sheep and horse. It was rather tasty but rich. My main was the “Baked Sheep Head”. Wasn’t as good as I expected but that could be because I had already filled myself with the soup earlier. As in China, the prices here were also relatively cheap. My sheep head cost me 12,900 Tugriks which works out to be under NZ$11.

Tonight we head out to see a local Mongolian traditional performance. On the way there we pass the Mongolian parliament house and stumble upon the big man himself, Genggis Khan and his grandson Kublai Khan.

The star of the performance is the contortionist. She appears not to have any backbone as she does things with her body that totally defies logic. We also heard the Mongolian throat singing, which was rather eerie.

On the way back to the hotel I came across some interesting street vendors. Someone with a weighing scale and you pay her to weigh yourself. Then there is the Mongolian public phone – which is made up on a table with a normal phone connected to a wireless device. People actually stand in the middle of the walkway to make calls.

The sun now sets close to 9pm and we head back to hotel to get ourselves ready for the next day. Tomorrow we are heading to a Ger camp to see what its like to live in a Ger with Nomad Mongolians.