Ulaanbataar

Now being completely and totally prepared i had not read a single book about the trans-siberian railway or any of the cities along the way until i was on the train and borrowed someone else's book. however, reading about mongolia i was getting more and more keen to arrive and more and more disappointed that i was only going to spend 3 days there! mongolia has a population of about 2-3 million with over 1 million of them living in the capital UB. the rest of the population still live nomadic lives moving about the rest of the country side. so basically mongolia's landscape is in almost pristine condition with few townships marking the rolling hills and steppes.



having only 3 days we (the pom, the belgian and i) decided to try and see a bit of everything and spend half the time in the terelj national park (about an hour and a half out of UB) and half the time in the city. well for a predominantly nomadic peoples (even in UB half the pop lives in tents) they have made a good effort at creating a very large city. the air when we arrived was thick with dust from the strong wind and 'gardens' (read: patches of fenced dirt) which are everywhere in the city, it was like a heavy smog and made it so that you could only just make out the hills which surround UB. the city itself is composed mainly of communist style appartment blocks which are in an advanced state of decay. the written language is a mix of traditional mongolian script (looks like a cross between chinese and arabic) and quasi-russian (looks like russian but apparently is not). actually speaking more than a couple of words is a laughable prospect but the people are invariably very friendly.



around the central square area and parliament building there are several nice and large buildings however the appeal of the large square was diminished somewhat by the clouds of dust blowing across it from the gardens surrounding it. while in the city i visited the mongolian historical museum which despite being housed in a smallish building was packed with information in english, rock art and tools (some dating back to the early paleolithic - about 800,000 BC), spear heads, whole rooms dedicated to Genghis Khan and objects from the pre-, post- and communist times. i also checked out the lama monastery which contained a 30m high statue of some buddhist deity and a lot of pigeons.



definitely the best aspect to UB was the food. it was very big and very nice and very cheap. the first night we ate at a place with the slogan 'meat is for men, grass is for animals' and that was pretty much the theme everywhere. the currency is one of those in which there are way too many zeros on every note but we had lunch for about $2 and dinner for $5. the final night we ate at 'The Great Mongol' - opposite the state department building near the state circus for those interested - with some people i had met in the national park and a local guy on whose couch Maarten intended to sleep for a couple of weeks. the house brewed beer was very good and i had a mixed grill. ok it wasn't very mongolian but there were 5 types of meat and it arrived on 3 plates!! it cost about $11 and the mongolian ate my salad.



the national park was beautiful. endless rolling green hills dotted with Gers (tent houses), horses and rocky peaks. i spent my time horse riding, meeting a local family and climbing some of the peaks surrounding my ger. the local family served me some sort of yak milk tea, little dried bits of curdled yoghurt (apparently a sweet, but basically yak milk which has been left outside for a couple of days) and some home made bread. i politely tried a bit of everything. camping next to me was group of 5 people including an australian bloke and 4 (more bloody!) dutch. we spent that evening playing a local game with goat's anklebones.



i was sad to be leaving but nearly everyone i had met so far was going to be travelling on the same train to beijing so i wasn't going to be lonely...