From Ulanbaatar (UB), I joined up with a group of two Germans, two Dutch, one Malaysian, along with a Mongolian driver and Mongolian translator/guide, and we headed off into the country. Outside of the city, there are not really any roads, just tiny dirt tire tracks through the vast countryside. It's like you drive out to the middle of nowhere, and then you keep driving for a few more days. Along the way, we saw some local huts (gers), nomadic people, and lots of open spaces.
(Our first ger where we stopped to sample the local drink - airag. It's fermented mare's milk, and it's actually not too bad. It just doesn't look that appetizing when it's sitting in a huge open bowl surrounded by flies in a hut in the middle of nowhere.)
(Our Russian minivan was a bit cramped for 8 of us and our luggage, but that was part of the adventure. Our driver also wasn't too fond of shifting, so we had a few very slow hills in this thing.)
(Tracks leading to... maybe China...who knows.)
(The local biker gang outside our lunch stop. Lunch pretty much always consisted of noodles, a tiny bit of potato and mutton. Mmmm, mutton.)
(Awww. He's wearing the traditional robe called a del.)
(Some cattle chillin' by the lake. What else is there to do in Mongolia?)
(A few lonely trees at the site of a former monastery that was destroyed by the cultural cleansing of the Russians.)
(Along the backside of the former monastery, trying out my "North Face" jacket that I picked up in Shanghai. So far, so good.)
(Aafke and Erwin, the Dutch couple, lamenting the short length of the rock hard beds that we had in our gers. We stayed in these traditional tents almost every night, as they don't really have hotels in the middle of nowhere. At least the rugs hanging on the wall were nice. Also, if you're over about 5'10", you're not allowed to stand up straight in these things. We learned that lesson over and over.)
(The site of our ger for the first night. Quite isolated - luckily our driver knew how to get there.)
(And a nice bit of full moon action to help us sleep. We met a group of Dutch travellers here returning from the desert, proudly telling us about the skinned fox that have had hanging in their van for the past two days. The driver chased it for half an hour with the van before finally managing to run it over. Mongolians.)
(A tiny monastery supported by one monk. This one was spared during the Cultural Revolution, probably because it's so small.)
(These little girls were quite interested in us, watching us for an hour while we waited for lunch and then popping their heads in the window to say "Hello" "Goodbye" and "Goodnight" - that one didn't make as much sense, but it was still cute.)
(Our van provides a bit of scale for these limestone cliffs. Our driver, Muha, also felt it necessary to drive extremely close to the edge of the cliffs while going a bit too fast. Again, Mongolians.)
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