The Chinese TrainToday is my birthday and it started at 6:30 as we had to be on the 8:00 train. Fran was panicking about getting to the station but in the event it was no problem - the first car we flagged down stopped and gave us a lift for 3000 T (£1.50). When we got to the station, we found out the train was running an hour late - typical. It eventually turned up - a Chinese run train though there was no real difference to the Russian ones apart from the carr...

Today we had planned as a quiet day seeing Ulan Baator. We went up the hill to see the Gandan monastery. This is one of the largest in Mongolia. We went into some of the small temples to see the monks in their daily routine. One of the temples was quite colourful with drums, cymbals and bells as wells as the normal chanting. The main temple housed an enormous statue of Buddha - 26 feet high - in copper covered with gold..We then went onto the summer palace. This ...

The tour started at 9:00. We were met by our driver and guide (a 22 year old female). Before we had cleared UB we had had 2 near misses in the car. We were in an ancient 4x4 that did not get above 80kph. Given the state of the roads - mostly dirt - this did not matter too much.Once we had got out of the city the scenery became stunning - rolling hills and endless steppes. There were lots of animals - herds of sheep, goats, cattle and horses - with the occasional ...

We arrived at Ulan Baator at 7:30am - a little confused as we had gained an hour unexpectedly due to no daylight saving in Mongolia. We had not booked anywhere to stay but saw a board for the guest house we wanted. We were soon back at the guesthouse which was clean if a little basic. After checking in, we went off for breakfast and to our great delight managed to find a place that did full English - this is luxury after Russian breakfasts!We spent most of the da...

The Train to Mongolia We got up at 4:00 am as we were on the 5:05am train out of Irkutsk. Before we could leave the hotel, the lady who looked after the floor had to inspect our room to make sure we had not trashed it - not sure how she was going to tell as trashing it would have been an improvement.On the train we were sharing our compartment with 2 other Brits who had come through the Ukraine and southern Russia. We managed to get a couple of hours sleep after ...