I really enjoyed the two days I spent at the Elstei ger camp - it's a tourist complex in the countryside about 50km outside of Ulaanbaatar where each guest has their own ger tent and there's a central building with a restaurant/bar and bathrooms. Pav, Mel and Tom were also there. On the first night we stayed late in the bar, drinking Borgio (Mongolian lager) and chatting to the staff at the camp. Pav was telling them how he wanted to try Mongolian wrestling so th...

The wine/port/vodka-fest on the train to Ulaanbaatar didn't seem like such a good idea the next day when I had a 300km drive into the countryside, most of it off-road... I was staying with a nomad family for three days - Shiidere and Oydau. Shiidere's brother and his wife lived in the tent next door and there were lots of children running around the place. I lived in one of their 'ger' tents - a round wooden structure with a stove in the centre, covered in felt ...

On the train to Ulaanbaatar I was sharing a cabin with a girl named Irene from Holland who's going to teach English to children in Mongolia for a month before travelling on to Nepal, India and then South America. Also in our carriage were 16 German pensioners on a group tour. I was trying to sleep after having been up most of the night watching the football, meanwhile the Germans were all singing and one of them was playing an accordion... I couldn't be mad at th...