Our cheerful guide Mando met us outside the hostel at 8am and introduced us to our driver and the ex-Russian army van that would transport us around Central Mongolia for the next week. We climbed in and headed for Terelj National Park, just east of Ulaanbaatar. After battling through rush hour traffic (and our driver apparently reducing a learner driver to tears), our first stop was the huge Ghengis Khan statue in the middle of the Mongolian wilderness. We took ...

The train journey along between Irkutsk and Ulan Ude (the circum-Baikal railway) was one of the best parts of the trip so far. After leaving at 11:30 the train took us along the eastern side of the lake, with views across on one side, and snowy mountians on the other. There was little to report from the trip other than a Russian boy giving us some chocolate, and what appeared to be a school drama group practicing their play on the train. We arrived in Ulan Ude i...