In the country

We have spent the last 3 days on a trip into the countryside. Bimba, the hostel keeper arranged a guide and driver to take us to Kharkhorin, the ancient capital city. We were warned that some of the roads were 'bad' this turned out to be somewhat of an understatement. Anyway, driver was called, to us anyway, 'Driver' and the guide was 'Baggy' who looked all of 14. Me, Matt, Baggy, Driver and 67 flies headed out of UB in a Russian minivan and we asked Baggy what the plan was; it was at this point that we realised his English was only very average. He constantly had to ask Driver where we were / where we were going, which to say he had allegedly been doing this for 3 years wasn't overly inspiring. We were heading for Hustei National Park. After about half an hour we were out in the country; the scenery it has to be said, was stunning. We turned onto a dirt track in the land; there were various tracks weaving across the land and every now and then Driver would stop, scratch his head and mutter something (eenie, meanie, minie mo, perhaps?) before setting off on our bone-crunching journey again. (A video clip on the site tries to convey the bumpiness, but as is usually the case with these things it doesn't really do it any justice).

After about 2 and a half hours we arrived at the National Park. We were driven out to see the wild horses (through binoculars) that live there. This is the only place in the world where you can find wild horses, that is until a Dutch scientist decided to knockout, tape up and ship over a number of them to Holland (not sure you can strictly call them wild after that). We ate at the restaurant there, only as it's late in the season there's not much food in so after Baggy had a lengthy discussion with the cook I got a plate of cabbage and rice, Matt got some cow gristle soup.

We headed off again and after a couple of hours we stopped at a small dusty town. Every now and then these towns would appear; usually consisting of rickety wooden buildings, gers, a few shops and a school (although I'm not sure who actually attended school as most of the children seemed to be on the roads). Baggy and Driver went to a café, we followed as I needed the toilet; the locals obviously weren't used to western faces. The toilet was outside and I can safely say that this is the most evil toilet I have ever experienced in my life . I couldn't bring myself to return to photograph it. It was basically a wooden hut sitting over a large cesspit. The only flooring was 2 planks of wood (rendering it very easy for someone such as myself to fall in should my footing betray me). This particular version had a door which made it fairly inoffensive to look at but I was literally knocked back by the thickness of the stench when I opened it; other versions we later saw were air-conditioned (no door) which actually reduced the stench dramatically. Needless to say I didn't go. I opted for a friendlier looking and smelling grass verge later on.

By nightfall we eventually stopped at a guesthouse for Baggy to tell us 'it's not working.' So they drove us to a tourist ger camp in the middle of nowhere, which turned out to be ok. The gers themselves have no water / electric but we had a wood burning fire and there was a toilet block (although that had limited electric and hot water).

The following day we were taken to see some churches and generally admired the scenery. We reached Kharkhorin, which, to say it had taken us about 8 hours driving in total was a little disappointing. We had lunch in another local café; our meal started with a cup of salty milk tea which is apparently the done thing but it really was an acquired taste. We wandered around the monastery called Erdene Zuu, for which Kharkhorin is famous. Driver then took us to a guesthouse slightly out of the town. His reason for this was that at night in the town it is very noisy and there are a lot of drunk people. So he took us to an even more run down shack off a dirt track on the outskirts of town with 3 grubby gers in the yard and a cesspit-style toilet. There's a photo of the 'complex' in the photos bit. We asked to be taken back to the tourist ger camp 3 hours drive away as it was on the way back to UB anyway so would save on driving time the next day.

So, to today, we arrived back in UB at around 5.30pm. Too knackered to seek out a different hostel we were offered another room with a hot shower, which we took, only there was no running water in the sink and the shower plughole blocked. We made do.

Although we didn't end up staying with a nomadic family (too cold at night to stay in a ger) we certainly got to see the way of life; that plus the countryside made up for the crappiness of the trip and our rather delinquent guide.