Hi everyone, as we have left China Bebo is no longer blocked so Paul is busy catching up and I'm writing this blog.

We got the train at 7.45am from Beijing and began our 30 hour train journey. We met up with the others which we would be travelling with and the time on the train flew by.

Crossing the border betwenn China and Mongolia the actual bottoms of the carriages had to be changed because Mongolia and Russia use a different track width than China. The border crossing took 5 hours in total so at 1am we got our passporta back and went to sleep.

We woke up in Mongolia and we were travelling through the Gobi desert, which was class. We arrived in Ulaanbaatar and the temperature was -1 to -4 degrees. It was time to layer up. We took a tour around the city, seen a monastary, a big square and went up to a senic viewpoint, which were all very interesting but we were freezing. We had a communal shower (girls and boys seperate) and then we were taken to our ger camp.

It is in the middle of nowhere but the facilities were good so when we arrived there was a warm fire and dinner. Ger's are a round building which the nomadic people use whenever they settle somewhere for a period. Our's was very cosy, it has a stove and lots of warm blankets. Weslept sound.

The next day we horse trekked to a herdsman ger because we would be spending the night there with him and his family. We took part in the daily chores of the family, shovelling horse poo, making dinner which was mutton, mutton and more mutton, played traditional games such as ankle bones, which uses real sheep ankle bones and Paul watched a sheep being killed. I declined.

That evening we played cards, more ankle bones and drank vodka by candle light because they have no electricity. We had another cosy nights sleep.

The following morning we went horse riding back to our ger and walked to see a big metal statute of Genghis Khan. They love him and this statute was in such a remote area, it was very random. We either hardened to the weather or it had got warmer but the weather wasn't too cold. We played some archery, I won by fluck but a win is still a win and had dinner.

Today we came back to the land of the living Ulaanbaatar and we are looking around the city. At 7pm we get our next train to Ulan Ude in Russia, needless to say we are very excited...