January 17-21

We spent all of the 21st going through border control on the train, which was a bit dull. It took us nearly eight hours. The trip was 32 hours in total.

We arrived in Ulaanbaatar at 6am and met our new honcho, Bogi. We went straight to our hotel and had a nap for a few hours. We met up at 12.30pm and went for lunch, the food was so much nicer than Russias. Adam ate horse for the first time, knoeingly that is, and announced it was his new favourite dish.

We went walking around the city, checking out the main square amongst other sites. Over half the population of Mongolia lived there, just over one million people.

It was a strange place, half high rise and half gers, a type of nomadic tent. It felt like I had one foot in the 12th century and the other in the 21st.

We climbed up to the Zaisan monument on top of the hill overlooking the city. I am not sure what the monument war commerating, but it had lots of mosaics of how Mongolia had gone from Chinngis Khan to their imagined future of communist eutopia across the universe.

The views were amazing.

Later that evening we went to a Mongolian BBQ, which was completely different to naff chains back home. There was no crazy meat like kangaroo, it was just traditional mongolian food.

The next day we headed to the Gandantegchinlen monastry to watch the monks morning chant in Tibetan. It was ver interesting, but I felt like I was intruding. In the afternoon we headed straight for the gers camp. Where we were told it could reach temperatures of -40. The drive was astounding, I had never seen anything like it. Mountains upon mountains and little ger camp farming communities at the bottom of them, living off the land. Living the simple life. I was very jealous.

Our camp was in the middle of nowhere. There was around a dozen gers for tourists and a few for the people that worked there. The toilet was a short walk from the camp. It consisted of two icy planks of wood over a ten foot drop where you could see everyone's doings for the day. In one of the toilets everyone had had a poo on the same spot and there was what resembled a two foot totem pole made of poo. It was a bit gross, but Adam and I had a laugh about it.

We had a good walk in the afternoon around the mountains and then we went to visit a local family. We brought gifts of sweets and chocolates and they gave us salty yaks milk, which was surprisingly nice and dried bean curd, which tasted like a mix between sick and gone off milk. I had to hide them in my pocket, but she thought I liked them so kept offering me them. Out of respect we had to sing them a traditional song from each of our countries, so we sang a bad version of Yellow Submarine by the Beatles, Rolf sang a dutch song about milking pigeons and John couldn't think of a decent Aussie song so he jumped like a kangaroo outside for a time. I think they thought he had mental issues. We then went and dressed up like Mongolians, which was very strange.

The gers were round with four beds and a massive wooden log fire in the middle. The lady came in every three hours and re light it. It got really hot nearly 30 degrees and then as the fire went out it quickly dropped down to 0. It was very difficult to sleep. On our final day we had a lot planned. After breakfast we were due to on a pony trek, Adam was petrified, being scared of horses and all. I was just scared about getting my leg over the bloody thing.

We went on the trek for two hours, I was proud of Adam and his horse Charles Manson. He really started to enjoy it after a while and I too with my horse, Jigglypuff. I felt like I was in a Mongolian western. My face was bloody cold, I had frozen hair, eyebrows and eye lashes. I also got cold burn on my legs to go with the cold burn I had got on my bum in Moscow.

After trekking everyone went sledging apart from me and then we had a bonfire at night and met some other people that were doing a different version of our trip. Four Swedes and two Brits. It was nice by the bonfire, I had vodka and apple juice and within a few minutes it had frozen into slush and if I closed my eyes and had a sip I felt like I was in a trendy bar back home. We stayed up quite late that night because we were going back the next day and it was our favourite place. Everything about it was amazing, I would definitely recommend it to anyone, just for the night sky alone. The explosion of stars at night was incredible.

The next day it was back to the capital where we watched a traditional concert, which had throat singing and crazy dancers running after each other dressed as gods and shamens and old men. Very odd. We also went to the Natural History Museum, it was good for the dinosaurs, but nothing else. Peter you would love it! The next morning we caught the train to Beijing. I was very excited about the prospect of China.