Sunday 18th March

We arrived in a chilly Ulaanbaatar at 6 am, I still dislike this time in the morning!! We meet our new honcho, Udka! She took us to our new hostel which was in fact a hotel, we had a couple of hours to get washed and chill out before our meeting and breakfast. We meet Udka downstairs and had a delicious breakfast consisting of eggs, toast, sausages and funnily enough gherkins. I offered to eat anyone's who disliked them!! We talked about a plan of action for the day and off we went. We went to the main square in Ulaanbaatar, where we discovered it was International Men's day. This pleased the boys and they demanded to be waited on hand and foot by the girl's. This was immediately meant with a resounding NO! The square consisted of several statues, one being of Chinngis (not Genghis and this is the Western way of saying this) Khan. He was a pretty fat lump if I do say so myself! There was a convoy of cars that were shouting out (in Mongolian) demanding that Mongolian women to stop marrying foreign men and leaving the country!

We walked to the main shopping centre which sat opposite a street that had a Beetles monument, which I found very bizarre to be here. Maybe the Mongolians are huge Beetles fans! Who knows!

We popped into the shopping mall to the fifth floor to the souvenir section and brought a little Mongolian painting of a Ger.

We had booked the bus from the tour company to take us to the other monuments around the city as they were too far to walk. First was the Buddhist monastery, it was rather bizarre. We entered the main hall where they were chanting and stayed for a while. When we exited the building we had to walk out backwards, this was a cause for concern and the doorways had the biggest steps in the world and I was guaranteed to stack it. Luckily I didn't manage to embarrass myself! Around the monastery there was giant hex-angle gold tubes with writing on, you have to walk along and spin each one so it rotates 3 times and you pray/make a wish.

We jumped back on board the bus to go to the next site was another Buddhist site which features a 26.5-meter-high statue of Migjid Janraisig, a Buddhist bodhisattva. This room had a million of the hex angle tubes; it would have taken ages to spin every single one!

After walking around the giant statue we got back to the bus to go to the famous black market, not the kind you get back at home, this is literally a market which is called the black market! The sold everything, from shoes to vegetables to toothbrushes! We didn't buy anything but we had a good 30 minutes wander through the hundreds of lines trying not to lose each other! Once we got our fix we once again got back on the bus!

We stopped for some lunch/dinner. Stu decided to go for sheep's liver and tail, something he has never had before and also looked vile! I went for something traditional, steamed dumplings and rice! YUM! Sam decided to have horse, so I was surrounded by people eating horrible food! I did somewhat lose my appetite half way through!

We went off to the huge Zaisan Memorial on top of a hill; this is the memorial for the soviet soldiers killed in WWII. It was a massive walk up; I had to stop for a moment to catch my breath. I blame this cold weather making it hard to breathe! It was a good view from the top, apart from that Ulaanbaatar is undergoing a lot of development. So there were a lot of cranes in view and unfinished buildings. Most of which seemed to be dormant! I think the ground gets so cold they cannot put further foundations in so work stops during the winter.

We went back down, which I enjoyed better, to pop down the road to Buddha Park. Udka told us it was unfinished, 10 years on. How long do they need? It consisted of a giant Buddha in a park. There isn't much more to say really!

We jumped back on the bus for the last time and headed back to the hotel, we didn't have anything planned so we all chilled out for the evening. Stu, Breton and I went to the Irish pub down the road for a few drinks! Udka told us not to wander far or get into any trouble due to the holiday today. When we arrived at the pub we realised we missed St Patricks day, so far this trip has been rubbish for national holidays at the wrong time! Never mind! We stayed for a couple of drinks, apparently last call is at 10:30 and then they close at 12. I have no idea how that works! We went back to the hostel and to bed. Tomorrow we are off to the Ger camp!!

Monday 19th March

We woke up and left around 10 am, we had all agreed to pay a little extra to go and see the ginormous Chinngis Khan statue enroute. We drove out of Ulaanbaatar which has the most pot holed roads I have seen in a while, after a bumpy 2 hour drive we had arrived. Chiggins Khan statue, which stood at 40-metre tall on horseback, on the bank of the Tuul River at Tsonjin, where according to legend, he found a golden whip. The statue is covered in 250 tons of stainless steel is symbolically pointed south toward China. It is on top of the Genghis Khan Statue Complex, a visitor centre, itself 10 meters tall, with 36 columns representing the 36 khans from Genghis to Ligdan Khan. Pretty impressive and also in the middle of nowhere! The site also housed the biggest shoe in the world! It was a pretty big shoe; I don't know why they built this giant shoe though! We walked up to the top of the horses head and got a good view of the surrounding countryside. The weather was being kind and was lovely and sunny; apparently Mongolia has even more sunnier days than Lake Baikal. Good news for us, but it was still freezing!

We got back into the bus and were back on the brilliantly tarmacked road to the Ger. The Ger was located in the Terelj National park. It was beautiful, rolling hills dotted with Ger camps and the wild horses! We finally reached our Ger for next few days, a Ger is basically a Mongolian tent (but you can't say tent!) with a giant stove in the middle to keep the occupants inside warm! We shared our Ger with Kirsty and Neil and the four beds lined the outside of the Ger. It wasn't very warm inside, but we were reassured it would be later. We went to the communal Ger and were served typical Mongolian lunch. Yummy! We had a lot of food that we weren't expecting!

After lunch we took a small drive to a typical Mongolian family which was lovely. We were served traditional tea which is milky tea with salt. I had a sip to be polite but it was honestly the most disgusting thing I have ever drunk! She had also made traditional snaky foods, which were fried curds or something like that, BLUERGHHH! I ate one and had to force it down. A bowl of mushrooms looked more appealing to me at that point! We asked her several questions about her life and living in the Ger, the place she was currently is her 'winter' spot. In the summer they pack up the Ger and move to their 'summer' spot, they move around due to the needs their livestock need. The Ger can be set up in 2 hours, which is impressive! This particular Ger had a full size fridge and freezer and TV! Some other Gers don't have these luxuries! She also asked us about ourselves which Udka translated for us, I mentioned about my nephew and how he weighed 10lbs 4 which seemed to amaze them! This was a top topic for a while between everyone! After spending an hour or so we left and went back to our camp.

We had dinner in the communal Ger and chilled out and tried on the several hats that were hanging up in the Ger. We all looked ridiculous! I went back to my Ger which felt kinda toasty as the fire women (who stocks the fires in the Gers every 3 hours or so) had got the fire going. So I went to bed normally in my Pjs and moved the big blanket off the bed as it was too hot and got under the duvet. This feeling did not last long. 3 am I woke up and it was absolutely freezing. I considered putting on my jumper but it was an arm stretch away so was considered too much effort! I ended up braving and grabbing the extra blanket it pushed off before going to bed. To no avail I was still frozen. In the end I made, what could only be described as a cocoon for me and pulled the duvet right over my head. The rest of the night was a very disturbed sleep.

Tuesday 20th March

Morning came, it was still cold. I was not impressed; I was less impressed to hear that the boys and girls were sleeping in a Gauna (Ger Sauna!). We had breakfast at 10 and ready for the day's activities, we started by trying traditional Mongolian wear! This was amusing, it was very fancy but the sleeves on the women's dresses are ridiculously long! I couldn't go to dinner wearing one as it would drape in my food! We managed to convince Breton to wear the woman's outfit and Alex to be his husband! The most mix match couple ever! Afterwards we decided to go for a horse ride; properly the cheapest horse riding you'll ever get to do! I was slightly concerned as no one seemed to know any health and safety this side of the world! We went at a slow plod which was fine, my horse was very disobedient. I had to keep kicking it and telling it 'GO' in Mongolian. Clearly my pronunciation is incorrect as it still ignored me and only moved when the guide came back and then it would jolt off! Stu's horse really disliked Beth's horse and they had a falling out halfway, luckily no one fell off or was hurt! We had 30 minutes plod through the fields and turned back. The foals were following their mothers (I assume!) all the way! Literally 30 meters from our camp Sam's horse decided it really had enough of carrying her and just generally being a horse and sat down which meant Sam fell off. I honestly couldn't stop laughing, of all the people to fall off it had to be Sam. She refused to get back on and even get on the guide's horse. We had a good old laugh with the rest of the group that didn't go!

We sat in the boys Ger as Kirsty and Neil had gone for a walk and locked the Ger. We tried to find out what other things annoyed Phil, we found out stupid facebook status annoyed him, like 'I just ate a sandwich!' This sent Phil off on a rant which was highly amusing for all of us. So every so often when I eat a sandwich I will have to update Phil via facebook just to annoy him!

When we got back we saw another tour group had joined us, they were also doing the vodka train, but the budget tour. This is 12 days long, with only 1 stop in each place which sounded horrible! This meant they spent more time on the train than at any of the stops enroute. We had lunch which we opted for salad seeing the main courses were huge and after last night I felt like a balloon! The boys went off to do some archery, and then most of the group went for a walk up the nearby mountains, I opted to get a few hours kip seeing as I got none the night before! Stu woke me up for dinner, which we made! Udka showed us how to make dumplings! Which is pretty simple but the folding techniques were hard, Udka refused Stu's first attempt and made him do it again! Our hosts then steamed these and we got to eat our creations, which was delicious and looked so good! We stayed in communal Ger and played a traditional game of bones which is played with sheep and goat knuckles. You pick all the knuckles on you hand and throw them on the floor (table in our case). Then you had to hit two of the same kind and pick up one of the bones with the opposite hand you used to flick with. Each side of the knuckle represented an animal. One was horse, camel, goat and sheep. It was a pretty competitive game and the losers had to do Brenton's banana dance he all taught us. I have taken a video of the original dance and song and will post it up on here when I can! It was rather amusing, if not embarrassing as the new group had only met us a few hours ago and must have thought we were a bunch of weridos (which we were!).We stayed up for a few more hours with some beer before hitting the hay.

During the day Neil and Stu had got some tips from fire engineer (Alex) of how to stock the fire without killing it. Neil had done a fantastic job during the day to get it toasty and by god was it getting warm when I came in! But I took no risks and went to bed with my thermals under my Pjs. Big mistake!!I woke up at midnight and felt like I had woken up on the sun. I had to take my thermals off and remove the second blanket and the duvet. I even had to stand outside the Ger for 5 minutes to cool down! I managed to fall back asleep after rolling around for few minutes moaning to myself! The fire lady made an extra stop seeing as it was a cold night. I felt like I was being roasted alive, karma for me moaning it was freezing last night!

Wednesday 21st March

I woke up hoping I was a few pounds lighter than going to bed! We were leaving the Ger today which I was sad about as it was lovely here. The other group left around 7 am to go back to Ulaanbaatar, we woke up at 9:30 and left at 10:30 after breakfast! Back on the bus to return to Ulaanbaatar, Breton was telling us how when he went to bed last night to read he thought everyone was asleep but Alex piped up and said (in your best German accent) 'It's like Mongolian hell!' This pretty much summed up all of our night's sleep. This became our new catch phrase if anything went wrong!

We returned to our favourite hotel YAY! (Or not...) we had some free time, so we went off to the post office and then to the shopping mall to get the last few souviners. I took the wrong turn, which I knew as soon as I did it, so we went the scenic route and we arrived! We went to the top floor again which we were then greeted by a power cut. Luckily we opted to use the escalators and not the lift. Thank god! We brought the necessary gifts, a fridge magnet, and went back down through the now dark store!

We went back to the hotel to chill out before our traditional Mongolian arts show. This entailed everything from Mongolian folk songs to dancing and even contortionist! My god she was bendy, made me feel kind of ill! We had our last supper with Udka at BD BBQ, which is possibly the coolest place ever. Apparently there are a few stores in the UK but I have never seen these and feel slightly cheated! Basically you choose you veg from the buffet bar, and what meat you would like and then the sauce. You then pass this to the chefs who stir fry it all in front of you. I ate far too much, but at a cheap price I couldn't say no to another plate! We rolled ourselves to the Irish pub for a few beers then to bed early. We had to get up at 4 am to get ready to get the train at 6 am. The 2nd time on this trip I've had to wake up before 6 am.

Thursday 22nd March

It wasn't the most pleasant feeling, plus the shower didn't like to warm up any time before 8 am. I opted not to have a cold shower! We got on the train and we all had a few hours kip as soon as we set off! This train was by far the coldest one! Obviously the Russians wanted to be sweating while the Mongols/Chinese wanted to freeze! Why is there no happy medium?

Once again we were on a train, I hated trains! We had one full day before the border controls the next day. Any eventful news? Of course not!

Well the border controls took a lot less time that the Russian border combined!! The usual get up lift the bunks up sit back down, stand up for passport control etc. I was relived to finally get through the Chinese border as it was now midnight and all I wanted to do was to go back to sleep ready for our arrival the next day!

Overall view on Ulaanbaatar/Ger:

I didn't like the capital city so much; the people were by far a lot friendlier than the Russians! The countryside and the Ger was by far my highlight on the trip! Absolutely fantastic! The food was great, but don't come here if you are a vegetarian! I would like to visit the Gers in the summer and see what it is like then!

Total miles travelled from UK: 7435

Transport taken:

Trains = 14

Hours ahead of UK:

+8

Our photos: