The mongolian people have a long tradition of being strong riders and warriors. Maybe this explains the way they drive nowadays. In their defense, roads are unmarked so you will see as many vehicles next to each other as the road plus both banks allow at any given time.
Plus, there are potholes large enough to swallow a small car.
The most common way to avoid potholes is steering directly into oncoming traffic, relying on that they will slow down at some point. Amazingly, we have not witnessed any accidents.

That being said, Mongolia is a beautiful country. Vast steppe, the occasional yurt here and there, eagles flying around…
Breathtaking.
Tomorrow morning we’ll be heading on towards China, last leg of the trip.

I will leave the uploading of the really cool pictures to Pablo and Nat, as we are off to dinner now and there is no time to pull them off the real camera right now.

Looks like a bit of rain tomorrow, so we elected to spend the day looking at the local sites, with a view to heading into the Gobi day after next. Mongolia seems hell bent on thrusting themselves into the western way as soon as possible. For one of the poorest countries in the world judged by GDP, there is a hell of alot going on here, with plenty of great resteraunts/pubs, still at dirt cheap prices. First impressions…… fantastic.

Gandantegchenling Monastary

With a 29 meter high Buda inside (no photos allowed of course)  making it the biggest monastery in Mongolia.

What Ollie said…..
Just a few shots of various stations on our recent leg from Irkutz to UB. As Ollie said, 6 hour wait at Russian border, then 3 hour on Mogol side. Zero idea why….

Random shot from 2 days ago. Thru it in cause the colours are awesome. ” Insert advert for Samsung S3 here” 🙂

We arrived at Ulaanbaatar after a smooth ride on the train. The train was fairly empty, so no cabin buddies on this leg. Except for Dima maybe, who got bored having a whole cabin for himself, so he came over for a couple of beers on the first night. Dima is a young fella from Irkutsk, studying international Management in UB.

The border stop between Russia and Mongolia took forever, but at least we met Yan and Joy from Hong Kong, “French couple” and some Germans (zey are everywhere, it’s a plague) in the process.

Arrived very early at UB after a rough wakeup call by the mongolian provodnitza. Now we are at the UB guesthouse trying to decide what to do in Mongo.