This trip just keeps getting better and better! Up early on the Thursday (I think it was Thursday – it’s been very easy to lose track of the days), threw our stuff into the back seat of a blue Russian van, climbed in behind the stuff, and we were off! We also very quickly learned that our driver didn’t speak English! Well, he spoke more English than we speak Mongolian but that’s not saying much! Out of Ulan Bator on paved roads, through an arch and checkpoint, then a left turn onto what we’d be riding along for the rest of the time – a dirt track. Mongolian roads seem to just be where everyone decides to drive – so dirt tracks, some times rocky or muddy, but tracks all the same. We spent the time bouncing around the back of a blue Russian van! We probably could have stopped more often to see stuff, but being British we just looked out the windows. And what did we see? We’ve tried to think of how to describe it, but it just can’t be done. Forget pictures of Mongolia – the real thing is much much much more amazing! The scenery changes quite a lot for what you may think of as grassland, and we went through several types of scenery – grassland, mountain, different sort of mountain, hills, lakes – and all of it just amazing.<\/p>\n
We also managed to see some of the wildlife, but don’t have a clue what we actually saw as we don’t have any books with us! So we decided, in true British tradition, to name the things ourselves. In no particular order we saw: Mongolian grass and ger (yurt) sparrows (well, they looked like tree and house sparrows but as there are no trees or houses . . .), Mongolian Steppe eagles (huge things and beautiful), Mongolian cattle egret (grey, black, and white birds that looked like they didn’t fly), various Mongolian finch birds, Mongolian hoopee, Mongolian furry critters – well, let’s be a bit more specific, Mongolian groundhogy thing, Mongolian weasely thing, Mongolian foxy thing, and Mongolian rodenty thing. We also saw horses, cattle, camels, sheep, goats. Up close and personal even. Like riding. At least we had to ride a horse and camel – just round the yard. Some of the other things we did: ate mutton soup with noodles (watched the noodles being made); watched a camel being sheared; played shepardherd to a lost lamb (decided I was it’s mother and I couldn’t get it to stop following me!); slept in two different gers and met two different groups of Mongolians (never did figure out the relationships); milked a camel (Joe got out of doing that one); watched sheep and goats being milked; helped round up lambs\/kids (Joe got to do that and let one get by); went to an amazing shrine\/temple hidden in the hills; saw some wonderful scenery; changed two tires (one on the first day which was pretty straight forward – flat off and spare on – and the second the second day – funny that – which involved taking the tire off the rim and replacing the inner tube); and bounced around the back of a blue Russian van trying to get pictures that will never do the place justice.<\/p>\n
We now have our tickets to Beijing – deluxe first class (gee) – and we leave tomorrow morning. So we have seen nothing of Ulan Bator – we’re pretty tired and need to get packed up as we leave at 7am tomorrow morning. Oh well. We plan to go straight through Beijing – only stopping long enough to get a ticket to Shanghai. We’ve met several people doing our trip the other way and that’s what they’ve done (in Beijing long enough to get tickets to UB!) and it looks like it’s no trouble. Japan is still allowing flights from China, including from Beijing, and our ferry is still running – so we’re off again tomorrow! Probably no update until we are in Shanghai, hopefully Tuesday!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
This trip just keeps getting better and better! Up early on the Thursday (I think it was Thursday – it’s been very easy to lose track of the days), threw our stuff into the back seat of a blue Russian van, climbed in behind the stuff, and we were off! We also very quickly learned […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_is_tweetstorm":false,"jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false}}},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p4T97-1p","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":86,"url":"https:\/\/www.purple-penguin.org\/blog\/2003\/05\/14\/posting-from-outer-mongolia\/","url_meta":{"origin":87,"position":0},"title":"Posting from Outer Mongolia!","date":"Wednesday, 14 May 2003","format":false,"excerpt":"Posting from Outer Mongolia! We made it to Mongolia after a couple of days on a train. Have now run into our first contact with Sars prevention - all the border control\/customs\/immigration people were wearing masks and our train was sprayed with something nasty and disinfective smelling. People in Ulan\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Travel"","img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":85,"url":"https:\/\/www.purple-penguin.org\/blog\/2003\/05\/11\/an-update-irkutsk\/","url_meta":{"origin":87,"position":1},"title":"An update Irkutsk","date":"Sunday, 11 May 2003","format":false,"excerpt":"An update from an Internet cafe in Irkutsk - with loads to say! The train ride was good - we have pictures of trees, train stations, trees, train carriage, trees, trains, trees and maybe a few pictures of trees! It was surprising how little the landscape changed once we were\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Travel"","img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":89,"url":"https:\/\/www.purple-penguin.org\/blog\/2003\/05\/26\/top-travel-tip-for-china\/","url_meta":{"origin":87,"position":2},"title":"Top travel tip for China","date":"Monday, 26 May 2003","format":false,"excerpt":"Yea, found an place to post that's about a quarter of the cost of the hotel internet access. Top travel tip for China: if you go through Beijing don't admit it or you won't get a hotel anywhere. Joe finally told the Ramada in Nanjing that we'd just flown in\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Travel"","img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":4268,"url":"https:\/\/www.purple-penguin.org\/blog\/2025\/12\/01\/nature-watching\/","url_meta":{"origin":87,"position":3},"title":"Nature Watching","date":"Monday, 1 December 2025","format":false,"excerpt":"So we didn't take a laptop on this trip. For once. But Joe took loads of photos and they'll be on Flickr at some point. And I took notes while we travelled and now updating with dates as they happened. We stayed at the Premier Inn at Gatwick before leaving.\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Travel"","img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":83,"url":"https:\/\/www.purple-penguin.org\/blog\/2003\/04\/30\/who-writes-the-posts\/","url_meta":{"origin":87,"position":4},"title":"Who writes the posts","date":"Wednesday, 30 April 2003","format":false,"excerpt":"The last pre-trip update! First, it has been pointed out to me that I need to state that although Joe's name is on the reports, it is me that actually writes them. Not that it makes loads of difference as he tells me what he'd like me to write and\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Travel"","img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":331,"url":"https:\/\/www.purple-penguin.org\/blog\/2009\/12\/31\/last-day-of-2009\/","url_meta":{"origin":87,"position":5},"title":"Last day of 2009","date":"Thursday, 31 December 2009","format":false,"excerpt":"And last update from Death Valley - our internet connection runs out this evening and we'll be out trying to get photos of the full moon. So next update will probably be 2 January. Definitely a rest day. Woke up around 5.30 but decided I didn't want to be awake\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Frog Blog"","img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.purple-penguin.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/87"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.purple-penguin.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.purple-penguin.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.purple-penguin.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.purple-penguin.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=87"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.purple-penguin.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/87\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.purple-penguin.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=87"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.purple-penguin.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=87"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.purple-penguin.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=87"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}