Mongolia: Monasteries, milk and museums

Day 1 - Ulan Bator
We arrived in Ulan Bator, Mongolia at 7.30am on Monday 14th May, after a not very restful sleep, but were picked up by Nassan from our guesthouse. She took us to our room, which was in the apartment of her mother and grandaughter, they were very nice and gave us some breakfast. We finally had a shower, it felt so good to have warm water!

After that we felt a lot better, and decided to explore Ulan Baator. We spent most of the morning running around really, we had wanted to check out some museums, but they were both closed, we tried to find a cafe for a coffee, that proved difficult. However, Ulan Bator is quite a small city, so after all that running around,we had a fairly good feel for the city.

We walked to the Gandantegchinlen Khiid Monastery, which was pretty impressive, one of the buildings had a huge golden Buddha, surrounded by hundreds of little Buddha dolls.

Day 2 - Terelj
On Tuesday we arranged a day trip out to Terelj National Park. Our guide/driver Ulzii picked us up early in the morning, and drove around, stopping at various sites. A lot of it was very off-road, luckily the jeep and Ulzii managed it!

Terelj was absolutely amazing, the scenery was so beautiful, it looked like we were in the middle of nowhere, even though it was only a little more than an hour from Ulan Bator. Some of the things we saw were camels, yaks, a cave, ovoo (a primitive shrine made out of rocks, sticks, and scarve, sometimes with animal skulls), and Turtle Rock, a big rock formation in the shape of, yep, a turtle.
In the afternoon, we visited a ger family. These people still live the traditional Mongolian nomadic life, looking after livestock. I was a little hesitant about visiting them, it felt kind of strange to be dropping in and looking at them and their home. But it seemed that a ger visit was part of every tour, so I prepared myself to feel awkward and intruding.

The family were, however, really lovely. The husband and wife were there, their three children are living in Ulan Bator so they can go to school. They made us feel very welcome, filling us with Mongolian tea, which is made with boiling water, salt, milk, and not much tea. Leon drank about 2 litres of the stuff (the British and their tea...) They didn't speak much English, and Ulzii's was very limited as a translator, but it was fun trying to communicate using dictionaries and phrasebooks.

We rode horses, watched them milk the cows, and played a game of knuckles with dried out animal ankle bones. Afer spending a few hours with the family, it was time to return to Ulan Bator.

Day 3 - Ulan Bator
On our final day in Mongolia we went to the Natural History Museum and the Mongolian History Museum. The National History Museum had the famous Gobi desert dinosaurs that I had to drag Leon away from. The rest of the museum was a little bit funny, in a 'local' kind of way - lots of rocks with captions. A whole bunch of little Mongolian children were there for a school excursion, as they walked into the rooms they all said "Wow!". Very cute. There were also some good dioramas of the different regions of Mongolia like desert, steppe and forest, and the kinds of animals and plants you would find there.

The Mongolian History Museum was fascinating, it was well organised with lots of English explanations. The section about Chinggis Khan and the Mongolian empire was really interesting. There was also a costume gallery, with examples of all the different types of clothing worn by Mongolian ethnic minorities.

Mongolia is such a beautiful country with an amazing history, I hope we can go back sometime to spend more time in the countryside.