A trip to the countryside

Last weekend we decided to make a getaway to see some mongolian countryside with the intent to go fishing. We asked around for public transport to see if we had the chance to do the trip for our selves, but that proved difficult since there´s public transport only to the capitals of the provinces and the odds of getting a ride with us three hitching out of there with all our stuff seemed a bit unlikely. Not that waiting on the side of the road has ever worried me, but with our sleepingbags being for temperatures above 10 C and the nights here dropping below zero a night on the side of the road didn´t exacly appeal to our desired level of comfort. It´s suprisising to be able to walk around with only a t-shirt during the days and then see ponds of frozen water in the mornings.

So we asked around for the cost of tours from local organizers and they were all over 40$ per day and for a tour to one of the bits of river where there was taimen to catch would have been at least a four to five day tour -we decided to skip our ambitions on fishing for taimen. Instead we got a bargain for 33$ a head/day for a trip to Terelj national park from our host Manlai.


Saw my first yaks:

So we got to stay at this family there with meals included and horses at our disposal for the whole three days we spent there -sweet! We still had the best of intentions to go fishing there, but horseriding proved to be exhausting enough to keep us from heading out to the river in the evenings. Exiting enough to ride with no prior experience. Especially going over the river with the horse was a scare at first. Luckily slipping with one foot doesn´t still get the horse to tip over.



Some awesome views we got to see with a little help from our horses:

Mongolian cuisine:


some more mongolian food:


saw also "the famous Turtle Rock"


On our way back we stopped by the Zaisan memorial again to snap a pic of UB at night:

Finally we booked ourselves tickets out of Mongolia. We'll take the train to the chinese side of the border on sunday and then take a sleeperbus to Beijing from there.. Let's see how that goes.. My first time in a sleeper.

Later