Wolves of the plains

The expected highlight for me before the trip started was the endless plains of Mongolia. To go there and get a feeling of the country, do some archery and try to imagine where Genghis Khan came from.

Some lobbying on the train, which did not require a lot of effort to be honest, and we got to go to the Genghis Khan statue on our way to the ger camps. Or Chinggis Haan which is closer to their pronounciation of his name.

The statue was impressive, 40 meters tall, and you could walk up the horse's mane and stand on it's head, where you really got a close encounter with the fierce leaders cold face.

We'd also read that you could get dressed out there for 2000 tingrit ($2-3), which most had planned to do, but most chickened out and it turned out to just be five of us. We did however enjoy our time as khan, warrior or princess/queen.

Outside there were vultures - which they claimed were vultures - of various sizes you could, again pay $2-3 to hold. Price depending on the size of the bird. I opted for the largest. Got my massive vulture glove and got the bird on my arm. Weighing about 6kg it got heavy quite fast and when the ower told me to wave my arm after holding it for 30-40 seconds, it proved quite difficult. Pretty sure he had fun with tourist this way, and the guy who came after me didn't manage to hold it for more than 4-5 seconds before he had to support with his other arm. The general threat of loosing an eye is there, but the awe of this beautiful bird took away most of it

Another minor thing I'd been asking about on the train was to try airag - fermented mares milk. Didn't really have too high expectations and most of the gang didn't really enjoy it - but everyone took a sip at least some. At the end Christian, Mark and myself had to finish the bowl, which we gladly did, and strangely enough it tasted better when you drank a solid mouthfull than just had a small taste.

A heard of yaks passed by us on our way to the ger camp. We stopped, took pictures, stayed out of their way as these are not friendly animals, and that's more or less it.

Arriving at the ger camp were we were to spend the rest of the day and the night, we started with a trek through the forest to a nearby temple. It felt very close, but with some ups and downs in the mountainside and with a group of 14-15 people, it still took some time. On my way back I accellerated a bit just to get my heartrate up for the first time in over a week, and with a decent pace I did manage to break a good sweat, but I was also a bit distrubed by some lurking black squirrels.

Back at the camp most people needed some rest before the archery contest I'd also lobbied for. Got through to the 2nd round as one of three, but the Don won it as the only archer to hit the target from the increased distance.

During night it got quite cold, but the ger-people had fired up an oven in our yurts and they even came in more or less before we woke up to fire it up again. Even with this being very far from a cold day, we got some understanding of how quickly the temperature drops on the plains.

Got up a bit earlier than my fellow ger-mates and climed a few meters up the hillside to get a small video of the sun breaking through the clouds.

After breakfast we went back to Ulan Bataar, where some of our crew was still hungover from last night. Ended up doing the national museum which was surprisingly good and then had our final dinner before they were to leave for Beijing, while I had another day before I went home.

My day alone started with going to the black market. EVERYONE had told me to watch my belongings there as it was supposedly pickpockets heaven. Didn't really experience any problems, but it was easy to see that the warnings were probably justified. The market was huge and had everything. A tip if you go there is to buy from one of the many places with fixed prices. You can easily get great deals, but if you try going into a discussion with someone you may also be screwed over quite easily.

In Ulan Bataar there aren't really any taxies, there's just people with ordinary cars doing this service, and they will wait till their car is full before going. Full meant 4 in the backseat as well as a 200yrs old woman in the front seat. But the drive wasn't far and it was ok.

After this stop, I really felt I'd not really had much quality sleep the last weeks and more or less crashed at my room for a few hours. Did however pull myself together and got out to get some more photos of the memorial and had a final Chinggis beer at one of the local bars.