Monky Business

We’ve spent the last 4 days in Ulaan Bataar. The capital of Mongolia which no one seems to be able to agree how to spell the name of (in Latin characters anyway). There isn’t too much to do here, our guide book stops at 2 days, so we’ve been to ALL the museums here (apart from the one that doesn’t exist) and seen all the sights within walking distance that aren’t on our tour which starts tonight.

Fortunately there are two english movie channels and our hotel room looks out over a monastery so we’ve been spending the rest of the time on Monk Watch (while watching bad films). Even after 4 days we still haven’t worked out their routine. Sometimes they line up, sometimes they slide down the slope outside the monastery (and look very pleased with themselves) and sometimes they even form a line and walk around the perimeter of their monkdom humming. The rest of the time they spend in the main building or just moseying around outside. We just never know what they’ll do next, or if it’ll be something we haven’t seen yet. Anyway, they are much more entertaining than the films we’ve been watching!

We’ve also discovered a very nice vegetarian restaurant that puts all others to shame! Everything we’ve had there has been really tasty.

From what we’ve seen so far and (via the museums and city) Mongolia has recently (in the 90’s) emerged from a long period of occupation by the Chinese and Russians to from a democracy and is currently enjoying a period of growth in the cities (there is building work going on all around). Mongolia’s population is only a few million and the country is massive! Ulaan Bataar is a pretty small place (about a million people live here) and a lot of people who live here actually live in gers (traditional large round tents used by Mongolian nomads to live in which can supposedly be fairly easily moved – though judging by the size of them I think it’s probably still pretty hard work!) in what seem to be pretty smart shanty towns around the outskirts.

About half the population lives outside the cities as nomads moving their (large!) gers around with their grazing animals so they get fresh pastures. That’s what we’re going to see for the next 10 days along with some pretty spectacular scenery. We’ll also be in the territories of Gobi Bears and Snow Leopards though i doubt we’ll be lucky enough to see either of them. I also doubt there’ll be wifi so there might not be any posts for a while!