Ulaanbaatar

We returned to Ulaanbaatar by lunchtime the next day, stopping on the way at the Chinggis Khan statue and museum.  The Mongolian have recently built a 40m statute of Chinghis Khan apparently in the middle of nowhere, but we were told this valley was the site where he found his golden whip which apparently where it all kicked off for Chinghis.  The highlight of this was being able to go up in the elevator to stand on the top of the horse’s head – spectacular views and meant that we were able to take a close up of Chinggis.  Fortunately, given our recently failures, we’d given up on trying to take photos of us with famous statues at this point.

Bolod - our amazing Mongolian guide

When we got to Ulaanbaatar first thing on our list was coffee before Fern’s caffeine addiction caused some casualties!  We also succumbed to eating some Western food to counterbalance the greasy meatness which is Mongolian cuisine.  Suitably refreshed we headed to Chaojin Temple Museum for some culture.

We then headed to the main square, scene of the 1990 protests that ended communism in Mongolia, to check out the Parliament building, with the requisite statue of Chinngis Khan, before heading off to the State Department store (commonly known as the big shop) to do a bit of shopping.

It was with a slight heavy heart that we woke up the next morning to catch our final train across the Gobi desert to our end destination.

Bring on Beijing!!!