Driving
18 days traveling about 3000 km around the Mongolian countryside in a jeep - of which 15 of these days we drove for about 7 hours, and the remaining 3 rested at lakes. With the excpetion of the last road back to Ulan Batar, all but about one hour of the driving was off road - not because we are gluttons for punishment, but because even what appears to be a main road on a map is actually a dirt track.
The first week we drove through the Gobi desert, then we headed northwards towards central Mongolia and the north, where the arid steppes gave way to greener valleys, rivers and lakes. To be honest, a lot of the scenery looked like Scotland (also Norway, I'm told), but the really incredible thing is the vastness and endlessness of the landscape. Most days we only saw a handful of vehicles - often a nomad (and his family) on the back of a motorbike. Every three days we got to an aimag (province) capital - small towns hooked up to an electricity supply and a public bath, where many people still live in a ger (felt tent), or rough wooden houses (resembling B&Q garden sheds). In the Gobi there aren't any towns or villages inbetween these towns, but later on we passed through a small settlement most days.
My traveling companions: was very lucky to have a great group: Jason from Hull and Stina and Stina from Norway came to the Gobi, then headed back to UB, then I continued on with Gary (Scotland), and Ainsley (Canada). Plus of course, our faithful driver Misheka.
Staying in gers
Amazingly over half of Mongolians live in gers (round felt tents), despite temperatures of minus 40 in winter. We stayed in gers for the duration of the trip; they're fitted out with minature beds - either extremely hard, or ridiculously saggy but nothing inbetween - and, if we were lucky, a wood burning stove.
Terrible food
At least, it started out terrible, but improved to a mediocre standard. Breakfast and dinner were provided by our hosts in the gers, and to start with consisted of dry rusk-like biscuits for breakfast, and soggy noodles in soup with a sprinkling of dry meat for dinner. Breakfast did improve from rusks to bread once we left the desert, but dinner unfortunately didn't move on much. We survived with our camp stove for lunch and supplementing our meals, and in the second half of the trip we passed by eateries that serve mutton dumplings, or on a good day goulash.
Misheka
Our wonderful driver. The best. Likes to eat marmot. Also likes driving :) cherry flavoured boiled sweets, and vodka. Communication good, but English limited to "we go?", "sleep", "lunch", and "water", meaning 'there's a waterfall / lake / river /hotspring over there / its a long walk up the mountain to the monastery so take plently of water with you.'
Good at: Driving. Mending jeep. Navigating via 6th sense (we saw 2 road signs in 15 driving days).
Bad at: Hunting marmot.
