Our 4^th day in Mongolia. I know, wait till four days pass then write something. Well, yes. You see, we’ve been on tours now for 2 months and are just starting another tour, our last for this trip, and there just isn’t much time to yourself on a tour. That’s the downside.

The upside is you get the experience and knowledge of a guide, and in most cases, a driver. We try to do private tours if we tour at all so this one in Mongolia is right up our alley. This is a private tour through a company called Goyo Travel. Goyo happens to be the name of the owner, Goyo Reston, who is a native of Mongolia.

Mongolia??? Yep, 3.5 million people make this their home with 800,000 of them being nomads. At one point in time, 13^th – 14^th century, the Mongolian Empire was the largest contiguous empire in history. Compliments of Chinggis Khan (Genghis Khan is the same person. The spelling difference is due to translation from original Mongolia to English)

The top 3 industries in Mongolia are mining (copper, coal, and gold), agriculture, and cashmere wool (the best in the world). We snagged up a few articles while in Ulaanbaatar, the capitol city. (population 1.7 million people)

Starting from the beginning, our driver met us at the airport, which took about an hour to get through because of slow baggage delivery, not customs. Customs was very easy. There’s no landing card so nothing to fill out, hand over your passport, get your picture taken and bingo, on your way to immigration. Find the “Nothing to Declare” lane and walk on out. Simple.

All the meat is pushed to the front. Nothing but bread 1.5 inches back.

The drive from the airport to the apartment took about 2.25hrs. Not only is the airport way the hell out there (DIA isn’t so bad now), but traffic is unbelievably the worst we’ve ever seen. As soon as we reached the city limits, stop and go traffic for the next 1.5hrs! Later we learned that when the Soviets built Ulaanbaatar, it was planned for 350,000 people. Today there are over 1.7 million and everyone has a car. BTW- the car of choice here – the Toyota Prius, everyone has that car.

MIAT (Mongolian Irgenii Agaariin Teewer) airlines leg room

The drive from Chenggis Khan International Airport

Ulaanbaatar

Finally made it to our apartment which we rented through our tour company. It was located in an apartment block built in the 1050’s by the Soviets so it was pretty stylish. There were 4 locked doors we had to go through to get into the apartment, three were steel! Inside the 2-bedroom, 1 bath apartment was cozy, not 5-star but clean, in good repair and comfortable furniture. The best thing was that it was quiet during the day and through the night, not a sound.

Out and about tomorrow.

маргааш уулзъя

Hello comrade! The apartment building

Apartment door (steel door outside, then wood door inside)

Bedroom

Kitchen

Living room