little bits

just sitting in a net cafe so i thought i'd add a quick one.

we're leaving mongolia tomorrow and heading our way into china. i'll be sorry to see mongolia go, it's been an absolutely fantastic 10 days. the mongolian people are incredibly friendly and helpful, and even in the countryside when they have very little or no english to complement our microscopic mongolian, it's been really easy.

a quick advert: if you're ever thinking of going to mongolia and staying in ulan baatar, you can't do better than staying at the UBGuesthouse, just off peace avenue. look it up! on www.hostelworld.com

last night we said to owner that we wanted to go our for korean food. Mr. Kim, the guy that runs our hostel is korean. his face lit right up, he said "follow me," and off we trotted to a nearby korean restaurant. within minutes of arriving we had our own room, 3 waitresses serving us, one cooking at our table, and had a superb meal. i'd never eaten korean before. it's gooood.

anyway, we ate our fill then Mr Kim jumped up, paid for the whole thing and asked only that we mention his hostel to people who intend to come to UB.
which frankly, i would've done anyway because it's been fantastic.

so there we go. mongolia is awesome but i'm very excited about beijing. we're just checking the weather forecast for the time we're going to be there and it looks like the coolest day will be 33 degrees. bring it on!

it's really hard to type on a cyrillic keyboard

we're safely back in ulan batoor, which now (weirdly) feel like home.

it was an incredible and beautiful few days, we saw & experienced a huge amount that i will happily talk to anyone about.. at length. be warned.
to sum up 6 days on the mongolian "road" i'll just have to do this:

vintage cars, eagles, kamikaze goats, off-road driving
tornadoes and volcanoes (yes, really)
slaughtered sheep and really fresh meat
stubborn horses, breaking down, sand-dunes, shooting stars
smelly socks, vodka, skeletons
marauding warriors and buddhist monks
little mongolian girls and ancient folk singers
icy lakes
hunchbacks
mongolian blankets and womanizing drivers
street races
thieving mice
snow capped mountains, rocky outcrops, green valleys and rolling grasslands
and
the guy who made it all possible
Ganna.

rock on

if there was a wild east to the wild west - it'd be mongolia

we're stopping back at the hostel in Ulan Batoor for an evening before we head west. just a wee bit o' time to upload a few pictures of the holiday so far. the internet over here is very slow, so uploading pictures takes a very very long time, but there's no queue at the moment so here we go!

(that took about 45 minutes)

we both rode horses yesterday (i named mine 'alan'). neither of us can ride a horse. or could. now we're old hands.... sort of. we had a local Mongol country-man guide us along pretty difficult terrain. he was a very skilled horseman and could control all of our horses with song, a bit like a cross between a cowboy and the pied piper of hamlyn. it was weird. he made them gallop across a plain with us clinging on for dear life and screaming. he thought it was hilarious.

didn't think it was hilarious when one of them kicked him in the head though, did he? nope. then he gave it to me and it tried to kick me in the head. it missed though. idiot horse.

it was fantastic but my bum is absolutely killing me.

we've reached the halfway point of the holiday now. strange to think that we've only been away for 2 weeks. seems like forever ago that we got in the taxi to heathrow at psycho o'clock in the morning. great to know that we've got the same amount of time ahead of us. not only does it include some incredible places in mongolia, but then we'll head off to china (where dvds are 50p) hurrah!

i currently have a big bushy holiday beard. nice.

we really will be off the radar now, for about 6 days. we'll be back at this hostel at the end of it though. fingers crossed i'll get some time to upload some more photos. for now though, cheerio.