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.

inner mongolia

it's difficult to appreciate how big Siberia is without actually traveling across it. it is absolutely massive, awe-inspiring.
we're in mongolia now, once you cross the border the scenery changes quite alot and you can begin to appreciate just how big it is. huge plains with mountains in the background.

mongolia is a brilliant place. the people say that they have eastern philosophy with western culture and that pretty much sums them up. SO much friendlier and warmer people than the russians. they cannot do enough to assist us.

coming through the border was pretty hairy. we'd heard so many scare stories about people having all their cash taken off them and cameras and such by mentally unstable border patrol guards with guns, but we saw nothing of the sort. it took a long time, but mainly because there is such a huge amount of bureaucracy in russia. it's trying to shake off it's communist roots, but some things are taking longer than others.

from tomorrow we're in jeeps touring around northern mongolia, seeing the scenery and living with local nomadic families. the people at the hostel here share the mongolian warmth and spirit and are basically sorting the whole thing out for us.

the weather has been incredible since we got off the plane in moscow. i think our coldest day has been 23*C. today in ulan bator i think it must've bounced over the 30 degree mark. not at all what we expected at all, certainly from siberia!

the internet is a precious thing in this part of the world, there is a queue behind me, so i'll be off again for now. not sure there will be much in the mongol countryside (or mobile phone signal) so communication may go blank for a while. until then, be excellent to each other...

pictures = proof

we're now right smack bang in the centre of siberia - irkutsk to be exact...
but here are some photos to prove that we've come this far:










it's all very exciting. siberia is massive. we've just got off a train this morning that we sat on for 4 days. the whole trip was a bit scary at first but now we've gotten into it and it's just a sort of way of life.

tomorrow we'll head to the biggest lake in the world. so that'll be nice.

exceeding expectations

moscow is the new black.

this city is beautiful and far removed from the oppressed, militant reputation it suffers. it is young, trendy and free. the sun has been our friend and it has yet to dip below 26*C.

these russians don't do things by halves. the architecture is so enormous and imposing it reaches a point of hilarity. coming face to face with the university, all we could do was laugh. it was as though someones taken the top half of the empire state building and decorated it with 4 canary wharfs.

absolutely nuts!

and the tube stations are like individual underground palaces, complete with chandeliers and bronzed statues.

i estimate we have walked about 1000 miles in the last 2 days, so i'm off to bed.

keep checking this blog, tomorrow we're popping into The Kremlin and then venturing into siberia.

absolutely nuts.

seriously now

theres probably a car somewhere, on it's way to us.

0315hrs.

here we blimmin' go.