Mongolia

I'm sitting here in my ger somewhere in the middle of Mongolia, writing. We roled in to Ulaanbaator with the train yesterday afternoon and left for a three day trp this morning. But before telling you about that, let me say a few words about the trainride. 

I woke up early morning, the last time in a long while that I would wake next to my girlfriend, packed my things and left, together with Yini, for the trainstation. There we met up with my friends from the Chalmers office. after a few minutes of chatting it was time to say goodbye to Yini. It was hard to walk away seeing the tears in her eyes. I would have liked to stay and hold her until her tears subsided but that is the catch 22 of going away, I couldn't stay. 

Getting on the train

As soon as we were on the train we had a rather nice time playing games and chatting for a few hours until it started getting boring.In the evening, as we were having dinner, they told us to get back to our carrige since it was passport controll but for some reason, the passport police stopped  us from from passing as they were checking other peoples passports. Finally they realized we were missing up ahead and rushed us on. as soon as they saw our passports we started gathering up things to go out but before we hade time to do so the train personell locked the doors.

So there we were, locked inside a traincar while they roled us in to a workshop, lifted us up and changed the wheels to suit a different track width. All the while the rest of the passangers were free to move about outside and even had access to a shop. After we managed to get a window open, being stuck in the traincarrige was less cloustrofobic, and seeing the wheelchange from inside was actually interesting.

Raised traincar

Changing wheels

Aftwert several more hours of waiting for passport control and such, we finally started rolling again and we fell asleep. i woke up around twelve the next day and just about hade time eat and pack up before we entered Ulaanbaator. There we got into the hotel, planned and booked a trip and went to bed.

This morning we packed up some things in small bags and set out in a minivan together with driver, guide and chef. We drove for a few hours, stopping here and there to look at the view. The landscape is mostly empty with mountains off in the distance. Here and there a beautiful rock formation, a ger (round, white mongolian tent) or a flock sheep, horses or Yak. it's beautiful in its own way but far too vast to caputre on camera although i have made a few attempts.

My attempts at capturing the landscape on camera

When we  got to the camp we made ourselves at home in the ger andhad some lunch. Next up was horseback riding. I was a bit nervous to start with but it was fun, I just wish I had a bit more control over the horse.