July 18th 2018 - Leaving Ulaanbaatar
An extract from this day's Journal entry:-
Checked out of the hotel this morning, first stop the Dinosaur Museum where we had a one hour guided tour. An interesting place, especially interested to see so many turtles who had obviously died together in the mud, some with their neck and head extended from under their shells. There were many excellent exhibits such as nests of dinosaur eggs and dinosaur babies, along with fossils and reconstructed skeletons.
Next we went to the State Department Store (GUM), bought food for the 24 hour train ride to Irkutsk. From there just a short walk to a Mongolian bbq restaurant where we arrived much too early for lunch. They weren’t ready for us and I wasn’t hungry. There was a good selection of thinly sliced meats (including horse), vegetables and sauces which we put in a bowl and took to a man at a big round hotplate. He cooked our food in a couple of minutes and returned it to us on a flat plate; delicious.
There were other cooked dishes to chose from as well, curries, rice dishes and sheeps heads among them. There was also a selection of sweets, three varieties of sorbet and cakes to finish the meal.
After lunch we rode to the station to wait for the train. We were a good hour early, no risk of missing the train. Said goodbye to Ganbaa, our Mongolian guide, sorry to see him go, a man named Zorek will accompany us to Irkutsk. Our train is an East German built set, old but sturdy, hauled by 3 Mongolian Railways locomotives. I am sharing a cabin with Zorek, a man named Tsange from Zimbabwe and his girlfriend Linda who is Anglo Chinese. Tsange and Linda are only travelling as far as Ulan Ude in Russia.
July 18th 2018 - Leaving Ulaanbaatar
An extract from this day's Journal entry:-
Checked out of the hotel this morning, first stop the Dinosaur Museum where we had a one hour guided tour. An interesting place, especially interested to see so many turtles who had obviously died together in the mud, some with their neck and head extended from under their shells. There were many excellent exhibits such as nests of dinosaur eggs and dinosaur babies, along with fossils and reconstructed skeletons.
Next we went to the State Department Store (GUM), bought food for the 24 hour train ride to Irkutsk. From there just a short walk to a Mongolian bbq restaurant where we arrived much too early for lunch. They weren’t ready for us and I wasn’t hungry. There was a good selection of thinly sliced meats (including horse), vegetables and sauces which we put in a bowl and took to a man at a big round hotplate. He cooked our food in a couple of minutes and returned it to us on a flat plate; delicious.
There were other cooked dishes to chose from as well, curries, rice dishes and sheeps heads among them. There was also a selection of sweets, three varieties of sorbet and cakes to finish the meal.
After lunch we rode to the station to wait for the train. We were a good hour early, no risk of missing the train. Said goodbye to Ganbaa, our Mongolian guide, sorry to see him go, a man named Zorek will accompany us to Irkutsk. Our train is an East German built set, old but sturdy, hauled by 3 Mongolian Railways locomotives. I am sharing a cabin with Zorek, a man named Tsange from Zimbabwe and his girlfriend Linda who is Anglo Chinese. Tsange and Linda are only travelling as far as Ulan Ude in Russia.