Terelj National Park

Today Emily, Graham, Kaye, Kristin and I went to Terelj National Park for a over-nighter. But, before actually getting there, we did see some stuff!

Cows...


...at a gas station!


A cave!


Turtle rock!


Another Buddhist temple.


The bridge to the temple.


View from the temple.

When we arrived at the national park, it was raining quite hard, so we were confined to our ger for the first few hours.

Happy cow processed "cheese".


Inside our ger.

However, the rain did clear up, making for a beautiful day. We did lots of exploration or the national park. The easiest way to describe it is a Mongolian campsite, where Mongolian families go on vacation. There was even a nice big river running right beside the campsite, but it was a little cold for swimming.

Assisted river crossing.

And finally, horseback riding!!!

Boarding the horses.


Graham on his pony... I mean "horse".


Kaye on hers.



Kristin being... happy...


Kaye laughing at Kristin!


Out of the way sheep!!!


Less sheep now!

More UB Randomness!

Just some stuff (I can't really divulge what I did today.... at least not yet!!!)

The dogs that live near our guesthouse.


Save a tree; eat a beaver.


The Japanese girl whose name I can't remember (too many names in so little time...)!


The burned-down government building.


The wrestling building.

Gandam Monastery, the Temple Museum and the Traditional Song & Dance Show

Big day today! It started off with a proper visit to Gandam Monastery (since I had only walked explored the temple grounds previously). I must say that it is a very impressive place, but a little more touristy than I thought it would be....

The main temple.

Again, with birds.


And, again.


The giant statue housed inside (they wanted to charge us unreasonable
amounts of money for photos, so we took some on the sly!)


Lion statue with bad teeth.


Another building.


Pigeon feeding 101.


Graham being really happy about his beer and lunch!


Brochettes, mmmmm.....

After Gandam and lunch, we headed to a Buddhist temple museum that was full of very strange things... Again, pictures were taken on the sly, so there are not many to be had!

View of the temple museum with a strange background!


Some kind of angry Buddhist deity.


Again.


A cow god?


Cute little building.


Some artistic representation of horses.


A mural of some sort.


Chinggis Khan on the mountainside.

After the temple monastery, we headed to the traditional song and dance show. It was amazing! Simply wonderful! There were many dance pieces, which were very lively, an orchestra and even some Mongolian throat singing. A definite must if you are in Mongolia!!!

The dancers are a little blurry since I didn't want to use the flash.


The orchestra.


Even the curtain was nice!

Amit & Meera and Emily's BDay

Today I spent the day with a Amit and Meera, a couple who had arrive at Oyuna's Guesthouse the night before. They only had about 13 days in Mongolia, so we went to some travel agencies to see what what available. We stopped at some souvenir shops as well, as you can probably surmise...

Traditional Mongolian hats (that look like bottles....)


Encore.

Then, since it was Emily's birthday, all of the guesthouse residents went to Pizza Della Casa to celebrate, followed by cake!

Group picture!


Graham and Em.


Emily and her cake.

Wandering around UB

Here are a few more pictures taken in UB.

Suhkbaatar Square.


Statue of Damdin Suhkbaatar.


The government building.

Interesting note: The are no phone booths in UB. Instead, people large wireless phone units sit around and charge menial amounts of money to use the phone. Weird....

Largest cell phone in the world!


Traditional Mongolian dish (Tseevan - the spelling is probably incorrect though...)

The State of Emergency

While we were gone, the federal election was held in Mongolia. However, it is clear that many people did not like the results, since they decided to start a *little* riot in Suhbaatar square. Unfortunately, the riot got out of hand, resulting in the loss of five lives and the burning of a government building. This actually occurred the night we returned from the Gobi, but Gaan advised us no to leave the hostel due to these events.

As a result, a "state of emergency" was declared. Even though this sounds dire, all it really means is that there was a very loose curfew established and the prohibition of alcohol for the next four days.

I guess that the Mongolian military definitely know what they're doing, since the morning after the riot, there nice little armored vehicules(BRDM's if I'm not mistaken) were put in place to ensure the peace. Thankfully, none of that was required and the soldiers instead chatted with the policemen all day!

GT6: Back to UB

Not much to say about today! We left in the morning and got back to UB at 5pm. However, Gaan did have some stuff to tell us, but that will be covered in tomorrow's post!!!

A village.