Back on the bus

Another phone shot from a moving bus. At least this bus had windows that opened so no dirty glass in the picture. The two tiny white dots in the middle are ‘ger’ - nomadic family accommodation.

In the morning I packed up and the guest house organised for a ‘public car’ (minibus) to take me from Khatgal to Moron. The bus picked me up and we were a couple of kilometres out of Khatgal when the driver’s phone rang and we turned round and went back to town to pick someone else up. Then on the way out of town again we passed a family and lots of stuff on a motorbike who were going the opposite direction to us and we stopped again and the woman, small boy and all the stuff from the motorbike got on our bus. We left town at the third attempt with Abba’s ‘Dancing Queen’ playing on the stereo! (After one Bee Gees track and two Abba tracks it went back to Mongolia music.)

In Moron I got dropped at the bus station, bought a ticket for the 6pm bus and walked into town to find some lunch and a place to sit for the afternoon. I spent the afternoon reading a book that blipper ‘Migrant in Moscow’ recommended (thanks!) which is an account by a woman who travelled around Mongolia in 1913. She might be challenging conventions of what women at that time were supposed to do, but she’s definitely not challenging the prevailing colonial arrogance and racist attitudes about non-Europeans.

The 6pm bus to Ulan Bator left the bus station at 6.25pm and then stopped after 50 metres to pick up more passengers! By the time we left Moron it was 6.50pm. My blip was taken just before the sun dropped behind the hills.

I’m uploading this on the 21st in Ulan Bator and I’ve now been able to stitch together the panorama that was going to be my blip yesterday. See the extra photo.