Genghis Khan

We continue to have a fascinating trip. After our night out we had only 6 hours sleep as
We set off with a local guide Nemo (he said we’d not be able to pronounce his proper name but we all knew the clown fish). We went to an old temple, more simple than Nepal and Tibet, and saw the prayer chanting and philosophical chanting, Then off to a museum, of where the last king and queen lived. (Died 1924, Soviets came). Then up a hill to a statue and wall mosaics dedicated to the soviet soldiers in the Great Patriotic War. (WW2)

Ulaan Bataar has huge high rise and has grown more than it can cope with under democracy. I asked Nemo whether people preferred life now. He said for him communism was 7/10and now 3/10. Then he stopped a couple of random people both said communism, one said 10 out of 10. Reason is free health care, education, house, having a job etc. Nemo trained as a doctor under the soviet system and would have been well paid, but by the time he graduated the Soviets had left and he got $11 a month, which went up to 14. Not enough as he had a wife and a child to support. He left and got a job driving a big wig and got paid 3 times more. His wife was a tour guide and had a baby a week before the season started so she told him to do her job!

After lunch in the hotel we left to go to the supermarket for drinks and water for the yurt. There were many many suburbs of all sorts of housing from posh western houses to simple gers. The govt gives a piece of land free. People claim their spot by putting tyres in the ground, then when they have the money they build a fence, then a ger, then a house.

We took a detour to the huge stainless steel Ghengis Khan on his horse, built in 2012 on the spot where legend has it, his first battle was won. The structure has 36 columns for the descendent 36 kings. We got a lift up to stand on the horse’s mane. Hopefully this collage will show the size of the structure. 150 tons of stainless steel. Not as pretty as the Kelpies though!

The NP was a bit of a let down. It is in a beautiful hilly area, but there are dozens of ger camps, hotels, and half built structures etc along one valley. We turned into a side valley to ours but it has some concrete buildings (unfortunately not housing loos), electric cables, transformers etc. The loos are 2 wooden structures with long drop, quite a walk away from the ger, which was freezing to get to in the night. I brought my big coat. It is minus 2 at night and plus 26 in the day. We are sharing a ger with Vanna a Canadian young woman. It is spacious. We go to a bigger ger to eat. Dinner was salad, and rice with cole slaw for me, and Mr C had potatoes and meat balls which were a bit tough. Then ice cream. Nemo is a big talker, and joke teller. I asked him about the eagle hunting and he says that film has made the festival so popular it has been made a tourist thing and they do it near UB instead of in the area the hunters come from, 2000 miles away. The girl was there this year.

It was very cold in the night. We had only one synthetic cover so we had our coats over us too. However we slept from 10 till 6 when a man knocked to come in to light the stove.