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  • Our Trans-Mongolian Adventure
    12
    Day 24

    Back in the Ulaanbaatar

    September 18, 2019 in Mongolia ⋅ ⛅ 16 °C

    Back in Ulaanbaatar (UB) we have two days before we take the train to Beijing. As far as the blog is concerned we are keen to complete Mongolia before we leave the country as censorship rules in China may well block FindPenguins. We know that WhatsApp and Google are blocked so we must assume the worst and it could well be that we have little contact with the outside World until we are home on 23rd September. We’ll see.

    So once arriving back in UB on Tuesday we visited the National Museum, then while walking across the square in front of Government House witnessed a number of wedding photo sessions taking place. We discovered that any couple getting married in Mongolia are allowed to have some photos taken inside the barriers around the Parliament and more specifically in front of the Genghis Khan statue. We then did some shopping (including some cashmere bargains for Janet) and had a very nice Indian meal to close the day.

    On Wednesday we had originally been hoping for a free day, however on the flight to the Gobi we realised that there was part of our day tour to the Terelj National Park last week that was not covered, this being a visit to the huge Genghis Khan monument - some way out of UB. We are still not sure if our UK agent or the local tour company were to blame, however this is a key sight and it needed to be done. Unfortunately it was a 2 hour drive there and the same back, so with 90 minutes actually there we lost half a day but it was very worthwhile as the pictures show. This stainless steel monument to Mongolia’s National hero was completed in 2010 and is truly gigantic, dominating the hilltop as Genghis faces the town of his birth some miles away.

    Our guide today was our old friend NK who had only just recovered from his return trip from the Gobi and our driver was another of our acquaintances from the local tour company, Eggy.

    After our trip it was back to the hotel for a packing session as we prepare to leave UB for Beijing tomorrow (Thursday) with the final train of our trip departing at 07.30am and arriving at 2.30pm, 31 hours later.

    As we now have the facility to send videos a couple are included below. You can also view our arrival at the summit of the Dune on this link:

    https://youtu.be/XEEH2AIanm0    Read more