Kharkhorin

Mongolia has two main biomes so having done the desert, we recovered for a day, during which Elli contracted a horrific stomach bug, and then headed into the steppe.

We hired a jeep from a woman who genuinely couldn't understand that we were going to drive ourselves, cook for ourselves, and sleep in the car, and off we went into the traffic jam.

Quite by accident we're in Mongolia during Nadaam which is their annual festival and every town has its own version. This meant that we were driving out of UB with everyone else heading back to see their families and despite leaving at 6am, we didn't get to Kharkhorum until 6pm. It was boggling that in a country which only has about 5 roads that we were stuck in a standstill traffic jam on one and most people just drove off the road to avoid it, resulting in multiple buses in the ditch.

We'd thought the stomach bug had passed but alas no and by the next day Chris was ill too, so we spent a slightly delirious couple of days gratefully staying at Gaya's guesthouse in a very comfortable ger and whenever we had enough energy, going to the Naadam festival down the road. It worked out relatively well, since Naadam is a great spectacle but aside from wrestling, archery and some horse races that you can only watch the end of, actually not very much happens.

Most of it features people zooming around on horses and then sitting in their family tents with piles of curd cheese given out to everyone who walks in, which we greatly appreciated, mostly for the shade.Read more