Saturday was meant for relaxation – meaning, no sightseeing. Sandy did a four-mile run around the Square. She also went for her “Starbucks” time at the coffee shop inside the State Department Store because the Muse Coffee Shop at the museum was closed. We had our Greek salad in the apartment for lunch and for dinner, it was spaghetti and Mongolian Merlot wine, which was much sweeter than the merlots we are used to. A nicely paced day after the business of Naadam.
On Sunday, we were up early to start our overnight trip out into the countryside. For this trip, we were headed to Amarbayasgalant Khiid, which is about 225 miles northwest of Ulaanbaatar. We caught a city bus to the Dragon Bus Terminal. This is the terminal on the west side of the city from which routes to the west and north part of the country depart. We found our bus and it left right on time at 10am. We made one stop on the way to our destination where we picked up ham sandwiches and bottles of water. Our destination was a small village called Baruunburen and we arrived around 3pm. The IF Tour camp arranged a driver to pick us up and drive the last hour to the campsite. We waited for about an hour for the driver to arrive and spent that hour in the small convenience store. Nobody spoke English but they were very friendly and talked with the driver to let him know where to pick us up. The driver had his wife and two small children with him. I sat in front and Sandy sat in back with the wife and children. The drive to the camp (and monastery) was thrilling. I don’t think I ever need to experience riding in an Indy car after the sensations of flying across the valley! It’s all on dirt tracks that have developed across the bouncy terrain. Sandy indicated she should have had her night mouthguard in to keep her teeth from hitting from all the flailing around she was doing in the back seat (there wasn’t a seat belt to wear). We tried to picture our former Prius covering the terrain like all the Prius’ we saw racing and going through shallow rivers. There are multiple tracks and there isn’t a lot of traffic but it’s easy to see because there is dust following each car that you can see across the spread. The area is stunning. Beautiful green rolling hills.
Upon arrival at the camp at 5pm, we met Saruul – she is the daughter of the camp owners, lives in Japan, and is here visiting home for a month. Her English is fantastic and she was such a help in getting our logistics figured out. We dropped our stuff off in our ger and walked over to the monastery to explore before it closed at 7pm.
The monastery was built in the 1700s intending to be the resting place for Zanabazar. Zanabazar was the first spiritual ruler of Outer Mongolia. His remains were moved to this spot in the late 1700s. During the purge under the Soviets in 1937, many of the temples were destroyed and many of the monks were killed. After 1990, it returned to a place of active worship and houses around 50 monks.
We were back at our camp – it’s only a ten-minute walk from the monastery – for dinner at 7:30pm. Dinner was delicious, especially the bread – all homemade. After dinner, we sat out and enjoyed the view over the valley while the sun set over the hills behind us. It was fun to see the herd of about 50 horses surround our camp as they were grazing.
Sleeping in a ger for the first time was comfortable. It got cool enough that we probably could have started a fire to warm it up, but we were ok without it. We got up around midnight to go out and see the stars and the Milky Way and we got up at 5am to see the sunrise.
Monday, we got a little more sleep after being up at sunrise and then we were up in time for breakfast at 9am. It’s amazing that you can have such a wonderful experience for less than $150 total for both of us (that included round trip bus tickets to/from Ulaanbaatar, 2 private drivers to get us to/from the camp, our overnight stay in the ger, dinner, 6 bottles of water, and breakfast). We left the camp with a new driver at 10:15am and went over to the monastery to see the monks chanting during their daily ritual. I don’t know if we missed it or if they were running late, but we didn’t see them and we needed to get going to make our way back across the valley to catch our bus back to Ulaanbaatar. We were back in Baruunburen at 11:40am and the way this works, is you look for a bus coming down the road and flag it down to get on. We had tickets so theoretically the bus driver would know that he had a pickup. There was another family waiting for the bus as well. Thankfully, our driver stayed with us because it did not go as planned.
When we bought the ticket at the bus station in Ulaanbaatar, I selected a 12:25pm departure time. The ticket printed a departure time from the originating city of Erdenet at 10am. The woman at the station handwrote on our ticket that we needed to be in Baruunburen between 12 and 12:30 as that was the time window when the bus would be expected to pass through. The first bus came, stopped, and said it was not our bus. A couple of other buses came through and did not stop at all. Our driver called the bus company and after a long discussion, he informed us that we were supposed to be on the bus that passed through an hour earlier – meaning we should have been there between 11 and 11:30. That was pretty frustrating and we’ve decided it was simply lost in translation. The woman at the station should have written 11 instead of 12 on our ticket. I’m still confused though because I clearly picked the 12:25 departure time. At any rate, the next step was to find a way back. It is very common here to put your hand out and flag someone down – basically hitchhiking except that you are expected to pay some amount of money to them. Our driver flagged a car down and the couple was headed to Ulaanbaatar and they agreed to take us for around $15. After spending a couple of hours roadside in Baruunburen, we hopped in the car and we were on our way to Ulaanbaatar. We spent almost the entire five-hour journey conversing with Google Translate. It was fun getting to know them this way. We stopped for a few pictures in the fields along the road.
They were nice enough to drop us off right at our apartment and we had so much fun, we invited them to come over for dinner the next night. We decided to eat dinner at Mirage in our apartment building. We both had salmon and we finally had a meal that we didn’t like. The salmon was smoked and way too salty. On the plus side, a German guy who now lives here, told us about a spot across the street where we could get milkshakes and they were excellent – Sandy did raspberry and I did blueberry – so they washed away the salmon taste.
Tuesday, we did a four-mile walk around Sukhbaatar Square, ate a healthy lunch at one of our favorite restaurants (Greeno) and did our grocery shopping. Sandy did a lot of work to prepare for our guests coming over that night. It was fun to be able to host in our home. The plan was steaks, broccoli, and baked potatoes and we played music from Sandy’s playlist on Amazon Prime – wanting to give them a typical American evening experience. Od and Oogii arrived around 8pm. They brought the meat – two beautiful tenderloins with each one weighing around two pounds, I would guess.
They also brought wine, candy, and as a gift, a travel size massage gun. I really hope we can fit it into our luggage. I think we will. We had such a fun evening – with our translators usually giving the right translation, sometimes it was obvious it did not.
Od imports used cars from Japan and sells them in Mongolia. Through the conversation, we came up with the idea of possibly buying a car to use while we travel around the country and then selling it before we leave. We’ll see – we may not have it long enough for it to really make sense, but even so, it’s good to keep in mind for other places we go on this journey.
Today, we headed back over to the square for some running. We spent the afternoon working on our plan for the next couple of weeks as we get out and explore more of Mongolia. I was finally able to arrange a pickleball evening. On our way to the sports hall, we stopped for dinner at Millie’s Espresso – Sandy had bean burritos and I had chicken enchiladas. We arrived at the sports hall around 8:45pm and met a great group of people. Pickleball is new in Mongolia – I don’t think there are any permanent courts. We set up two courts inside using the portable nets exactly how we do at home. They do not have pickleball lines taped on the gym floor, so we used the badminton lines. The space allows for two courts to be set up and there were nine of us playing. The level of play is excellent. Every game I played was very competitive. I had such a good time playing and I really hope that I am able to join them again before we leave Mongolia.
