Reading Time: 11 minutes

Another active week here in Mongolia. Tuesday’s highlight was that our AirBnb hosts invited us to lunch. We got to meet Khasar, Yudko, mom, and their twin daughters.  We ate at Zoma, which is affiliated with Route 22 and Greeno.  The lunch was fantastic – Sandy had mushroom pasta and I had beef bourguignon.  Getting to meet the family was awesome. Wonderful, wonderful people and so helpful. We leave the apartment on Wednesday morning, but we would be happy if our plans give us the chance to return. In the afternoon, I spent time working on the critical error that showed up on our blog this morning. This is not an area of expertise at all for me and I was not able to figure it out.  I’ll have to keep trying later this week.  Sandy spent time looking for solutions as well. I had some leftover spaghetti before I headed out for another evening of pickleball with the Mongolia Pickleball Association.  Not quite as many people for this session but had some really good games. Sandy stayed home and worked on giving her body a chance to recover from whatever it is she picked up. We got ourselves packed before heading to bed.

Wednesday was a travel day. We left the apartment at 9am and used UB Taxi to get a ride to the bus station on the west side of the city – at the Nomin Wholesale Warehouse.  I believe this is a temporary station for buses headed west while the Dragon Terminal is undergoing construction work. The bus left on time at 11am, but took a long time to get out of Ulaanbaatar – seemed like an efficient route and extra stops but we finally got out of town. After a couple of hours, the driver didn’t seem like he had an interest in stopping but quite a few people started to complain that they needed a toilet break.  He eventually pulled over and those who needed it headed for the fields. A little later, we stopped at a café where we had some meat (either mutton or beef – not sure), rice, cabbage, and carrots. The bus pulled into Kharkhorin around 6pm and it was pouring down rain. Gaya and another person were there to pick around ten of us up in two cars and take us to our new home Gaya’s Guesthouse. We opted for a room with en-suite bathroom in the main building as opposed to a ger.   We could see the morning commute from our bedroom window.

We unpacked, had some tea in the dining room and talked with travelers from Hong Kong, France, and Spain. It was still raining a little, but we needed to get some dinner so we went to a hotel/restaurant called Khorgo Arwijikh. We shared a veggie pizza that I thought was really good.  Sandy liked it, except it had BBQ sauce on it that she could have done without. After dinner, we went to the grocery store to pick up a few items.  Gaya was there as we were getting ready to leave so she gave us a ride back to the guesthouse.  I got to catch up with cousin Rusty for a few minutes before calling it a day.

Thursday was the first of the month, which generally means it is an office day for us.  Laptop and picture backups, bills, etc. It was a fairly rainy day so not a bad one to be in for the day. At breakfast, we got to meet new friends from Germany, Netherlands, Oregon, Singapore, and India.  One of the great things about staying in a guesthouse like Gaya’s is the hostel feel to it – getting to meet so many adventurous travelers and hearing their stories. Later we also met Monica from Italy.  She is about a quarter of the way through a two-year bicycle trip around the world.  Now that is an adventure. We ate fruit throughout the day and wrapped up our work around 4:30. During the day, we met with Gaya to make a plan for a couple of day trips we want to do while we are here. We headed out to get dinner at King Restaurant in the center of town.  I had fried chicken and Sandy had tsuivan – the Mongolian noodle dish usually with meat (Sandy requested no meat…Mongolians eat a lot of meat!).  It continued to rain on and off but cleared enough for us to make it home around 8:30.

Friday greeted us with more rain – I think we had around an inch of rain between Thursday and Friday. We had breakfast with Bernard from Germany and Peter from the Netherlands. Bernard changed the battery in the clock in the dining room and Bernard, if you happen to be reading this, it worked.  Thank you for getting that fixed.  We worked on plans for post-Kharkhorin hoping the rain would let up.  We finally left around 1pm even though it was still coming down.  First stop was the Kharkhorin Museum.

This city is the ancient capital of Mongolia.  Chinggis Khan decided he wanted the empire’s capital to be here and his son Obedei was the one who really established the city after Chinggis died. At it’s peak, it was one of the largest cities in the world at that time (mid-1200s). It only lasted for around 40 years because Kublai Khan (Chinggis’ grandson) proceeded to move the capital of the empire to Beijing – something that some Mongolians today still resent. Lonely Planet says this is one of the best museums outside the capital and that doesn’t surprise me. Nice displays and very informative presentation. We had some chips for a snack at the museum café and then walked a few more minutes up the road to the Erdene Zuu Monastery. Some say this is the most important monastery in Mongolia.

Like most others it was destroyed with the purges of the 1930s and then rebuilt after communism collapsed in the early 1990s. Zanabazar was born here in Khorkhorin and he is a direct descendant of Chinggis Khan.  He traveled to Tibet early in his life and returned to Mongolia to become the first religious leader of the country.  He came back to Khorkhorin to build his first temple and introduce Buddhism to Mongolia. Our tour of the monastery was led by a high school student who took this job for the summer to work on her English.  She did a great job and we are so impressed with the number of students we see taking this initiative during their summer break.  Not only does it help with their language skills but it also helps instill a deeper respect for the history of this amazing country.

After the monastery, we walked into the town center and had dinner at the Ikh Korum Hotel.  This is a beautiful hotel – very new.  The restaurant is upscale and you can tell it’s meant for nice nights out.  The food was ok, but we won’t call it our favorite. We enjoyed Altan Gobi beers, a spinach and goat cheese salad, salmon, pork ribs, and I finished it off with a chocolate shake. We stopped at the store for some apples and bananas. Back at Gaya’s, the power went out at 8:45pm for around an hour so we headed to bed.

Saturday and Sunday were both day trips. They each started with about an hour of driving on paved road and then that was followed by roughly two-and-a-half hours on Mongolia’s non-paved roads and they were just as bumpy as you can possibly imagine. Sandy has determined that her limit is four hours total for the day and then she hits her wall.  They are not comfortable at all, but it remains very impressive how the Toyota Prius cars can handle these roads. Our driver for Saturday was Baljaa and he was excellent so we were thrilled when we learned that he would be able to drive us on Sunday, too.

Saturday’s destination was the Tovhon Khiid (monastery). This is another monastery built by Zanabazar in the 1600s.  He spent 30 years of his life at this monastery built on the side of a small mountain, including a couple of meditation caves built into the mountain. The monastery is not easy to spot up toward the top of the mountain but it is there. A monk lived in one of the tiny meditation caves for 11 years.

I walked along the mountain path while Sandy stayed by the main temple. The path wasn’t clearly marked so I followed a nice family showing me the way.

The monks started their chanting prayers in the main temple, which we had been wanting to hear since we started seeing all of these temples. To get to the monastery from the parking area, you walk just short of two miles uphill through an incredibly beautiful pine forest.  This is one of my favorite hikes ever.

After the monastery, Baljaa took us to a ger camp that has a restaurant and we enjoyed five pieces of buuz each while Baljaa had vegetarian tsuivan. While eating, he explained to us what the plan was to go back and we weren’t quite understanding.  In the car, we learned what he was saying.  He started driving straight up a very tall and steep hill but the Prius couldn’t make it.  He told us to get out and walk to the top.  We did so while he proceeded to, in effect, slalom up the hill in the Prius.  We arrived at the top around the same time. 

That cut quite a bit of time off our return to Khorkhorin because we avoided the long way around the hills.  We also learned about secret procedures for a Prius. Baljaa pulled out a sheet of paper and did a few steps (like press the brake pedal a certain number of times, press a certain button, turn the blinker on, etc.) and suddenly it seemed like the Prius had four-wheel drive. We just keep learning more and more about the car we used to own.

Sunday’s trip was through the Orkhon Valley mostly along the Orkhon River and eventually to the Orkhon Waterfall. We made a couple of stops for photo opportunities along the way.  We have had several instances when strangers have come up to either one of us or both of us and asked to take a picture with us.  It happened twice in this spot.  We laughed that they must think we are celebrities. Years ago, I was told I look like Steve Jobs and Sandy was told she looks like princess Diana.  We wondered if that’s who they thought we were, even though both have died.  Or maybe they thought we were from the Outback of Australia since we are dressed in hiking clothes and hats.  Or maybe they just want to show pictures of the “goofy-looking” people they saw to their friends and family.    

Our stops were followed by lunch near the falls with a nomad family. Although they live in gers and herd yaks, I can’t say they are really nomads because they have stayed in the same place for 43 years and we can see why – it is a beautiful area.

All three of us had vegetarian tsuivan accompanied by yak milk tea and yak yogurt with blueberries. Everything was delicious – the yak milk tea tasted a lot like oatmeal and the yogurt tasted like any other yogurt, maybe just a little more tart. After lunch, we went over to the falls area and hiked down to the river level to see the falls from below.

After enjoying the view for a little while, we hiked back up and saw the falls from above. So far, this has been Sandy’s favorite area of Mongolia and I think, mine too. 

When we got back to Gaya’s, Sandy did a little laundry by hand using a large ladle to fill a basin with water from a rain barrel.  Nomi (Gaya’s amazing daughter) helped us arrange lodging and transportation for our next destination, and then we walked back up to the hotel we ate at the first night and had another pizza and some beer.

After a couple of bouncy days in the car, we both had the urge to get out for some exercise. Monday started with a four-mile run to the ancient city of Kharkhorin.  This is where the great hall was built back in the 1200s and they are in the process (I think) of restoring the great hall. The foundation is all that exists at the moment. Our run ended back at Gaya’s and we had breakfast. We spent some time working on the blog and we were finally able to figure out what the issue was and get it resolved. We left around 1:30 to walk toward King’s Monument, which is a memorial to the Hunnu, Turkic, and Mongol Empires.  It also offers nice views over Kharkhorin and of the Orkhon River. Lunch was at Simple Fare Bistro on the way to the monument – we both had tofu tsuivan. Not big fans of tofu, but it was fine. We treated ourselves to chocolate ice cream bars later. Back at Gaya’s, the daily bus came into Kharkhorin and we got to meet a new crew of people.  Sandy teases me that I’m the unofficial greeter as I like to meet everyone and learn their story.  One of them (Ayesha) is from Morocco and we mentioned we were walking to a restaurant to get some dinner.  Since she just arrived, she wanted to walk with people who knew the area a little and we had a lovely dinner with her.  Sandy and I had salads and the buuz Ayesha ordered was too big for her so she shared hers with us. Back at Gaya’s we caught up with Peter (Netherlands) and Monica (Italy and cycling around the world for two years). We packed our bags and headed to bed.

Tuesday was a travel day.  Before breakfast, we hiked up the hill behind Gaya’s to see one of the ancient stone turtles.  There were four of them back in the 1200s and they marked the corners of the ancient city. We said our goodbyes to our new friends at breakfast and headed for the bus station at 9:30. We were happy because Elena and Alessandro from Italy were on our bus back to Ulaanbaatar. The bus left Kharkhorin at 10:10. We stopped for lunch at the same spot as our stop on the way to Kharkhorin – had the same meal we’ve been having at all of our bus stops (meat, gravy, rice, potatoes, cabbage, and carrots) and “enjoyed” the pit toilets with the open slats. Arrival in Ulaanbaatar was at 4:10pm and we tried to get a cab through our UB Cab app, but none took the fare so we walked the 20 minutes. We settled into our room at Baigali Hotel and then walked to a restaurant in the Luxoil Center (the center had an oil change place, car service garage, hotel, restaurant, and pub – an interesting mix). I had a chicken Caesar salad and a beef udon noodle dish while Sandy had a garden salad and vegetarian tsuivan (if you can’t tell, this is Sandy’s favorite Mongolian dish). Good food. Then we stopped at a CU convenience store to get breakfast items for tomorrow’s bus ride and called it a day.