More UB and a loooong drive through the desert

Ok, so I may have a been a little harsh on my early morning judgements of Ulaanbataar. I still stand by most of what I said, but the biggest difference is that there is a noticeably large amount of construction going on. Mostly new buildings going ....but here and there some of the older more culturally significant buildings are being worked on.

I spent all day at the Entree Office just kind of hanging around, facebooking it up. Still tired from the travelling I guess...I hadn't gotten much sleep the night before. At the end of the day i went out for drinks with Kelly from Entree. He's been in country for 9 years, and is a good guy. We went to the bar in the Bayangol Hotel (where I was staying), the Casablanca, or just 'the Cas' for short. It's a pretty popular spot for ex-pats (i can't believe I can use that term, and also that it applies to me...weird..) I met this crazy guy who works in gaming, and knows the jockey who won this past Kentucky derby (That was neat), and more or less just sat around drinking beers listening to people talk about living and working in Mongolia. Kelly also pointed out the current and former Prime Ministers of Mongolia when they came in and went into the private room. Also pretty neat.

So at 6am I was checked out of the Hotel and on my way into the Gobi. Just outside of Ulaanbataar the landscape was grassy steppes, pleasant, but not very exciting. Reminded me of Wyoming..especially with all the sheep, goats and horses running around. As we continued south the landscape changed to more what I expected the desert to be. Rocky, some sand, small brush, very little gr as....dusty. One thing I didn't really expect with the sun out was the cold wind. It was probably about 5 degrees C with the wind chill.

Nothing very exciting happened, we got lost a few times, had to ask at some gers (yurts....round Mongolian hut things. Typical Nomad habitation), and we had a soup lunch at one. Noodles and...Sheep bits. Wasn't that bad. Like chicken noodle soup but with extremely dense noodles and...well....sheep bits. It took 12 and a half hours, but we finally arrived in camp, and..I will leave it there for tonight because I am exhausted. I have some pictures from the drive, they'll be on Facebook, and I might put some up on Flickr when I get some more shots.

g'night