Archive for the Mongolia category
Mongolia
Last daysWell, the last few days in Mongolia were amazing. Monday and Tuesday I spent exploring the museums I’d never gotten a chance to visit. Mongolia won again when I was at the National history museum. Gin was giving me a tour and we’d gotten to the last of the Khans when the power went out [...]
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Mongolia
Done with workSo now I’ve finished my official project in Mongolia. That means I’m outta here in 5 days…it’s going to go by quickly. There are a ton of things I have to do between now and then, including sightseeing in all the museums I’ve been putting off. I’ve also got to go to the black market [...]
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Mongolia
Death marchThis past weekend I went out with my co-workers on a 5 day countryside trip. Most of Golomt bank shuts down for long weekend and the whole company goes out on a team building exercise. The staff was divided into about 5 teams each with their own matching outfits and backpacks. I was [...]
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Mongolia
Naadam!From July 11th thru 13th the city of UB shuts down for the annual celebration of the "Three manly sports". These include Archery, Horse racing, and wrestling. We went out to see a little bit of all of these, plus the 4th not so manly sport of anklebone shooting. The festival starts on Friday morning [...]
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Mongolia
Yak dung!Brrr! Our last night camping was also the coldest one we’ve experienced so far. Every night we’ve been able to stay in either a ger campground, or in our tents near a river. We’ve always had plenty of firewood laying around to easily keep ourselves and our food nice an hot. [...]
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Mongolia
Waterfalls and wildlifeHeading towards the end of our trip, we stopped at the site of Mongolia’s biggest waterfall situated at the halfway point of the Orkhon river. It’s fed by runoff from melting snows, and apparently even three weeks ago it was completely dry. We spent several hours hanging out near the falls, just walking [...]
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Mongolia
Erdene Zuu MonasteryOne of the highlights of the trip was a visit to the Erdene Zuu monastery located on the site of Chingis Khan’s capital city of Karakorum. The city was founded in 1220 by Chingis, and completed by his son, Ogedai, after his death. The city was abandoned by Kublai Khan when he expanded [...]
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Mongolia
Rural citiesBesides seeing lots of countryside, we also stopped in quite a few cities for supplies along the way. All the towns we stopped in seemed to be one of two types. Larger towns were very Soviet looking…a few apartment blocks, some rundown factories, central pipes above ground, and usually a market of some kind. Smaller [...]
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Mongolia
Staying with the localsOur driver Oogi knew a family near an extinct volcano at the edge of a beautiful lake. He asked if we wanted to go visit them, and of course we jumped at the chance! We had no idea what to expect, but it turned out to be one of the highlights of [...]
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Mongolia
Canada Day!So July 1st is Canada day…I never would have thought about it. Sarah, our trip’s resident Canadian, wouldn’t let us forget and treated us to pancakes for dinner. Why pancakes? I have no idea, but I just figure what do you expect from the same people who brought us Anne Murray and [...]
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