Ulaan Baatar

We arrived early Monday morning and were served a lovely breakfast before heading into town. It wasn't at all like we expected, some parts are really modern and there's big skyscrapers going up and SUV's everywhere. The people are absolutely lovely and very friendly. Most of them wear modern, fashionable clothes, but we've also seen older people and children dressed in traditional clothing. I don't get a second look when we're walking around, but the people do tend to stare at Colin and we've had a few sitting right by us to hear us talk and to look at us. There's a lot of colourful temples here, but you're only allowed to take photos from the outside and preferrably a distance from them. Monday night we had dinner at a Mongolian BBQ (like the one in Covent Garden, except they had a sheeps head at this one with traditional singers and a band). There's a big square in the middle of town with a Genghis Khan statue and loads of restaurants named after him too.
Yesterday we drove to a little village 2hours outside of UB, where we would spend the night at a Ger Camp. On the way we stopped off at an even bigger statue of Genghis Khan, in the middle of nowhere. They're building a big ger camp around the statue. When we got to the village we were surrounded by such beautiful scenery. In the middle was the ger camp and all around us were mountains and trees. It was absolutely stunning and absolutely freezing! So we decided to go for a hike up one of the mountains to warm up and hopefully have a great view from on top. We made our way up through the trees and up some steep slopes and only when we got to the top did we see a path. Our route was much more adventurous anyway and the view was definitely worth it. It was so peaceful and beautiful... once you could breath again.
The food was also great and the portions big enough to feed us for 3 days. Breakfast was two courses, lunch four and dinner three.
We slept in a ger last night, with a fire going all through the night and at 7am someone came in to restart it for us so that we stayed nice and toasty. It was a fantastic experience which we shared with some new (unwanted) friends 2 big spiders and a few little ones and 2 grasshoppers. But we were warm, which was the most important thing.
We drove back to UB this morning and have had another day of walking around the town and to see the last few things before we get back on the train to Beijing early tomorrow morning.
Here's a few more photos.