Into Mongolia

Today was mostly travel. We met the additional 7 people in our group who did not go to China and our Mongolian guide....a 19 yr old university student who spent 5 years in England as a teen with his family, so he speaks English very well, if very Englishly.

Billy -- short for Bilguun-Ochir -- our teenage tour leader

Flying in, I was struck by the beauty of the green, rolling hills and the sparsity of the population. There are about 3 million people here and about a third live in the capitol of Ulaanbaatar (revised, preferred spelling) which is commonly called UB. There are gers here, mostly on the outskirts of the city, and many had what looked like (from the air) stone walls surrounding them, so they have apparently given up nomadic ways. Our guide Billy (vs Billguun-Ochir) says the nomadic ways are dying. The primary wealth here is minerals and mining is big industry, but it remains to be seen if that will find its way to the masses. Probably not. With the example of China and the Soviets before them, political corruption is rampant.
We walked around the hotel and visited a grocery store....since almost all the text is in cyrillic, its as bad as being in China from the standpoint of being able to understand what we read.
We've had two meals so far...and as predicted, both were heavy on meat, potatoes, and ice cream and light on fruits and veggies. Tasty, tho. We also are finally able to access picasa and blogspot,so before we leave tomorrow am, I hope to upload some photos. We will only have internet connections here in UB, but electricity is provided at the ger camps, so at least I can keep the electronics running.