Arriving in the Worlds coldest capital at 5 o’clock in the morning, we had plenty of time to check out what the city had to offer on our first day there.
First off was a walk through the city center, which probably took us around half an hour, as the city (even though it has around 1,5 million inhabitants) seemed pretty small for such a big country. The citys main square, even though really small fitted skyscrapers, fashonable clothing stores, government buildings and statues (of a fat sitting Genghis Khan and others) with cars driving right next on the streets. It must have required some great city planning, which should have gathered more tourists there, but there were actually noone but us around! That, together with the Mongolians being the most friendly people I have ever met has given us a impression of Mongolia as a genuinely awesome country.
Our local honcho also rented us a minivan to see a kashmere factory, the famous city viewpoint and the so called “black market”/ local market where we were told that prices would be much cheaper that what we would find in China, as the Chinese will at all times try to rip you of, whereas you in Mongolia always will be given standard price, that also the locals would pay.
After having spent some days on the countryside we also got to spend out last day in Mongolia in its capital city, where we went straight to the ski resort, located between ten to fifteen minutes outside the city center. Prices were even cheaper than in Russia, with skipass, skirental, locker and taxi to and from the ski resort costing around 100 Norwegian Krones. We were pretty much the only ones there, and with the sunny weather it was a quality experience that I would reccomend anyone going to the Mongolian capital. The evening was spent watching a show with traditional dancing, contortionist performance and throatsinging and then going out for karaoke and disco the last night before leaving Mongolia to travel through the Gobi desert and into China.
