First I would like to finish Russia.
Looking back it was a great country, which has a lot to offer. Beautifull nature, architecture, culture, etnic groups, every kind of surrounding,...everything...exept a general feeling to be welcome. If I compare my experience of Russia with the first 30min of Mongolia, then I note that I have seen more smiles then in a whole month of Russia. People say spontanious 'hallo', they make you relax.....big difference.
Anyway, Russia is a country of fansy cars, drunken people, vodka, very good trains, big diference between people(etnic, social, ...), ....well I should stop because If think generally, I can only think of bad things. My experience with the peope we met was different. Once the people know you, or you you find a way in, to communicate with them, then they can be very generous and friendly. The last days we took the train from Irkutsk to Ulan Ude (cost 450R), a trip with a very nice vieuw on lake Baikal. We stayed one day in a clean, hospitable, cousy hostel (Etnic Baikal Hostel), visited the center of buddhism in Siberia, a monastery(nothing compared with the first monastery we saw in Ulan Bataar) and we visited also the etnografic museum, walked little bit around and had funny evenings in the hostel.
Finaly we said goodbuy to Russia although we could stay there some more years to see and experience...but we changed it for better I think. So we took the bus for 9 houres, included 1,5 houres borders cheques, to Ulan Bataar (cost 950R).
It is not the the most beautiflull city at all, but as I said, more smiles, many shopes and ho(s)tels, and very much cheaper, exept gasoline!!!!
Now we stay over at Ayuno's Hostel, six dollar a night, a very nice host who helpes us a great deal, but not very clean, nor confortable.
We visited many shopes to find a new jacket for Saartje, who lost here's. So we walked a lot, even on the huges black market, to finaly buy it in the first shop we actually entered.
We visited a beautifull monastery with a huge statue of a buddha inside and we visited the national museum of history, which was very good, even better than Hermitage in Russia, in terms of presentation and tourist orientation.
Oke, sorry to be so very dry, I am not ver inspired, but I write to say, we probably leave tomorrow, or the day after(after we arrange our visum for China), to a family on the countryside, direction the anscient capital 'Kara Koram', to learn horse riding for ten days. then we come back and arrange our visa extension for Mongolia before we leave to north west to do a horse trekking around the biggest lake of Mongolia, in the area where the rendeer tribes live.
So, love you all
kisses
simon,
yeah, we bought sunglasses ;)
