Orjan is a Swedish PhD student who bought a one-way ticket to Mongolia to work at the base camp of our long-term research project. These are his adventures…
Well, it’s still hot. UB is like all Asian cities, and not. Dowtown is busy, with people everywhere and lots of shops and resturaunts. The traffic is horrible, if you try to cross a street the drivers speed up to make sure you have noticed them. Though, I don’t think that they will stop in case you haven’t noticed them…
The difference is that downtown is very small, you can easily walk around it. It’s easy to tell that the houses downtown were built during the Soviet era. l I think that many of the suburbs consist of Ger tents, but I haven’t been there.
Spent last day at ISLT’s office and on the immigration office, trying to obtain a work permit and long term visa, none of them worked. I’ll head to the national museum now to learn some more about Chingis Khaan and Mongolia in general.
Some info for all people using Google earth (and all other with good maps). We will fly from UB to Dalanzadgad, the regional capitol of Omnogov (south Gobi) province. The flight is about 500 km. From Dalanzadgad, we head west in a Russian van to the Soum (municipality) centre Gurvantes. This trip is about 300 km and takes about 16 hours (without breaks). J. Tserendeleg camp is situated about 45 km north of Gurvantes in the Tost Mountains. I have been told that there is GSM coverage at a hill 800 meters from the camp, if this is true you can text me at my new Mongolian number, send a mail to get the number ( I have no idea how steep the hill is though, it might be 800 meters straight up…).
Chingis and the Golden horde is waiting, don’t want to keep them waiting…