The trip has been long so far. We have covered more than 15.000km over the Central Asia, Russia and Mongolia. It was time to relax. So we did in UB. We enjoyed the western luxuries which can be found here.

We also met with the Buddha culture. Near our stay was a big monastery called the Gandantegchinlen Khiid. It is a Tibetan style monastery and the name translates to Great Place of Complete Joy. It was a nice place to walk through. The squares were almost completely covered with pidgeons as the locals were feeding them. I was praying they would not shit on me as they flew over with hundreds 😉 The belief here is that it is a good deed to feed them, as they may be a relative or friend from another life. At least I think this is the meaning. I spoke to a local and he told me he was thinking about his dead mother when he was feeding the doves. Larisa liked to play with the doves! We walked further on the temple ground until we saw very big feet and the large temple with a gold covered huge buddha statue inside.

Our next stop was the book shop Papillon, again 🙂 I like to read a good book and have a cup of tea with it in a good sofa. After this pause, we wanted to know even more about Mongolia so we went to the National Museum of Mongolia. This is a quite good museum I think and covers about the whole history.

We stopped at a good restaurant called Broadway for some food. We also got a bit fatter again. In the Pamirs and Mongolia we both lost some weight. I think we regained a good amount of it here again. The food is really tasty here. Actually we went a couple of times to this place.

We walked over the Sukhbaator square again, and decided to make the walk a lot bigger by walking to the Zaisan memorial. Normally this is done by bus, but we like walking. It is important to keep in good shape if you ride the bike as well!

The Zaisan memorial is a war memorial which honours soviet soldiers killed in World War II. During the walk we witnessed many new apartment blocks arising. The walk takes you to the south of the city where you get to a soviet tank. From there you climb 600 steps to a panoramic view over the city. There was some wind here and Larisa had a skirt, so she acted a bit like Marlyn Monroe here 🙂

It was getting pretty freezing outside. I could feel this is the coldest capital in the world. Not the coldest big city, which should be Yakutsk, right Ivan? 😉

They say that after the Nadaam autumn begins. Yes indeed, it was about 15 degrees and windy. So we took the bus back and were hungry again 🙂 We ate in the Grand Khaan Irish pub again.

We finished the evening in the Blue Sky Lounge on the 21th floor which gives you also a nice view over the city to watch the sunset. It was a nice last evening before leaving Mongolia…