Mongolia - May

Mongolia has always been on my mind since 2018, when I came there for the first time. This time we entered Mongolia from the Russian side through the border gate near the small village of Tashanta near of Ulgii. The last one is infamous for its Golden Eagle festival, which occurs every year in September. Apart from this, it is a small town where we spent one night. Totally we spent 5 or 6 days in Mongolia.

Pit stop for manti and mutton soup:

Golden Eagle Festival:

This is the entire Ulgii:

This is Ulgii housing:

There is no public transport on the road between the Altai region of Russia and Western Mongolia. So remember that you need to have a car or ask somebody to drive you.

Muttons:

The next day, we took a bus directly to Ulaanbaatar throughout the country. The journey takes around 25 hours. It is not long compared to my bus trips through the USA (back in 2010) when I traveled non-stop on a bus for four days. But still, it was a cool experience.

Our bus:

In Mongolia, they built a new highway throughout the country, so now you can reach UB faster. There are no bus stations. Sometimes the bus stops in the steppe near gers (yurts) where everyone is served a meal - manti with mutton meat, which looks like big dumplings cooked with steam. Sometimes it is accompanied by salt milk tea, which is strange at first glance, but tasty when you get used to it:

There are no equipped toilets on the road. Sometimes a bus driver stops in the steppe for 10-15 minutes, and everyone is free to do their business somewhere around:

The scenery is magnificent. The traffic is sporadic, and animals waver back and forth — camels, yaks, muttons, sheep, and so on:

UlaanBatar suburbs:

In UB we spent two days, which is enough as there are not many things to do there. So next, we got on a train back to Russia using a different route and set forth to discover new lands.

Train to Ulan-Ude:

Train set: compartment, bedding, hot pot and camel milk:

On the train, they offer a thermos flask for each compartment full of hot water. So you can enjoy tea without going to the thermos pot (like we used to do in Russian trains).

I recommend buying powdered Mongolian milk tea for your trip. You can mix it with hot water on the train. Also, there is a CU store near the train station where you can buy a bottle of camel milk.

Train at glance:

The whole route from the Russian border in Tashanta to UlaanBatar: