Ulaanbataar

Ulaanbataar was my only stop in Mongolia and even there I stayed only for a day. While that may sound strange at first to someone being familar with the awesome landscape, I decided that it would be better to do a separate trip to Mongolia to really explore this sparsely populated country (around half of the 2.5 million inhabitants live in its capital Ulaanbaatar). So I got out of the train just for a day, ready to catch some fresh air – well, as far as you can speak of “fresh“ air in Ulaanbaatar, anyway, being one of the worst polluted cities in the world.

I had arrived here very early (6 am) in the morning, giving me the opportunity to walk through the streets and watching the awakening of the city, something which I like to do in general, since it often gives you a lot of insights into the everyday life of another culture. It took a while to find a nice hostel with a free bed still available, but finally I was successful.

Having seen a bit of the city already during my early morning walk and being aware that I certainly wouldn‘t be able to really “understand“ it in the few hours left, I decided to do a bit of sightseeing, visiting a nice museum/buddhist temple (not in use anymore as the latter one) and hiking to the memorial later on. Being on the one hand happy to escape the dirtieness of the city and looking forward to meet the friendly, mongolian people and exploring the landscape later on on the other hand, I left the city the next morning.