Arriving in Mongolia!

As oft happens, updating my blog has fallen by the wayside in the mad rush that has been my first week in UB (Ulaanbaatar), Mongolia.

We left Sydney at 3pm on Easter Sunday. We arrived in Mongolia Tuesday morning at 7am local time, 10am Sydney time. This made the journey 46 hours from Brunkerville to UB!

Our introduction to how Mongolia operates came with a 12-hour delay on our Seoul to Mongolia flight, instead of leaving at 1830 we didn't take off until almost 4am; this was with many changed estimated leaving times in between. The 6 of us travelling over together spent this entire time together - sharing the highs of touch downs in Singapore and Seoul, and the lows of hours and hours with nothing to do in Seoul Airport. The delirium that no sleep and high-level excitement and anticipation can induce made for many interesting, and some never to be repeated, moments on this journey.

As we began our descent through thick cloud cover we began to spot huge snow-covered mountains, and then tiny ger (yurt) settlements and some buildings...and finally the dirty city of Ulaanbaatar! As we touched down in easily the roughest landing of my life, it seemed the airplane's brakes were intermittently working!

From here on in our experience can only be described as truly Mongolian: the plane was late, although getting off the plane quickly and being towards the front of the immigration line we managed to be the last ones processed - the locals just barged in as they wished! Collecting our luggage seemed to be going well, one of my bags was first off! But...as time passed, my travelling companions collected all theirs and I was still waiting...increasingly anxiously. The carousel stopped...and I was still without my main bag, containing all my clothes...a few minutes later - hallelujah! - it popped off onto the stopped carousel and we could emerge into the freezing reality of our new home!

Our Mongolian "mother" - the Program Manager for the AYAD Volunteers - was there to greet us and transport us by mini bus to our hotel. The bus-ride quickly overtook the plane landing as the scariest journey of my life! The road was filled with enormous potholes, the traffic was a bizarre mix of 4WD Porches and Toyotas - shiny and brand new; packed buses; decades old mini-buses; Police Cars; ambulances; trucks and anything Japanese or Korean made from the last 10 years. There is no line down the middle of the road, and the drivers see no need to stay on a particular side.

Little was I to know this was one of the better roads in UB - the traffic here is intense - cars and pedestrians somehow manage to go where they want when they want, how they want - and amazingly we have only seen on minor car accident in a week! I am starting to get the hang of walking out onto the road into oncoming traffic with confidence and making it to the other side without running, being hit by a car, falling through a pothole or worse!

Our mini-bus was stopped 5 times by police on the way to our hotel, each time our driver had to get our of the car and show his licence, and was then directed an alternate route to the one he had been heading. It turned out this was due to a small protest going on in the city, as a precaution the police were directing any mini buses away from the centre of town - last time there was a protest it got way out of control and 5 or so people died....so understandable that they were being cautious.

After arriving at our hotel we all passed out for a few hours before apartment hunting that afternoon. There were plenty of interesting sites and quirky things going on, following 2 days of no sleep - which I will post in good time!!!