Ulaanbaatar in Autumn

The month since I have returned to Mongolia from a brief visit back home has seen the landscape rapidly, but gradually, change from spring to autumn and now with some strong hints that a typically cold winter is on the way. As one expects in Autumn, the leaves turned - the range of colours in the leaves has been stunning - especially considering the few trees there are in this barren country.

The grass on the vast, endless hills and mountains began showing small sprouts of brown amidst the lush green. This has dulled to an almost uniform brown now. The weather has been kind - daily highs of 10 degrees, and some even higher, is very generous for this time of year. The kind of zero-ish temperatures we should be expecting hit last week. The nights are very cold -15, and the days are chilly at around zero, maybe reaching 5 degrees for what seems like 5 minutes!

It's also a time of change in other areas. A new group of AYADs arrived this week. It seems like only a few weeks ago the last "New AYADs" arrive - but it was three months ago. Now my intake are well and truly the old guys - which means the time for goodbyes is imminent. Very imminent in fact. Our group of six is saying it's first goodbye to one of our own on Saturday week. Living in a place like UB means there are frequent hellos and goodbyes - or housewarming and farewell events - which gets pretty disheartening, and it's even worse when it's your housemate that's leaving.

On the positive side we've got a new AYAD replacing the leaving AYAD in our apartment. And before we say goodbye a group of 4 of us are heading out, including our departing AYAD, to Bayan-Ulgii for a week - this is the Kazakh region in far-western Mongolia. I went here for work and loved it so much I wanted to go back as a tourist. We are going to see kazakh eagle-hunters, hear traditional throat singing, see ancient petroglyphs visit the highest peak in Mongolia and walk up to a glacier - which means we are more than likely going to freeze, spend most of the week without showering, being offered lots of salty milk tea and mutton. Good times!

This week I spent a few hours driving through suburban parts of town I had never been to before - in search of newly built ramps and universal access features (access for all people including those with a disability) such as a paths and curb ramps. We didn't find much, there are only a handful of usable ramps around - a little while ago Mercy Corps had a project that successfully had standards for universal access passed into national legislation. Now the project has been renewed for a phase 2 that will see promotion of the standards to actually be put into practice in new buildings and added to existing civic buildings.

Here are a few pictures from driving around town. It's such a cool place...snow covered mountains in the background, with modern buildings, buddhist temples and gers all mixed in. Hummers drive alongside ancient Russian trucks. Stores for designer clothes are next to stores for coal and wood to burn in gers (yurts).

Possibly the best part of winter is the star suits that babies/toddlers are dressed in.

The C is the equivalent of an L in Australia. My boss at work recently took a leave of absence. She told me that a month of this was spent learning to drive. In soviet times, when she was young, very few people had cars so learning to drive was totally unheard of. Now plenty of people drive without a license or get illegal licenses - but some people are honest. The honest ones, like my boss, spend a month in a car with 3 other learners. They spend the whole day taking turns at driving the group, along with an instructor.