Leaving UB

By steve on August 9th, 2004

Well, all the details are set and we’ll be heading out of the capital in a few hours. We’ve hired a guide, Tsogo, who is 23 years old and teaches English at the University. He’s a bit shy and has only been working as a guide for a few months, but we get along well. Our first mission will be to find Tsogo’s wife, Dao, who is guiding a trip near where we’re going. He hasn’t seen her for a week and wants to say hi before he disappears for two weeks on his own trip. They’re newlyweds.

We’ve also hired a car and driver. We haven’t seen the car yet, but it’ll be something fitting the description of “Russian jeep”. Our driver doesn’t speak any English, but seemed friendly enough when we met him two days ago.

Yesterday we went to the store to buy groceries for the trip… rice, bread, vodka, etc. Their selection of spices is incredible! Incredibly bad, that is. There was salt & pepper, and then a bunch of “seasoning packets” that were in Russian which Tsogo couldn’t translate. I was hoping to find some cumin, but no luck…

Our plan is to be on the road for 18 days. We’ll probably be in a town every few days, but the odds of finding an internet cafe are slim.

We booked our trip though the UB Guesthouse. The owners are Mr. Kim and Bobby (a woman). We booked everything through Bobby.

Our plan is to drive to a few days to Lake Khovsgol, spend a few days there, then proceed in a counter-clockwise direction around a central mountain range called “Khangai”. Although we’re intentionally keeping our itinerary flexible, our general sequence of stops is going to be: