Reading back over my blogs, I've noticed how often I start by saying "it's been a lifelong dream" or "I've wanted to go here since I was a child" or similar and it's true, I've always enjoyed looking at maps and atlases and imagining what life in other countries is like. Mongolia or Outer Mongolia as it was known when I was a child was somewhere so ridiculously far away I probably originally said it as a joke, but for the last 10 years at least I've been badgering Ian on a regular basis to visit and he has steadfastly refused on the grounds it would be cold and he didn't want to sleep in a yurt.
But then I saw a holiday advertised by our favourite tour company VJV and firstly it went in mid June so it shouldn't be cold and secondly they don't have yurts in Mongolia - they are gers (probably the difference is academic but enough for me to prove a point). And to my astonishment when I mentioned it for the umpteenth time last year, he finally agreed.
For once we didn't try and arrange the flights ourselves as it involves a 2hr Lufthansa flight to Frankfurt, a change of terminal and then 8hrs 30 with Mongolian Airlines to Ulaanbaatar and for this leg Ian has "demanded" we upgrade to business class which I'm more than happy about as it looks like they have beautiful turquoise amenity kits! And then as a last minute treat we also upgraded the Lufthansa flights as we have a 5 hour layover coming home.
The usual comments we get when we say we've booked a holiday to Mongolia are "Why, what's there?" and "I don't even know where that is!" Well the second one is easy to answer with this map:
And the first question, I'll hopefully answer during this blog. One thing we do know is there'll be a lot of driving.
