UB or Not To Be

Ulaan Bataar is a very odd capital. There are all the things you would expect: Ghenghis Khan’s image carved on to a hill? Check. Gers right near the city centre? Check. Mongolian Barbeque Restaurants? Check. However, UB is also a city that is trying to be startlingly modern with it’s stretched Hummers, shopping malls that are so new that they don’t yet contain shops (or shoppers) and the noise of new buildings and apartments going up all the time. The whole place was not quite as post communist as I had feared and although it is a little shabby and dusty it is trying to assert it’s own character. It is also a place that is such a contrast to the stark and simple beauty of the open steppe and as you approach it in the train or by road it does look a little odd to have 1 million inhabitants crammed into a small valley when the rest of the country is empty of people. 

We have been staying in the Bayangol Hotel which, like UB, is a little dog-eared but essentially OK. It is only a stones throw from Sukbaatar Square (where you can see a giant statue of Ghenghis Khan in front of Parliament House and be accosted by drunken Mongolians) and not far from the National Museum (a very good recount of the insanely colourful history of a nation that has been responsible for changing world history) or the Natural History Museum (fossils and badly stuffed animals). The 36 hours we have been in the capital have been enough time to recharge our batteries, catch up on the internet and pick up supplies before the trip into Russia.