Wednesday 9th October - Elsen Tasarkha back to Ulaan Baator

The long drive back to UB, change is in the air. After last night's rain got heavier through the night, it has now turned to snow. We arrived in summer, now four days later it is winter.

The industrialised outskirts of UB

Quite what The Beatles are doing in Ulaan Batoor, I don't know, but as a fellow scouse, I felt compelled to get involved. I must be on a magical, mystery tour.

Yet another Irish pub. This one claims to be the first Mongolian Irish pub, and who am I to argue. No Guiness though. A curry round the corner followed before an early night at Idre's guesthouse, where we share a dorm with a Dutch guy who has spent the last thre years cycling here, covering maybe 30,000 km. 

[There seem to be quite a few of these ultra long distance cycle tourers out there.  Last year I chatted with Zac http://www.zacplusbike.com/ and i've just heard about this fella: www.carryoncycling.com. I've long harboured dreams of doing it myself. I spent some time in my twenties plotting out an overland route from Cape Town to the Cape of Good Hope. Three years is what I reckoned it'd take. When I didn't make that happen, I considered the more manageable North Cape (Norway) to Gibraltar option. I'd budget three or four months for that, it could still happen, sometime down the road.]