Ulaan Baatar Mongolia – Day 1

First let me tell you about the roads in Mongolia.  The roads in the city of Ulaan Baatar, which means Red Hero, are bumpy and pot holed.  When you leave the city you get on the paved highway which is very bumpy.  As you move farther away from the city some times the road turns into a gravel road which is very, very bumpy.  Then there are times that you say #*\]?!!# about the road.  We figured out the reason our Fitbits were showing us climbing many, many flights of stairs was because of all the bouncing we were doing in the bus.

When we left the hotel on Wednesday, June 7 we headed to the Gandan Monastery.  We had a private blessing by three monks in a ger.  We then walked a short way to the Janraisig Temple (Buddhist) to see a giant Buddha inlaid with over 2,000 precious stones.  The building and the Buddha were quite impressive.

Our next stop was at the National History Museum.  We saw some amazing artifacts and our guide gave us a lot of information about early Mongolia and Genghis Khan.  His empire stretched from the Pacific Ocean to the Bkack Sea.  He was a social innovator, great general, outlawed slavery and bride kidnapping, had sophisticated networks for communication, respected the religions of the lands he conquered and because of the Mongolian horse was able to move quickly through the land.

Our lunch was at Asiana, a restaurant that had Chinese, Japanese or Mongolian food choices.  The tables were in gers.

Our last stop for the day was at the Genghis Khan Statue complex.  We walked up stairs to a lookout point.  We could see the steppe and mountainside.  The statue is 131 feet tall and covered in 250 tons of stainless steel.  It was built by a local businessman to try to bring information about Khan to the world.  We also had a local historian give us a tour of the private collection museum in the basement level of the statue.  Bette talked her way into a photo with a group of young people dressed in traditional clothing.

Here is a link to an article about the statue.

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/08/03/world/asia/03genghis.html
The following is a quote by Genghis Khan that we liked.

“If you’re afraid – don’t do it – if you’re doing it – don’t be afraid.”   Genghis Khan

Fitbit – 7679 steps, 133 flights (bumpy ride number), 3.64 miles