Ugang Inc.
Narantuul market, or the black market, history goes back to the Soviet era, and is absolutely massive.
The market is largely un-regulated and is known for hosting a lot of counterfeit goods, but also lots and lots of other stuff. Here you will get everything from washers to tshorts, saddles, jewelry and suitcases. Also there is tons and tons of clothes, cloth and shoes….so so so many shoes.
Continue reading “Narantuul Market”The popular mongolian hero is visible almost every where you turn in Ulan Baatar.
We decided to visit the 44 m high statue of him located outside the city, an hour and fifteen minutes by car.
Genghis Khan was born Temüjin 1162 and he died in August 1227. He was the founder and first khan of the Mongol Empire. After spending most of his life uniting the Mongol tribes, he launched a series of military campaigns, conquering large parts of China and Central Asia.
Continue reading “Cenghis Khan”As we all know the the world is on fire, and if one wants to travel, you just have to go with whats avalible. Trond booked tickets 3 months ago with the travel agency in China for railway tickets from Bejing to Ulan Bator. It was a lot of emails and the language barrier was significant. But with a little trust and patience. It all worked out. And it was quiet the experience. We got to see a lot of both China and Mongolia we woulden’t have seen otherwise.
Continue reading “The closest thing available to the Trans-Mongolian railway”Got woken up at 0500 by the conductors, everybody off in 30 mins. Now it is time for change of the wheel sets to fit the wider tracks in Mongolia, og narrower – we are unsure. They are different at least.
It was absolutely freezing and windy – it at least felt so that early in the morning, think it was about 10c.
Continue reading “Got to Erlian”We arrived in Hohhot after 2,5 hours on the bullet train, arriving at a huge rail station (the new one). And we where met by our travel-company-guy just outside. He had gotten a bit nervous that we would not be able to get from the new station to the old one (10 km), so he had gone and got his car after work – so he could drive us there. What a nice guy! ( He had been to Senja in Norway )
Today we start the travel that will/can/might bring us to Ulan Batar in Mongolia. We have spent months setting up these tickets, transferred money abroad.. 20 emails, so lets see how this will work out in the end.
The bullet train (speed just below 300 kmt) leaves from Beijing North railway station, and because of luggage we went with a taxi this time around.
Continue reading “Hohhot next !”Jinshanling
The great wall is a series of fortifications in China. They were built across the historical northern borders of ancient chinese state and Imperial China as protection. The first walls date to the 7th century BC, these were joined together in the Qin dynasty. Successive dynasties expanded the wall, the best-known sections were built by the Ming dinasty (1368–1644). We did som googeling and decided we wished to visit the part of the wall you can acsess from Jinshanling. Its a part of the wall that haven’t been restored, but still safe to walk. It was challenging in parts, but so worth it. You could feel history under your feet and the view was breathtaking. Its also very few tourists here. So you could enjoy the great walls magic undisturbed. And the great wall of China definitely has a magic thats hard to convey into words. One simply has to exeperience it.
We booked an unguided tour that picked us up at our hotel. They had bookes tickets for us and explained where to go. The bus drove us to the main office at Jinshanling.
Continue reading “The great wall of China”Its one of those places where its really hard to capture the scene in a picture You feel engulfed in the place – with all the massive buildings on all sides. History going back hundred of years.