So last weekend we booked our first little tour into the Mongolian countryside, to make use of our free time while waiting for the Chinese embassy to open again. Every hostel here in Ulaanbaatar doubles as tour organisator, and Mugi, our host, was quick to draw up a short trip around the city on the wipeable map on the living room table. The next day, we where picked up by our guide and our driver, and headed to our first site, the monumental statue of Genghis Khan south of the city. Before arriving there, we stopped at touristic attraction just on the side of road: Four huge mongolian birds, a few camels, a horse and donkey where on display and waiting to eager tourists to spend money to take photos with them. The one Judi finally got to hold in her hand was a smaller one, weighing only 8 kilos. The 20 kilo vulture we both didn't dare to touch.

After that, finally, the huge site of Mr Khan, where he allegedly found a Golden Whip. The local attendant was happy to point out the several certificates of records by the Guinness Book, the one about being the biggest equestrian statue displayed most prominent. The view from the top of his horses head is quite astonishing.

Next stop was getting lunch at our hosts for the night. A kazak family living in four yurts, or gers, as they say here, right outside in the nowhere. Just as we arrived and started to trying to grasp the place, a motorcyclist pulled up to the settlement, trying to shout louder than the baby goat on his lap. It had just been born minutes before, and he brought it home to have it checked.

After a few short lessons in proper yurt behavior (Don't step on the threshold! If there two beams holding up the tent, don't step between them!), we hiked to the nearest hill, to confirm what we felt the whole time. There really was no sign of any civilisation whatsoever, apart from the animals grazing around, and the odd collection of yurts here and there. No power lines, no streets, no buildings. Surprisingly, as this area was quite densely populated: the closest neighbor was only about 300 meters away!

Before dinner was served, the chores waited. The whole family, plus the little neighbors kid helped out milking the cows. We more or less tried helping, but soon migrated back to our usual position of standing around and making photos.

The next morning, on the way back from outside lavatory (roughly a hundred meters outside, that is), Judi alerted me to the big birds in the sky. Circling above us was a vulture (I think), but we soon saw several more birds camping along a trail up the hills. In the night, apparently a wolf attacked the horses of the neighboring family and killed a young foal. The birds where dotted along the way the attackers had left with parts of their prey.

The Gorkhi-Terelj National Park east of Ulaanbaatar was our next destination. The touristic appeal of Mongolia was definitely more visible here. Around the so called Turtle Rock and a rebuilt Buddhist monastery several ger camps and hotel and resorts have sprung up, catering mostly to regional tourists, either from Mongolia or other countries in the region like South Korea and Japan. The countryside differed very much from the empty steppe we encountered the day before. A rugged mountainous region with lots of vegetation unfolded before us. We stayed close by with a family which have permanently settled here, which just means that they don't move their tents and have a proper wooden fence around their belongings. There, we greeted by another newborn: A little calf huddled in the corner of the cow shed.

The family didn't only provide food and shelter for us, we are now also quite familiar with Mongolian pastimes. A few rounds of wordless chess were quite fun, but we all enjoyed the several games you can play with a set of sheeps ankle bones. They have for different sides, and are used similar as dice for a wide variety of games.

During the visit to the temple we learned it was completely rebuilt in the 90s. The communists came to power in the early 20s, and soviet puppet state was installed. During the 30s, Stalin ordered to eradication of Buddhism, and nearly all Buddhist temples of the country were destroyed, and thousands of monks killed. Since the peaceful revolution of 1992, Buddhism is very widely practiced again, and a lot of monasteries have been rebuilt.

The next day, we started early to our final destination, the mountain south of the capital. Here again, the countryside changed. Walking up the hill, we felt reminded of the Alps, with meadows filled with different kinds of plants and flowers. The ensuing forest felt like we were the first humans to walk this ground (apart from the odd plastic bottle). The tune to Lord of the Rings hummed in my head.

Our trip was then rounded of by a short visit to the highest point in Ulaanbaatar, where a communist monument to Mongolian-Soviet friendship was installed. The modern skyscrapers around, we finally really realised, that Mongolia has a lot more to offer than wide steppe with four yurts in it. Two newborns, one killed animal, the stone testament of a religion almost being sent to extinction, only to be rebuilt again, and a thriving city shooting out of the ground under a monument of the communist past.