Rain and breif summary

We headed down to the big market in UB to catch a bus/van to the countryside. All our information about catching a bus/van came from Eric's memory - sometimes outdated - and friends of Eric who didn't travel through Mongolian 'public transportation'.

We made it down to the market in the early morning after visiting the Chinese Embassy and sat in a van for 6 hours before we actually departed on the 26 hour ride out to a small town we couldn't find on the map... not where we wanted to end up. We got nervous and climbed out of the van and began walking. We left town following a river towards a lake and crossed a volcano. We camped a night, Eric got sick, and moved into a Ger on the lake shore.

We stayed a few days, fishing, swimming, and enjoying the beautiful lake (insert pictures here).

We hiked back to town, ran into the driver who took us out from UB, got ripped off by him again heading back east to Teserleg.

We spent the night, woke up, hiked to a monetary and caught a bus to the former, and potentially future, capitol of Mongolia -- Hahorken.

We arrived and visited a giant monastery before heading out to a giant valley filled with horses, goats, sheep, and yaks. We pitched our tent and read as animals milled about --- It was pretty surreal.
Storm clouds rolled in and Eric and I fled the valley to find a guest house, and ended up lost in the middle of a field as the rain began to fall. We ran into some Mongolians on the riverside who, when we asked for directions to the guesthouse, ended up being the owners. The offered to give us a ride and drove us to the complete opposite side of town (the map was completely off). We spent two nights in the guest house and today we headed back to UB