Ulaanbaatar, Mongolia - Day 2

Saturday (26 August) evening at the hostel was uneventful, in fact, it was pretty dead. I ate a very filling dinner with a milk shake at a nice restaurant near the hostel for $4. Did I mention Mongolia was cheap?

Sunday (27 August) I decided I should see a little bit of the city even though I wasn't feeling very motivated. I walked over to one of the city highlights, Gandantegchinlen Khiid, Mongolia's largest and most important monstery. I was surprised to see so many people around the compound and to my disappointment the monstery was closed for some special event. I could tell there was something big about to happen though as there was a large chair under a tent set up directly in front of the entrance to the monstery, along with a bunch of chairs, video cameras, speakers, etc, surrounding the tent. Then there was a 'light' barrier set up all around this that the crowds continued to build around. I could tell someone was coming to speak and the crowds continued to build. They have no concept of personal space here so everyone just pushes everyone else and no body gets upset (except foreigners!).

After standing there about 20 minutes a thought entered my mind as to who this speaker might be, but I thought there was no way I could be so lucky as to stumble upon such an event. But as the crowds continued to grow I became quite certain of the speaker, seeing several people holding pictures of him. Then my suspicions were confirmed when His Holiness the 14th Dalai Lama of Tibet arrived with his entrange! Wow, talk about luck, getting to see the Dalai Lama in Mongolia. Of course I couldn't understand a word of what he said, nor of the Mongolian that it was translated into. But nevertheless I got some photos and it was a cool experience. I grew tired of the crowds though and left before he was done speaking. What an unexpected surprise and talk about luck; I just happened to show up at the monstery at that time on that day.

The hostel had arranged a meeting at 6 pm that evening (Sunday, 27 August) for people to get together to plan trips to the country side. I was looking forward to meeting some people for a trip but neither the people nor the trips interested me so I decided to wait it out another day in hopes of finding what I was looking for on Monday.

Monday (28 August) morning at breakfast I met some Italians who just arrived who seemed interested in going to the Gobi Desert like myself, but importantly seemed like people I would want to travel with. Then I went to another hostel and met some other people I had been emailing. We seem to have the same philosophies so we are going to meet up again in a couple hours and hopefully make some plans to leave tomorrow. Tentatively we are looking at a 10-11 day trip to the Gobi Desert. So I have a couple of leads at this point and things are looking positive. Hopefully I'll be on my way tomorrow morning.