Yurt camp and UB day 3

Now I can say I've spent a night in a Mongolian yurt.  I had a restless night...I think my pillow was too small.  I'm not complaining.  It all makes me thankful that I have a bed to lie down into every night.  We woke up to a beautiful morning.  I climbed out of our yurt, hit my head on the door frame again, and the first thing I saw was a camel grazing near our abode.

Grazing Camel

I got my camera and took a few pictures.  Our camp sight was very nice, we had good facilities and excellent food.  After breakfast we took off for about a 50 minute nature hike.  We went over a small saddle back to the other side of the hill.  The view was spectacular.  Once we caught up with the rest of the group, we found a souvenir yurt and I made all my gift purchases there.  After that we all went a little further to a Buddhist monastery located on the side of a small mountain.

Buddhist Monastery

It was a little hike and a bunch of stairs.  As you approached the monastery you passed 150 signs with Buddhist sayings of wisdom.  On the mountain side as you there were symbols painted on to the cliff walls.  As you looked off into the distance you could see the valleys had a beautiful “U” shape to them.  They were formed by ancient glaciers.  The monastery itself was simple but charming.

On our way back to UB we encountered some grazing yaks.  The locals refer to Ulaanbaatar as UB.  By the time we got back we were all pretty hungry, so we stopped at another Mongolian barbeque place.  This one did not put on a show, but the food was still great.  My culinary excursion today was horse meat.  To be honest it tasted just fine.  If you had the buffet they had a tray with a goats head on it.

I still had a lot of cars to give away from “Toys for God's kids”.  We asked out tour guide where we could find a lot of children and she sent us to an amusement park.  We gave a few cars away there, but we knew a better spot.  Our hotel is located in a residential complex.  Right next door to us is a playground.  We went there and gave away the remainder of the toy cars.  To see the happy and thankful faces of the children was a blessing.  Kids are the same wherever you go.

We were able to do a little exploring on our own at the end of the day.  We were all hot and sweaty.  Our day only had a couple of activities but we didn't stop all day.  Tomorrow we get up early again and start the final leg of the train journey.