Another beautiful and warm day here in Ulaan Baator. In the hostel I got booted from my private room and stuck in a dorm. But at about $5/night for a pretty comfortable bed, I'm not complaining. Plus, I still haven't quite adjusted to the time changes, so I was just about all in last night. I shared the room with three folks from Ireland - so I had a strange conversation about hurling in the middle of Ulaan Baator. Weird.

After the usual coffee (instant) and some pastries and such I dug in earnestly to try and book a trek outside of UB. I'd been chatting with Byanbodol at the Golden Gobi and told him what I wanted. He was friendly, but so far nothing has panned out. One option I discussed with him was to rent a jeep and head for Lake Hvovlsgol for fishing, ger camps, etc. That trip would be about 8-10 days. Hopefully, I can find some other folks in the hostel to take the trip with me to cut the cost, but so far things haven't been too good. So, I headed over to an agency run be a Dutch guy who married a Mongolian woman who runs a pretty well thought of shop. I gave him the run-down of what I am interested in and I also mentioned I brought flyfishing equipment. He perked up at that and made a call to another Dutch expat who's into flyfishing. I'm going to meet him in about half and hour and we're going to try and hammer out a deal. With a bit of luck, I'll have 4-5 days of guided flyfishing a few hundred miles from UB. I guess there are at least three rivers that fish pretty well. I'm quite excited as I'll be able to combine some riding (horses) and ger camping with it...

Outside of trek planning, I walked around southern UB today ending up at the winter place of the Bogd Khan. It was quite a charming palace with a great set of buldings, some terrific Buddhist artwork, and some nice artifacts. I enjoyed it quite a bit, though this was the first location that was "swamped" with other tourists - meaning a busload of about 20 germans.

Finally, while eating lunch today I finished up writing the postcards to the 20 or so folks who signed up. I'll be mailing them later today - who knows how long they'll take, but they are on their way. If you want a postcard, just sign up and I'll get one out to you pronto!