Our adventure begins

Hello friends, welcome to our blog! We’re so excited to share our adventures with you.

For those of you who don’t know, we’ve set out on a six month long journey around the world. Travelling has always been something we both love, and we’ve been talking about a big trip since we first met, so here we are!

Our plan is to make two grand overland journeys, one through Asia and the other through Central America. In the spirit of slow travel, our aim is to use trains, boats and buses as much as possible. So naturally, we started with a long haul, trans-continental flight, ha!

We’re travelling in Mongolia with a company called Goyo, as it’s a pretty difficult country to navigate independently. Arriving in Ulaanbaatar (UB) after no sleep for 24 hours, we felt a little like zombies. Nevertheless, our guide for the day, Naya, picked us up at the airport and threw us, bleary eyed, into some sightseeing.

The influence of Mongolia’s two much larger neighbours is immediately apparent. Chinese construction projects are everywhere, and shortages in imported fuel from Russia mean there are queues of cars waiting hours or even days to refill their tanks. The shortages started with the Ukraine War and are only getting worse.

Our first stop was the Gandan Monastery, the only Mongolian monastery to survive the Stalinist purges of the 1930s. The centrepiece of the monastery is a giant gold and copper statue of a Buddha, which is a 90s replica of the original which was shipped to the USSR in the 1940s. The rumour is that it was melted down to make bullets for the war effort.

After this, we visited the National History Museum where we saw some beautiful traditional costumes, and later a performance of traditional Mongolian throat singing, contortionists and dancing.

Folllowing a delicious dinner of mutton dumplings called Buuz (steamed) and Hushuur (fried), we finally headed back to our hotel for a well earned sleep.