Far East

Sunday 30th July 2017
It's not every day you have in your hand a baggage claim for Ghinggis Khann airport.
But that won't be needed for many hours. I'm sitting air side at Heathrow airport having checked in, dropped off my bag and passed through security and now playing the game of waiting for the gate for my flight to show up on the board.
Even though my flight is not until the evening I didn't want to risk travelling from Cumbria on the day of the flight, so came down yesterday and spent the night at the Hilton Terminal 4. So it's already been a long day of sitting around killing time. You would think that with all my "holidays of a lifetime" that I would be more relaxed about these trips, but I seem to worry more about visas and flight bookings with everyone. I have never really had a problem in the past. May be that's it, may be I feel that I'm pushing my luck and sooner than later I'll hit a problem.
My first flight is to Beijing and will take around 9 hours, a couple of hours in the airport there and then another 2 hour flight to Ghinggis Khann International Airport, Ulaan Baatar (the Mongolian capital). By that time it will be Monday evening, having lost 7 hours due to the time difference. We will be stopping in Ulaan Baatar for one night before heading to the Hogno Mountain area. We will return to Ulaan Baatar a couple of times during the trip.
Going to Beijing was a new farthest East record for me.

The Great Khan

Well it's almost time once again to get ready for another holiday of a lifetime! In 18 days time I'll be heading to Mongolia.
This blog entry is partly to check out that the tech is still working as I have not blogged since the Antarctica trip. Don't think there will be much wi-fi out on the Mongolian Steppe or deep in the Gobi Desert, but I'll try and keep the blog up to date and publish the entries when I can.

Once I have managed to negotiate the transfer in Beijing airport I'll be arriving in Mongolia via Ghinggis Khaan International Airport in the capital city Ulaan Baatar. There I'll stop in the capital for one night before heading out to explore Mongolia. In fact that will be the 1st of only 3 nights in a conventional hotel, the other nine nights are in Ger camps. A Ger is a Mongolian Yurt.

There's mountain walks, monasteries, Genghis Khan historic sites, the Gobi desert, horse back riding, archery and even a yak pulling a kayak up a river to experience.