Day 16: the Land of Chinggis Khaan

This is somewhat of a retro-post. We have been back in the UK almost a week now, so I thought it was probably time to draw this #honeyschmoon blog to a close.

We'll start with the Chinggis Khaan statue. Yes, the stainless steel statue of Chinggis Khan on horse-back, with his golden whip at one hip and his sword on his other; slap-bang in the middle of nowhere. It looms 50m overhead and (apparently) points east, towards his birthplace. The statue is said to be built where Chinggis found his golden whip - I'm not entirely sure of the significance of this whip, apart from the fact that it's probably SOLID GOLD. Or not.

You can get a lift from the visitor centre into Chinggis' crotch and emerge from it onto the view point, on top of the horses head. It's a good view of... well, vast emptiness. The statue was originally designed as part of a tourist "complex", where it would be surrounded with multiple ger camps; but as far as we could see, there was no on-going construction work.

There was also a rather hilarious power failure whilst we were in the basement, walking round the 2 museums of different artefacts from the 13th Century, which meant we were plunged into darkness and evacuated onto the ground floor in a not-so-orderly fashion. As a result of this, the lift into Chinggis' crotch was also out of action, so we took the stairs. Our driver came with us up the stairs (I'm not entirely sure why..), but by the time we got to Chinggis' crotch, John and I were deeply concerned that our driver might have a respiratory arrest or a stroke. (He didn't, obviously.)

We were carted back to Ulaanbaatar and had a little wander around the city centre, the highlight being (of course) renting a hilarious looking tandem at Chinggis Khaan Square (he's quite a bit deal in Mongolia) for 10 minutes at the cost of 66p. AMAZING!

On our 17th day, we boarded our very first plane at Chinggis Khaan International Airport (as I said, he's quite a big deal) and flew home, via Beijing Airport, where we had the pleasure of experiencing the Premium Lounge (= free food and drink!)

It was only when we were boarding our very first plane that it suddenly dawned on us how far we had travelled, without flying. I mean, we were ruddy in Mongolia..!? The 11-hour flight west was nothing compared to the 11-days of train-ing east. Plus, I got to watch 4 films. Yes, FOUR.