Today we went on our trip with a guide and driver, which was great fun, although I always feel vaguely embarrassed about that sort of thing. In the morning we went to the Manzshir monastery in the Bogd Uul national park, 50km from UB. It had (not surprisingly) been destroyed by the Russians, but you could still get an idea of the majesty of the place as it must have been once. Then lunch. I had thought we were going back to the national park and would have welcomed the chance to wander about on our own a bit, but after lunch we were able to visit a nomad family in their "ger" tent and ride some shaggy Mongolian ponies. That was fun, but again I felt a bit daft being led around, perched on a horse, by a bloke who had lived in the saddle practically since he was a kid and probably thought how odd it was that two people could be so unfamiliar with horses. Oh well, he'd be lost trying to use a PC or play a guitar. Our guide was friendly and informative (no doubt employed for that reason) and a good way to learn about Mongolian customs and lifestyle.

The guide recommended a good restaurant for us to try Mongolian food in UB that evening, but unfortunately it was closed for refurbishment. In the end, after wandering about for an hour, we ended up eating in a place that served an odd mix of European food [Adrian notes: the ox tongue at least was a local speciality, and very tasty too]. UB is not a place for strolling about... it's dusty, hot (in the summer, anyway; more later) and full of traffic, the drivers honking their horns at each other and charging about with no regard for traffic lights. Full of potholes and drains with no lids... a bit of a building site.

Forgot to mention our hotel. It's the complete opposite of the UB Guesthouse, with enormous bedrooms and sparkling bathrooms, chandeliers and marble. Very nice, but out of place in UB; a way for US businessmen to forget they've left the States. Even though I didn't really approve of it, I was quite pleased to get out of the Guesthouse... not really our thing any more.

Nicola mentioned a bit about our day in the countryside, but I'll fill in a few details. The visit to the nomad family, while somewhat staged and touristy, was totally intriguing. Remember... these people live in their ger tents all year round, although they have different camping grounds for winter and summer. A family's winter camp tends to be in a fixed location, to which they'll return every year, and the main visible distinction from a summer camp is that they'll enclose the group of tents with a wooden fence to keep the wind out. The summer camps are flexible, sited according to the best grazing land and water supply. In both cases, though, they live in tents made of a light but strong wooden frame covered with skins and canvas. These things can be dismantled in an hour!

Sitting inside the ger, we were brought bowls of a Mongolian speciality... fermented mare's milk, known as airag. At 3% alcohol, it's the sort of thing you can quaff, but the guide warned us that most people hate it the first time they taste it. Having sampled it, Nicola was a bit dubious, but I thought it was great. Like a sour yoghurt, but with an extra flavour I couldn't quite put my finger on... slightly smoky or pungent.

And of course another use for horses is as a means of transport. I had never ridden a horse in my life, so I wasn't quite sure what to expect. Once I'd assured myself that I was going to sit upright without falling off, it wasn't too difficult. Not exactly comfortable, but there's something quite relaxing about having a sturdy little animal plodding along, saving you from having to do the walking yourself. I'm glad they invented trains, cars and buses, though...

Writing this on the train the following day... Adrian's chatting with some people in the corridor, so I'll catch up with what we did on the 15th. Our third and final day in UB started well... we visited the Bogd Khan monastery and Winter Palace, which was pleasant but not spectacular (although the tigerskin-covered ger sticks in the mind). It was the palace of the final Bogd Khan (the national religious ruler) and his queen... funny, I thought monks were supposed to be celibate. They both had huge thrones and beds and obviously lived in the lap of luxury... I think it had all gone a bit awry by that point.

We then wandered out into the suburbs for a bit, as far as the river Tuul, but Adrian's hip was giving him gyp, so we wandered back again. It was hot and dusty, and deciding to walk to the opposite end of town to find the Gandan Monastery (after a fine Mongolian lunch of mutton and noodles at the Bayangol Hotel) was not a good idea, partly as we couldn't find it and partly as it took us through a more dodgy part of town. With both of us feeling hot, bothered and irritable, we gave up on the monastery... well, you've seen three, you've seen 'em all! Traipsed back to the hotel, just avoiding a huge thunderstorm. Bathed and refreshed, we did no more that evening other than sitting in the bar and drinking vodka. UB is an experience, but it's so dusty and fumy, I don't think I could bear to live there... and this is from someone who works in London.

I'll leave Adrian to report on the next, eventful day, which started at the bright and early time of 6:30am...

So, after spending three days in dusty UB, exacerbated by the warm (20+ degrees each day) climate, only to see the relief of merciful rain, we woke early the next morning to... two inches of snow. No, really. As we waited in the hotel foyer for our 7:30 taxi to the railway station, I asked the receptionist if this sudden change was normal. He pointed out that there's no such thing as autumn in Mongolia... winter follows immediately on from summer [as I type this up, on 25 September, weather forecasts are predicting a week of wild temperature changes in UB, with 30 degrees on Saturday, 10 degrees on Wednesday... looks like it can't decide].

We boarded train #24 for Beijing, and as it moved out beyond the UB city limits, the landscape got whiter and whiter, to the delight of us and our travel companions. Yes... travel companions. Despite specifying to Intourist that we wanted 2-berth compartments for all train journeys, this time they'd cocked up... all the more annoying as they'd charged us the highest price for this part of the journey! Still, it could have been worse; we could have had a couple of total miseries or in-yer-face sociable types, or even dodgy Mongolian traders, but Michaela and Giancarlo were a pleasant Italian couple who, like us, were happy to do their own thing as well as chatting from time to time. In the course of the evening (when, as you'll find out, there was plenty of time for talking) we learned some things about Italian life... Venetians pay less at local shops than tourists and people mistaken for Venetians (like Trieste residents Michaela and Giancarlo, who speak with a similar accent) get charged premium prices in other part of Italy. And we learned that Treviso is a good place for Grappa... useful info for future holiday plans.

But anyway... the weather. As we moved further away from UB and deep into central Mongolia, the conditions became more and more Xmas card-like. The snow was drifting along the sides of the track and the mountains faded into the heavy, snow-laden sky. As we gradually started to pass into the Gobi desert (yes, desert) the snow fell more heavily. Eventually, though, we passed through it and spent a couple of hundred kilometres surrounded by heavy grey skies and damp, bleak steppe. Slowly, the sky cleared, the ground became drier and the train was suddenly engulfed by a huge sandstorm. After the snow, this really was bizarre, as was the fact that our compartment's draughty window was resulting in our beds and table being covered by a thin layer and dust and occasional plant fibres. This went on for a couple of hours, after which we were able to shake out all our bedding and get back to enjoying the view of the desert. Our tour guide from a couple of days before hailed from the Gobi region originally, but we found it hard to believe that anyone could live in this arid lunar landscape; nonetheless, we passed several small ger camps as well as solid houses.

With the benefit of all-too-recent hindsight, we felt a sense of impending doom over the border crossing into China. Sure enough, it was another fine example of misplaced, inefficient and profoundly thoughtless bureacracy. In short, we were denied access to toilets and hot water while a number of bored Mongolian border officials collected various forms from us, and the same was repeated on the Chinese side. This crossing was slightly more complex in that the wheels of the train (the "bogies" as train-spotter types would insist on calling them) had to be changed (China as the same track gauge as the UK, but Russia and Mongolia just had to be different). We thought we'd have to leave the train while the carriages were winched up to have their wheels changed, but we were allowed to watch it all from the warmth of our carriages. However, this meant even more time without access to basic Human Being Stuff, so lots of people soon started to get quite pissed off at the lack of information coming from train staff.

Eventually, at 1:40am, the train moved off and the bathroom queue quickly grew. Oh, actually it was 0:40am... China doesn't have daylight saving time in the summer, so we gained an hour, even though we were in the same timezone. Bed, even on those narrow train bunks, was a good place to be.