No matter where you're going in Mongolia, you'll start in Ulan Baatar because it's the only place with an airport and one of the only cities with an international train line. It's where the hotels and travel companies are. And the "nightlife."

Visiting this city is really a surreal experience. The Mongolian people are pastoral nomads, never much for getting together and erecting buildings. So what you have is a large, flat square of land with wide, scantly populated streets and a vast central square. You have Soviet and East German apartment blocks, some of which now function as hotels. You have a currency exchange upstairs from a movie theater, a commodities exchange where the only commodity is cashmere, and a parliament where Communists still compete for power and the economic system is revisited daily. You'll see empty shipping containers standing in rows near apartment blocks; the locals use them as carports. The sites aren't all that, but we loved wandering this huge parking lot of a city just to soak up the weirdness of it all.

Places to visit:
1) The Natural History Museum. Giant skeletons of dinosaurs found domestically. Pretty darn great, but the museum knows it's got a good thing going and charges extra to get in to see the dinosaurs. No photographs are allowed, but there are lots of postcards and books for sale. The non-dinosaur part of the museum is boring and unattractively presented.

2) The State Department Store. This was my favorite place in Ulan Baatar. Upstairs, there is an area that serves the dual function of outfitter to visiting nomads and souvenir shop to us. It has woolen robes ready to wear off the rack, complete with gorgeous ribbons embroidered with silver and gold thread. The traditional leather boots with the toes turned up like elves' shoes. Round hats with a bedknob rising from the top of the dome. I really wish I could have bought an outfit, but I was backpacking so it wasn't possible. More portable souvenirs are the little embroidered drawstring pouches that locals use to hold their snuff bottles. They can be worn hanging around the neck or hung from a belt loop. Then there are tons of cashmere sweaters, of course. There is traditionally painted furniture for a Mongolian family's ger, or tent, plus potbellied wood-burning stoves and rugs for the floor. There was even a rug with Genghis Khan's image woven into it, with block letters below spelling out GENGHIS. We had our film processed downstairs but it turned out really bad; I strongly recommend carrying your film out of the country to be developed. The department store is your best bet if you need camera batteries, videotape. Most consumer goods are hard to find at other shops or booths in the city.

3) The Gandan Monastery. Mongolia's main monastery, this was the only one that stayed open under the Communist regime. Nice, working monastery where you can see young monks learning to chant for hours on end. They were very cute and you could see a little misbehaving going on -- whispering, giggling. Actually, the teacher seemed pretty apathetic and didn't reprimand them.

4) The Bogd Khan's Winter Palace. A replica of Dalai Lama's summer palace, Norbulingka, in Lhasa. The Bogd Khan was the last Mongolian living Buddha. There's some nice Buddhist art inside this faded and tumbledown complex, as well as some examples of Bogd Khan's decadent lifestyle. Nice gift shop.

Most visitor stay in the Chingis (Genghis) Khan hotel, where there's a lackluster casino and halfway-decent rooms, although the lobby and rooms don't reach the international standard of luxury they aspire to. This was about $100 a night. We stayed in an old apartment block formerly reserved for foreign experts. This cost something like $10-20 a night for a large apartment with a small kitchen (no stove or refrigerator) and a bathroom with a tub. The hotel staff was pretty lackadaisical, and tried to get us to take a more expensive room with a TV. One morning when we woke up we noticed a couple of horses lounging on the lawn outside; other people have spotted massive deer here, come down from the hills for a weekend in the city.

There's no public transportation, but there is a fun and easy way to get around town. Just flag down any car that passes by. Chances are, as a car owner this person moonlights as a taxi driver, and he will point at the odometer and drive you to your destination. You're expected to pay him by the kilometer. No tip is necessary. Having your destination written down helps, since these folks are no likely to know any English.

On the edge of town, there's a permanent encampment of gers, where a large portion of the city's population actually lives. Take a look at this area during the daytime, but avoid it in the evening.



Recommended: Yes