Before heading home to the States, I decided to go visit my friends Christina & John in Ulaanbaatar, Mongolia. What an adventure! I spent several days in "UB" while they finished up school, then we all headed out on a van tour of the desert. Mongolia is incredibly beautiful and such a fascinating place.

Here are a few of my favorite pics:

My favorite camel. We were in a national park in the middle of the Gobi, and we rode camels & horses up a valley to a little canyon filled with ice. I don't know if you'd properly call it a glacier because it didn't really flow... but it also never fully melted. Anyway, this was my first (and probably last) camel-riding experience!


Downtown UB (notice the herdsman herding his critters along the river):

Tsuki Theater, UB

Christina & John Konopaski


UB from the American School (where C & J worked):


Mongolian Parliament Building:



Buddhist Monastary, UB:
These little girls sold bags of rice for 50 cents that you could use as offerings to Buddha:


Dawn over the steppe:



John, Christina & I on our way out to the Gobi:


Into the desert:

The highway. Yup, this is it (and this was one of the nicer sections):


Provincial capital in the Gobi:


The emptiness was both shocking and beautiful:


One of our ger camps. We arrived at 3 in the morning and woke up to a crazy windstorm. We looked out to what seemed like the surface of the moon... miles and miles of rocky nothingness...

Mongolia!!

I spent 10 days visiting friends in Mongolia in June. What a cool experience. It's a completely different world. Leaving Ulaanbataar and travelling out to the Gobi was like stepping back in time. Many people still live nomadic lifestyles, and those who've settled into towns still mostly live in traditional homes (gers) without electricity and indoor plumbing.

Here are a few pictures I took while there. I'll upload more later...