Five Minutes

As previously threatened, I’m going to start putting up the journal entries I wrote while in Mongolia shortly under the Mongolia category. Before I do, though, I’ll quickly lay out the trip to avoid confusion, since I don’t think I explained it clearly at any point. (I’ll write a full summary of the trip and my thoughts on it after the journal entries are up.) The itinerary was pretty simple, all things considered:

• Perth to Beijing via Kuala Lumpur.
• Beijing to Ulaanbaatar.
• After a few days in UB, 17 nights camping while doing a loop of northern, central and southern Mongolia.
• Ulaanbaatar to Beijing, with one night in Beijing.
• Beijing to KL, an overnight transit in KL, then home.

Of course, things didn’t quite go according to plan with the travel…

My travelling companions were tremendous. Jas, fellow cricketer and owner of a far, far better ponytail than I could ever manage, was unfortunate enough to be with me the whole way, while we met up with Dirk and Nick, his high school buddies, in UB. I could try to create some suspense as to whether we got through the trip without major disagreement — but we did, so I’ll disappoint any people who like hearing about trips-gone-wrong now.

So, without further ado, it’s onto the first atrociously scrawled entry.

No, really.

No, really.

Back in October.