but when we broke down, locals did appear almost magically out of thin air with just right kind of cement we needed to plug the hole in our transmission and get us to the next town. they are extremely giving and industrious people.

as for the mining, that story is yet to be told. you have a better sense of it than i do i’m sure, and i hope you’re right – the gov’t does seem to be willing to resist the salivating wolves who want their resources. but it is a true democracy and if it slid rightward a little bit, who knows what happens. developing countries don’t have a great record vs. multinationals.

i want to visit Mongolia again, rent a real 4×4 and go into the north. Susan, what do you do there?

And, “Mining is getting ready to destroy the interior of the country.”  Seriously?  One wonders where the iron and aluminum and oil (and oil products like plastic) came from that went into manufacturing the automobile Jeff and his partner were using…  maybe the Iron Fairy?

ALICE
Oh, really?

RALPH
It’s going all the way from Tibet to Mongolia. Says it’ll cut five hours out of the trip for everybody that’s going there. http://www.sitcomsonline.com/boards/showthread.php?t=282753#ixzz1nPhwWzus

Mining is happening, but it is hardly wrecking the entire interior of the country, although I have seen damaged areas in the mountains.

The repair sequence was spot on. Mongols are the greatest, most practical fixers of things in the world.

To answer ET’s question: The people are out there. The population density is very low, but the herders are spread out throughout the countryside. They all have binoculars or monoculars (probably Russian-made) and are keeping an eye on their animals, usually from an elevated spot. They probably won’t be visible unless you have a breakdown, in which case they can almost magically appear. See “Long Way Round”.

I would encourage people to visit Mongolia. It’s an amazing place where 1000 years of history exist alongside of a 21st century parliamentary democracy and rapid economic growth.  You can spend the day watching wild horses (Przewalski’s horse) at Hustai National Park or visiting a herder family in their ger and be back in Ulaanbaatar in time to hit the nightclub hip-hop scene.

but there were lots of folks who took the northern route thru Russia for time reasons. we weren’t worried about time, so wanted to take the most challenging/interesting route that didn’t require Iran (tho we’d consider doing Iran if given another chance).

A: Gobi Tweens.

But, as I was watching, I wanted to linger more in various moments. Must everything now be condensed to four minutes or less before we’ll consider spending time with it?