The Genghis Khan Museum + the Mongolian Outback

Despite private taxis costing a pretty penny, I couldn't in good conscience spend three days in Ulaanbaatar without seeing what lied outside the city.

The Genghis Khan Monument/museum is an attempt to get more tourists to the country. Though the statue is large in size, the museum itself has little of note.

entrance to Genghis Khan exhibit

HUGE statue of Genghis Khan- the building is large, the
statue larger  

entrance to The Genghis Khan Museum

old Mongolian sword in the Ghengis Khan museum

 Head out from the monument area and you'll find, pretty much nothing. Grass and dust, with a mountainous background, and grazing herds of sheep, goat, and cattle.
The national park has nothing remarkable, and aside of paying a $3 toll to enter, there is no marker or boundary.
The highlight and original selling point for me going was to witness the amazing tortoise rock formation, which you'll see below in the photos. Beyond here, you plunge into the vast nothingness which comprises almost all of Mongolia.
Due to the difficulty of travel outside the capital, I had little desire to head into the outback to meet the nomadic people of Mongolia, especially after asking myself how different it would be than the days I spent with Bedouins in Syria and tribes in Laos and Vietnam amongst other adventures.
Fortunately my plane left the next day.

you'll see a lot of this- livestock grazing in the dusty fields with meager vegetation

Mongolians selling nuts along the side of the road-
hard way to make a living in a country where no one has any money

horses in the national park- note off-road vehicle.
Roads get dicey quickly out here

more sellers of nuts along the road-
be thankful you were born in your country!

a lot of rocky terrain around here

better grazing lands for these cattle- Mongolians eat a lot of meat

Tortoise rock formation- the highlight (and I mean highlight) of the area

Ulaanbaatar- Mongolia's Dusty Capital

typical buildings in Ulaanbaatar. Soviet style vomit architecture

There are places where friendly people, cheap prices, and scenic beauty abound, vastly underrated travel destinations well worth dropping off the grid to visit; Mongolia is not such a place.

First off, traveling around the country is excruciatingly difficult, as traversing any distance outside a certain radius around the capital takes a lonnnggggg time, a combination of the lack of paved roads and rugged terrain. Horses here are still symbols of prosperity and good luck, and they'll maintain that status until they become the slower option of exploring the outback.

horses are images of importance all over the country

Mongolians, at least in the capital, are plumper than you'd expect. Maybe they're imitating their pop-stars, as every single one of them I see in music videos are obese. 
Note to pop-stars: This isn't 1850 France. Being fat in today's world no longer indicates you're a person of means.

An interesting fact is that the center of Ulaanbaatar is filled with English signs, a welcome change from Russia, but still, few people speak the language. Case in point the taxi driver who accosts me, demanding my fare upon arrival, and takes me to a bank, where there are 150 people in line ahead of me, literally. "Serving #740," and I draw #892.
I asked him to stop at various banks along the way, but he drove me all the way past the center of town to what has to be the most inefficient money center of the world, then demands well above his quote when he takes me back to where I originally asked to be dropped, all without speaking a word of English.
I don't find the people here to be cheerful as they are in SE Asia. Maybe it's because the region is pretty much a dusty wasteland, a former Communist country with limited opportunity and infrastructure. Despite very low wages, the prices in the capital are fairly expensive. The buildings are without any charm (ie. ugly) and the average winter temperature is minus 20. 

I'll end my rant now and let you check out the photos of Ulaanbaatar below.  

this is still near the very center of the capital.

city center - very modern, and one of the few nice buildings

beautiful monument in the capital square. Hard to go wrong with flowers

the capital building

the Mongolian stock exchange

I did however make it out of the capital the next day: here is the story of that

The Empty, Dusty Road to Ulaanbaatar- Mongolia's Capital

The friendly clerk, unaccustomed to foreigners spending the night in her hotel, knocks on my door to make sure I'm up to catch the 8 AM bus.
Ticket sales start at 7, and she makes it clear unless I desire spending another day in Nowheresville (literally the English translation of the town's Mongolian name) my three and half hours of sleep must suffice.
She walks me over and negotiates the ticket for me.
I'm grateful and let her know.

bus interior

I gather my stuff, and return to wait for the inefficient system to process her passengers; no electronic check-in here.
I'm the only white person, probably in the entire town, and somehow I end up with the worst seat possible- "Back of the bus whitey."
The very back, and the only row which is elevated so we're too high to look out the windows, which I couldn't anyways since I'm in the middle seat, and the curtains around me are drawn closed.

The bus departs an hour late, making me wish I had used that time for sleep since there is zero chance of doing so en route. Only a few miles outside of town, the paved road ends, and the Mongolian outback begins. We move incredibly slowly, often coming to a standstill as we navigate holes which, if  I could look out the windows, I'm certain I'd see filled with the the skeletons of trucks, their unskilled drivers waving to us for help.
The bus shakes and gyrates like a chihuahua during an earthquake.
We kick up so much dust, that even with all the windows and vents closed, passengers are covering their faces with their jackets, coughing hard as the powdery ground enters their lungs. I look down and see my pants literally covered with dirt; our ship is not exactly airtight.

brief excerpts from the bus ride to Ulaanbaatar

The paved road returns, creating a collective and audible sigh of relief amongst the passengers, then falls away again soon after. This continues for the next 100 km, as we slowly slog our way through.

inside Mongolian eatery

Half way through our journey we make a stop for lunch, about the only sign of human life we've encountered along the way.
While large in size, Mongolia only has 3 million people, giving it the lowest population density of any nation- 1.8 persons per square kilometer.
As nearly half of the country resides in the capital of Ulaanbaatar, and given that forests cover only 8% of Mongolia and are found exclusively in the North of the country, you can imagine the expanse of barren nothingness.
Coughing up fine dust particles while gazing at the lack of scenery, I question why it was I came here. The best answer I can come up with is that I'm running out of new countries to visit.
"Maybe I should buy a ticket to the moon," I joke to myself, but, looking outside I imagine Mongolia might not be all that different visually.
Plus it's cheaper.

Ancient Mongolian woman at lunch stop