Ulaanbaatar – Chinggis Khan Statue

21st June 2014     12-21’C       110km
Ulaanbaatar – Chinggis Khan Statue – Ulaanbaatar

I decided to have a short ride today, a warm up, since I had been off the bike for 10 days.  So I headed out to the mammoth Chinggis Khan statue for the day, and back to UB for the evening. The ride out there was uneventful, and as I rounded a hill, the huge statue appeared, Chinggis Khan astride his horse, facing towards China and ready for battle. The Mongolian people really dislike the Chinese people, and they are still fearful of their southern neighbour. I climbed up to the top of the statue for a close up view of Chinggis, bought a drink and a few stamps and headed back towards the city.

Twenty minutes into the ride, I was waved down by a cop by the side of the road. He was nice enough, asked for my licence and I handed over the dodgy laminated copy that I had made on a friend’s home inkjet printer. After a quick check and the standard questions, where are you going, for how long, etc. He told me to be careful and I headed off.
Ten minutes later I was pulled over by another cop. This time he wanted to see my passport, I don’t have a fake one of those, so I handed the real one over. The cop was surly from the beginning, and started machine gun questioning, 5 questions in a breath. To which I just answered the first question each time, ignoring the others. After a while he started walking off with my passport, then came back and said “bike passport! now!”. To which I replied “I don’t have a bike passport”. He asked again and I repeated the same answer “I don’t have a passport for the bike”. He then stuffed my passport back in my hand, and walked off, which I took as my cue to kick the bike into gear and get out of there.

Back in town, the Saturday afternoon traffic was madness, but I made it back to the hotel, parked and went for dinner before returning to pack the bike, ready for an early departure tomorrow. On the way to dinner, I stopped at the State Department Store, buying some colour pencils to give to kids on the way through country Mongolia. I also stocked up on camping food, adding necessary but unwanted weight to the bike. Another customer in the shop tried to convince me to buy the vacuum packed ‘Stewed Horse’, telling me how delicious it is. She had two packets in her trolley, so I took one of the shelf also. But on the way to the checkout, I noticed the packet was out of date by 12 months. I went back to find a newer one, but they were all out of date, so I decided to pass on the stewed horse for now.