News for the last few months...

Well, the summer months are the busy season so no apologies for not posting in a while. A few work trips have taken place including a couple of weeks on the road and a short bit of helicopter work We had a large mining investment conference in UB that also ran a visit to Mongolia’s latest zinc mine. Unfortunately this coincided with the first snows in UB so we got stranded for a night in Baruun-Urt waiting for a plane. I remembered a night a couple of years ago when we got grounded there on a helicopter trip, fortunately I didn’t end up sharing a room with a mega-snorer this time.

New photos covering the last major non-work road-trip went up on the website. I’m experimenting with Macromedia Flash at the moment, easier to get photos up quickly but not so convenient for people to access. The whole web-site will be getting revamped in a ‘cleaner and more pure’ design over the coming months, watch this space for updates.

A few weeks ago I returned from the second big non-work road trip of the year. 4 ½ days out via the Govi Altai to Olgii in the far northwest of Mongolia, a couple of days at the Kazakh eagle festival out there and then four days back to UB through the north of Mongolia. 3300km, 2200 photos!

Ben and Malcolm joined me for the trip, Ben an old friend from Mid-Wales and Malcolm a retired business man from Shanghai into travel and photography. I think they survived the road fairly well considering the pace of travel, short days, cold nights and my selection of food to put up with. Wine, beer and Malcolm’s cognac pulled us through…

Ben also brought me out my new toy, an Apple Powerbook. After getting back from the trip it took me several days to convert from the PC (how do you right click on a one button mouse????) before e-mail, photoshop, dreamweaver etc etc were up and running again. And then disaster, the power adaptor fried itself. If you know Mongolia and UB then you know there isn’t a chance of finding a replacement up here. I warn anybody travelling/living remotely with a mac to look up the customer reviews on the UK apple store website for the 65W notebook power adaptor – scary reading that I wish I’d have seen before buying the mac. Anyway, now I have 2 friends scouring Leeds and Bangkok for me, fingers crossed otherwise I can’t charge until finding a new power brick – hopefully the apple store in Beijing will have one.

Went out to Terelj at the weekend with an accompanying lady friend. Nice countryside that I had only seen from the chopper before but colours are a bit muted now the trees have all lost their leaves. Did a couple of reasonably large river crossings on tracks that don’t see too much traffic. Amazing that within 50km of UB and it’s million plus people you can get into the wilderness so quickly.