Weekend tourist activities

Nancy posing between statues showing respect by folded hands. Behind her in distance, statues stand for 2 kilometres

A group of Przewalski horses. Note foal nursing on the right side of group

We spent the weekend being tourists. On Saturday, we visited the Khustain  National Park, about 65 miles southwest of Ulan Baatar. It was really good to get away from the city, which suffers from severe air pollution. 

The park is famous for reintroducing the Przewalski horse, which had become extinct in the wild in the 1960s. Although the pro-Soviet  government had been suspicious of offers to reintroduce the horse to a wild, after the fall of Communism in 1990, the new government accepted the offers of conservationists to reintroduce the horse to its native Mongolia. 

We did a two hour hike to a local high point, to get some feel for the terrain, and were fortunate enough to see a number of the Przewalski horses on a drive through the park to see Turkic stone monuments from the seventh through ninth centuries. After lunch, we spent an hour riding local horses before the drive back home.

Nancy walking across steppe with cows in background

Panoramic of typical Mongolian landscape

Sunday we walked to the Winter Palace, home of the last religious leader of Mongolia, the Bogd Khan, the eighth Living Buddha and last King of Mongolia, who had been held captive by the Chinese overlords until Mongolia became independent, and then was declared the nominal leader of the country, until his death in 1924. From there we hiked by an 82 foot high Buddha, on our way to the Zaisan Memorial, constructed to the everlasting friendship of the Mongolian and Soviet peoples. The eternal flame to commemorate this friendship no longer burns.