The Owl and the Pussycat http://safehaven
orphanage.org/

Our long journey westwards is underway now. We sat on a train for 30 hours from Beijing, through mountains, over the Gobi, past whirlwinds over desolate salt lakes and into the capital of Mongolia Ulaan Baator. 

The journey was quite something else, but we wish we could say as much for our destination. Helene has learnt a new word that we feel very succinctly sums up Ulaan baator, that being drab. Communist architecture and culture seems to seeped into all aspects of this town from the way people dress even to the Buddhist temples with rendered walls and/or bare concrete walls; drab drab drab drab.

We have began to count the amount of smiles we have seen as we walk down the streets, today`s total so far: 1 1/2. However now we are off to the “black market” together with a man who claims to be the king of haggling so most likely we will be smiling enough for the whole city.