My wife and I spent three weeks on a RTW trip in July this year, visiting Mongolia, Moscow and the Caucasus (Azerbaijan, Armenia and Georgia). Some friend of ours were planning on spending two weeks in Moscow and the Caucasus and had invited us along. I had an extra week of vacation, and as we like to squeeze as much into our trips as possible, we were looking for an addon trip prior/following meeting up with our friends. One option was spending a week in Mongolia for the Naadam festival, the other was finishing the trip in Iran. We finally decided on Mongolia. My wife also had never been to China, and wanted to spend some time there before going to Mongolia, why not? She would fly onto Beijing a week before, spending a few days there and in Xian before meeting up in Mongolia.

PHOTOS:
http://homepage.mac.com/musick/China/PhotoAlbum42.html
http://homepage.mac.com/musick/Mongo...toAlbum55.html
http://homepage.mac.com/musick/Cauca...toAlbum61.html

The first trick was trying to find out how to get to all these places. My wife and I had made our plans rather late in the game, during the height of summer season, and we had a hard time finding award availability. Korean Airlines is the only alliance member airline that flies into UlaanBaatar, and paid tickets are very expensive. However, there wasn't availability on SkyTeam from the USA to Seoul, or from Europe to the USA on Oneworld on the days we needed. We finally sorted out the tickets, using a combination of paid tickets and awards. We really wanted to do the Trans-Siberian from Mongolia to Moscow, but wouldn't have enough time, instead we would be flying from UlaanBaatar directly to Moscow on Aeroflot. I purchased the Aeroflot tickets before leaving the USA. One-way biz class tickets were only $520, at less than $100 more than Economy on this route, it was a no-brainer. I purchased my wife's internal China flights through yoee.com, for about half the price other online engines were quoting. We also arranged our Russian visas ($160 each with introduction/service fee!) beforehand, through visahq.com.

Oneworld Biz Award - 115k miles
AA aus-ord-ngo biz
BA tbs-lhr-bru biz
IB/AA bru-mad-ord-aus biz (will be using in early '06)

Delta Intra-Asia Award - 25k miles
KE ngo-icn-uln econ
KE uln-icn-ngo econ (unused)

Paid tickets:
SU uln-svo $560 biz
SU svo-bak $140 econ
AA bru-jfk-dfw-aus $623 econ (upgraded w/ VIPs)

My wife's itinerary was the following:
03JUL AUS-SJC AA biz (AA award)
03JUL SJC-NRT AA biz (AA award)
04JUL NRT-PEK NW econ (DL award)
08JUL PEK-XIY MU econ (paid)
10JUL XIY-PEK CZ econ (paid)
10JUL PEK-ICN KE econ (DL award)
10JUL ICN-ULN KE econ (DL award)
...

My itinerary was:
09JUL AUS-ORD AA biz (AA award)
09JUL ORD-NGO AA biz (AA award)
10JUL NGO-ICN KE econ (DL award)
10JUL ICN-ULN KE econ (DL award)
16JUL ULN-SVO SU biz (paid)
19JUL SVO-BAK SU econ (paid)
30JUL TBS-LHR BA econ*(AA award)
30JUL LHR-BRU BA biz (AA award)
31JUL BRU-JFK AA biz (paid/VIP)
31JUL JFK-DFW AA biz (paid/VIP)
31JUL DFW-AUS AA biz (paid/VIP)

July 9, 2005
Flight: Austin to Chicago, American (M80) First 4A, flown: 973, earned: 0
Flight: Chicago to Nagoya, American (777) Business 10A, flown: 6436, earned: 0

The trip started out pretty normal. Arriving at the Austin airport I breezed through checkin. American wasn't able to issue my onward boarding passes on Korean like they had been able to with my wife's flight to Beijing on Northwest a week earlier. The flight to Chicago was smooth and on arrival I headed to the Flagship Lounge until the flight departed to Nagoya. I had boarded the plane and everything seemed ready to go when the copilot came on the PA and said the pilot had an emergency and they were trying to find another pilot. My heart skipped a beat at that; as I had only a 60 minute connect in Nagoya. I knew that had been tight connection, but all the flights from Chicago had been arriving on time, and NGO was a small airport so I had been confident I'd make the connection with no problems. We ended up sitting on the ground for 90 minutes after scheduled departure before finally they located a pilot. Meanwhile, I was frantically trying to get in touch with my wife who was in Xian China. I wasn't able to get through to her cell, it was the middle of the night there. We took off around 2:10 PM with an ETA of 5 PM the next day, 20 minutes after my Korean flight departed!


They ran out of the Japanese meal right before they got to my seat, so I chose the salmon instead. I wasn't able to sleep very well during the flight, worried about my connection.

July 10, 2005
Hotel: Centrair Hotel (Nagoya, Japan)
(http://www.centrair.co.jp)
We weren't able to make up all the lost time in flight, and as we were landing I saw the Korean Air flight taxiing to the runway. That was the last flight of the day, which meant I'd miss my connecting flight onto Mongolia. The transfer desk rescheduled me for the early morning flight to Seoul. I found an internet kiosk and checked to see if my wife was online. I literally had missed her by minutes as she had just been in the Korean airlines lounge! I was unsuccessful in getting ahold of my wife via cell; Japan and Korea must be the two countries that don't have GSM service as neither of our phones appeared to work. The Korean desks were closed, and I wasn't successful in trying to communicate with the Korean Air phone to try to have her paged. I hoped that she would continue onto Mongolia when I didn't show up in Seoul in a few hours! Having no other choices, I checked into the Centrair Hotel, located a short walk from the main terminal. The room was decent but small. The bathroom had a shower and a computerized toilet seat/bidet.

July 11, 2005
PHOTOS: http://homepage.mac.com/musick/Mongo...toAlbum55.html
Flight: Nagoya to Seoul, Korean 752 (773) Economy 31J, flown: 606, earned: 0
Flight: Seoul to UlaanBaaatar, Korean 867 (333) Economy 33J, flown: 1226, earned: 0
Hotel: AirGarden Hotel (Seoul, Korea)
(http://www.airgardenhotel.com)
Hotel: Mika Hotel (UlaanBaatar, Mongolia)
(http://www.mika.mn/hotel.htm
Visa: N/A
$1 USD = 1120 Mongolian Tugrik
I'd forgotten to bring Melatonin with me, and wasn't able to sleep very well last night. Around 6 AM I got up and wandered around the deserted terminal. The flight to Korea wasn't departing until 10 AM. I was finally able to get through to the tour company in Mongolia; the guide was with my wife at the opening ceremonies and assured her that I was Ok! I was relieved to hear that she had made it to Mongolia OK when I didn't show up. When the Korean Air desks finally opened, I discovered the transit desk hadn't actually made a reservation for me, luckily the flight wasn't full. They also wanted to charge me the $50 for making a change to the award reservation; I explained that the reason I missed the flight was because of my AA flight arriving late. They had been on separate reservations, so usually that would be tough noogies, but they accepted my explanation and did not charge the fee! The Nagoya airport is brand new, only opening earlier this year. It is in a T-shape, split between the domestic and international terminal. There was not much to see/do once going through security and I wasn't able to check out any of the lounges while there. The flight to Seoul was on a Triple-7 in economy. This was my first time on Korean Airlines and I'll say the service and food was good. The flight was a quick 2 hrs. I had nearly 8 hrs to kill before my flight to Mongolia; I had thought about doing a city tour but when we arrived in Seoul it was raining heavily. I decided to grab a day room at the transit hotel; it took awhile to find as the Seoul airport is huge. The hotel offers day-use depending on length of time, for 6 hrs it was about $50. The transit hotel was located on the 2nd level at the end of the terminal, and was perfect for finally getting some rest. I awoke around 5:45 PM and grabbed some dinner and headed to the gate. The flight to Mongolia looked full, lots of tourists and Mongolians with huge shopping bags. The flight to Mongolia was on an Airbus 333. We departed quite late and didn't arrive at the ULN airport until nearly 1 AM, over an hour and a half late. Immigration was surprisingly easy; they had several lines open for foreigners and locals and I was one of the first ones in the foreigner lines. A visa is not required for Americans for stays under 90 days. The tour guide Nara was waiting for me as I exited the baggage area. We drove about 20 minutes into town towards the hotel. People were out in the streets celebrating Nadaam and fireworks were going off right above our hotel. The tour company had booked us into the Mika hotel, which is near the Japanese embassy. My wife was waiting anxiously for me by that point! We talked for awhile, she described all the events that I had missed today, she had seen the horse races and opening ceremonies of the games. She said that when she arrived at the Mongolia airport, the tour company did not have our names on the list; just the tour company name. I had told her the name of our tour guide, but she hadn't remembered. She had gone up to the Korean desk to find out where I was, and luckily the tour guide had come looking for her.. I'm not sure what we would have done if she had gone off to another hotel; I guess at least our phones worked in Mongolia and we would have been able to get in touch that way. Eek.. we will make better plans next time! She had met some other Americans at the opening ceremonies that said they had experienced something similar; the best plan if they were separated was to continue along with the travel plans. The Mika hotel room was huge, with a decent sized bathroom with hot water. There was no A/C however and we slept with the windows open.

July 12, 2005
Hotel: Mika Hotel (UlaanBaatar, Mongolia)
(http://www.mika.mn/hotel.htm)
I was totally wiped out this morning, but we had to have an early start to go see the Nadaam ceremonies. We had a simple breakfast of toast, jam, yogurt and tea at the hotel before our guide arrived. Several other tourists were joining us today in the minibus for the 2nd day of ceremonies. Naadam is a combination Olympics/national holiday in Mongolia, always starting on July 11th. Mainly an excuse to party down, the games demonstrate the three 'manly' sports of wrestling, horce racing and archery. I had missed the horse racing yesterday afternoon, but the archery and wrestling competitions were continuing, in the Naadam stadium on the south side of town. This was my first time to see the city by daylight; it surprised me being a lot more modern than I expected. It was an interesting mix, new Korean and Japanese cars jostled on the roads with older Russian vehicles. The Mongolians have strongly embraced capitalism and the West since the downfall of communism in the early 1990s but thankfully there wasn't yet a McDonalds or Starbucks to be seen. The stadium itself was surrounded with dozens vendors and their gers (yurts), the traditional Mongolian nomadic house. Once inside the stadium, which is plastered with ads for Coca-Cola and local businesses (all in Cyrillic, the Mongolians use Cyrillic with a few additional letters), we sat down to watch the wrestling. Unfortunately we really needed binoculars; even with the best 'tourist' seats, the wrestlers looked tiny out in the middle of the field. The wrestlers would face off against each other; both of them dancing about wearing gaudy blue or red speedos with a frontless shirt/vest. The reason for this is to prevent women from entering the wrestling, at one time a woman entered in disguise and won the event! We soon headed over to the archery competition. There were a half dozen Mongolians wearing their traditional silk costume (del) and conical hats standing in a line shooting towards theline of judges with the targets literally at their feet. Quite a spectacle, the judges would point to a target, and the archer would send the arrow (blunt ended) screaming towards it! The archers were all ages and both men and women are allowed to enter this event. It was quite warm by this time and looking around for shade we noticed a tent where there was the sound of chanting. This was the ankle bone shooting competition, a team event, which consisted of flicking a bone or plastic chip towards a sheep ankle bone target. Team members sat on one side, the opponent's team on the other side of the target, both chanting and singing. Several of the wooden tracks used to flick the chip were quite elaborate; some had level bubbles built into them! After the ankle bone shooting, the tour guide took us to a local restaurant for lunch. Next we were off to see a folkloric dance and song show. The wind had started to pick up by this time and gritty dust was blowing through town, coming off the Gobi heralding the approach of a storm. The storm broke just as we arrived at the theater, and what a storm it was.. rain was coming down so hard you couldn't see across the parking lot! As soon as it started, it was over, and the sun came out again. The show was fantastic, with fabulous costumes and songs including throatsingers. We headed back to the Naadam stadium for the closing ceremonies. This is where all the awards were given out for the events. The winning horses were brought out just below us, and policemen lined up around the stadium to keep the audience from jumping out of the stands; apparently touching a winning horse is considered good luck! Mongolian horses are small, barely 5 feet tall, but they are very strong and sturdy. The horse races are around 25kms, and some years some horses are literally raced to death. All of the announcements were in Mongolian, so it was a little hard to follow what was going on! The tour guide took us to a Mexican/Indian restaurant for dinner, seemingly an odd combination for Mongolia, it turned out to be excellent! Chinggis beer is quite good.

July 13, 2005
Hotel: Steppe Nomads Camp (Mongolia)
(http://www.selenatravel.com/trips/st...omads_camp.htm)
Our new guide greeted us this morning. His name was Baggy and would be our guide for the next few days, it would just be my wife and I so we ended up with a private tour! We would be going out to one of the tourist ger camps for a few days to get the feel of traditional Mongolian life. On the way out of town we stopped at Gandan Monastery, one of the few to remain open during the communist era. This is still a functioning monastery with yellow and red-robed monks chanting prayers. The camp was a few hours drive east of the capital. The roads were in excellent condition (newly paved by the Japanese), and once we left town the barren landscape of treeless grassy hills continued to the horizon. We soon turned offroad to the camp, and ended up getting lost several times as the plain was crisscrossed with tracks, none of them were labeled. It was our guide's first time out to this camp, so he wasn't familiar with the route. We finally found the right route after asking some locals, the setting of the camp was absolutely amazing right next to the Kherlen river surrounded by tall hills. A herd of horses was drinking down by the river. There were a half dozen gers setup with a permanent cabin which held the restaurant and bathrooms. No electricity, no cell phone signal, heaven. The Steppe Nomads camp is setup within a wildlife reserve, run by local families. The camp had an expedition to search for the Argali (bighorn) sheep that afternoon, I set out with some other tourists in 4x4s across the plain and up the mountain. We caught a glimpse of some of the sheep as we arrived, but they soon disappeared into the rocks. We clambered up the peak and managed to spot a few more. It was getting dark by this point as we headed down the hill and back to camp. We slept in the ger that night, inside was a simple arrangement of two beds and a wood burning stove. The ger had a center post with 81 spokes radiating outward to meet up with the lattice walls. The entire frame was then covered with heavy felt and a canvas covering. The front door (which always faces south) was painted bright orange with designs.

July 14, 2005
Hotel: Steppe Nomads Camp (Mongolia)
(http://www.selenatravel.com/trips/st...omads_camp.htm)[/b]
Our guide took us out in the reserve this morning to search for more wildlife; swans and other birds which were usually found in some nearby lakes. The scenery was surreal; still no trees anywhere to be seen. Only 3% of the country is forested, mainly in the northern and western areas. We returned to camp for lunch, and our guide showed us how to play games with sheep anklebones. There are 4 different sides to each bone, labled camel, sheep, goat and horse. There was no end of games you could play, one was similar to jacks, another was a race around a track, etc. Baggy also taught us Mongolian animal onomatopoeia; sheep say maa, roosters say cockerycoo, cows say mboo. Baggy and I then practiced archery for awhile, I finally was able to hit the target consistently at about 50 yards. That afternoon we rode horses several miles to a local family's ger. Mongolians are very big on hospitality; we were welcomed inside their ger and they placed out cups of airag (fermented mare's milk) and some milk sweets. The airag wasn't nearly as bad as I was expecting, tasting very much like a weak buttermilk. The milk sweets were good too, almost like a clotted cream, if you ignored the flies. I had to remember not to use my left hand to eat. The Mongolian's diet consists entirely of milk and meat; very few vegetables, yet they all live to their 80s or 90s! The father showed us several of his former horse racing trophies and the grandmother came in wearing an American flag on her head!

July 15, 2005
Hotel: Mika Hotel (UlaanBaatar, Mongolia)
(http://www.mika.mn/hotel.htm)
We left the ger camp this morning to head back to the capital. Today was our last full day in Mongolia, but we still had plenty on the schedule. We visited the Winter Palace of the Bogd Khan, the last king of Mongolia. The Palace was mainly traditional Chinese-style Buddist temple, but there was also a Russian-style building donated by the Tsar Nicolas that contained a museum. We then visited the Natural History museum which had several dinosaur skeletons that had been discovered in the Gobi desert. We then went to an overlook to view the city. The blocks of Soviet apartments were more apparent here; with the giant steam pipes running all over the city used for heating the buildings. For dinner we went to a Mongolian BBQ restaurant. Now Mongolian BBQ isn't really Mongolian (our guide had never had it before), and this restaurant was actually a US chain (http://www.bdsmongolianbarbeque.com)!

July 16, 2005
Flight: UlaanBaatar to Moscow, Aeroflot 564 (Tu204) Business 2A, flown: 2884, earned: 5778 (SU)
Hotel: Holiday Inn Lesnaya (Moscow, Russia) $135
(http://www.ichotelsgroup.com/h/d/6c/1/en/hd/mowlu?irs=y)
Visa: $160 from VisaHQ
$1 USD = 28 Russian Rouble
Baggy arrived at 6:30 this morning to take us to the airport for our 8:05 flight to Moscow. Checkin was a bit chaotic but we soon received our boarding passes and paid the departure tax ($12). We hugged our tourguide goodbye, and gave him a $60 tip, our remaining Mongolian currency. We were so sad to leave, we wanted to take him home with us! Once past immigration, there was a small business class lounge with snacks and an internet terminal. Once they started boarding the flight to Moscow, we held back until most of the line had gone through security. We boarded the Aeroflot Tupelov 204 via a jetbridge. The Tu204 is very similar to a 757, twin engine with winglets. Business class was 5 rows of 2-2. The seats were high square backed seats, similar to the old AA woolly mammoth seats. The cabin was clean and decorated in dark blue and grey, with orange accents. Our flight took off on time for the 7 hr flight to Moscow. Service was very good onboard. An appetizer of coldcuts and olives was served, followed by a chicken sandwich for lunch. I slept the rest of the flight before we started our descent into Sheremetyevo (SVO) airport. We arrived almost 40 minutes early, and even after disembarking via stairs and shuttled to the terminal it was only 10:30 AM. We were the first ones in line at immigration and were through in minutes, I was quite surprised. This was my first time to Russia so did not know what to expect. I was glad we were early as the Delta flight from JFK arrived right after ours and the immigration line was huge. However once through we had to wait almost an hour for our luggage to come through! I had pre-arranged a car service to take us to our hotel for $30, that included waiting time if the flight was late. The driver was still waiting for us when we finally retrieved our bags, and after stopping at the ATM we drove off in an old LADA. We were staying at the Holiday Inn Lesnaya, a new hotel a few blocks from the Belorusskaya station and right around the corner from the Marriott Tverskaya. We had scored a $90 (2 for 1) rate, which is great for Moscow. Unfortunately, everything else at the hotel was very expensive. It was past lunchtime by now, we walked down the street to a local restaurant where lunch ended up costing $80! We tried to find a laundry that could wash our clothes quickly; apparently there aren't any. We had to use the hotel service which was $85, even after washing most of our stuff in the sink! We then walked down the street to a kiosk to stock our fridge with drinks. We were exhausted by this point (Mongolia was 5 hrs ahead of Moscow), and we ended up crashing at 6 PM!

July 17, 2005
Hotel: Holiday Inn Lesnaya (Moscow, Russia) $90
(http://www.ichotelsgroup.com/h/d/6c/1/en/hd/mowlu?irs=y)
Breakfast at the hotel this morning was $18 each; we both snuck out a couple of bananas and bottled water for later. As our friends weren't arriving until the afternoon (and would probably be dog tired even then), we decided to go for some sightseeing. We caught the metro from Belorusskaya to the Kremlin, from where we walked to the Cathedral of Christ the Savior; a huge golden domed church that is the largest church in Russia. It was rebuilt in the 1990s after being torn down by Stalin. Next we visited the Pushkin Museum. It was quite impressive, with lots of Egyptian, Persian and Roman artifacts. The weather was gorgeous so we wandered around the streets for awhile before ending up in Old Arbat street, which is now a pedestrian mall of shopping and entertainment. The Hard Rock Cafe is here, and McDonalds too. We had lunch, then back to the hotel to meet our friends. They had arrived, but D's luggage was missing, he was headed back to the airport to sort it out. S. was tired as he had flown in from Houston. My wife and I headed out for some more sightseeing, this time to the Tetryakov museum, we had just enough time to see it before closing. The Tetryakov was well worth the visit, with amazing paintings by the old Russian masters. The lifelike color and textures of some of the paintings were simply amazing.

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