Day 231: Seeing UB's other side

This morning we tried a few different bakeries for breakfast but they were all closed, so we ended up at the Bon Bon Cafe, just across the road from the apartment. Unfortunately, we ran out of money, so I had to hotfoot it to the nearest ATM to re-cash so we could pay for the girls' hot chocolate.

We ate quickly and were back in the apartment by the time that Anna arrived with Deggy (?), our driver for the day (and our tickets to Beijing... hooray!). She then left us in his capable hands, and we all drove out through the centre of UB and out into its outer outskirts, eventually pulling off the main road adjacent to a small settlement. There, waiting for us, was another car, which we followed around to a small compound fenced off with corrugated iron. Getting out of the car, we were greeted by the young woman who had led us here – the owner of a felting business that she was running from the rather delapidated house in the compound. Inside, we were shown the various processes that are involved in making felt, and some of the products that they made and met some of the staff. Panoramic Journeys supports the business and had given us some of their slippers when we first arrived. We added to those with a few sweet little felt horses. 

On the way back to UB, we asked Deggy to stop at a supermarket so that we could buy some pot noodles and other supplies for tomorrow's train to Beijing. He took us to a very fancy new shopping mall, with an interesting range of fancy shops (but some a very rudimentary parking lot), but it had obviously only opened recently and was still only partially populated, with an awful lot of empty space still yet to be filled. There was some sort of early-years beauty pageant going on, and a very impressive dinosaur exhibition (I reckon they had a better collection of skeletons than the dinosaur museum), but they didn't have a supermarket, so we drove a bit further back the way we had come and went to a nice big, bright, shiny one. 

Then it was back to UB, where we had a hurried lunch at Luna Blanca, the vegan restaurant. I ran back to meet up with Deggy again. Together, we drove through the centre of UB and picked up Anna and then we all continued on to the so-called ger districts. Rapid climatic change and a series of sever winters has seen enormous numbers of Mongolia's herders give up the nomadic life and move to UB. Virtually all of them end up in the ger districts, and today, more than half of UB's population of two million or so people live in this vast unplanned slum. I was visiting to see the districts for myself and to interview Shari Tvrdik of Flourishing Future, a charity that works with families there. Originally from Chicago, Shari has been living in the ger districts for seven years with her family, and the insights she gave me into the realities of life in the districts will be invaluable for my feature. 

When we were done, Deggy dropped me back at the apartment and then Kate, the girls and I all went out for an excellent Indian meal at a nearby restaurant called Namaste.