We left for Mongolia at 03:30 on day 5 (19 July) as the Chinese informed us that we needed to check in 3 hours before departure. Turns out the check-in staff hadn’t been given the same information, so we checked in about 1 hour 45 mins before departure, had to wolf down some breakfast from the only place open in the departure lounge and run to our departure gate. It’s all good fun. On arrival in Ulaanbaatar only 1 bag was missing and our busses were there ready to take us to site. After trying to determine the location of the missing bag, we headed south to a piece of land just outside the National Park near a town called Zuunmod were we were greeted with 7 fully erected gers and 4 floors. We then proceeded to erect the gers under instruction from the Mongolian Rover Scouts (but making endless mistakes leading to the leader redoing knots and such over and over), and some dug our toilet pits a little way from site.
Once the gers had been setup, we had a small opening ceremony where we were presented with a small gift from Mongolia. We set about making our first Mongolian dinner - mutton stew.
