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Hello from Karakorum. It's Genghis Khan's ancient capital in the middle of Mongolia from the 13th century. Actually, the Manchurians destroyed it in the 14th century and now it resembles a town in the UP with one gas station and a bank but the signs are in Cyrillic and so that's kinda cool. There's a great Buddhist monastery here built in the 16th century from Karakorum's ruins (then the Soviets destroyed a lot of it in the 1920s but now it's partially rebuilt). Mongolia is excellent. Six of us are driving around the country in a 4WD, Russian version of a VW bus. The driver is a huge Mongolian man who knows a few English words like "shit" and he drives like a madman but there are very few cars and so the risk is minimal. Our guide is a 25 year-old Mongolian woman who studied in Florida and so she has a great American accent: "So, that's, like, the monastery..." She's very interested in geology and paleontology and is a wealth of information. The two others are an American IT worker turned volunteer in India and an Indian woman who gave up her American corporate job to volunteer to help rural Indians (darn do-gooder not getting paid). We are camping and staying in yurts with nomadic families. Mongolia is so interesting in that apart from the few towns, all land is public land and so 1.5 million Mongolians just roam around in their yurts and make camp where ever. There are 2.5 million Mongolians and 45 million livestock here and so most everyone grazes their animals and moves 3 or 4 times a year. There are almost no fences in this massive country and we just camp. Camping is better than yurts because the yurts house a lot of dried cheese and yogurt and so there are a lot of flies. Mongolia is also interesting after India and Nepal because everyone is so stocky from all of the dairy and meat. They may not be wealthy but they get a lot of calories. xoc