Having spent enough time in cold slow vans and buses in Mongolia to last our entire lives, we decided to fly to Ulaanbaatar from Dalanzadgad. There is a very nice airline that serves countryside locations in Mongolia, but no matter how good their inflight snacks are Mongolian weather still is a wildcard.  We were supposed to leave at 9 A.M. but didn’t leave until around noon. (One exciting discovery that we made when we were delayed was that there was high speed wireless internet at the airport!) About half way through our 1 hour 20 minute flight an announcement came over the intercom that made it sound like we were landing in Khentii, the province east of Ulaanbaatar, instead of Ulaanbaatar. Brian had been asleep during the announcement and didn’t believe me until our plane banked to the right.  We landed on a dirt, snow, and ice runway at one of the least inspiring airports in the world-here:

Here is our cute little plane:

After an hour in the drafty and entirely unsecured airport, (people were walking freely in and out of the airport and the airline never did a second security check when we got back on) we re-boarded and flew over beautiful snow covered hills