We found out that there was a town called Moron in Mongolia :D So of course, we had to check it out.

Flying there sounded a little dangerous.

So we decided to hitch :D

First we prepared by making a nice sign while we were still in Ulaanbaatar.

Then we stocked up on some food from the supermarket (buckwheats, oats, noodles, nuts, dried fruit, water ($5 each)), and bought a bus ticket from Ulaanbaatar to Darkhan. Hitchhiking out of a big city is always a huge hassle, so since the bus to Darkhan was only about $5 and took us more than 3 hours in the right direction, we thought we would save ourselves the hassle.

We took the city bus from Ulaanbaatar center to the Dragon Bus Station and caught the 1pm bus to Darkhan (this bus goes every hour). We asked the bus driver to stop a few km before Darkhan, where the main road intersected with the road that goes northwest, towards Moron. There are only about 4 roads in Mongolia so it’s not too hard to find your way around :D.

We walked down that road for about a half hour without trying to hitchhike, and then a car stopped and a young local guy offered us a lift. We didn’t even have our thumbs out :) He was very nice, knew a tiny bit of English and loved Russian rap. He told us that his girlfriend was beautiful and that she liked to take selfies. When we got out of his car in a village called Khutul, his girlfriend was waiting for us to take a selfie :).

After the selfie, we walked down the road for a little, but since it was already getting dark, we decided to find a spot for our tent and forget about hitching further. We walked past Khutul (which didn’t take long) and then walked off the side of the road for 50 meters or so, behind some small sandy hills and pitched the tent there. The cool thing about Mongolia is that it’s almost all nomad’s land (and there’s a lot of open land), so you can basically pitch up a tent anywhere and you don’t have to worry about people bothering you about it.

We cooked buckwheat on a gas burner and rested up for the next day of hitching to Moron.

Total expenses: $5 groceries + $5 bus= $10
Accommodation: tent
Food: cooked

(Photos by Felix)