Novosibirsk to Ulan-Bator

June 12, 2013

Our stay in Novosibirsk was really very short. After we arrived in the hotel and did my opa-nap of 15 minutes we looked for a restaurant, where one of the guests was so kind to translate the menu to us and pass on our choice, translated in Russian, to the waiter.

Our handling agent Anatoli did a good job for us in every respect. He sent a taxi in the morning, helped change money and slalomed us through checks and customs. It a appeared he was a helicopter pilot only replacing someone else for two days. The next day he would travel with his 11 year old grandson for a holiday to Vietnam. He got my double sympathy after this information.

We prepared the a/c on the platform surrounded by an army of people with an unclear mission, at least unclear to us.

For the second time I used the magical instrument constructed by Leen. They could not understand that the bottle with drain fuel could be kept by them. For us that meant no waiting.

We flew a SID which made us get back to the airport again, just to let the a/c gain height in order to pass safely the mountains surrounding Novosibirsk.

Thereafter we passed many mountains until we came closer to the Mongolian border. Exceptionally we had coffee on board. We must have learned something of our African trip.

Monique and Maas got a special place on the portside of the cabin

Wild landscape followed. This trip allowed me to restart the Latin studybook of Theun, called Disco 1. I repeated the chapter about the conquering of Troj, dealing with the ablativus of which I forgot all.

The appraoch to Ulan-Bator was beautiful. Also here the controllers used meters instead of feet so we changed the Altimeter indication in the Apex Honeywell displays. Then we discovered the city of Ulan-Bator on Final.

It took us more than two hours to fuel the a/c and take out all of our belongings, mainly our laundry. I also took the Sony computer. Somewhere on the way out of the airport, or in the taxi I must have lost this computer much to my regret. Search actions have been initiated but sofar no success.

Now we have planned two days of rest in Ulan-Bator. Today we met Ryan van Geest already, Dutch origin as his name indicates. He flies passengers all over Mongolia in a Cessna Caravan. In Canada he has been flying a PC-12 so we had a lot to discuss.

Tomorrow 11 June will be our first day of rest. Hopefully it will also be the day that our computer gets back.

At this time and place we have covered nearly 6.000 Nm or one third of our entire Jules Verne trip 2013. So far, so good with an exception of the lost computer.

Will be continued after departing from Ulan-Bator. By that time I will call it certainly by a somewhat different name like Ulanbataar or so.