Hello from the empty row of my United Airlines flight from Beijing to San Francisco. It's the little things in long travel days that mean a lot especially since our total travel time from Ulan to Bator to Denver is over 40 hours.

Can you say jet lag? I thought you could.

We had a busy couple of days in Ulan Bator. My main priority was to find more accurate maps of the entire Gobi desert - ones that clearly showed the topography, wells and most importantly the maze of roads that criss cross everywhere. We drove to a small map store where two old women sat behind a long glass case. Judging from the location and state of the shop, we may have been the first customers of the day (week?). But clearly the shop was a diamond in the rough and after pouring over a few maps, one of the clerks pulled out a large slab of maps folded in half and protected by brown parchment paper secured with a long string. She paged through the quadrant numbers and pulled out one map after another.

From these maps, I will be able to chart a bigger route for next year, determine the location of a variety of old wells and most importantly, get a variety of gps positions that I can input into my Garmin GPS and inReach for easier navigation.

Later we drove to the outskirts of Ulan Bator to check out the The Genghis Khan Equestrian Statue the 130 foot-tall statue of Chinggis Khaan. Side note: throughout our journey J repeatedly made a point to correct westerners spelling (and saying) Chinggis Khaan's name.

Anyway, the statue is located about 35 miles outside of U.B. where according to legend, Chinggis found a golden whip. The statue is symbolically pointed east towards his birthplace. We spent a while looking through the variety of ancient artifacts and then climbed up into the top of the horse where we were treated to a panoramic view of the surrounding area.

Back at the hotel, we spent the next several hours carefully taking apart our Trek bikes and packing them and the rest of our Gobi dust-encrusted gear for home.

J and Balu stopped by the next morning to take us to the airport. Along the way, we stopped briefly and at the dinosaur museum. We said a rushed good bye at the airport and parted ways. So many people come in and out our our lives. I will probably see them again, but Tim may not. Regardless, our lives are all the better for the time we did spend together. After a little bit of finagling over excess baggage fees, we were through security and on the plane.

A while later, we were airborne flying effortlessly over the same Gobi desert that we had come to know so intimately over the past two weeks. While it clearly wasn't enough time to gain a comprehensive understanding of this place, our journey was a thorough primer.

Before this trip, Mongolia had been a distant and mysterious place to me. I had a few vague notions about what it might be like. Some of them turned out to be correct. Many were not. Through this adventure, I have gained a better understand and appreciation of a new place and the people who live there. And if that is my only takeaway from this trip, then it was a successful adventure.

But it wasn't the only thing I learned, but more on that at a later date yet to be determined :)

Image: Tim and I and our bikes and the Gobi.