A Trip in Mongolia - Impressions of Sara
This trip was made possible entirely by Wolfgang's ingenuity and persistence. He had found out about a meeting being held in spring in Vienna on Traditional Mongolian Medicine, and arranged for us to go. We met many wonderful representatives of the country at this time, including Dr. Tsevegsuran of the Mongolian National University. Since this meeting, he had kept contact with Dr. Tseveg (for short), and gradually arranged that we would make a botanical expedition in western Mongolia together, through numerous emails and calls. Our flight was taking off from Vienna, stopping in Moscow, Russia, and touching down in Ulaan bataar, Mongolia (the capital city). I guess I should have had a premonition of how the trip was going to go when we arrived at the airport and no one had heard of the airline (Mongolian Air....). It turned out we were flying the first leg with Austrian Airlines, although I gave a wistful look at my bags as I checked them in, not sure if I would see them again. During the next three weeks, Wolfgang and I would be traveling with two of our European colleagues and several Mongolian researchers, collecting plants in the mountains, steppes and on the edge of the Gobi Desert!
