Our next big trip is two weeks in Mongolia with the specific focus of Snow Leopard and Pallas’ Cat, organised by Chris Townend of Wise birding and Tumen Khumbaa from Tum-Eco Tours. You need a visa to visit Mongolia and it has to be collected from the Mongolian Embassy, either by you or by a representative. The basic one costs £40.00 and takes at least 2 days, £60.00 to collect on the day or £120 if you get one of the agencies to do it. I objected to paying more to the agency than the cost of the visa so we chose a grotty day, caught a train from Headcorn and went to London for the day.
The Mongolian Embassy is situated just south of Hyde Park in Kensington among many other embassies. The Visa department was down a stairway in the basement and there was quite a long queue which took us over an hour to hand in our extensive bits of paperwork. We then went to visit the Natural History Museum but the queues there were miles long so we opted for the Science Museum, where we had lunch and then wandered around the lower floors, which were very interesting.
To collect your visa you have to return between 4-4.15 so we left the Museum and made it back in time to walk in, collect our passports with their visas and then head back to Charing Cross for the train home. Mongolia here we come!
No comments:
Post a Comment