The inexorable drunken post; 2348y620391877ty.

Oh man, I apologise in advance. This dispatch is going to remind me why I don't usually drink. Only abroad, he says. Only abroad or when others buy at home.

Darkham - Erdenet - Tsetserleg; that's the route I've paved the past five-odd days. Three separate capitals of three different providences, each small and quaint with their own distinct charm, and coal plants, good ones. Darkham offered me mutton in a most welcomely digestable guise, Erdenet afforded me steamy dancing with perhaps the most ravishing woman I have laid eyes upon in my relatively lust-free life, but Tsetserleg I remain fondest of. For one thing, the name is so darned cool, pronounced Tsztszrliig, formidable rolling rrrr and spitting, whispery other bits (try it, and fail, over and over again). It's set amid the muscle-bound brand of mountains that romantics gawk at all day, which I did, one day, from inside a monastery destroyed 70 years in the unwarranted wrath of the Stalinist purges, which if you don't know about you should perhaps investigate, lest mass social injustices go unchecked. The kids around town were bright and curious and assailed me with questions I didn't even begin to understand, snotty-nosed, weepy-eyed, who laughed and laughed and laughed each time I tried my feeble hand at Monguloor, which cut deep man, deep, but then redeemed themselves by guiding me home to their humble family's gers to indulge in some airag, sweet liquid airag, newfound nectar of the gods, beside a tranquilising fire that crackled and sparked hypnotically. And at one eerie stage, there floated an ominous grey bloop of a cloud in an otherwise blue sky, which cloud I was sure would bring mass snow, but in actuality brought only wind, a lot of it sweeping through quickly, sudden violent gushes enough to topple camels, in it dirt which stung my skin sooo bad and elicited thoughts of Lawrence in Arabia, queerly. Also, during the sandstorm, a sheep stumbled off a cliff to a death I would not wish upon anyone, and I saw it all unfold with my own two eyes, and I was traumatised to the extent that I had to have a little lie down in my hotel bed thereafter. I think I might actually still be scarred or scabbing - you should have seen it, really, awfully horrible: slide, tumble, tumbling tumbling tumbling, bump and grind, launch, drop, freefall- splatter, red splayed everywhere. A daring Expressionist painting.

Look here: I have so much to write, so much to tell, but I have to digest and comprehend it first before committing it to paper. Plus, you know, I haven't had a beer for an entire half-hour now, I'm sobering up, and I think I just saw I person I know and like walk by outside, whom I will now chase down boisterously, like a drunk, like half the rest of UB's population at the moment, god help their livers.

Just know that I am healthy and looking forward to tomorrow.

Much love, Mark.