For everyone going to the small village of Tariat: a nice place to stay is in a ger at Ma Bagsh. The gers are very clean and well kept. It's at the beginning of the village, right in the same street that ends in the bridge going into the nature park to the White Lake. Ma Bagsh in the Lonely Planet and indeed does have great fresh food, like it says in the book. You have to wait for it a while but then you have a delicious meal for sure! The woman who runs it, is very kind and helpful. I first stayed at Tunga's Guesthouse but that wasn't nearly as good as Ma Bagsh. After one night in Tunga's guesthouse we went looking for another place because we weren't happy at all at this 'guesthouse' which is just a big room with 3 beds and if there's more people you have to sleep on the floor. That I do not mind, it was just her attitude. Tunga, the woman who runs it, was all about the money. From the second we met her she kept going on about all the things and tours she could arrange for us and kept asking us about our plans. We just wanted to relaxe a little and browse and think about what we wanted to do next, but she kept 'pushing' us into all these things she was ready to arrange. Unlike the LP says, you can't do your laundry there. In fact she literally told us that it was in the LP only because she did it for the guy who wrote for the LP at the time. We asked her information about getting a jeep to Moron, where we wanted to go ourselves by hiring a driver. She then came up with all these horrible stories about people that had died on the way from Tariat to Moron and the we should not go there and that it was very very expensive. Instead, she advised us to stay some longer at her guesthouse and then her husband could drive us back to Ulan Bataar for way too much money... We didn't trust her and asked around in town where people indeed did say the road to Moron was difficult, but no horror stories. We found a driver very easily and did the trip to Moron which was long, but possible. Tunga just lied to us for the sake of her own business. When we moved to Ma Bagsh on our second day in Tariat, Tunga became furious and charged us 10.000 Togrok for the night (5000 is normal). We just paid and left. Luckily Ma Bagsh turned out to be a much more friendly and sincere person so we quickly forgot about the horrible Tunga lady. Such a pity that some places go really bad once they're in the Lonely Planet.
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everbrite
You might want to post this information about Tunga on the guidebook updates section so that the editors will see it.
Ruth
3

jumblina
That is a shame... I was one of the people who originally recommended her after staying there in 2004. At the time she let us pitch our tent in her khaashaa for free (although we did go horse-riding through her) and helped to resolve a misunderstanding with her driver. I guess that's what can happen when people start losing sight of the basics.
Pro tip