The climb was pretty uncomfortable on the way, it was slow but it was cool to see the scenery. I noticed that the trees got smaller as we went up, the conductor said this was due to elevation. The trees got more air and sunlight the higher they were, so they didn't need to grow as much. I noticed some weird rustling that followed us as we got closer to the top. It was in a very loose path, not really following us but doing so at the same time. Some other people noticed it too, as I heard them say, “What is that noise?” I decided to ignore it and focus on other things. Then a thought stuck in my head, “What if what the conductor said was serious?”

    Once we arrived at the top of the mountain, it was incredibly cold. Luckily I brought an extra thick jacket just in case the conditions were bad. It was very windy as well. I heard of a rumor that you could spill water on the top and it would instantly freeze. Sadly, I tried that but it did not work. I was not really worried about what the conductor said now, I was just admiring the scenery. I bought a postcard from the commerce area and mailed it to myself which took a while to arrive in hindsight. 

There were certain levels of the mountain you could also access if you were to hike or drive. My family and I decided to go there, and again I noticed rustling as if there were animals. I thought to myself “Is it just deer or something like that?” Once we arrived at the lower areas of the mountain, we decided to walk around the forest area there. I noticed there were some statues of the deer, it was almost as if they were there for years. Then I saw a vague image of a bear just roaming around, and a deer that was trying to be quiet. My family and I instantly left, and went back to the upper part of the mountain. We reported what we saw and it was then where they realized that's what happened to the deer statues. That thought from earlier came back, about how the conductor mentioned them and how actual deers would get near them. It must have been a bear that chased them, and tried to bring the statue of a deer back to its space. A weird coincidence surprisingly. After we reported the incident, we left and went back to the hotel, hoping nothing that weird would happen again.

We went on the elevator with a ton of other people. For some reason, it felt very chilling. I didn’t really feel like it was 100% safe to be on the elevator, I even noticed some creaking. I tried telling my family about what I thought,  but they just thought I was overreacting, as I was only about ten or eleven during this. I kept hearing some sort of construction while we were rising up. It was sort of vague as if it was just normal elevator noise or something else. We kept rising up, the elevator was surprisingly fast and everyone was so loud in the elevator. However, we came to a halting stop all of a sudden. 

The speaker inside the elevator said “Please wait, we have encountered a minor inconvenience.” We waited there just for a while, we had no portable chargers so we could not waste any battery on our electronics. For a couple of hours I just stood there wondering, “if my parents had listened to me, would we be in this situation?” It just kinda frustrated me as a kid, it was to the point I just did not want to really speak to them.  I got tired so eventually I just took a nap on my dad's back, and eventually I just woke up back at our cousins house. Apparently what had happened was that something went wrong, as I noticed those workers looked stressed. They had spent over 4 hours actually trying to fix the elevator, I was glad I managed to skip a lot of that time, and I got satisfaction knowing that I was right.

    On the way there I kept noticing some peculiar smell, it was not too fragrant so it was just really weird. It smelled like some sort of plant, and my sister noticed it too. We tried looking for what may have caused it in the trunk, but could never find it. We kind of just accepted that we had to smell it for the entire ride, so we decided to cover our noses. When we finally arrived there, we still smelled it in our trunk. It was kind of worrying me out, so I decided to spray on Febreeze to stop the smell. It sort of worked but kinda fused the scents so it smelled like grass and a clean room. 

    When we put our luggage on, the security guards were confused. The dogs had smelled my bag. I started to worry, because I didn’t know if that smell was coming from my bag. As far as I was aware, there was nothing illegal or anything. The guards decided to strip all of our bags for about an hour, and we missed our first flight. My parents were really stressed and didn't want to be late, it had been a year since we saw my grandparents and extended family. Eventually I realized that I didn’t forget anything, rather I put in some Mongolian herb that had a very particular smell. I decided not to tell my family, as I did not want to be lectured at. Eventually our bags came back, and somehow they did not find the herb. We had to wait another day, so we rented a hotel in New York, and eventually flew to Mongolia the next day.