A typical Mongolian road: (don’t forget the photo page! And the second one)
Day 3, 4
The third day of our trek took us to a hot spring. It was great to get a douche after a few days in the wilderness. The spring was pretty cool. There was a small steaming stream that was super hot – way too hot to get in. Fortunately, there was a small, cool water stream that joined the hot stream just below a bath house. We jumped in where the streams met and arranged rocks to mix the water. When it was our turn to go in the bath house we used big jugs to pour the hot water into the tubs. There were locals doing laundry and bathing.
Before the day was out we stopped by a big waterfall. It probably was about fifty feet high and poured into a huge hole and canyon in the Orkhon River Valley. That’s where we would spend the next two nights.
This ger camp was more aimed toward tourists as it had several guest gers for visitors to stay in. That night we learned a great new card game. It’s one I’ve seen several times on the streets of Beijing being played by old guys. To play you have to group suits and numbers and then put them on the table all while trying to get rid of your cards. Every turn you get to put one card down and pick up a new one. There was another driver guy there and we played with him and our driver. We even kept score and had to pay a few hundred Turreg when it was all over.
The next day we went on a great horse ride. We rode up and down the Orkhon River Valley passing by the occasional ger camp and enjoying the hot Mongolian sunshine.
We passed a river and I wanted to jump in so I suggested we take a douche. So we did. We all jumped in the water in our birthday suits. It was pretty cold but the water was sort of muddy so we didn’t stay in for too long.
Day 5
On our fifth day we left the Orkhon River Valley and headed for the sand dunes. There’s a strip of sand that I guess is the northern tip of the Gobi desert. It was really hot and sandy there.
Around lunchtime, before we got to the dunes, we were just cruising around when our driver, Billick, suddenly pulls a sharp U-turn and we start bounding over the grassland not following any road. We were all like, uh.. where are we going? We just did the only thing we could, sit in the jeep and see where we’d end up. Sure enough, we come to a little family having a picnic lunch out in the sun. That is what was great about our driver. He knew all these great spots and had friends along the way that he could take us to.
For lunch we ate the Mongolian bread things with a yogurt cheese sauce thing that you scoop. There was even good Mongolian vodka, and by tradition everyone had three hits. We also passed around a bottle of snuff. It stung.
After lunch the family challenged Wendel to a foot race. He won and had to take a celebratory shot. It was about 12:30pm.
We also checked out some cool monasteries. One was actually real. When we walked in, the monks where doing their singing thing. This was a lot cooler that what I’ve seen in the past because it felt real. There were absolutely no other tourists. Usually there’s a bunch around and you just think they’re doing the singing thing for the tourists. That wasn’t the case here. The second one we checked out was much bigger. It was the first monastery in Mongolia.
For the night we slept at a tourist camp but they didn’t cook us any food so we cooked our own. Before dinner we hiked up the mountain behind camp. The place was basically in a natural crater with one side left open. It was fun climbing because we really had to work to get up the rocks. It took a little while but the view from above was pretty sweet. On the way down we found some rhubarb. I ate a stick while I was hiking down, it was really good.
Day 6
All we did on the last day was drive back to Ulaanbaatar. Oh wait, we also went shooting at the army place that was closed before. We shot a huge sniper rifle and an AK-47. There wasn’t as much kick as I expected. With the sniper I shot two targets way off in the distance. The shooting range was set up just like a video game with people figures that fall backwards when shot.
We arrived back in Ulaanbaatar to see the streets crawling with military, roadblocks and tanks rolling around. There had been riots the evening before. People were angry over the recent election outcome. International outsiders claim the election was fair so I guess people just got mad and rioted. The headquarters of the ruling party was burnt. I went out and took some photos.
Stay tuned for a Russia post!
