After breakfast the next morning, I walked again to the waterfall…the sun was on the other side this time, so I was able to get photos with the blue sky in the background, which hadn’t been possible the day before…plus, it was nice to get out and walk…
We drove back to kharakhorum for lunch…after lunch we went to the local market to get dinner food…I went in the market as well, just to see what was there…not surprisingly, I found lollies, and proceeded to buy some…and apples too, so I wasn’t completely awful…lol…after trying the lollies I was disappointed I hadn’t bought more…yummy!
Then we drove to sand dunes…since Mongolia is mostly desert, there are sand dunes all over the country…the most famous dunes are in the gobi desert, in the south of the country, but I was pretty happy seeing these dunes…we got to stay in the family ger, which was set away from the tourist ger camp…awesome! It turns out that ger camp was owned by several Koreans who came to check on it a couple times a year, but otherwise left the mongol family in charge…
After settling in, renaud and I went for a walk to the dunes, while kim, koen and taro rode camels…walking up the dunes wasn’t easy, but still fun…they’re beautiful…there were plants growing, I have no idea how…after a little while, we got on the camels too…while running down the sand dunes, my camera fell out of my pocket…fortunately, I noticed it almost immediately, so I was able to follow my footsteps back immediately and find the camera…unfortunately, sand had gotten into it, so I could tell straightaway that I needed to get a new camera as soon as I got back to korea…argh…but the photos were still fine, and that’s all that ever matters to me…the others in the group had cameras, so I knew I’d be okay…it was a tame ride, and not as much fun as I’d had during my ger to ger tours, but it was still fun to ride a camelJ…apparently taro liked it as well, after being somewhat freaked out by the way a camel stands up…
Our guide told us dinner would be at 2100…which would’ve been fine…howeva, we had no lights in the ger…there was no solar panel outside, and we couldn’t see any candles inside…so as the sunlight got dimmer and dimmer, we decided to watch a movie on renaud’s computer…(he travels with a small laptop, they’re easy and cheap)…we chose the Charlie chaplin movie “the gold rush”…it’s a silent movie, the words (when they’re written at all) came up on the screen…there is a soundtrack the whole way through…I haven’t watched one of those movies in a long time, but we all enjoyed it, and kept laughing…when our guide came in with our dinner at 2130, the four of us were sitting on one bed with the computer on the table in front of us watching the movie in the dark…what a picture we must’ve made…hee hee…dinner was vegetable dumplings…pretty tasty, considering…
The next morning we were all ready to go fairly early, but our driver slept in…we never did find out why…we figured he had been drinking, and was somewhat hungover, but our guide denied that when we asked her…
Our first sight of the day was a temple…it turned out to be the same temple gramps had shown me during my first ger to ger tour!! I didn’t get to see anything additional this time, but I was able to hear a lot more information, which was great…the temple was originally built by zanabazaar for his mentor, and was one of the most important temples in Mongolia…it was quite large as well, we could see the remains of the foundation of many buildings…since my camera wasn’t working at this point (even when it did work it made funny noises) kim and koen let me take photos with their camera…
Lunch was at another random hotel/restaurant on the road…
That night was supposed to be the last night of the tour…we stayed in the ger of a nomadic family…our guide tried to tell us it was done up nicely because it was mostly an extra ger used for groups like us, but we could see that it was the family ger…she and the guide slept on the floor in the other ger, which was actually the the extra ger…(it wasn’t nearly as nice)…
This family had goats, sheep and horses…when we arrived it was the middle of the afternoon, so not many animals were around…the family had a brand new baby cow (born just that morning) and a number of nearly new baby goats and sheep…taro toddled around in the pen, trying to get close enough to look but not touch the animals…he seemed to understand that grabbing the animals wasn’t the way to go…at one point kim and koen caught a lamb for him to pet, and he loved it…all the babies had been kept in a little blocked off portion of the bigger pen, and when we arrived, they’d been let out so we could see them…it was funny watching koen and renaud run around and try to get them back into the smaller pen…renaud and koen are both tall, while the baby animals are so low to the ground…I think I have a video somewhere…taro tried to help, in his own way but more than anything he kept getting in the way… lol…
Before dinner koen read, renaud walked in one direction (taro walked after him for quite a bit, until deciding he’d rather come back to his mom, kim) while kim, taro and I walked in another direction…it’s so easy to walk for an hour, look back and see where you started and feel as though you haven’t walked anywhere…
Dinner that night was what our guide called Mongolian barbeque…not like what we eat in the states…they heat up stones in the fire, while preparing the food…then the food is put into the pot, along with the hot stones, covered by a lid and put on top of the stove with the fire still going underneath it…about an hour later, everything is yummy…kim and koen had plenty to eat, even though they didn’t eat the meat…renaud ate a lot of the meat, he loved it…I ate a bit, but I focused mainly on the potatoes…it was a lot of food and we were all stuffed afterward…
One of the amazing moments of the day happened after nightfall…as we each stepped out to brush our teeth before going to bed, we saw all the goats and sheep owned by the family…RIGHT IN FRONT OF OUR GER!! Goats and sheep are a bit skittish, and will usually try to move away from anyone at all close…every time we opened the door to the ger they moved a little bit, that’s how close they were to the ger…earlier in the day koen, kim and renaud had asked me if we’d be able to hear the animals at night…I think they were more concerned that the animals would keep taro awake…I told them that the animals would be quite loud when they brought them home, but that during the night we’d know they were there but they wouldn’t be so loud…and I was right…it surprised everyone, including me, to see how close they were when we went to brush our teeth…amazing…I tried to take a picture, but there were clouds, and of course the animals weren’t nice enough to stay still…even with an extended open shutter, it was dark and somewhat blurry…lol…
The next morning was another lovely day…I really could get used to those kinds of days…for a while we watched as members of our host family gave vaccinations to the sheep in the herd…definitely an interesting process…
Then we got to go horseback riding…we only went fast a few times, but that was okay…our host laughed everytime we went fast because of the way kim bounced up and down…hee hee…we rode to the top of a small hill, and were able to see for miles around…AMAZING…renaud asked our driver to take a photo of all of us, I need to get the file…koen had stayed behind with taro (who went down for his daily nap around that time) so when we returned, renaud went out riding with koen, while kim and I read and enjoyed the weather…
We left after lunch, and drove to hustai national park…its an important park in the country…this is the national park where wild horses were essentially saved from extinction…none had been seen in the wild for a number of years, so in 1992, a few from various zoos around the world were brought to the park, and bred…the babies were carefully monitored, and released into the park, where they were protected…ever since the herd has grown, and careful watch is kept over them…the program is considered a success…as we drove through the park taro proved to have pretty good eyes, he spotted the wild horses as well as some reindeer…we were lucky enough to see fighting between some of the males, I wish I had it on video…one horse kicked another in the head!...we also saw a few marmots, which look like fat squirrels…only they don’t live in trees, they live in burrows in the ground…
We had a very quick look around the “museum” and watched a 15 minute video about the park before moving into another family ger…as we arrived, the mom was still packing up what she’d need to spend the night in another ger!! This ger was one of many, it was a community…and much more permanent, despite being a ger…I could see an electric meter, so I guess they got utility bills every month!! There was a refridgerator too!! Koen ended up leaving his cheese in the fridge when we drove away the next morning…boo…
That night it was super windy, and therefore super dusty…we couldn’t see far, long before sundown…a lot of the dust ended up on our minivan, so someone wrote on the minivan “eat my dust”…it wasn’t me, I promise, though I found it just as funny as anyone else…
No comments:
Post a Comment