Mongolian Fire Starters

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After spending 12 hours at the Russian border, we arrived in Outer Mongolia with our new Danish friends at 6am and were greeted with minus 18 degrees, nice. We went straight to our Ger Camp which would be our home for the next 24 hours.

We were dropped off at Buuviet Am Camp in the middle Tereji National park (AKA in the middle of nowhere) Apart form the nomad family, sheep and yaks we were the only residents there, we should have figured by then that there was a reason no other tourists (or sane human beings) would want to stay there in the middle of winter. We were surrounded by beautiful scenery, snow capped mountains and horse droppings......

Our actual tent was a quaint little round felt tent with a real wood fire, two beds and a table, basic, but that was better then we expected. The piece de resistance was our authentic loo, based approx 200 metres away in a little tiny hut in the middle of a field. We were so scared of this little hole in the ground we did not drink the whole time we were there, afraid nature would call in the middle of the night. This of course did not go to plan and Lou stayed up the whole night busting but refused to even contemplate venturing out in to the freezing cold (it was minus 20 odd by this time) and I am sure there were wolves waiting out there for me. However, the cold kept us awake anyway when our fire went out. Our succesful attempt at starting a fire earlier failed us and even cooling alcohol, brown paper bag and a whole box of matches did not work. We were saved when the kind nomad lady(who spoke no english at all) rescued us with more wood and coal for our fire and were able to defrost ourselves and feel our limbs again.

Despite the cold and going back to basics, we did have our very own 'tent' silver service, which consisted of mutton, mutton and more mutton. After little sleep we said goodbye or our nomad family and moved to the slightly more civalised city of Ulaanbaator and stayed in a guesthouse whose beds were not the most comfortable. Spent the day visiting UB attractions which are few and far between and eating MORE Mutton packcakes before heading back to our train cabin for another 36 hours to China.

baigaarai mongolia!!!

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