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Published: August 16th 2005
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Hi all
After resting a little and staying healthy, I decided I should go to see the Gobi desert. Well, at least a part of it. Also decided to try a little bit of traveling with Europeans. It was actually my only chance of going to the Gobi quickly and returning in time for the big Nadaam. I met a Swiss couple that decided to rent a jeep and go on a long trip in Mongolia. They planned on hitting the road the next day, just the two of them, because they couldn't find partners and they just had enough of UB. I offered them to join for the first week, pay my share for it, and leave them after the Gobi part in a place where it's easy to get a bus back to UB. For them it was a way to cut a little on the costs, so we had a deal.
That day we already used the driver and his jeep, a Russian made metal box, and we went to the market to buy food for the ride. Packed the car with as much as we could fit in.
The next day we started the ride south towards
the desert. The road got narrower every kilometer, and just 45 km out of the city it disappeared into a dirt road, not before we had to pay a toll for the paved road we were using... The dirt road itself also shrank as we moved on, and pretty soon we were going on something that looked like marks that wheels left on the grassy land.
All around us were green hills, with no trees at all, and many gers dotted the valleys. People with horses, sheep, goats, cows, and yaks were a common site. The free spaces were endless, just like the promising slogan "discover a land with no fences".
Wildlife was also common - many birds, including big birds of prey, gazelles, squeals, and even jerboas.
At one point the driver left the road (if that can be called a road) and headed to a ger. He showed us the family there who was in the middle of wool shearing. The driver was also kind of a tour guide, and he kept showing us nice little things along the way.
As we drove south the green color started to disappear and a brown color took its place, looking
more and more like a dry desert. We also left the road completely and started to drive on the hills according to the driver's instincts and the directions he got from local nomads along the way. Late in the afternoon we reached our first destination - a place full of granite rock formations, that also had some sacred meaning to the Mongolian, called Baga Gazrin Chuluu. Not a very interesting place, except for, maybe, the many ovoos on the surrounding hills, but still a nice break from the monotonous desert scenery.
We camped here for the night. After we had dinner arrived a funny local on a motorcycle and showed an ID saying he is a park ranger. He asked for a payment for staying in that area. We paid him and in return took a picture with him.
The next day was just a long day in the car, in a never changing desert scenery. During that time we discovered that our driver is a physics teacher in the school during the year when he is not driving tourists in his jeep. Or at least that what he told us.
That evening we reached a small city and stopped
for a public shower. After that we drove a little out of it for camping.
The next morning we had a short drive to the Eagle's Valley, Yolyn Am, a park that is famous for its glacier more than for its eagles. It is a valley between the mountains in the middle of the desert, and it's so narrow that the sun has a hard time melting the ice that is formed there early in the winter. The glacier here is around till late August. When we arrived it was obvious that it is only half there already, but it was still nice to see all that ice just a few km from the hot desert.
We hiked around for a couple of hours. Many tourists come here and I met a German guy with a Jagermeister hat. I tried to make him understand that he should give it to me, but he only allowed me to take a picture.
After that we continued west. The desert has a few different areas looking a little different, but most of it is quite boring. There aren't as many people and animals as we saw on the first day of the ride,
Ger from the inside
Everything is orange... and most are located around water or water holes. Camels became a common site, double humped if you had a doubt.
That night we stopped at a green spot in the middle of nowhere. and after dinner we took out a bottle of local vodka and watched the sunset (at around 11 P.M.) behind the distant dark mountains.
The next day we drove a little more ans reached the sand dunes part of the Gobi, with some dunes 800 m high. The place is called Khongoryn Els, or the Singing Dunes, probably because of the sound of the sand in the wind. The heat was on, and dusty hot winds made us run and hide in a ger and rest for a while. I used this time for reading a book, because there was no Internet around for writing in my blog 😊
Later we hired some camels for a ride on the dunes. As long as we were walking parallel to the dunes all was fine, and I even thought I controlled it and lead the way and the pace. As soon as we started climbing the dunes all has changed. The camels just refused to climb and they
turned back towards their home. We had to dismount and climb the dunes on our own. It was hot, and the dunes were high, but I made it up, and the views from the top were amazing.
On the way back the weather became bad, with strong winds, some muddy rain, and sand clouds. My poor tent couldn't take the strong winds, and it broke, so I spent the night in a ger all alone, which was nice.
The next day we drove some more. This time we crossed some mountains to make it more interesting. We reached a place called The Flaming Cliffs, or Bayanzag. I guess desert sites like the name "flaming", as I already seen The Flaming Mountain near Turupan. This place is famous for the dinosaur fossils and eggs that were found here back in 1922, most of which are no longer in Mongolia. The place itself is beautiful and I walked around for two hours taking pictures.
Some souvenir sellers called us and opened up a box they were hiding. They tried to sell something they claimed to be an fossil of a dinosaur egg...
We stopped nearby for an early camp, and I had
some time to read some more in the shade of a tree. All and all I finished a whole book during the Gobi trip!
We went to a tourist ger camp to take a shower. They had a leg operated pump that you had to dance on in order for the water to run. Very funny. A second ger camp had a normal shower, though, and I even got a shave.
All around our camp, like before, we saw rabbits, squeals, mice, jerboas, etc. and there was even a porcupine that showed up for dinner.
The next day we drove to the ruins of a monastery, called Ongiin Khiid. Mongolia was under the influence of the Soviets from the early 1920's till the early 1990's. During that time most temples and monasteries in the country were ruined. The place looked like the remains of a 2000 years old city, because there is almost nothing left but the foundations of the buildings. Quite sad, because it looked like a big place, and the Mongolians play an important role in the history of the Tibetan Buddhists.
From there we drove north, starting to leave the desert area back into the greener part
Many Ovoos
Ovoo is a pyramid shaped collection of stones with some offerings to the gods(silk scarves, vodka bottles, etc.). Must be circled clockwise, or at least passed on the left side, even when driving! of Mongolia, but I'll tell about the rest of this trip later.
And as usual, until then,
R.
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Roxane
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How the Mongolians live
I recently checked out a DVD from our local Library about the Gobi Desert and how the Mongolians live. I found it most interesting how simple and unrestricting their lives are in comparison to the complexites and greed in America, yet how rough their surroundings are compared to how simple it is for us to get around here in the states. I thought that how thankful we should be, but maybe the Mongolians might be a lot more thankful than us if they lived in America for a season and discovered such struggles we indure all because of greed. Their families appear more interlocking than most families in America. Their families work together, our families are torn apart due to many factors such as high taste of living, divorce, love of money, daily violence within the family, and many other reasons. I think that America can certainly learn from many other countries how simple life (itself) really is. Living is not difficult, it is what we surround living with is what makes living so difficult. I don't envision a rollercoaster in the lives of the Mongolian peoples that is taking them downhill to destruction. However, I see them on steady plateau enjoying their families and simplicity.