Advertisement
Published: August 22nd 2005
Hi,
We arrived to Khatgal, a small village on a river,
just a few km from lake Khovsgul, and said goodbye to
our driver. We started to arrange a horse trekking
trip for the following day. Somehow instead of
splitting and enjoying the lake separately, we added
two more people to our group, and hit the road with 9
riders, 3 guides, and 3 pack horses for all the bags,
tents, food, etc.
In the morning we bought some more food, loaded the
horses, and then mounted our horses. When they gave us
the horses the guide said that he needs a good rider
for one of the horses, because "this horse likes to
gallop". Of course I took it immediately. I felt it
almost immediately. He just wanted to run all the
time. I had to be really hard with him, almost to hurt
him to make him slow down. But it was fun. I kept
riding to the back of the group and then set him free
to run back to the front. The guides were angry, but I
had fun.
The first few hours were along some hills with nice
forests. I started to feel some parts of
my body that
weren't used to horse riding. The knees hurt, my butt
hurt, my back... And it was only after about two hours on the horse. I feared the future.
Early in the afternoon it started raining. Heavily. I put on my rain gear, so I didn't get wet, but it was still becoming very very cold. Our backpacks were on the horses, so they did get wet. The correct term should be soaked. I was afraid especially for the sleeping bags inside them. The rest of the group weren't as lucky as I was, and their rain gear wasn't as good, and they got really wet as well, especially in the lower part of the body. We tried to ask our guides to find a ger for hiding from the rain, but as weird as it sounds - there were no gers in that area, probably because it was on the mountain side.
We had to ride in the rain for two more hours. It really wasn't fun at all. Your body hurts, you are very cold, and some people are also wet. After two hours the rain stopped, just as we arrived to a small wooden hut.
We stopped there for damage assessment. We took everything out of the bags to check what is wet and what is not. People changes their cloths (if they had any dry ones). Our guides used their axes to chop some wood and make a big fire for us, both for getting warm and for drying all the wet stuff. They also built a small wooden hanger near the fire for drying everything. They even built our tents for us (which were really bad and had parts missing). Luckily, the sleeping bag in my backpack was dry, so I still had a warm night sleep.
When things got a little better we made dinner, and drank some Jameson for getting even warmer.
The next day was still cold, but it wasn't raining, even though our guides pointed at the sky and warned us that it will rain again. I guess they are not really nature guys if they can't tell when it's going to rain. We rode a along the mountains, with the intention of crossing them that day and reaching the lake on their other side. Everything was green, and there were flowers everywhere, mainly yellow and purple. We crossed
many streams of water while we were climbing more and more towards the mountain passes.
In one of the valleys we saw some snow. Just a small amount, which probably remained from the winter, but it was still surprising. We were climbing up and up, until the slope became to hard to ride. We got off the horses and walked with them for a while, and then we reached the top.
Well, it wasn't the top, because it wasn't the peak of the mountain, but it was the highest point in a valley between two peaks, and from there we could see the other side, with the lake right down there below us. The views were amazing.
Riding still hurt, and I realized I have to understand how to reduce the pain. I looked at the guides and realized they are sitting on the side, not on the middle. That way you sit with the chick of your ass on the horse, and not with the middle crack, so you don't feel it in your bones, and you have more fat to cushion the ride. I tried that and saw that it is really better as long as the horse
After the storm
Drying the cloths near the fire, and the new shitty tent.is not going too fast (which was a problem with my hose who always went fast). But still I felt I am learning.
The way down was no picnic. I guess the guides wanted to make a shortcut, or perhaps they were just lost and improvising. Either way they were going along the mountain trying to find a way down, and then decided to climb down a valley. We got off the horses and started to walk with them down the steep slope, with many rocks and with high grass and bushes. The horses didn't like it either and we had to pull them down sometimes. My horse was so mad that he kicked one of the girls in our group that he decided is standing too close behind him. The blue mark on her leg didn't pass for days. After a long walk down we reached a point that wasn't too steep and we mounted the horses again. At that point one of the horses decided to sit down while the rider was sitting on it. The rider was very upset about it, and it happened several more times later with the same horse.
The rest of the way
was very difficult. We rode in a dense forest, and it was hard to find a path. We sometimes walked on steep side angels, and we were really afraid the horses can fall down. Some people preferred walking some of the way, and the girl whose horse kept sitting down just walked the rest of the day.
All and all we rode more than nine hours that day, instead of the four-to-five hours a day we were supposed to, and we arrived the lake side very late, and very tired. Everybody was hurting, and most people really complained about the trip. For me it was still fun, and I tried to ignore the complaints around me in order not to get disappointed myself.
The lake shore was beautiful. Once again we had a fire, tents, food, and Jameson. Some local came to sell smoked fish for ridiculous price, and I ate it for dinner. It was great. Just made me want to fish. So I tried fishing again, again without any luck. The water was so clear and you could just see that there are no fish near the shore. I guess you had to go deeper on a boat
or to another place. I gave up and took pictures instead. That something I do better...
In the morning of the next day we visited a Tsaatan family that lives by the lake. Tsaatan are a tribe of nomads that have different tents, and they raise reindeer. They live in the mountains north-west of the lake, and are very hard to find. One family understood the tourist potential and moved to the lake, and they put their reindeer on display for the tourists, and they even let little kids ride them. They take some money for it... Since it is very hard to see the real Tsaatan people, we also went to visit the touristic family,
After that we rode further south along the lake, in the general direction of Khatgal. That was the last day of the trek. One couple decided that this day is just one day too much, and stayed on the lake. The rest of us just had another long day on the horses, with some more experiences of some crazy horses, tired guides, tired riders, etc. That day I learned another secret of horse riding - if you lean back on your horse instead of
forward, you don't jump that high when the horse is riding fast, and it hurts much less. I was really getting the hang of it, and I think I was the only one who had fun during that trip. Since we rode that day on a road on (generally) horizontal ground, we really went fast, and I repeated my trick of going to the back of the group and then galloping fast to the front.
That day I also realized why the riders always wear boots. The bold spots on my legs explained it to me, and I only noticed it because the area began to hurt and was really red already. Later I saw that other people sometimes had wounds there from the ropes.
By the time we reached Khatgal we were all tired and really wanted to get off the horses. Took a hot shower and slept in a bed for the first time in about 10 days!
The next day I woke up late. Eventually our group broke apart. I wanted to stay a little longer on the lake, because I wanted to rest before I take the long drive back to YB, and I also wanted
to catch that fish I was trying to catch so hard.
Rented another tent and tried to hitch back to the lake area. This time I was heading to the river side, very close to the lake, which was closet to the village. After waiting for a ride for almost an hour arrived a funny yellow bus. Inside there was a German woman with many Chinese people. She explained that she is an artist and she is here with more artists from a Mongolian university. They came to the lake for a while to paint and draw. Got with them to their camp, where all of them were sitting and drawing, and it was really cool.
That area was a place where many locals came to picnic and to spend some time on the lake. There were many tents around, and many families were cooking, drinking, swimming, etc.
I tried to fish again. But I still had no luck. A local guy approached and told me that where I am fishing there are no fish. I believed him... Still had a nice evening there, a little quieter without the big group I was traveling with for a long time.
The
second day I started to walk along the river, hoping to find some locals fishing. They knew where the fish are. I found a young boy, maybe 12 years old, that was fishing. He already had a fish in his plastic bag, so I decided to watch him for a while. The first time he threw his hook to the water he caught a fish. I decided that this is the place for me. I joined him. I also asked him for assistance. He looked at my equipment and started to explain to me what I am doing wrong. The hooks were too big for the fish in that area, I had to change them to smaller ones. The bait I was using was not good, he told me to use his grasshoppers. The depth of the wight and the float were wrong...
After fixing all that, I tried again. In a short while I started to feel the fish eating my bait. But I still didn't catch any. The kid's fishing line broke and he lost his hook, weight, and float. He offered me a fish for a hook I had. I gave him 3 hooks as a gift,
and the extra weight I had. He improvised a float and got back to fishing.
The kid decided to move to another place, even though where we were it was really easy to see the fish in the clear water. I had to go with him because he had all the baits. I didn't like the new location. I couldn't see any fish there, and I had to adjust the float again, and then it broke. I thought that was the end of my fishing experiences in Mongolia. Somehow I fixed it, but decided to go back to the previous location, because I felt it was better.
After going there and re-adjusting my equipment, I started to feel fish biting again. Four young Mongolians passed by and found it interesting, so they stayed and watched. After I lost two grasshoppers to the fish, I felt a strong pull on the line. A fish was caught on the hook! I pulled it carefully out of the water with the filling of a winner. The viewers were cheering, and they even took my picture with the fish hanging from my hook. It felt really good. I was ready to leave...
The way
back to UB was also funny. We were 8 tourists, and we didn't want to take a bus back. A bus here is the same Russian van we hired, but they put 20 people inside. We tried to hire a van for ourselves for the way back. Eventually we got one, with two drivers, and a plan to go 16 hours without a stop to UB. Unlike our previous drivers, who cared for their cars and drove slowly on the so-called roads of Mongolia, these two were just flying. We could hear the rocks hitting the bottom every few minutes, and the car was in a terrible shape. In the middle of the ride a big hitting sound was followed by the noise of the engine being stringer. They broke the exhaust pipe. Several times along the way they stopped for filling up air in the tires - with a bicycle pump. We did make it in one piece, and even though I didn't sleep that night, I could still laugh at the whole thing. I was back in UB.
And until next time,
R.
Advertisement
Tot: 0.083s; Tpl: 0.015s; cc: 12; qc: 24; dbt: 0.0345s; 1; m:domysql w:travelblog (10.17.0.13); sld: 1;
; mem: 1.2mb
nitai
non-member comment
?
great pic`s but whats with the hair dude?