Look another destroyed monastery

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July 18th

After a decent night of sleep and missing the sunrise above the dunes its onwards to one of the largest monasteries. This is slightly hampered by us getting lost for several hours though since I have no idea where we are anyway it doesn't really matter. Finally finding a small kid in the middle of literally nowhere picking his nose he gives us further directions and we're off again. After driving along a river bed that due to the recent rains has become an actual river we arrive very late at the monastery. A long search for wood gives us some fire though its soon damped by the oncoming thunderstorm. Using a tarp from the vehicle we're able to hold out the night in our cheap tent.

July 19th

The rain having washed away everything once again we wake up for breaki and strolling through the monastery grounds. The size of the ruins are quite stagering and it will be interesting how restoration will effect it within 10 years. A small makeshift temple is set up for the tourists complete with its own mini version of the dalhi lahma. Deciding this abomination is not quite worth taking pictures of please refer to your travel guides. We quickly break camp afterwards as we are all excited to go towards the waterfall and perhaps take in some swimming and relaxation. Lunch is taken with ohna's sister in a small city/container city. After further searching we arrive at the waterfall....non-existent though due to the dry season. A bus full of mongolian highschool girls makes the trip almost worth it with their oggling us. Primoz and I climb down some cliffs to collect wood for our ritual evening fire.

July 20th

After the late fire side chat we decided to push through today to the ger camp between the old capital and UB. The day consists of lots of heavy driving and backtracking. For lunch we stop at one of the only monasteries not destroyed by the communists in the old capital. Interesting as some of the stones contain arabic writing from when chenghis Khann allowed all religions to prosper in his capital. Also saw the turtle one of the last foundation stones of the old capital. Ohna got some meat and ate at the equivalent of the wild west/disco restaurant, shortcutting through butcher shops to get back to our ride. This is also where our two belgians left us to continue up north. Even though we now had some paved roads they were worse than anything before as our driver continued to server the mamoth sized potholes due to illrepair. We eventually reached the nomadic family, the insect were unbearable though the "natural" insect repellant worked extremely well.

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