Blogs from Gobi Desert, Mongolia, Asia - page 10

An early start at 07:00 and some mongolian cornflakes soaked in yak's milk before our guide Baysaa came to pick us up from the hostel. we went by car to the Golden Gobi to meet Jason, Madeleine, Morritz and our driver Dugreh before heading off in our fully-packed furgon (old russian van). After about 30 minutes of driving we came off the tarmac and onto a dirt track and that would be the last we would see of civilisation for the next 8 days. We continued for about 5 hours until we came to a tiny village consisting of a few gers. A ger is a traditional mongolian home which looks a little bit like a Native American teepee but is round and covered with felt with a small wood-burning stove in the centre. We stopped ... read more

Well, we survived our journey into the abyss, with everything intact, and a little bonus body odour to boot. The Mongolian countryside is everything that the capital is not: clean, spectacular, beautiful, breathtaking and well worth another visit. At times we felt so far removed from our current residence that the only commonality was the blistering cold and wind (which began on the day we departed). Day 1 saw us bump out of the city in a brick-shaped Russian military style van, in the capable hands of our driver, Bazaraa (whom we soon renamed Red, after Morgan Freeman from "The Shawshank Redemption" - gentle, wise and street smart, with a killer smile) and our guide Sukhee, who sported a whopping black eye from the violent mugging he suffered the night before. Our travel buddies were Andreas, ... read more

Early morning start for Benedict and I. He is kind enough to drop me at the station. My train leaves at 08:10 precisely (as advertised on the ticket, with "precisely" underlined and in bold). Benedict is going to try to change his ticket to leave Ulan-Bataar earlier then he planned, so that he may join me in Beijing for Tibet. As I get on the train, my cabin is yet again filled with bags. Thankfully, this time it is not cigarettes but the bags of three English guys, named Ben, Jack and Jamie. Ben and Jamie are going round the world on bikes. They cycled from London to Moscow and will cycle from Beijing to Singapore and then around Australia, then from Southern Chili to Canada etc... Great guys, having taken 3 years of their lives ... read more

My sleep was troubled and filled with visions of horses, yaks, camels, sheep and goats, all laughing loudly and displaying a rather strong stench. I awoke from those visions of horrors with a jolt and a sense of relief at it having only been a dream, only to be faced with Stinky smiling at me wildly with all of his 6 teeth and gesturing to the outside world. It was 9 am on my 20th day of travel. I pushed Stinky away from me, made a slalom through the empty bottles of vodka, made a mental note never to drink vodka again, banged my head on the ridiculously low doors and stepped, mumbling and grumbling outside. This time round, the experience was more pleasant. The Ger where we stopped was on top of a hill overlooking ... read more

Early morning (and painful) wake up for us, but we feel excited at the idea of heading out into the wilderness. Xinthia, the Australian girl I mentioned earlier, was also meant to leave this morning for the Gobi but due to the fact that the girl she was supposed to travel with found herself a boyfriend during the night and wished to remain, she asked to come with us. Xinthia (aka: Snaily, in regards to her carrying everything she owns on her back) joined us at the start point at UB guesthouse. We saw three huge army jeeps engulfing their loads of tourists; we were rather keen to get one of those monster jeeps but eventually our car turned up: a battered old Toyota, barely holding itself together. We were informed that all the jeeps were ... read more