Blogs from Gobi Desert, Mongolia, Asia - page 9

Day 147, 25th October Tsomog - Tsagandörvölj (30 miles south of) The days are passing quickly and the knowledge that we are slowly heading south into warmer climes is keeping our morale up in this desert land. Last night it was “Bastard-Freezing”. All my water froze solid, good job we are keeping enough in pots to warm up on our stoves each morning. I have to shake the ice out of my tent this morning, and it lay there on the Gobi like thin pieces of glass, not melting, even though the sun was up! The landscape is becoming more and more desolate, small tufts of dry grass, and no animals now, but we did actually see a herd of wild gazelle in the distance today. The gravelly road is getting more sandy as we head ... read more

Day 142, 20th October Ulaan Baatar - Khooltyn Davaa Nothing more has put fear into our hearts more so than crossing the Gobi Desert on our bikes. We’ve heard stories that the road is non-existent, there is very little water, and we could get frozen to death. Still, four crazy guys on bicycles keeping the tran-Mongolian railway in view shouldn’t have much of a problem - we could still flag-down a train if we ran into serious trouble…. Couldn’t we? After the usual amount of arsing about and last minute things to do that should have been done in the previous days, we set off just before midday. The day was bright, warm, and sunny. The road out of the city was choked with traffic as usual. Just on the outskirts of UB, away from the ... read more

After a couple of days in the capital, Ulaanbaatar, I met some other travellers and we decided to do an 11 day trip together to the Gobi Desert and some of the National Parks in Mongolia. There were four of us in total, Heidi from Germany, Rainer from Austria and Miguel from Argentina. Instead of doing an organised tour, we decided to just hire a van and a driver and do it on our own. We organised this through one of the hostels and they provided an itinerary and some camping equipment and we left on the 15th of September. Our driver was called 'Ekhmer' and he spoke only a few words of english. He brought his 6 year old son, 'Otkar' on the trip too. He was really cute and lot of fun. He was ... read more

Cogemos el tren de nuevo Lo de madrugar se estaba haciendo recurrente y encajaba mal con nuestra idea de trasnochar. La verdad es que no trasnochábamos mucho, pero sí lo justo para comentar o hablar las cosas que habíamos visto o que nos habían sucedido, que era hablar de nosotros mismos. Conversaciones en las que lo inmediato iba modificando lo que ya llevábamos de viaje. Conversaciones sobre que les gustaría, o no, a aquellos que habíamos dejado donde vivíamos y que se convertían, sin quererlo, en una manera de clasificar nuestras experiencias. Una manera personal, de un pequeño grupo. Si al madrugón se le añade que el agua de la ducha no estaba muy caliente (según mis amigos, que pasaron de ducharse, estaba fría) y que el desayuno, a pesar de ser un hotel de cuatro ... read more

July 16th Even with rain the gobi is still hot, the morning entails another lamentable breakfast and off to the yal valley. After arriving we hike through the mountain passageways untill we arrive at the Ice canyon, due to the rain I left my camera behind, I'll try to post some pictures another time. It was quite amazing and on the return way it had rained enough to make the small caves within the ice passable, saving us the trouble of climbing over them again though the prospect of hundreds of tons of ice crushing us was also exhilarating. The gerbil like creatures living in the valley's are also quite cute observing our every move and occasionally becoming the super for some of the mongolian herders. After squeezing the russain mini bus through the mountain passages ... read more