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On tour for three days with Red (Singapore), Erica and Sharon (Sweden) our first destination was Kharkorum. This involved a seven hour journey in a delapidated mini bus on one of the few roads that exist in Mongolia.
The scenery was superb with a variety of colours, it often looked as if someone had painted the backdrop. The countryside was covered with herds of goats, cows, horses and sheep.
On the first day we had a close encounter with a group of camels who were very obliging when it came to taking photos. Thinking that the camels looked a bit shabby Red assured us that's what they always look like.
We continued along empty but incredibly bumpy roads arriving at our accomodation - a ger - early evening.
A ger is traditional accommodation - a round tent - known as a yurt in Russia. Although it has many poles in the roof it can be taken up and down very quickly. Its both living and sleeping space, with beds around the edge and a stove in the middle. Often they have a shrine to buddha with items thought to bring good luck to the family.
Expecting
to be served up yak meat stew for dinner Tina was pleased to find out that the vegetarians outweighed the meat eaters in the group so nothing to worry about.
Our ger was guarded by an enormous dog Bataar which means Hero in Mongolian, Bataar was just a big puppy that liked to grab legs with his mouth. Each ger seemed to have its own dog.
We had a large dusty hill just in front of our ger and climbed this after dinner to get a good view over the old capital city of Kharkorum and to visit turtle rock.
Overnight with our own stove to tend and none of us willing to set an alarm to get up in the night to keep it going, we woke up to a chilly ger in the morning. Having got to Kharkorum later then expected the previous day the museum was opened especially for us. We learnt more about Chengis Kahn. This was followed by a short trip down the road to the Monastery.
Reaching Mini—Gobi took several hours travelling back the way we went the day before then off the main road passing some sand dunes and
onto a dirt track by some small lakes with a lot of wildfowl. The path was incredibly sandy and bumpy with a complete lack of suspension on the van not helping. We drove away from other gers and ended up in a remote sandy area with some striking hills as a backdrop. The wind got up as we arrived and as anticipated we had a mini-gobi experience with sand being whipped up into the air and our faces so we all retreated into our ger.
We joined our host family for dinner and got on extremely well with their three year old girl who showed us lots of pictures of herself. After that it was back to our ger with only candlelight to see and a toilet about a 5 minute walk and no washing facilities.
The next day we headed towards Terelj a large national park on another long journey but the trip was more than worth it incredibly stunning scenery and we were later provided with a clear starry night.
We were eagerly looking forward to a bit off horse riding following breakfast and stood watching the horses being herded in by motorbike. Our enthusiam
was short lived as the horses broke free of their tethering and jumped out of the enclosure, one of them dragging a long piece of wood it was attached to with him. After a while thankfully another set of horses were gathered and bought down for us to ride. Mark was given the smallest horse. After little instruction – (we were all novices) - and no helmet we set off, joined by the camp dog.
We all liked to think we had control of the horse but clearly we didn't.
We spent most of the time panicked or laughing and whilst we all enjoyed the experience were glad to get off. Severe saddle damage was experienced by all with Red and Tina coming off worse.
On the way back we stopped off at another turtle rock (there are lots of turtle rocks) with a great panoramic view.
After 3 nights without a shower and festival toilets we were glad to get back to the hostel and have a good scrub down but had seen some amazing sights.
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