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Published: October 8th 2010
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Steppe Nomads Camp, Gulaan Galuut Nature Reserve, Mongolia
Woke up and prepared to be picked up at 10am from our guest house, to be taken to the camp I had booked months in advance, but 30 mins after the driver was supposed to arrive, I called the camp and they had no record of our booking!! Not a problem though as they had space and they sent a driver to get us. We were picked up at 1pm and drove for 2.5 hours to the camp, east of UB. The road was very bumpy (it was a dirt track for the last 30 minutes)! We passed several little run down towns on the way, all containing a large number of old dusty gers and people selling sheep skins by the side of the road.
Upon arriving at the camp, we were showed to out ger which seemed a lot larger inside than it had looked from the outside. It contained four beds circling around a small table and a burner for heating the ger at night. It was very comfortable. We rested for a few minutes then went to explore the camp. We walked down to the river where
there were about 20 people trying to move a hurd of about 300 goats and sheep across the river. It was an amazing sight. Some were chasing the hurd from behind on horses and some were on foot shouting at the hurd. They were all having fun and laughing, in between racing after the occasional animal trying to escape the hurd.
For the next few days we did such activities as a four hour kayak, mountain biking up into the hills (steppes) archery and lunch with a nomad family which we reached on horseback. We chatted to a lady on the camp who was waiting for her daughter to arrive after a 10 day horse ride through Mongolia. Her and her husband had started the horse ride but had to drop out after the first day as her husband was suffering from serious back pains.
The nomad family visit was incredible. We booked it through the camp the day before, and the following day at 12pm a young girl from the family arrived by horse with three other horses following. Crystal, Laetitia and I climbed onto the horses and the horses followed the leading horse all the way
to the families ger, which was an hour away. A couple of times our horses decided to stop or go in the wrong direction and it was up to us to control the horse which none of us had done before. It wasn't difficult - a kick of the heels and firm slap on the backside and shouting the words “cha cha” seemed to do the trick!! When we reached the families ger, a lady was waiting. She showed us into her ger, which was very clean and well decorated with a big photo board on one side containing photos of the family and of friends. After a few minutes introduction the lady served us each a bowl of warm milk, then brought us each a bowl of stew containing noodles, potatoes and very stong tasting mutton. I really enjoyed it but Crystal wasn't quite so keen. I can imagine a lot of western travellers struggling to eat such strong meat. After eating, the lady's daughter and granddaughter came into to ger. The daughter was around 20 years old and the granddaughter was 8 months old. They were all very happy and smiley, especially the little granddaughter. We gave the
lady 15000 Mogolian Togrog (about £10) for her hospitality and Crystal gave her a little necklace as a gift, which she was very happy with.
After leaving the ger with the girl who took us there on horseback, Crystal pointed to some other gers about 100 meters away to ask if they were owned by the same family. The girl did not understand the question, and thought we wanted to visit the other gers, so she took us to them and explained “my home”. She invited us in, and we instantly noticed the inside was very dirty. The girl introduced us to her mother and father who were inside. Their clothes were torn and dirty. They had nothing but three old beds, and tiny table, some very old cutlery, cups, plates and a couple of old horses outside. The father gave us a cup of milk, which was very different to what we drank in the other ger. It tasted like it was fresh from a goat or sheep with no processing. Crystal and Laetitia could not bring themselves to drinking it, so I drank most of the cup ful. We all felt that we were not meant to have
seen this ger (and how nomads really live), and we didn't want to impose so after 10 minutes we left. Before getting back on the horses we gave the girl 5000 Mongolian Togrog and explained “for mother and father” for the milk they had given us. We got back on the horses and headed back for the camp.
Our stay at Steppe Nomads was overall excellent. We were given very tasty meals everyday and the weather was nice. During our stay we got to know the people running the camp, who would smile and chat with us every time we saw them. It was sad to leave, but knowing our next destination was China also made moving on exciting. We were driven back to UB (the traffic was a nightmare, especially in the 40 degrees heat), where we went back to the Mongolian Steppe Guest House to stay in the dorm one more night, before catching the final “Trans Mongolian” train, for Beijing. We had one last Mongolian meal that night. I had to have the sheep stew and dumplings, as I was craving it since eating it in the Nomad family's ger. After the meal we went back
to the guest house, chatted to our dorm mates for a few hours over a beer, then set our alarms for 5:30am and went to sleep watching Hot Shots part deux on the dorm DVD player...
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