Today is home-coming for Nyaama and son, Muno, and this has become one of our tour itinerary. Muno told us he used to spend his school vacation in Zavkhan. His grandfather and some relatives still live nomadic lifestyle in Zavkhan. Well, locating the family gers is not an easy affair, for they shift from place to place, without a fixed address. We need the Mongolian GPS ("Gers Positioning System") to help us. Nyaama and Muno asked around a few ger owners before we finally arrived at the family's ger. Visiting a nomadic family is an interesting affair. The nomads usually live in clusters of a few gers. As it is summer, there are many children around, and lots of goats too. We wonder around the gers, mingle with the children, take photos, and so on. The ... read more

I took so many pictures today. We left Khar Nuur this morning and travel towards Mukhart. Along the way, we travelled through varied scenaries that were simply breath-taking. From the blue lagoon of Khar Nuur, sand dunes, lakes, glaciers, rock formations, plateaus, grassland,... we saw them today. We stopped by at Senjit Khad - a natural stone arch situated on an elevated plain. We had much fun exploring those natural stone formations. And most memorable experience was to climb up one of those stone formations and survey the surrounding landscape far away. The feeling up there was terrific. We ended our day camping beside a river in Mukhart. Mukhart is part of the huge Mongol Els (sand dune). It's unique coned shaped looks particularly Hoover Dam in Nevada, I was told. A river runs from the ... read more

We checked out of the yellow ger this morning to travel further northwest, supposedly to meet four more ladies at Uliastai who would be joining us for the rest of our journey in Zavkhan Aimag. Along the way, we past some ancient burial sites. At the sites were some standing stones known as "Deer Stones". These are cultural monuments dating from the Bronze Age (4th to 3rd centuries BC) to mark the grave or commemorate local people of high rank. The stones at the burial sites are piled in an interesting pattern, a rounded hill ending with a long tail. We had lunch at Uliastai, the aimag centre of Zavkhan Aimag. We waited anxiously for the four ladies but was disappointed to hear that the domestic flight from UB took off ahead of schedule because of ... read more

We left Khovsgol Nuur this morning at 9am. Just out of the resort, we met a nomadic family moving house. It was an interesting sight - the nomads and their long line of belongings, cows, sheeps, etc. At around noon, we were in Moron again, the Aimag (Province) centre of the Khovsgol Aimag. We had lunch there and continued with our journey. After travelling on the road for the whole day, we were still in Khovsgol Province. The vastness of Mongolia country is unimaginable. Upon reaching Tunamal Lake, we took quite some time to search for a suitable camping ground. The original plan to camp beside the lake was not possible as it was too windy. We finally found a hill with numerous big rocks. They made perfect shelters from the howling wind. It was really ... read more

We woke up to a lovely morning in Bulgan House today. Across the hotel is a pasture with some horses. It was beautiful and serene. After breakfast, we were on the road again. Having lost one day on the van repair, we needed to catch up in order to reach Lake Khovsgol today. The journey was long, very very long. It was almost 8pm when we arrived at Moron, a town just before entering Khovsgol Nuur National park. We had dinner at Moron, and almost wanted to give up continuing with the journey, but we trudged on. Whenever we see a hill coming up, we told ourselves that the lake would be at the other side of the hills. Alas, hills after hills, we finally reached the park entrance at sunset. We thought we would reach ... read more