We got back from the Gobi at midday today, and are happily settled in to a double room at a centrally located guesthouse. I had reached the end of my patience with strangers after sharing gers for four nights in the Gobi desert. But the trip was fantastic.
We headed out Friday morning, very early. Landed at Dalanzadgad before 8am, and were introduced to our driver. Naturally, he spoke fluent Russian but no English. He offered to have his daughter, who speaks a little English, join us for free, but we offered to pay her a few dollars a day, so we headed by his house to pick her up. When I say house, I mean, of course, ger. Almost no Mongolians live in houses--even those who are pretty settled (in the city, except UB) mostly live in gers, maybe surrounded by a fence. After we picked up his daughter, a very sweet and very shy 17-year-old whose English was at first limited to three or four sentences (but she improved rapidly as she lost some of her shyness!). We went off to a local restaurant, which was decorated with plastic palm trees and served Chinese food, but we were able to score an egg with some fried bread and cabbage salad for breakfast.
Then we were off to purchase food for our journey. After stocking up on ramen, we had some trouble explaining that we also wanted to get some vegetables. Finally we ended up in the market, where we got a bunch of cucumbers, tomatoes, peppers and a large watermelon. Then it was off to Yolyn Am, a canyon that famously has ice most of the year (it usually melts some point in mid-July). As I'm from Norway, ice in July didn't seem particularly interesting or exceptional to me, but according to the guidebook, the area was good for hiking, so we'd agreed to go anyway. After being conned into a museum at the park entrance that cost $2 each for looking at some really unattractive stuffed animals, we got to the parking lot near the canyon. During the 2km hike down, we met pretty much every single person we had flown down from UB with. Then it started to rain, a steady, cold drizzle that was sapping all the energy out of us. We had packed the Camelbak with lunch and planned to explore the area for several hours, but after eating some Chinese imitation Pringles under a sort of shelter, we gave up and started back. The only highlight of this relatively depressing experience was seeing an ibex that was grazing up on a cliff.
We got back in the jeep and went to the park entrance, where we were shown into a ger made of concrete and informed that this is where we were spending the night. Warm goat's milk was brought in a thermos and served us in bowls. Realizing that we were spending the night in a souvenir-sales ger left our spirits very low, plus we were cold and wet as we had not really expected rain in the Gobi in July! (Although that is the month with the most precipitation. Since annual precipitation is limited to 130 mm, though, we thought we'd be pretty safe.) After an hour or so, our driver said something about another gorge with ice, and since the rain had stopped, we agreed to go take a look.
At that point, the trip changed. Instead of being a tourist-heavy, silly-sight having, waste of time and money, it became a pretty unique experience. Our driver drove us through a twisting gorge carved by a river that was barely wide enough to get through, driving part of the way in the river. We ran into groups of horses grazing free, hiked up a mountain, and saw wild gazelles racing over the hills. Then we arrived at the herder family with whom we would spend the night, blessedly free of the souvenir ger. We watched (and tried to help a little) as they rounded up the goats for their evening milking. We were served endless bowls of warm goat's milk, and I had some sweet rice porridge while B and the rest ate noodles with dried mutton. (Nothing else.) In the morning, we headed out for another herder's family. On the way, we watched Mongolians herd horses with a motorcycle and used the jeep to try to round up a horse that simply did not want to cooperate.
We hung out at the next herder's family during the day. Went for a run in the afternoon, but it was HOT and we were so full of dairy products as we were being served steaming bowls of goat's milk approximately four times a day. So the run pretty much sucked, especially since I saw a small snake, but we did look at the camels which were everywhere. We also saw more gazelles. We went for a ride on the horses, which was cool also--thinking Chinggis Khan (as he's now called) riding across the world on horses just like our pretty-stepping Mongolian ones. We gave the watermelon to the herder family and were rewarded with squeals from the five boys (is it possible that they were as tired of white food as we were?). Maybe the highlight of that stay was playing pick-up basketball with five Mongolian herder boys, our driver, and his daughter. This is the only time on a basketball court, we suspect, that B (5'9" 1/2) will be the tallest person on the court and able to determine play! And basketball court, by the way, is not quite right--a square marked in the dirt, with a piece of metal twisted to make a somewhat crooked hoop. But the oldest boy was fabulous on interceptions and rebounds, and the next oldest a specialist at three-pointers.
The next day saw us heading to Khongoryn Els, the Gobi sand dunes. Although B has been to the Sahara and I've seen dunes in Death Valley, Wadi Rum, and elsewhere, these really were impressive dunes. Not so much because of their extension, because they're mostly just a few km wide, but because they rise out of the ground, as from nowhere, and climb up to 300m. In front of them runs a very narrow river (you can step across it) that supports a green swath where everyone grazes his (probably) camels. Although we agreed with our driver to go to the dunes at 7pm, we couldn't resist and climbed up in the heat of the day. It was HARD, but the reward--sliding down a mountain of sand that literally hummed under our feet--was well worth it. It was, predictably, much easier to do it again once the sun had sunk somewhat! Leaping down the dunes after watching the sunset was simply amazing. This night and the next were spent in quasi-tourist gers; not the huge, luxurious camps favored by most travellers, but in simple guest gers run by herder families to supplement their herding income and gain some hard cash. (The first two nights, we stayed in the "living room" ger--one family had two, one for cooking and one for entertaining, and the second family had three, with one for sleeping--we felt bad about chasing the families out but they seemed very pleased to have visitors.)
On the forth day, we drove up to Bayanzag ("rich in saxual shrubs"--that's what they're called. They're like little Joshua Trees, sort of). We wandered around the Flaming Cliffs, which look just like a very very very small Grand Canyon/Zion made not of rock but of clay. This is where Roy Chapman Anderson went on his dinosaur-hunting trips in the 1920s and killed 46 vipers in the tent one night, so I was very alert for snakes but saw none. There were beautiful rocks everywhere, and it might not have been very hard to find a dinosaur fossil, but once more the heat was quite exhausting so we had mercy on our driver and headed to the ger. After gorging on ramen to the point of near nausea (finally, we weren't staying in people's "houses" so we could eat our own food), we went out for a sunset run through the saxuals toward the cliffs. It was stunning: one of those classic runs that just makes you happy to be alive, and happy to be in the Gobi, and happy to be in Mongolia.
After a short night, we drove over the bumpy bumpy roads to the airport. There are only about 1700km of paved roads in Mongolia (1800km of railroad), even though Mongolia is the 14th largest country in the world. It is impossible to get around areas like the Gobi without a native driver (or maybe, maybe using GPS) because there are no landmarks to use to navigate. A few hours at the airport, a short flight with the delightfully polite AeroMongolia folks, and we were back in UB.
One final anecdote to illustrate why Mongolia is what it is: after finding a room for the night, we went out to eat lunch just now at an Asian restaurant. When we paid the bill, the girl came back to say that something was wrong. She showed us that we had paid the bill and then left 2500 Togrog over. When we explained that it was for her ("a tip"), she hardly knew what to do with herself. Note that this isn't common, but that it could happen at all... !!
We headed out Friday morning, very early. Landed at Dalanzadgad before 8am, and were introduced to our driver. Naturally, he spoke fluent Russian but no English. He offered to have his daughter, who speaks a little English, join us for free, but we offered to pay her a few dollars a day, so we headed by his house to pick her up. When I say house, I mean, of course, ger. Almost no Mongolians live in houses--even those who are pretty settled (in the city, except UB) mostly live in gers, maybe surrounded by a fence. After we picked up his daughter, a very sweet and very shy 17-year-old whose English was at first limited to three or four sentences (but she improved rapidly as she lost some of her shyness!). We went off to a local restaurant, which was decorated with plastic palm trees and served Chinese food, but we were able to score an egg with some fried bread and cabbage salad for breakfast.
Then we were off to purchase food for our journey. After stocking up on ramen, we had some trouble explaining that we also wanted to get some vegetables. Finally we ended up in the market, where we got a bunch of cucumbers, tomatoes, peppers and a large watermelon. Then it was off to Yolyn Am, a canyon that famously has ice most of the year (it usually melts some point in mid-July). As I'm from Norway, ice in July didn't seem particularly interesting or exceptional to me, but according to the guidebook, the area was good for hiking, so we'd agreed to go anyway. After being conned into a museum at the park entrance that cost $2 each for looking at some really unattractive stuffed animals, we got to the parking lot near the canyon. During the 2km hike down, we met pretty much every single person we had flown down from UB with. Then it started to rain, a steady, cold drizzle that was sapping all the energy out of us. We had packed the Camelbak with lunch and planned to explore the area for several hours, but after eating some Chinese imitation Pringles under a sort of shelter, we gave up and started back. The only highlight of this relatively depressing experience was seeing an ibex that was grazing up on a cliff.
We got back in the jeep and went to the park entrance, where we were shown into a ger made of concrete and informed that this is where we were spending the night. Warm goat's milk was brought in a thermos and served us in bowls. Realizing that we were spending the night in a souvenir-sales ger left our spirits very low, plus we were cold and wet as we had not really expected rain in the Gobi in July! (Although that is the month with the most precipitation. Since annual precipitation is limited to 130 mm, though, we thought we'd be pretty safe.) After an hour or so, our driver said something about another gorge with ice, and since the rain had stopped, we agreed to go take a look.
At that point, the trip changed. Instead of being a tourist-heavy, silly-sight having, waste of time and money, it became a pretty unique experience. Our driver drove us through a twisting gorge carved by a river that was barely wide enough to get through, driving part of the way in the river. We ran into groups of horses grazing free, hiked up a mountain, and saw wild gazelles racing over the hills. Then we arrived at the herder family with whom we would spend the night, blessedly free of the souvenir ger. We watched (and tried to help a little) as they rounded up the goats for their evening milking. We were served endless bowls of warm goat's milk, and I had some sweet rice porridge while B and the rest ate noodles with dried mutton. (Nothing else.) In the morning, we headed out for another herder's family. On the way, we watched Mongolians herd horses with a motorcycle and used the jeep to try to round up a horse that simply did not want to cooperate.
We hung out at the next herder's family during the day. Went for a run in the afternoon, but it was HOT and we were so full of dairy products as we were being served steaming bowls of goat's milk approximately four times a day. So the run pretty much sucked, especially since I saw a small snake, but we did look at the camels which were everywhere. We also saw more gazelles. We went for a ride on the horses, which was cool also--thinking Chinggis Khan (as he's now called) riding across the world on horses just like our pretty-stepping Mongolian ones. We gave the watermelon to the herder family and were rewarded with squeals from the five boys (is it possible that they were as tired of white food as we were?). Maybe the highlight of that stay was playing pick-up basketball with five Mongolian herder boys, our driver, and his daughter. This is the only time on a basketball court, we suspect, that B (5'9" 1/2) will be the tallest person on the court and able to determine play! And basketball court, by the way, is not quite right--a square marked in the dirt, with a piece of metal twisted to make a somewhat crooked hoop. But the oldest boy was fabulous on interceptions and rebounds, and the next oldest a specialist at three-pointers.
The next day saw us heading to Khongoryn Els, the Gobi sand dunes. Although B has been to the Sahara and I've seen dunes in Death Valley, Wadi Rum, and elsewhere, these really were impressive dunes. Not so much because of their extension, because they're mostly just a few km wide, but because they rise out of the ground, as from nowhere, and climb up to 300m. In front of them runs a very narrow river (you can step across it) that supports a green swath where everyone grazes his (probably) camels. Although we agreed with our driver to go to the dunes at 7pm, we couldn't resist and climbed up in the heat of the day. It was HARD, but the reward--sliding down a mountain of sand that literally hummed under our feet--was well worth it. It was, predictably, much easier to do it again once the sun had sunk somewhat! Leaping down the dunes after watching the sunset was simply amazing. This night and the next were spent in quasi-tourist gers; not the huge, luxurious camps favored by most travellers, but in simple guest gers run by herder families to supplement their herding income and gain some hard cash. (The first two nights, we stayed in the "living room" ger--one family had two, one for cooking and one for entertaining, and the second family had three, with one for sleeping--we felt bad about chasing the families out but they seemed very pleased to have visitors.)
On the forth day, we drove up to Bayanzag ("rich in saxual shrubs"--that's what they're called. They're like little Joshua Trees, sort of). We wandered around the Flaming Cliffs, which look just like a very very very small Grand Canyon/Zion made not of rock but of clay. This is where Roy Chapman Anderson went on his dinosaur-hunting trips in the 1920s and killed 46 vipers in the tent one night, so I was very alert for snakes but saw none. There were beautiful rocks everywhere, and it might not have been very hard to find a dinosaur fossil, but once more the heat was quite exhausting so we had mercy on our driver and headed to the ger. After gorging on ramen to the point of near nausea (finally, we weren't staying in people's "houses" so we could eat our own food), we went out for a sunset run through the saxuals toward the cliffs. It was stunning: one of those classic runs that just makes you happy to be alive, and happy to be in the Gobi, and happy to be in Mongolia.
After a short night, we drove over the bumpy bumpy roads to the airport. There are only about 1700km of paved roads in Mongolia (1800km of railroad), even though Mongolia is the 14th largest country in the world. It is impossible to get around areas like the Gobi without a native driver (or maybe, maybe using GPS) because there are no landmarks to use to navigate. A few hours at the airport, a short flight with the delightfully polite AeroMongolia folks, and we were back in UB.
One final anecdote to illustrate why Mongolia is what it is: after finding a room for the night, we went out to eat lunch just now at an Asian restaurant. When we paid the bill, the girl came back to say that something was wrong. She showed us that we had paid the bill and then left 2500 Togrog over. When we explained that it was for her ("a tip"), she hardly knew what to do with herself. Note that this isn't common, but that it could happen at all... !!
1 comment:
That picture on the dune is amazing. I can honestly say I've never had a more enjoyable vicarious vacation!
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