mega trip part 2
(for a more complete and probably better written account of our trip check out Rdoc’s blog here)
We survived our 13 hour drive through the mountains to arrive in a small town. Petty exhausted from the drive we didn’t leave till late the next day. The drivers spent most of the morning practically rebuilding the vans, when we asked what was wrong our driver said “too much Gobi!”
We wandered down to a local shop to stock up on chocolate and bread for the next few days. It was freezing cold, and very windy so we spent a long time in the shop trying to avoid going outside. he town was another non-descript, dirt road, big fences type place. Soon we were back in the vans and driving to our next destination. There was still lots of snow on the ground and we drove past (and through) lots of frozen rivers.
That night was spent in an amazing location set in the hills all covered in fresh pure white snow. The snow in Mongolia is the whitest most powdery snow I have ever seen. We were close to a waterfall which was totally frozen in motion, very cool. We also loaded up on horses and went for a bit of a token ride around which was kind of cool. Generally I am not a big fan of horses but Mongolian horses are different in that they are strangely small so not so far to the ground if you fall. We rode our horses around a bit, even getting them running for a bit. But I was glad to get off after an hour as my butt and toes were getting numb. Eventually we were on the road again stopping via a monastery in the hills.
During Stalin’s rule most Buddhist monasteries in Mongolia were destroyed but recent years has seen lots of them restored. This monastery is really in the middle of nowhere, then a hour walk up a hill to where i is built among snow covered hills with amazing views. A young shy monk lead us up to the buildings and let us in the rooms where they pray. We climbed right up some vertical cliff face to a big rock pile covered in blue ribbons then back down where there are some tiny caves a guy lived in for 11 years. The whole place was beautiful, mostly because of its remote location. Back down the hill it was a long drive to the next town of Karakhrum, the old Mongolian capital.
Now its just a small dusty town, but it does have a big monastery which we checked out in the morning. Lots more monks around, and some nice buildings. The other van load left us at the point to head back to UB while we pushed on through for another 4 days. It was day 9 by this stage, that is 9 days with no shower, no running water, toilets that are really just holes in the ground. I can’t say I wasn’t a little jealous when the other group headed back to civilization. But of course the next 4 days were great.
(our whole group on some random fake yak’s)
We headed north towards the white lake stopping on route at our drivers family house. We picked up some bottles of arag to try, which is fermented mares milk. People sell it all along the road for a couple of dollars a bottle. It was pretty disgusting, although not quite as bad as the fermented camels milk we tried on the first day. We also picked up some yak cream which kind of had the consistency of cream cheese and tasted surprisingly good. Over the next few days we came up with multitudes of uses for it. Yak cream and jam on biscuits. Cream on chocolate, in coffee, on bread….it was good and a bit addictive.
We had 2 nights at the White lake which was a beautiful big lake, partially frozen over. We were supposed to go horse riding again on our full day there, but the horses never turned up…apparently they didn’t know where they were. But we walked over to a volcano crater instead which was pretty cool. From the top you could see where the lava had spilled out and spread over the country side.
(Our van load with our awesome driver)
From the white lake it was a 2 day drive back to UB. 2 very long days. Our last night we stopped at a place known as small Gobi because of its sand dunes and gobi like scenery. The man whose Ger we were staying in was really funny and kept coming to check on us. In the morning when we asked to take a photo he disappeared inside to put on his ‘photo jacket’. We had picked up Gana (our drivers) wife who was coming back to UB. On our last day we all stopped at some Mongolian restaurant on the side of the road where the boys all ordered big plates of fatty mutton…I stuck to a salad.
Finally we arrived back into UB, back on paved roads, back in traffic. UB was even uglier that I remembered after 13 days of amazing scenery. It took us an hour to navigate the traffic back to the hostel.
A shower has never been so good
Tags: 1, Adventure, blogsherpa, karakhrum, Mongolia, TRAVELS 2008
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Wow Arnika! This sounds so amazing and the photos are so cool! I think it is very hardcore travelling indeed.