Sand dunes, Gobi desert

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  Ulan Bator, Mongolia
Tuesday, August 5, 2008

8.00 am we were packed and ready to go on our nine day trip to yhe gobi, we were waiting for our 4x4 to turn up merlin was getting excited when these new land cruisers were turning up and taking tourists away, our driver turned up about 15mins late in a 4x4 not a nice new land cruiser but a 12 year old russian attempt of a 4x4 at least it had two spare wheels one of which was flat and we had heard that punctures were a comon thing, it didnt seem to bother the driver much. on the puncture side of the journey we had a total of 3 punctures, not bad for the whole 9 days only problem was that they were all in one day!!

the first major sight we saw besides wild camels, gazels and huge eagles were the flaming cliffs which were in the middle of nowhere very hard to explain but the colours were amazing, we werer staying about 2miles away from this place in a little ger net to a lake it was very quiet and as we looked out side of our ger door you could see camels, about 100yards away

Mouse

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that evening we were watching a mum and dad teach their two little girls how to round up goats which was very nice to see, little did we know that 1 hour later we would be eating one of these goats for our dinner!
our next big stop was to be at the sand dunes where we were staying for 2nights. The temperature was unbelivable our driver said it was about 40 degrees. so we and the italians that we were traveling with spent the day sleeping and came out in the evening when it was cooler. On the 6th of august we took our camel ride to the sand dunes it took 1hour to get from our ger to the dunes. it was then a 10min hike to the very top of the dunes we sat on the pointy part for about 1hour just looking and wondering why it was there. when we went back to the camels we were invited into a family ger to have traditional warm goats milk with vodka and some other really horrible food which merlin had to smuggle in to his bag as it was so bad... but it was a all round good experience.

On the 7th of august we went to Yolyn Am valley which is where the glacier should of been but we were 3 days late as it had melted! but we still managed an amazing 2hour trek down this gorge which had wild hamsters and gerbil type animals running around everywhere, it was quite chilly here which made a nice change

Nasty looking bug

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On our way back from the gobi we stayed at a ger in the middle of flat land with absolutly no one around us not even the driver or the ger owners, we couldent believe our liuck but at the sametime we couldnt understand why we were here, i mean there was literally nothing as far as the eye could see, we decided to go for a walk and 1hour later our driver sped out of nowhere shouting somthing at us? we all jumped in to the 4x4 and went for a drive to a place called Tsagaan suvarga, this place has to be seen to be belived. there are cliffs that just come out of nowhere full of colours of reds, green, yellows, purples, and oranges. we took plenty of pics of this place which we will add later.

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The amazing gobi desert	Tsagaan Survagaa 1	Tsagaan Survagaa 2	Tsagaan Survagaa 3
Us enjoying our camel ride	Yolyn Am gorge or ice valley

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