Monastary
Trip Start
Jul 21, 2008
1
9
23
Trip End
Ongoing
Ulan Bator,
Mongolia
Friday, August 22, 2008
About 3 hours into our trip our driver had to stop to get the exhaust pipe repaired, it had strated to crack around a joint and he didnt want it to snap off and loose it, so he found a body shop in a little town called Moron, they soon repaired it using an arc welder with the use of no gloves or special glasses!!
So we set off once again and headed into some of the best country side yet, big green hills with clear winding rivers and valleys for as far as you could see. our driver is a smoker so he stoped every hour to the second. Along the way he stopped by a bunch of eagles that were just sitting around doing nothing, there must of been about 20 -30 of them.
Along the way i realised that all i wanted was for our ger to be in a place just like we were looking at out of the bus window, it would be perfect, a little ger next to a river surrounded by trees and mountains. Helen told me not to get my hopes up too high as this would probably never happen, I asked the driver how long until we got to the ger he said "2 hours" which in mogoian time is 3 hours. Along the way he stopped and picked up two old ladies that were walking down the road (this was very unusal as the drivers are under strick instructions not to give people lifts) but 1hour later we had to cross a toll bridge and as our driver is a clever old so and so he knew that these two old ladies would talk the guards into letting us cross for free as he gave them a lift. so well done him! He laughed a lot about that.
As we crossed the bridge there were 3 ger`s down by a river surrounded by trees and mountains... these surley werent ours as we were an hour early, but as we strarted to head towards them we both got very excited, the place was perfect and for once so was the drivers time keeping.
we went for a walk and it got very cold very quickly so we headed back to the ger to light a big old fire. There was a lovely old lady at this place and it was her job to chop our wood,cook food and light the fire,unfortunatly the wood they chop for you is so small that the fire has no chance of staying alight, so it gets a bit chilly when all the wood has burnt out. I decided to chop our own, so me and the korean lad headed off to the wood pile and set about to get some decent sized logs. It's lucky we did this as this night was one of the coldest yet (we were really missing the temperatures of the gobi). The fire stayed in no problems, and when we looked outside our ger in the morning, it had froze that night! so good job really.
This night would be the first time the korean couple would get to see the stars . Every night up until now it had been very cloudy, or there was a full moon which was so bright you could hardly see any at all. But this night was amazing they were so lucky they had a crystal clear sky and as we were in a valley the moon had not yet come over the mountains, they were so happy to see the milky way for the first time, they knew all of the star constellations and they even saw shooting stars.
we headed off early that morning 6 yes 6 in the AM we all struggled especially our driver who didnt get out of bed until the last possible second!! eventually our trusty russian bus started after 20mins! and we were off..... well we got about 10 yards then conked out..... so another 10mins tryng to start it then we were off, this time we got 50yards, our little ruski bus couldn't quite make it up a little hill, so the driver turned around and gave it massive run up all, the poor bus was coughing and spluttering.
we arrive at the monestery around 4pm we heard rumours that if we had a lot of rain we could be stuck here for a few day as the roads can get flooded very quickly. On our way here the roads were already pretty bad and in one place there was a tourist mini bus stuck next to a big puddle. As we approached, our driver chuckled as they were trying to get through this massive muddy puddle, luckily our bus sailed straight through the middle of it, but couldnt quite make it out ( our driver is now no longer laughing) we roll backwards into the puddle,our driver curses a bit (i think), but eventually we get out and arrive at the monastery.
This place is huge and very beautifull, its set in an ideal location on the base of a mountain looking over the flat palne with mountains either side. We spent the best part of 2 hours looking around and we managed to tag along (without any guards noticing) with a group of spanish tourists and their guide, this meant we didnt have to pay an entry fee into the main temple !
we went back to our ger and lit a huge fire as it was very cold,unfortunatly the heat from our fire woke up about 10.000.000 flies so the korean lad and I set out on a kiling spree, he was amazing he could catch them in his hands and then throw then in to the fire i had a go but only managed to catch one, so not to be out done i reached for my deoderant and lighter (yep you know whats coming) i think the most i schorched in one go must of been about 20,we had a lot of fun and got rid of nearly all the flies.
while were were sitting having our dinner we heard this strange noise it turned out it s what we were dreading RAIN it was like a monsoon and the wind was showling and blowing under our ger, this night was also very cold so we hurried to the wood pile and got some huge logs, we also had to put a load around the outside to stop some of the wind rushing through.after an hour or so the rain stopped but the wind carried on. I had the fire roaring so much that i got the chimney to glow bright red.
This would be our last night in a ger as we were heading back to UB in the morning and the koreans were catching a flight home at 3pm ,so another early morning 6 yes 6 AM and we were awoken by the coldest morning by far. I was gutted that the fire hadn't stayed in, but under closer inspection it had! I looked outside of our ger and everything was covered in frost, so I quickly threw some smaller bits of wood on the fire and in no time got it roaring and up to decent temperature.
we set off and this tme the bus was much better behaved it only took 15mins to start this time. After 2 hours of off roading we got to a tarmac road an the drriver said "asphalt to UB" this could only mean that we would be on a proper road all the way back and sure enough it was we got back to UB and were greeted with traffic jams, noise and normal food. When we got settled back in our guesthouse we went out for some food and this is when Helen got her first real dose of food poisoning. So with a trip to the hospital and 5 days later she was feeling much better. Roll on chinese food!
