The Magnificent Gobi Desert
Trip Start
Sep 01, 2007
1
8
58
Trip End
Oct 22, 2007
Gobi Khongoryn Els Sand Dunes,
Mongolia
Friday, September 7, 2007
A short 70 minutes flight south and were in the main Gobi town of Dalanzadgad. From there we drove to Juulchin Gobi 1 camp. After resolving another itinerary mix-up (there has been a fair amount "lost in translation" so we are getting good at making sure we do what we had planned to do.)
We headed off on a 200 kilometre drive west through the Umnugobi Province with miles of beautiful nothingness across the Mongolian Steppe. We had a stop along the way to relieve ourselves and visit the "Stone Sellers", amazing that in the middle of nowhere there are people living and trying to sell their wares to the passing travellers! We arrived at the Juulchin Gobi 2 camp and the magnificent Khongoryn Els sand dunes. They are about 100 km long, 20 km wide and rise about 800 metres high. From the camp we had a fantastic view of them and after lunch we headed off to see them up close. We had a short diversion while we met a local family and tasted what to us was a fairly vile tasting drink of Airag (fermented mares milk) and ate equally vile tasting dried yoghurt. Our guide and driver really enjoyed these Mongolian delicacies.
Finally we were on the dunes, one of the main reasons for visiting Mongolia (which means "Blue Sky") and we were not disappointed with the dunes or the sky! We climbed up the first set of dunes and collapsed for a while. We were pretty high up but went further up the next dune where the wind picked up too much for us to keep going. The views were forever and the sand comfortable so we went back down to our first stop and watched the world for a while.
Once we were down again we went back to our local family and rode their camels back towards the dunes. It started off with our camels getting on top of each other, my camel giving Annie a big slobbery lick, and the camel guide having to continuously stop and separate our camels. A bit of manoeuvring and we were happily on our way. It was really tranquil walking through the desert mostly in silence, just enjoying the beautiful scenery.
We spent the night in a Ger, a traditional round Mongolian tent with a wood burner in the middle of it and made out of animal skins so very warm and toasty and we did not even need to light the fire. After our adventurous day we slept like logs!
