Western Mongolia - Gorkhi Terelj Nation Park

  Gorkhi Terelj, Mongolia
Wednesday, April 2, 2008

Arrived in Mongolia at 6am at the train station, as I stepped off, was hit immediately by the cold air which you could see sparkling under the dim street lights as the moisture in it was frozen. After a bad nights sleep on the train (as the monster next to me was snoring so loud that I was worried I may actually be inhaled through his huge nose in the night into his yak (a hairy Mongolian cow) sized belly!) and navigating my way to the hostel in the dark, I was kind of hoping for some sort of bed. Instead I was told I would have to wait until someone checked out at 12 in the afternoon, I then found out that there was trip leaving with one spare space at 9am to West Mongolia, not wanting to waste time I spontaneously decided to go. When the others turned up for the trip, it turned out that I knew two English guys on it which I had met in Moscow.

The view from the top

The drive was not to long and within minutes of leaving the center of the capital, the whole suburbs was dotted with the Ger tents (a traditional circular felt tent, lived in by the Nomadic herders from the countryside), which people in the city still chose to live in. The scenery changed quickly, out of the city, the road disappeared and we were left with a sandy track with a nice view of the jagged mountains and snow covered peaks. When we arrived at the Ger camp the sounding area was breathtaking, even after just traveling just a couple of hours out of the city. We had lunch with the local people which was rice and some chewing fatty sheep (mutton), it was basic, but did the job and I thought it was still quite tasty. We had the afternoon free to explore before jumping on the horses to move on to the next camp. I headed to the highest point I could see which was a near by rock formation, after a long and hard climb through a narrow,dark,icy cave then up a near vertical face I made it to the top.

Yeeee F#*#ing haaaa

The view was spectacular, like nowhere else I had ever seen in the world, snow covered plains to the west, huge sandy areas to the east, miles of rolling hills, jagged rocks, forested parts and the occasional ger settling in the distance. As I arrived back to the camp, we had to set off into the sunset in hope to make it to the next camp before night fall.... which we didn't, and as soon as the sun went down it got extremely cold (at least -15...at a guess + the wind chill), and the wind unforgiving ripped across the plains, which actually started to hurt any exposed parts of body until they went numb. When we made it to the Ger we all appreciated the fire but not for long!!! We had been given a tip from a local lady which was once you have got the fire going and the ger up to heat, what ever happens - do not open the door before you go to sleep as it will let all the heat out and you will be cold in the early hours of the morning, so this is what we did but the ger was so well insulated from the cold, it didn't let any heat out. This causes the inside temperature to raise to 48 degrees C resulting in me having to strip to my underwear and lie on the floor to prevent sweating and dehydrating.

Shadows of me and the horses

The next couple of days had a similar story, exploring and climbing in the day, mutton for every meal and moving to the next camp by horse back, although we did finally master using the internal furnace in the ger by limiting the amount of oxygen in and keeping us warm (or at least above freezing in the ger.) all of the night. Really enjoyed the horse riding and was amazed at the gradient they could climb and descend and the rocky passes they could get through, and all with me on their back. I almost felt guilty for a while but that didn't last for long.