Travel Blog Mongolia

one time seen is better than thousand times heard.

Mongolian Saying

Here we go: Our first trip!

This was the route we decided to drive guided by Tseegii and our two awesome driver Bartaar and Naraa.

And because pictures say more than hundred words I will let the pictures speak….

Day 1: From UB to Baga Gazriin Chuluu

Start of the trip was 9am State Department Store. I slept at Jessys and Flos house, as it is a bit closer to SDS. We had a great start and drove off, first on a geteerte street, later on pistes. The Mongolians call them road 😉
At out first stop the Baga Dazriin Chuluu, a rock formation with a cave, Jonas joined us as he was in the Gobi to held a speech. Awesome scenery, awesome start of the trip and the two cars are just nice! But as I told you not too many words here some pictures.

The night we stayed at a somehow strange Ger Family as there were just two guys living together with the mother of one of those. We found out that he had a wife which died but before they were already separated. He has 3 children, but they do all live in UB.

Day 2: From Ger Family via Tsagaan Suvraga to the next Ger family

First and last problems with one of the cars forced us to stop one time in the middle of nowhere, but the drivers could fix it pretty quickly. Then off to our next sight! The Tsagaan suvraga is also a mountain formation made of sand stone. It is around 40m high and 60m me long. Then we drove off to our next Ger Family. They had a little child aged 6 years who was absolutely awesome! We played together and run together. The scenery when we arrived there was just amazing. You could saw the two Gers popping up on the horizon, by driving closer some silhouettes of camels joined this pictures and at last a car and some people. Behind all this you could see the sun set ☺

Day 3: From Ger Family to the Yolin Am (Lammergeier Valley or Valley of the Eagles = Geierschlucht)

Next stop was a valley located in the Gobi Gurvansaikhan National Park. Its particularity is (or maybe was) that even in summer the sun can not really reach the whole valley and therefore the little river flowing in this gorge is frozen. But thanks to the climate change this becomes worse and the little river defreezes more and more. It is by the way the oldest tourist attraction in Mongolia and since 40 years tourists travel there. The part where the ice never melts is called the eternal ice. The ice is several meter thick and kilometres long. We celebrated into Jonas Birthday and had a whale of a time there. Even if it does get around minis 10 degree Celsius durin the night it is okish thanks to my lovely down feather sleeping bag and my silk inlay (thank you daddy ☺)

Day 4: Khongor Els

Seemed like a ling and a bumpy drive to the 180km long sand dune. Today was the day of camel riding, trying camel milk (very yummie!!!!) and sleeping the first time in Gers on our own because the family offering the Gers had to search their camels. They run away 😀 That’s also Nomad life! The life pretty close with the animals, their everyday life complies with the animal’s life. During our camel ride we stopped at a point where the dune was pretty high and we could climb up the sand dune! Exhausting and interesting to see how soft and hard sand could be. It was one of the cold days because of the strong wind and it was freezing cold. Lucky us that the camels had warm humps and fur to hide the hands in.

Day 5: Bayan Zag (Flaming Cliffs)

Kirsten’s Birthday and she as well was surprised with a cake, burning candels and a birthday song. Then brekky and off we go. Next stop the Flaming Cliffs. They are located in the Ömnögovi Province and importan fossil finds have been made there. It is particularly important for the first discovery of dinosaur eggs. On our way to Naras family we searched nomads to buy Airag, Camel milk and we got a bit lost on our way. Finally we found the Sum (the little villages Russians created to help to get a certain structure over Mongolia) where Naras family lives. We had a lovely dinner at their house, played the finger game while drinking Airag (the goupe that looses had to dring the whole bowl) and then we drove off to our sleeping place. A house where some herders live. They work for Naras family. And the father of Naras family is an important politician in this area, his brother a well-known wrestler.

Day 6: Family and Khorkhog, Ongii Monastery

Today was the day of the days. Because Kirsten and Jonas had birthday Naras family butcher a goat for them and made the Mongolian dinner what is eaten at special festivities. It is called Khorkhog (http://www.mongolfood.info/en/recipes/khorkhog.html) and is probably the most existing Mongolian dish. The meet is cooked with potatoes, carrots, onions, in a closed container (sometimes a milk bottle, in our case not outside on a fire but on the oven inside) with the held of heated stones inside the pot. The meet tasted awesomely good and I guess it was the best meet I have eaten here up to now. Yum yum! The Mongolian way to slaughter an animal is kind of cruel as two people hold the animals legs and another is cutting into the body, puts the hand inside and tries to destroy the aorta so that the animal bleeds to death. Advantage is that you do not see any blood because it bleeds all inside the animal. Mongolians use everything of the animal, they fill for example the gut with the blood and cook it. Enough of this!
After having eaten we had to continue our journey to reach Ongii Monatery before darkness. We made it and had a look around while the sun was going down. First time sleeping at a place where little river was floating by. And yeah what else could we have decided… Have a guess…. Yes of course we wanted to hop in this frozen river after dinner. First try failed because we tried to get down in the darkness without light and without shoes. Result: thousands of pricking thorns in our feet… Second try was successful: fucking cold water, but awesome. You have to imagine that the rivers here are not deep; to we could not really swim (maybe better because otherwise we would have died), so we just washed ourselves a bit and that’s it. But what was ice to see was that the hair got frozen when you went out of the water. Our second last evening ended for some singing in the Ger with the drivers and the family and for others relaxing and hanging out playing card games. #backtotheroots

Day 7: Kharkhorin, museum and monastery

Last real day and we all thought the past times went by so quickly… Some also thought it is worse not having a shower for one week and not having a real toilet for one week. But thanks to Mongolian dryness it is absolutely ok not to shower for a week without stinking too much 😀 This morning we drove off to the Kharkhorin Sum, which was actually a very important city in former times: Dschinggis Khaan had his main camp there and it was the capital during this time. There is also a monastery. We had a guide within the museum and the monastery which is pretty useless because of the language barriers… They could not really tell us more than our books told us before… Nevertheless it was absolutely nice to walk though and see a tiny part of the former city. The last evening we finally found a way to do something in common after cooking our last dinner (yummy rice with a meat veggie sauce). We played two group games called “Psycho” and “werewolf” and had a blast!

Day 8: Mongol els and return

The last day existed in driving home stopping by the mongol els – a tiny sand dune compared to the Khongor els, doing some last funny things with the car, making a group photo and thanking our two drivers and Tseegii our lovely tour guide! We had an awesome trip and have already some nice ideas in our head for January (even then it will be shitty cold) where some of us do have 2 weeks off.

Who wants to read more (but in german only) clicks here

Jessys Blog