Continued from the Mongolian camping trip

28-09 – 30-09 : These days were a bit relaxing after the campingtrip. So i catched up with my e-mail and exchanged pictures with the others. Very handy those Ipods and Archos portable harddisks : no need to allready filter out the pictures you like

What can you do more to relax around here? Joining for a cultural performance is one of them. Amazing in what position some people can get their body!

The last day in Ulaan Bataar (30-09) we said goog-bye to Nathan who went by train to Russia.
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….continued from Campingtrip/Mongolia 2005 (3)

23-09 : Around 9.15 we headed to Yolyn Am, a 160km/5 hours from here. Yolyn Am is also known as Vulture’s mouth and was originally established to conserve the bird life in the region, its dramatic and very unusual scenery of a valley in the middle of the Gobi desert, with metres thick ice almost all year around. Sadly no ice off course when we were there
There’s a nature/ethnography museum and we had a very beautiful walk there. We spotted also a lot of kind of marmots (Gerbail?) and on the way back from out of the car a glimp of a fox, but he ran away when we stopped the car to take a better look at him.
Our camp site for the night was in a very windy and cold area, so it was just a matter of choosing between a windy higher camp ground with the chance the the camp site would blow away or a lower, sheltered dry riverbed with the chance to be flushed away when it would rain enough. Looking at the stars….we choose the riverbed Sadly there’s not to much to make a camp fire here, so after preparing the dinner in the cold windy area, eating it and doing the dishes, we head straight into the tents and hoped that it wouldn’t rain..

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….continued from Campingtrip/Mongolia 2005 (2)…

17-09 :
Around 4 am, Ulzi came bargin into the ger. He was drunk and said that it was cold and wanted to lit the fire again. Because it was very dark, he tried to look for some light, but luckily it didn’t work cause Maya used the poweroutlet to charge her camera Not that that would stop Ulzi and so he started to disconnect the chimney along with a lot of noise. Offcourse it didn’t work either cause the chimney was to long to get into the ger like that. Why he tried it in the first place remains a mystery. Then he tried to lit the fire by just throwing wood into the fireplace, which didn’t work as well offcourse. Pretty amusing i must say Finaly he gave up and left the ger.
Around 8 am someone off the guesthouse came into the ger to lit the fireplace, so we would be able to get out of bed warmly, because it was certainly cold and probably has been freezing last night. Around 9.30 am we got breakfast served in our ger again and around 10.15 am, we tried to wake up Ulzi, so we could continue our trip. He didn’t look to fresh to drive, but after some coffee we were on the road again.
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…continued from campingtrip/mongolia (1)

13-09 : Around 10am we went on for the last part to the white lake (Terkhiin Tsagaan) . We had some lunch near a vulcanic crater and arrived at the lake a bit later. We found a nice spot between some trees to put out our tents, so we would be a bit protected against the wind. When going to the lake side, it seems to be further away then i thought. The grassland between our tents and the lake side also doesn’t seem to be normal grass, but more a bit swampy. A bit strange, since our campsite is as dry as it can be and there’re even cracks in de ground . An hour later i returned with some bottles off lake water, which we needed for cooking our dinner. This time it was my turn to show my cooking skills and the dinner was defenitely a 5 star pasta with some salsa sauce
Again a friendly looking man from a ger camp close by, was paying us a visit and asked us to make only fire on the open sandy space in our campsite, cause the soil is so dry that it would burn the last trees or grass very quickly away. He also seemed to know allready that the wind would come from the wrong direction (no wind at all at this time), so care should be taken. In the evening we got some more company from some yaks, who came closer and closer…Yaks grazing/walking in the dark sounds funny i must say. The Yaks look like ghosts in the dark produced by  the bright moonlight. A nice sky with stars  again and very quiet around here.  This night  i also used my fleece sleepingbag together with a blanket and my normal sleepingbag, cause it would be a cold night again. To bad i had to get out in the middle off the night for a toilet stop, so completely awake again as i was, i could enjoy the sky even more since the moon was gone and thus more stars to see!

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continues from Mongolia/Ulaan Bataar story…

04-09 : Around 8.30 am we left the guesthouse in the rain. According to the guesthouse owner this should bring luck? Well then we should be very lucky in the Netherlands Today we’re heading towards the Amarbayasgalant Monastry, where we should arrive in around 7 hours. Just before leaving the city limits of UB, we stopped to fix/change the spare tire and just outside UB we had to walk 3 times around a kind of a stupa for a safe trip, but was not more than a pile of rocks, old bottles (offerings) a big pole in the center and a lot off blue ribbons waving in the wind.
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