Mongolia Tour Highlights Part 1

So we’ve made it back from our trip into rural Mongolia! It’s been quite a trip. When Khishgee (said as ‘Hish-key’), our guide, turned round from the front of the truck to us just after we set of holding a large bag of non-descript meat and said “sheep head meat?” we knew we were in for something special! We were initially a little hesitant (unsure if we were looking at a bag of brains or not) but she was having none of that so we all ended up having a piece and agreed that it was actually pretty tasty.

The culinary highlight of the trip was watching Ulyiibayar (he liked to be called ‘Byra’) our driver blowtorch a marmot for lunch outside the van after the traditional method of stuffing it with hot rocks and waiting an hour or so had failed to cook it sufficiently. That was also tasty (it turns out blowtorching meat has pretty much the same effect as barbecuing it).

Apart from Byra and Khishgee our companions were Florian, Amy and Katrina who were all from Australia. The small group size meant that we fitted into a single truck. The truck had a forward and a backward bench seat in the back with only 4 seat belts. This meant the forward facing middle seat, which someone had to take each day, had great views but also involved a certain no seat belt risk element. We thus named this the Seat of Scenic Death.

We spent most of our first day driving to a monastery. The asphalt roads quickly gave way to full on dirt tracks. It had been raining and was pretty bad conditions for driving, though Byra and his wonder truck (an awesome Russian built mega off-road version of a VW camper van) made short work of it.

We looked around the monastery and a monk told us a story about the fourth Bogd which I found very confusing. Apparently his father had been killing people to put his feet in their stomachs, but fortunately the Dalai Lama was on hand to point out that this wasn’t appropriate behaviour. There was also a Stupa next to the monastery which we climbed. Though it wasn’t really clear what that was actually for, it was a building on the top of a hill which is always fun. Our guide told us the monks had recently held a festival which apparently involved a lot of rice, sweets and vodka which were all over the monastery and stupa making it look more like they’d had a massive house party! She also said the monks had to clear it up now.

We spent the next couple of days driving to the White Lake. At the end of the first day Khishgee asked where we wanted to camp and I jokingly pointed to the top of highest hill in view. Khishgee and Byra took this as a challenge so we all headed off to the top of the mountain in the wonder truck to camp! They decided to put the tents below the top. It seemed like a good idea to be shielded from the wind but did mean we were sleeping at a 20 degree angle, sideways.

Near the White Lake are some extinct volcanos which last erupted about 10,000 years ago but look like they only blew up a few years ago. We climbed to the top of one and looked into the crater at the top. Then we had milky tea with meaty dumplings in while an eagle sat and watched.

We then stayed at the lake for two nights. It was a beautiful setting. We stayed in a family ger which is a large round tent made from wood and felt. It was very cold by the lake, especially at night, but we had a stove which made our ger toasty warm.

While we were there we rode some horses to some nearby caves. I called my horse ‘Boris the Horse’. We had an understanding that if I let him eat grass a lot he’d do what I asked most of the time. Laura enjoyed riding the horses a lot and wants to ride them when we get back, but then she also wants a ger…