The Mongolia Diaries: Day Eight

I woke up fairly early after a long but interrupted sleep. I was awoken a number of times by the party outside and again when my group came into the ger around midnight. The girls were fighting off some of the Mongolia boys who wanted to come into our ger. And then the youngest German girl who was only 21 decided to run outside without any pants on. It was quite comical and worth being awake for! It also reminded me that I am so far from my twenties!

On a camel in the Gobi Desert

My stomach wasn't feeling 100% better but my appetite was back for breakfast. We were scheduled to go on a camel ride that morning. Unfortunately, the ride wasn't that interesting but it was fun to ride a Bactrian or a two-humped camel. The camel guide tied all the camels together and we walked around an open field. As per Mongolia, the scenery was stunning but they should've taken us in the direction of the dunes.

We were scheduled to have a traditional Mongolian barbecue for lunch. When we got back from our camel ride, our driver and one other guy were carving up a goat that had just been killed for our lunch. The goat's head was beside a box, the skin was lying out to dry and random pieces of the goat's meat were sprawled about a plastic sheet. Sadly, it wasn't uncommon to see discarded goats' heads around. I guess the head is of no use based on the number of them I'd seen but every other part of the goat is used.

The barbecue was inside the family ger. They had an oven that had a long pipe to release the smoke going up out of the top of the ger. The oven had wood and stones inside the bottom part and as the stones heated up, they would move them into a big pot of goat's meat that was over the fire. It was like smoking the meat at the same time. As soon as they dropped the hot stones in the pot, it smelled delicious!

Preparing our lunch

They added potatoes, carrots, garlic and onions along with a bunch of salt. Mongolians seem to love salt as a lot of the fermented animals' milk they were serving us was very salty. The end result was that the food was delicious but the goat meat was very oily. Overall, it was a lovely experience from the start to the finish and one that I'll never forget!

I noted that the blood from the goat was in one pot and all its insides were in another. I asked them what would be done with those things and their answer was that they would be making blood sausages. It was nice to know that all parts were used with very little waste. Except for those heads!

At some point after lunch, I decided to walk over to the river near the dunes. The water was too shallow to go in and rinse off so I settled for putting my feet in. It was nice to walk around in the cold mud and feel the water on my skin.

On the way back to the gers, I saw a group of vultures! They were off in the distance, so again I wasn't able to get a picture. I also ran into a big group of horses. I couldn't get too close to them but I loved that there were random groups of animals in big herds everywhere just doing their thing!

We had an early dinner and then headed out to climb the highest sand dune in the Gobi Gurvansaikhan National Park. The area is called Khongoryn Els. The climb up was tough! Each time I put my foot in the sand, it felt like it slid right back down to where it started. I was getting nowhere. And being with a bunch of young kids, my group ran up there like it was nothing. It took the guide and myself quite some time to make it to the top but we eventually made it!

Once there, we could see over to the other side of the dunes. It was overwhelmingly beautiful and on my recorded journal I was close to tears just talking about it. And this happened to me a lot in Mongolia. It was like someone dropped me into a painting to live for two weeks. The gorgeousness brought me to tears on many occasions thoughout my trip which has never happened to me before. I don't know why I was so emotional but I was. And even now when listening to my recordings and recalling back, tears roll down my face.

Watching the sunset on the dunes was spectacular and perhaps the best part was that we brought sleds up with us! We got to slide all the way down. (about 300m or so) I hadn't laughed that hard in a very long time! And again, I had tears in my eyes from laughing hysterically. We were absolutely covered in sand!

Another highlight of my trip happened on this night. I went to the bathroom in the later evening with my headlamp and there was a little bird sitting right near the bathroom door. I thought maybe the bathroom door had closed on its tail because it was there looking at me and not attempting to move. So I opened the door expecting it to fly away but it didn't budge. It looked stunned. I didn't know if it was the light from my headlamp that was stunning it or what, but it was frozen there and staring at me.

I wasn't sure what to do so I nudged it and it hopped over a few spots but was still gazing at me. So then I starting thinking about what happens to injured animals in Mongolia. I had come across a number of dead animals by this point already. Ones that were most likely sick and had died. I had seen random bones, carcasses and a number of goats' heads. We were in the middle of nowhere. It's not like we'd find an animal hospital or a hospital for humans for that matter!

I was so close to this beautiful, little bird that I could touch it and we continued to stare at each other for quite some time. It was a magical moment. I could see that one of its feathers was tattered so I put out my finger to see if it would hop on it but instead it chose to fly away! I don't know what I would've done with it had it hopped on my finger, so that was that. Back to bed I went with another amazing memory!

We would be packing up and making a move the following morning. We had about 180KM to drive to our next stop which was a place called the Flaming Red Cliffs.