The Mongolia Diaries: Day Seven

A huge wind storm woke me up around 4:30AM and while I wanted to get more sleep, I was scared that my tent was going to blow away along with me in it. I stayed bundled up in my sleeping bag until about 7:00AM. My tent was near the van which is where the guide and the driver slept and I heard them up and about starting to get breakfast on the go.

I got out of my tent and was amazed at how intense the wind was. I needed to visit the little girls' room which meant squatting in that huge open field. No one was around yet and I found myself laughing out loud trying to figure out which way to point my butt so I wouldn't pee on myself. Ha! Mongolian problems! And let me tell you, it didn't work out so well. Thank goodness for wet wipes!

I started packing up my things and the driver came over to help me take down my tent. We couldn't put anything on the ground because it would blow away immediately so he guided me on what to do with my things. He had obviously dealt with this before.

We were served a very simple breakfast of dried baked goods, yogurt and museli. We had to eat in the van because of the wind. I took two videos of myself outside trying and capture the fierceness of that wind. As soon as we were packed up, we took off and headed in the direction of the Naadam Festival. There was to be horse racing, Mongolian wrestling and archery.

Our location for two nights

On the drive over, we saw a group of gazelles which was pretty awesome! We also saw a fox! We were making our way further into the Gobi Gurvansaikhan National Park. The festival was in the middle of nowhere and it took us a bit of time to find it. It seemed we were going this way and that until the driver finally spotted it!

We got there just as the horses were coming in from a 20KM race. I was very surprised when the winning horse came in with a kid on it. I just assumed it would be adults though I am not sure why I made that assumption. Horse after horse came in and they were all being ridden by kids and some of them were very young. It was pretty neat to watch!

After all the horses were in, there was an introduction with the Mongolian national anthem, followed by a singer and then by a man playing a traditional instrument in Mongolia called a Morin khuur or a horsehead fiddle. After that, the Mongolia wrestlers came in.

During the introduction, they were asking foreigners to sign up to wrestle against a Mongolian wrestler. The Mongolian wrestlers were quite big and strong so it hardly seemed like it would be a fair fight. Most of the wrestlers had the foreigners down on the ground in less than thirty seconds.

At some point during the wrestling matches, the two German girls decided that the festival was too touristy and they wanted to leave. I guess they had talked the Australian girls into wanting to leave too, so the next thing I knew was that we were packing up and getting ready to go. The guide seemed surprised that we didn't want to stay.  I was quite happy to stay for the rest of the festival but when you are traveling in a group, the majority wins.

Free offerings at the Naadam Festival

A few things I noted about the festival was that they were serving free Mongolian vodka to anyone who wanted it. They also had a huge bowl full of candied fermented camels' milk bits and bites. I did try a small piece. It had the consistency of a crumbly cheese and it tasted like blue cheese gone bad or sour yogurt. I don't even know how to describe the flavor but it was not pleasant. Also, little kids were wandering around with big plates of dried lamb meat and encouraging guests to try it.  It was delicious but also odd that they were just serving dried meat on an open platter in a massive field with still fairly intense wind.

We made our way not too far from the festival to some gers near the Gobi Desert sand dunes. We would be staying in the gers for two nights. The thought of not having to go anywhere for two days was nice. There had been a lot of long, bumpy drives and on that day I was tired of being in the van and feeling a little unwell.

Upon arrival, we were told we had to meet the family in the family ger. We were once again given fermented camel's milk. Ugh. The family at this set of gers were camel racers and they had a lot of awards in the family ger.

After arranging our things in our ger, my group wanted to walk over to the sand dunes that we could see in the distance. They were about a one hour walk away. I decided to stay in the ger and have some alone time. My tummy was upset so I thought it would be best to stay near a toilet. This set of gers had two latrine toilets set up with doors that closed. We were promised 1.5L of drinking water each day but that meant getting water from a well in one of the villages and filtering it for us to drink. Perhaps it wasn't agreeing with me.

It was nice to have the afternoon to myself. I met a girl who was on a private tour and I found myself wishing that her and I were traveling together as we were on the same page about Mongolia and had a lot of similiarites as to where we are in life. We ran into this girl a few times over the next few days and the girls in my group seemed to be making fun of her for being alone and they couldn't understand why she would choose to travel by herself. I found myself feeling a little jealous that I hadn't thought to do that. Ha! That being said, since she was alone, she was in a normal van. She told me they had to deal with four flat tires and the van had broken down twice. I probably did pick the best way to travel through Mongolia with the Russian van as they weren't sending those out unless you were in a group.

My group returned before dinner and they had made friends with another group in the ger beside ours. They all had a bunch of beer and vodka and after dinner a big party was forming. Everyone got pretty drunk. I guess some younger Mongolia boys joined their party and they kept yelling out extremely loudly, "Vodka, where? Vodka, where?" It was a little strange and a tad annoying.

I barely ate dinner that night nor did I have any alcohol. I watched the sun do down which was beautiful and then watched the huge orange moon rise up from the horizon before settling into my bed for the night. My tummy was still unsettled so I thought it best to rest up. I was glad we didn't have to go anywhere the next day. I guess if an upset tummy was going to happen during this adventure, the timing couldn't have been more perfect.