Snowed in...

We were supposed to leave Ulaanbaatar on our second 12 day trip around Mongolia this morning but we've been thwarted by the weather.

We got back from a 12 day trip through the Gobi and central Mongolia on Wednesday which was absolutely awesome. Before leaving on that trip we left messages around the guesthouses in UB looking for people to join us on a second trip up north after we got back. As soon as we were back (pausing only to wash our clothes and have a shower - having only 3 showers in twelve days was pretty grim) we started following up our responses. Eventually we hooked up with another 3 people and were due to leave today, heading towards Lake Khovsgol.

We all piled into the minivan and headed off out of UB at 9.00am. We didn't get too far before we were stopped by the police at a checkpoint and turned around. Apparently a severe snowstorm is setting in throughout most of Mongolia and no one is permitted to leave UB for a few days. It was a bit frustrating because we had just checked out of our hostel and they didn't have room for us to come back, but thankfully we just extended our visa yesterday so we weren't too stressed about a couple of days delay. We're now hoping to head north on Monday or Tuesday and are currently enjoying the pretty snow which is falling on UB. It's very weird weather here as yesterday the temperature was about 27 degrees and today it's about 5 degrees and snowing!

The trip to the Gobi was excellent. We ended up joining an Italian guy Raffaele (who we met on the train coming up from Beijing) and his friends Sam and Steve (a couple from England) for 12 days, which included three days of horse trekking. With our driver and our guide/translator that made 7 of us in a Russian minivan. The minivan was awesome - it was really comfy (apart from the seat near the engine which was a bit warm) and powerful, which it needed to be to navigate the roads outside of UB. Heading south, within a short time the bitumen roads turn to dirt tracks through the desert - we had no idea how our driver knew the way each day as there seemed to be hundreds of different tracks through the desert all heading different ways and absolutely no signposts.

The Gobi was really dry and rocky rather than sandy. There seemed to be hardly any water around - we gathered that most of the people living in the Gobi draw water from a well for themselves and for their animals. Most of the people living out there have a herd of goats, sheep and sometimes camels. Our accommodation each night was with a local family in a ger. The gers were really comfy with 5 - 6 beds around the inside wall and some had a stove which made the inside of the ger really warm. Wood was a bit scarce though - there were a couple of nights where we were kept warm by burning dung in the stove. But hey...when in Rome... It was so beautiful out in the desert with hardly anyone else around - on most occasions you couldn't see anyone else around, sometimes you'd see the neighbours' ger about 10km away across the desert. We had fantastic sunsets over the ger most nights.

My favourite stop on the Gobi part of the trip was the night we spent at the Khongor sand dunes in the south. The sand dunes were huge, made of beautiful white sand and were stuck smack bang between a mountain range and a little wetland where some horses were grazing. We hired camels for an hour and rode around the base of the sand dunes which was fun.

After the sand dunes we headed north again and started our three day horse trek from Orkhon waterfall. Our driver waited for us at the waterfall while we all headed off with the camping equipment, our translator and our two horse guides. Soon after being assigned our steeds we asked what their names were - they didn't have any. Mine soon became Spike and Paul's horse was Princess (even though he was a boy).

We trekked around the Eight Lakes area which was really pretty. The second day we had to climb a mountain range on the horse and the going was pretty steep and rocky. I felt sure that Spike wouldn't be able to get through some of the areas but he did, even though he had to cross over big boulders etc. Sometimes the only clear path went right under a low hanging tree branch - I was pretty good at horse limbo by the end of the three days. That night we camped by one of the lakes. It was really cold before we went to bed but we were all standing around the fire so it didn't feel that cold. When we went to bed I put my half empty water bottle inside the tent in case I was thirsty in the night. When we woke up the next morning, the bottle had ice blocks in it! My shoes, which were outside the door of the tent were all frosted over and stiff. I had to go and thaw them by the fire before I could put them on.

We were supposed to camp again the next night but we all thought we should try to head back to the ger at the waterfall so we could actually get some sleep. That day was a pretty hard ride and we all had pretty sore legs from rubbing against the rough stirrup leathers that our saddles had. By evening we reached the waterfall but were still two kilometres away from the ger. Our horse guides enticed us to camp again by saying that we could fish in the river for dinner. That decided us and after a hairy crossing of the river which was flowing through the bottom on the canyon, we made our camp on the opposite ban.

That evening, a man from the ger on the other side of the river bank came over to say hello. We had told our guide that we wanted to try traditional Mongolian food. This guy said if we bought one of his goats, we could make a traditional Mongolian dish which is cooked with hot rocks. It seemed like this was our opportunity to try some "real" Mongolian food. We started building up the fire while the guy went to collect a goat (which, by the way was only 30,000 t - less than AU$30 for those of you who are interested in the going rate of a small goat in Mongolia these days).

I'll skip over the bit where the goat went from being alive to being dead but suffice to say in short order we were all sitting down to "hot rocks goat" wondering where our appetites had gone. The meal was actually really nice though, despite the only ingredients besides the goat being potatoes and salt - once we started eating we felt a lot better (how quickly we forget). Everyone sat around the fire on the horse blankets eating out of the massive cooking cauldron with their hands.

The next morning we headed back to the ger, said tearful goodbyes to our trusty mounts, promised to visit the ger family again next year and departed for the old capital of Karakorum. Karakorum was interesting, but by this stage we were ready to get back to UB and have a meal which didn't consist entirely of mutton. (Sometimes it seems like everything in Mongolia has some element of mutton in it. Even the hot water we got at the gers tasted like mutton - we suspected that everything was probably being cooked in the same one or two pots most of the time). We were also missing toilets which had a door. The most basic toilet we had on the trip was a pit dug into the ground with a short wooded wall around three sides, which wasn't even high enough to cover your head when you squatted down. Even though it was a little way away from the ger it never felt quite private because everyone knew when you were in there! Also, if the minivan or a motorbike chose that moment to leave the ger, it usually drove round behind the toilet - where the only open side was! I think there were times when we all found a nice clean spot behind a rock to do our business instead of face the pit toilet!