The Gobi Desert, Mongolia

August 9-16, 2003

Well…we have now been officially baptized by the sands of the Gobi. What an experience! It was almost a sensory overload. The sights were so spectacular, the experiences so surreal yet authentic, the opposites so profound…

We started out in UB with 4 other people- our driver, Ikhmee, and 2 English girls, Tara and Jess, and 1 male Canadian originally from Latvia, AKA Aus. We really didn’t know any of our traveling companions, but it worked out quite well. Everyone was very relaxed, totally enthralled by the Gobi, and, for the most part, on the same page. Our driver turned out to be the best driver ever. He spoke no English mind you, but was always smiling, laughing, or singing, and with our broken Mongolian, we were able to communicate with him just enough.

His driving skills were definitely needed, because there was a lot of driving involved, and within 1 hour of leaving UB, we said goodbye, permanently, to paved roads and made our way over open pasture, dirt road, sand dunes, and rocks for the next 7 days. The first night we stayed with a family next to their ger- it was straight out of little house on the prairie. There was not another ger or structure to be seen, and you had horizon for 360 degrees. It was difficult to figure out who was whose child, parent, brother or husband, but they were extremely friendly, and we even shared our tasty (at least to us) home-cooked dinner of curried rice, potatoes, carrots, onions, and some meat with them. They had quite a large family- about 15 people- all living in their one ger and accompanying bedroom built out of wood (which is unusual for a herder family). Ikhmee, our driver, told us to pitch our tents semi-close to the houses so we would be protected by the dogs if any wolves were thinking of swinging by for a little fun. Hearing that helped us sleep peacefully. (Ha!)

We said our goodbyes the next day, after taking loads of pictures of ourselves wearing their traditional clothes, which they made us put on, and headed further south to Bayanzag, better known as the Flaming Cliffs, a name that was penned by Roy Chapman Andrews, the archeologist/explorer who was the model for Indiana Jones. The Flaming Cliffs are one of the most well known parts of the entire Gobi, both for their unparalleled dinosaur fossils and the stunning beauty at sunset; they glow bright orange like fire, hence their name. We camped amidst some neighboring dunes with small tree-shrubs here and there for the second night, made a camel dung fire (seriously) and slept under the stars, which was nice, though a soon-to-be full moon brightened the sky a bit too much for our star gazing.

The next day we explored and hiked around the Flaming Cliffs, which turned out to be just sand, held together somehow. There were bones everywhere, and it really gave you the accurate impression that you were in a graveyard, whether it be one of dinosaurs of thousands of years ago or camels and birds of yesterday. We spent 2 hours just wandering around, each one of us hoping to stumble upon a Tyrannosaurs Rex skeleton sticking out of the ground. The wind was unrelentless, and we soon took cover in our 9-seater, 20 year old, Soviet jeep, and headed towards Yolyn Am, or Vulture’s Mouth, the entrance to one of the Gobi’s national parks. From here, the terrain changed rapidly, from sweeping green steppe that continued on endlessly to rocky mountains that came up like molars out of nowhere. Within the park, we headed straight for Yolyn Am, as even in the middle of summer, there is a glacier within the gorge. The ice reaches 10 meters during the winter, gradually melting throughout the spring and summer, but never fully disappearing. We saw it when it was only about 3 feet high, but it was still magical and very puzzling.

We camped in a nearby gorge within the park for the third night, and then the next day made the all day drive to Mirror Rock, out in the middle of, literally, nowhere. Though I realize that most of the Gobi fits that description, we truly were off the beaten path. Mirror Rock is a very sacred spot for Mongolians, and it was the one place our driver actually joined us in exploring. It used to be a 20-foot by 10-foot solid rock wall that was so smooth and flat, you could see your reflection perfectly. But in the 1930s, the Soviets came and shot it up because of its religious importance, rendering it little more than a broken chunk of rock. A little bit of restoration has been underway, so now there are some parts where the mirror aspect has returned. We camped next to it for the fourth night, and again slept out underneath the stars, this time with a full moon keeping watch over us.

The next day we drove to Sevrei, to see some rock paintings. After swinging by a ger to pick up a local to escort us around the area (our driver was very good at using his GPS- Ger Positioning System), we all then spent the next 2 hours on the ground searching for these rock paintings, which were not in caves or rocks attached to mountains, as we had all assumed, but were in fact paintings on loose rocks, somewhere in the thousands of acres of arid land that stretched out before us. After walking in the heat of the day for 2 hours and 4 square miles of fruitless searching, we all reunited back at the van, only to be told by our driver, who searched as well, that we had been looking in the wrong area. Dehydrated and discouraged we all hopped back in the car and drove about 4 minutes north, and there we found what looked like a crop sign made out of rocks. It was actually a grid of 2 rows, each with 3 squares. We got out again and started looking for these alleged rock paintings. Even though we were in the right spot, we still found nothing. The only thing we could assume was that they were either removed for scientific study or stolen; either way we were definitely bummed not to have seen them. Nevertheless, we headed north (as we had gone as far south as we would go, about 100 miles north of the Mongolian-Chinese border) to Khongoryn Els, the spectacular sand dunes that adorn the front of almost every postcard of the Gobi.

We arrived there around 3 p.m., but it was much too hot to embark on our camel ride through the sand dunes, so we pitched our tent next to a river, prepared some food, and waited for the heat to subside. At 7 that evening, our camel-mounted guide, followed by 5 camels in tow, made his way to our camp, and soon we were all perched atop our very own camel for the next hour. The camels were overall pretty well behaved, and we had a really enjoyable hour-long jaunt over the dunes. They were like none other animal we’d ever been on. They were trained to kneel for us to get on them and once up and walking their stride was quite methodical yet thrust us from one side to the other with each step. They have the longest and most beautiful eye lashes ever. You’d almost think they were trying to flirt when they bat their eyes at you. The more unpleasant and disheartening aspects were that some of their humps sagged due to lack of water and they were quite stinky- let’s just say that their bums weren’t washed frequently. They seemed to play a little game with us; they liked to walk as close as possible to the other camels, so as you and your camel were coming up on another camel they would brush up against the others arse. If you weren’t paying attention you could end up with fresh and stale camel dung all up and down your leg. Not pleasant, especially considering there were no proper showers to be had.

Before we knew it dusk fell upon us and the sun was replaced by the glowing moon. Rather than turning in early we thought we’d try to surf down the steep slopes of the sand dunes on trash bags, using our headlamps to see. We were not successful in the least and speculated that the sand must have to be hot rather than cool like it was the hour we decided to try. (Someone please share the secret with us if you have succeeded in sand dune surfing.) Unexpectedly our journey back to camp was an adventure as well. What should have taken 15 minutes to get back took an hour. The sites seemed so different when it was pitch black out. After many detours and debates as to which way, we found the river we were camped on and followed it back home. Once again, we all slept under the stars yet this night it was also through 2 rain showers and one fierce sand storm.

The morning found a herd of goats and sheep grazing around and in our campsite. We obviously didn’t seem to threaten them; three of them were even nice enough to wake up NikiAnne by sniffing and chewing on her sleeping bag and the little of her head that did stick out of the bag, while I took pictures, naturally.

Day 6 we headed for Ongiin Khiid (Monastery), a former Buddhist monastery that was totally destroyed during the Stalinist Purges of the 1930s, when almost all of Mongolia’s Buddhist infrastructure was eliminated. The ruins were pretty depressing, but at least gave us insight as to what life is like around the monasteries in the aftermath. To this day people are still piecing together relics of what was, in an attempt to record that era and place. This was not a manicured tourist site at all; you were able to walk in amongst the rubble as if it happened yesterday. The pieces of alters, pottery, statues, etc., were housed in both the on-site museum and the monastery’s gift shop, both of which were within gers. The more intact and decipherable pieces were in the museum, whereas the less distinguishable yet enticing broken relics were for sale. Although this seemed very wrong and sad to us, the economics made sense; to have money would be the only way to keep their excavation project underway and this was one of their only ways of making money.

We camped in the outskirts of the ruins and somehow survived a night of fierce, cold rain. We woke up only to find that the temperature had dropped considerably and that the rain was still coming down. Needless to say, we decided to get on the road early, around 10am, to head for our final camping spot, some 170 kilometers south of Ulaan Baatar. We drove and drove through the rain, which wrecked havoc on the dirt roads, and ultimately our vehicle.

Ikhmee gave us a huge surprise when we unexpectedly arrived on the doorstep of the family we stayed with our first night. Although he had originally he said that we wouldn’t be coming home that way, he saw how much this family meant to us and how well we all connected so he took a longer route just so we could have one last meal together. This time they cooked for us. We politely ate the goat’s cheese they presented us with, as is customary in all herder homes, and waited for the real meal to come out. Whipped up in no time was plain white rice with chunks of meat mixed in. We took one bite of the meat and almost gagged. It tasted salty and old and was very dry. NikiAnne began worrying that she was eating horse meat (a common meat in Mongolia) so she pulled out the phrase book and tried asking if we were eating horse meat. When they replied yes her eyes lit up in horror. Somehow the miscommunication was cleared up, they had meant to say yes, she was saying the sentence correctly. Still not sure what we were eating she persisted with the questions. Finally, they pulled the table out from the wall and pointed to a billy goat nestled comfortably next to our feet without us even knowing it and said, “that is what you’re eating,” in Mongolian. Now that our meal was just domesticated and smiling at us lunchtime was over for most of us. We politely ate what we could, eventually said our goodbyes for the second time and got back into the car for the rest of our day’s journey.

By mid-afternoon we had all decided that cutting our trip short by a day and driving straight through to Ulaan Baatar, still an estimated 6 hours away, would be more preferable than trying to make camp in the middle of a rainstorm and sleeping wet and cold all night. We trucked on, led by our fearless and extremely capable driver, who would stop every hour of so to fix something wrong with the vehicle, or at least do preventative maintenance work. From about 9pm, when it first started to get dark, to our ultimate arrival time in Ulaan Baatar at 1:30am, we passed at least 10 cars or trucks either stuck in the mud or with a dead battery.

Finally made it back to our respective houses, tired, cold, and exhausted from 14 hours of continual driving. We were all extremely grateful to our driver, Ikhmee, who demonstrated his skill and ability more than enough times. All of us spent the next few days recovering from our fantastic trip, while Ikhmee, our driver, left 1 day later to take another group back to the Gobi. While the Gobi Desert was even more wonderful and mysterious than we could have possibly imagined, heading back there just 1 day after returning to UB was unimaginable.

As for us, instead of going back to the Gobi, we packed our things and prepared to make our way to China. Honestly, we could have stayed in Mongolia for the entirety of our visa- 3 months- but it became apparent to us that there was still so much more of our trip left and that we needed to start moving if we were going to avoid cold weather that was rapidly approaching. With that in mind, we got back on the train, still heading southeast, to the world’s most populous country, the People’s Republic of China.