Monday, July 7, 2008

Day 396 - The Make it or Break it Mongolian Mission - "Maybe it's possible ..."

Today is day one of our 15 day tour through the Mongolian countryside. By 8.30am we were on the road - 'we' are now the 5 travellers (us, the Italians we met on the train Franco and Marco, and Sylvie the happy Genevan), our Driver Bimba, and our guide Chana. After stopping off at Bimba's mansion for his 'bed', we made our way out of Ulaan Baatar and onto bumpy, dirt roads that would become the norm for the next 15 days.

Chana cheerfully informed us that today's driving would be a comfortable 2 hours, with a stop for lunch in the mountains, however after a few hours Chana frequently gazed back at us with an increasing look of concern - this was most likely because she realised that the day was going to be a lot longer than anticipated. So after 4 hours we stopped for lunch, with many more kilometres to cover ...
Lunch was sandwiches and tea in the rolling green hills, which we explored while lunch was prepared. On the way we found mushrooms erupting from the soil. We took one back to Chana to see if it could make part of our dinner - a Mongolian herder who had come to visit informed us that the top was edible but the effort required wasn't worth the rewards.
We soon headed off in our old Russian Van, and after almost another 4 hours arrived in a picturesque mountain range in Khogno Khan Uul Nature Reserve where we were greeted by a family and settled into our first Mongolian Ger (yurt in English - a large white tent nomads live in).
We set off on our first Mongolian horse ride, and the first 4 km we were led by a member from the family. We arrived at the base of the mountain range as the sun set, which Adam and Sylvie climbed to the top of (causing Chana some concern - though she'd slowly become used to Adam doing crazy things). This meant we were in a hurry to get back to the Ger, and that we got to ride the horses alone and a bit faster. Back at the Ger we met Grandpa, a pipe smoking entertainer who showed us how to lasso horses and explained to us about his huge goat herd - including grabbing Liv and Sylvie's breasts to indicate that baby goats drunk milk from their mothers (just in case us city types didn't know what they were for?!).

We headed off to bed still talking about the amazing views of the mountains, rivers, grasslands and everything else we had seen on our first day of our Mongolian Mission together.

Adlibing it as a group of 7.

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