Day 408 - Fly, Sylvie, Fly

Given that our accommodations for the night was only a 5 minute drive to the airport, we got their without any hiccups, and Sylvie soon had tickets in hand. At the airport we all got a treat when the toilets flushed and there was a basin with soap! By 8am we were farewelling a fantastic friend, whom without the trip really wouldn't have been the same. Thanks for the compass and temperature gauge Sylive - now we can complain about how hot it is when we're trying to become unlost! This photo is a little snap of one of the silly things she did just for the fun of the group: We had a stop in Dalanzadgad for shopping, and Chana treated us to an early lunch at a traditional cafe - which provided a welcome break from the monotonous potato, carrot, cabbage, and mutton soup we'd been eating for the last 2 weeks!

Our drive from here became even dustier - we had to weigh up whether to be steaming hot, or dusty!! Dusty usually won.

We stopped at a well for some refreshment, the process of which took half an hour or more as we had to tie rocks to a massive water contain so it would sink in the well and fill up. None of us were complaining though because it's nice to get out of the van and the water is like heaven on a hot day. We drove until our van was too hot to continue and stopped to watch goldminers in action. There had been a major find in the area and we got a peek at a woman's findings for the day - $10 worth that had taken most part of the day of hard rock smashing and digging. We questioned the effectiveness of the collection process and the machines in use - but they're the rock miners, not us!!
Around 4pm we arrived at Tsagaan Suvraga where huge white and red (and everything in between) limestone cliffs spread out into the desert. We spent a lot of time walking around and up and down the cliffs, which gave us amazing views and also a sense of mortality, as the cliffs were crumbling underneath our feet and we knew that in the distant future these cliffs would be an undistinguishable bump in the desert. We tried as much as possible to walk along the established pathways, so that we didn't speed up the natural process.

We then made our way to another well where the boys stripped off and had a wash - shampoo and all! The lengthy process of filling the water container was then repeated and beers lowered into the well to cool for the night.

Chana asked us if we'd sleep in tents for the night, and we told her we'd rather a ger if possible. Unfortunately this backfired on us, as the place where she asked if we could stay only had one ger, and the family more than willingly offered us. We tried to tell Chana we didn't feel comfortable making them sleep outside just to accommodate us, but she told us it would be rude to after they had offered. And so we were invited in to drink goats milk, and were taught to play Shagai - a Mongolian horse racing game played with knucklebones. Adlibing the crumbling cliffs.