Ryan McFarland's blog

The Gobi

zieak ♦ March 24, 2013 ♦ Leave Your Comment

That word alone carries weight – Gobi.  It was the topic of high school classes about deserts.  There have been BBC Planet Earth segments about the place.  And I live just north of it.  Getting to experience it was a priority and we finally took advantage of the chance last fall.  The Gobi saddles Mongolia and northern China and we spent a week driving from Ulaanbaatar south through regions of the Gobi and then returning to UB.

The first day we got moving a little late because the timing belt on the Russian van we were going in broke before we even left the city.  We stopped and grabbed a new on on our way out of the city.  The first day was a lot of driving but before we left UB we found a store selling an assortment of beer we had not yet seen in the city so we stocked up.  We also gathered our Pringles supplies and other snacks to ready for long days of driving.

Our first night we were housed in a hotel (of sorts) but we had one big communal room for all of us to stay in that featured a portrait with a topless woman we had to cover in order for Jordan to consider staying in the room.  The next morning I took some photos of the monastery that was just outside of our hotel.

The monastery in the town had survived the communist purges of Stalin.  Unfortunately it was closed when we were there.  We drove again for many hours and it started to snow.  At one point our van nearly lost control (Ganbat, our driver was quite skilled but we’re all pretty sure we were on only two wheels for a few moments).

The first time we saw a hers of Bactrian camels we asked to stop.  Most of the camels are domesticated but they generally are not fenced-in.  Pepper showed off her comfort around animals (she grew up on a ranch).

We had a short breakdown in this area.  There was nothing but the pebbles, sparse grass, and very distant hills in any direction.  The perspective was incredible – it lent to being very introspective.  Sometimes we stopped at gers and asked for directions.  There are no directional or road signs.  No road markers.  One main dirt road might disintegrate into numerous insignificant dirt trails.

At one of our stops there was a pair of kids that came out.  It isn’t hard to imagine that a van full of foreigners might be the highlight of a day when you live in such a landscape.  The cute kids below must have lived a few hours from the nearest school.

 

We made it down to the Flaming Cliffs area which is famous for the first dinosaur bone discoveries in the area.  It was cold and this puppy followed our group around as we wandered the cliff area.

When we got back to our ger and had it sufficiently warmed up we decided to do a beer tasting in the Gobi.  We got out the beer we had stashed in Ulaanbaatar and tried all of them…

…unfortunately none of them were actually good!  But they did make cool shadows on the ger wall.

 

The next morning we rode camels.  It was bitter cold and the wind was piercing.  I’m not very happy with any of my pictures from that ride so I won’t post them here.  We then drove for quite a few hours to get to Khongoryn Els sand dunes.  At first we took care to take pictures of the dunes and the new snow but it didn’t take long before jumping off the dunes became more interesting.  It had warmed up considerably and the wind had died down so we had a great time wandering the dunes.

 

We set off but ended up breaking down so badly that both of the front seats and the van grille were removed.  Although I helped hod a light over Ganbat while he worked to make the repairs, I’m not entirely sure what was broken.  I think it was some break in the connection to the throttle cable.  It took almost two hours to fix.  Fortunately, Russian UAZ vans are legendary for the ability to repair in the field.  The one other vehicle that went by while we were doing repairs took a quick look at the work and seemed to think Ganbat would have no problem in his repair job so they left us after 10 minutes.

As a result, we didn’t make it as far as our guide had hoped.  We ended up staying with a family.  Staying in someone’s ger is pretty amazing and yet also somewhat disturbing.  If you can imagine just allowing anyone to stay with you whenever they want to – even a group of six foreigners and two Mongolians that are just passing through… but it is the nomadic way.  They expect to be able to stay with anyone so extend the courtesy even to our group.  The family we stayed with had a few gers and a large herd of goat.

Yes, that bin next to the stove is full of dung to burn.

The next morning we drove through an incredible slot canyon (Dugany Am) on our way to Yolin Am which has ice in it nearly year-round.

 

Unfortunately, we didn’t see any wild sheep or ibex but we found signs of them.  There were lots of pike barking at us on our hike into the canyon too. By now it was time for us to start driving back north toward Ulaanbaatar.  We did plenty of asking herders for directions… our driver, Ganbat, is on the right in the below photo, wearing the brimmed hat.

We also stopped and bought fermented camel milk to try.  This guy was just stopped along the road with his motorbike and a few plastic bottles of airag.

 

We stopped by a few monastery ruins and took in the vastness, silence and openness of Mongolia’s Gobi region.

 

Our last night before returning to the city we spent in the ger of a herder who gladly showed off his handiwork like the ger top he had decorated years earlier.  He gave us a few beautiful carved fish that he had made.  Sadly, all I had to leave him was a couple bottles of beer that none of us liked!

Despite frustrations with our guide/cook and essentially six days in a row of at least six hours of driving, we had a great trip.