Ana_Mongolia(Trip to the North)

Sat. Oct.7
Our driver Otto picked us up at 9am. He seemed like a nice guy. Didn’t actually leave until 10am. We had the whole green Russian van to ourselves. We stopped by the market to get water. It’s really cheap here a 1.5 liters is 25 cents.

After few minutes of driving we were out of the city. Yellow grass and rolling hill was all you saw. Right away the bumpy ride started. We had like an hour of paved roads after that just dirt. I had to hold on to the sidebars. Tim went to the back of the van. I couldn’t just relax, I had to pay attention to the road and make sure I didn’t get sick. Tim said the car had no suspension and that’s why we felt it even more.

We had lunch in the middle of no where it seemed like. The menu was only in Mongolian. Otto didn’t speak much English and was trying to tell us what was on the menu – goulash or dumplings basically. I ordered goulash and Tim ordered dumpling soup. I liked my goulash – rice, carrot salad, potatoes with cubed meat kinda like roast or carne guisada. It tasted it pretty good. Very good meal!

Kept driving for few more hours. Arrived to the first town feeling road worn. This town was super tiny. It had a nice temple to see but that was about it. I think I counted like 10 houses in this town. We put our stuff down in the ger. It had five beds, dining table with a stove/fireplace type thing in the middle. The walls had wood sticks as foundation and the outside was covered with layers of felt and other fabrics. The lady host was adorable. She kept bringing us stuff. We went around the town, the only thing to do was visit the temple. It was isolated and rundown. Besides looking at the bird poop on the columns you can see it was once really beautiful. Tim kept taking photos.

Went back to our ger and relaxed the rest of the night. The lady kept bringing us stuff like a candle since it was getting dark, more wood for the fire and then she brought us more blankets in case we got cold. I cooked some veggies for dinner cauliflower, tomatoes, and onions. It was good a sautéed them with butter and put some Lawry’s seasoned salt. What a lifesaver. We’ve used it a lot on this leg of the trip. Everything tastes good with a bit of seasoned salt.


Sun. Oct. 8
Losing track of the days…Monday, Sunday, Friday it’s all the same, doesn’t feel different.

The lady host came bright and early to light the fire. Woke me up. I thought it was Tim. I even said “Vida, thanks for starting the fire.” Then I realized it was the lady. Didn’t matter, she didn’t speak English.

Another day of bad roads. Asked Otto to put on the heater. He responded “frozen.” It was so cold that it had frozen overnight. But next thing I knew he stops to fix it. He loved his van. He took his tool out and there he started fixing stuff. Tim watched. He said that Otto knew what he was doing. I just stayed in the car trying to stay warm with my thousand layers.

We stopped for lunch and again we had goulash. It tasted similar, which was a good thing, pretty consistent dish. We met another group just coming back from the North. They said it was cool and cold and to watch out for those vodka shots. The one guy telling the story said they give you shots and they don’t take any. He got so plastered one night that they had to put him on a yak to get back to his ger.

After lunch we kept on driving for four hours through the forest. The drive was bumpy of course but what a view. The lush forest of pine trees changing colors. I love fall. There was snow on the ground too. In fact, at one point Otto asked us to get off the car and just walk down a hill he’d meet us there. Bobby who organized the tour for us warned us about that if the driver feels we’re at risk he’ll ask us to get off the car. Great I thought! But it was actually fun walking on slippery roads. Tim said it was better since the car wasn’t the best. We took our time to walk down. I had on my plumber boots on, I could barely walk straight. The boots had no arches it had a thick flat sole. So I walked stepping side by side. Pretty fun! Otto made it down the hill with no problem, he didn’t slit or anything. He was a good driver.
We made it to our overnight place, another ger. The setting was not as impressive. It was next to a small dry up lake. We walked around a bit since we had nothing else to do. Didn’t last very long since I was getting cold. It was very peaceful out there. It was nice to know we were the only tourist around. It’s nice to feel that we had the place to ourselves. We tried to imagine how it would be to live in a place like that. I kept thinking it would be very simple. You wouldn’t know any different. I was watching the family who owned the ger the young boy was already helping the dad cut the meat for dinner and stuff. I’m talking a six year old boy. And this house was the only one around in this lake. I would get so lonely I’d cut my veins. I think in this case I’ll have like 10 kids to keep me company. Not really, just a thought!

Mon. Oct.9
Drove to Moron, the next big town. Five hours of dirt roads. I had no tolerance that day. I wanted to end the trip. I was so achy form the night before. My neck was really sore. I told Tim that and he said we can. I love Tim he lets me be. But for real I didn’t know how much I could tolerate the drive. I couldn’t just sit there and enjoyed the view. I had to hold on the whole time, plus the view was getting repetitive – lush desert, rolling hills, big empty land, few gers here and there, herds of horses.

Made it to Moron around 2pm. Had our usual goulash for lunch this time with French fries, pretty tasty. Finally arrived at the Khogsvol Lake around 5ish. I was glad to be there. No more driving for a few days. The host of the hostel was very friendly. He greeted us with a “Hello” and “Welcome.” His name was Jimmy, funny guy. He had a cowboy hat with a long khaki coat on. He invited to have some tea and coffee at the kitchen area. It was so nice to know he spoke a little bit of English. He reminded me of myself when I was little – he had an under bite, meaning his bottom teeth are further out than his top ones, so it makes his chin stick out. Whenever I see that I think if I didn’t have braces thanks to my parents I would look like that. He suggested for us to stay in a room rather than in a ger, it would be warmer. I could feel the air colder here. It was only $8 US for both us and included dinner. Jimmy mentioned we can shower. My eyes light up. It had been two days without a shower. I was feeling a bit gross. He warmed us it wasn’t the best super fancy showers but I told him as long there is hot water I’m a happy camper. It was the best shower ever. The water was almost too hot. How they were warming it up was with fire. Didn’t understand the mechanics, but I didn’t care. It felt so nice to shower. The simple things I tell you sometimes are the best rewards. After the shower I put all my layers back on. I was saving my thermal underwear for the lake, since it was suppose to be colder than other places.

Dinner was waiting for us. I took my time with my shower. Tim was already waiting at the kitchen area. There were other locals hanging out by the kitchen. First thing Tim said – watch out for that guy, I don’t like him. He pointed at this big man. He later tells me the story that when he walked in the man just touched his “pp” and that he just slapped his hand away. I thought it was just so funny. I tried not to laugh. I told him maybe he wanted to feel his package =). Tim said he couldn’t tell if it was joke, he looked around the room to see if others were laughing but he didn’t see any reaction. The weird dude left shortly after. Tim was happy about that. I was distracted with the cute little girl, 3 years old. She was the daughter of the cook, Jimmy’s sister. So adorable! I gave her some chocolates and she responded – thank you very much. We played for a little bit. We had rice, potatoes, meat and tomato for dinner. It was the best dinner I had in Mongolia. It tasted different than the regular goulash, the meat was more like shredded carne asada. It had great flavor.

We set up with Jimmy what we wanted to do the next couple of days. We decided to do a two nights/three day horse trek around the lake. He recommended three nights but we talked about it that three days of horse riding would be plenty, especially since we’re not the best horse riders.

We had plenty of wood back in our room to keep us warm. It was so cold that night. I kept all my layers on. To go to the bathroom it was the worse feeling. I just went right outside the building. Forget walking to the toilet which was far from the room. I would tried to pee super fast. Still pulling my pants down and feeling the freezing cold air hit my butt was not fun. Even in the toilets I’d feel the freezing cold air since it the wooden walls had wholes on the bottom and the top. Part of the fun.


Tues. Oct.10
Waited for a while to take off on the horses. Jimmy took us to the market to see if we needed anything else. We had pretty much everything. We had bought plenty food from Ulan Bator. It was only three days.

Finally we got on our horses. Mine was cute – light brown with brownish and black highlights. Jimmy tried to look for the biggest horse for Tim. The horses they had seemed very short and stocky. But one was pretty big. We took off and had what it seemed two guides. They didn’t speak English. Our first stop was a one the guide’s home. We got in and got offered the yak tea (yak milk, water and salt), not bad. Wasn’t sure why we were there, but just sat and waited. The kids and mom were curious looking at us. Before we left one of the guides took out a Mongolian style long jacket for me to wear. He said I would be cold. I put it on. I felt like a wrapped burrito. I had like five layers of clothing.

We finally started riding about 11 am. The horses were going at slow pace. The guide taught us how to say “cho” which means “go”. That’s all I knew how to say in Mongolian. I have to say I had no desire to even how to say “thank you” in Mongolia. Don’t know what it was, whether I was getting tired of always making the effort of learning few words or that I thought Mongolian was hard to even learn the basics…Whatever. One of the guides which I thought was “the guide” at first and the other guide was tagging along, disappeared. It sucked because he knew more English out of the two of them. It was frustrating since we couldn’t ask any details to the other dude. We kept riding along the trail, beautiful forest. Extremely peaceful, all I heard was the steps of the horse trekking along the path. I loved to see so many dried pine needles on the ground. It looked like yellowish snow. Tim’s horse kept eating every two second. He was usually behind my horse. All I kept hearing Tim saying “cho” all the time. In front of me was the pack horse. He kept farting whenever there was a hill. It was so funny. And Tim thought it was even funnier that I was behind the horse. We took a break. I was sore already. My butt was hurting pretty bad. I was hungry too. All we had was a snickers bar to snack on. It tasted so good. Kept trekking along for the rest of the afternoon. It felt like hiking but on a horse. Finally arrived to one campsite for the night. We stayed a small cabin. The host family stayed in a ger in the middle. The owner, young guy, spoke a little bit on English he told us to have a sit and again was offered some yak tea. I didn’t like it like much, but felt good to drink something warm. I was tired from riding the horse for five hours. My legs felt rubbery and it was nice to sit down on a chair. He tried to make conversation with us but he barely knew English. He would speak to us in Mongolian when he got stuck with his English. I don’t know why but I always responded in Spanish “no entiendo,” like he would understand that. They showed us the cabin. It was small and cozy. He told us to go back to the ger for dinner. In the meantime he and another started wrestling right outside. Wrestling it’s a big thing in Mongolia. Soon enough Tim was wrestling with him. He got beaten three times. They were really good. Although they were shorter and smaller than Tim they had tactics to take him down all the time.

Went back to the ger for dinner. It felt like I was in a movie. Just so random – inside a ger with the locals just mingling like nothing. While we waited for the food to be ready the guy host, I can’t remember his freaking name busted out a tape of R&B songs. They had a radio on the ger that worked with a solar battery. Pretty advanced. They also had a small TV. I do have to say from all the ger I’ve seen this one was the cleanest and fanciest. Very neatly decorated – colorful finishes inside the wooden frames of the ger. Out of the blue, the guy started dancing, but he kept dancing like a girl. You could tell he had seen videos on TV and started to imitate them. I was cracking up. He kept asking me to dance. I was shy for some reason.
Dinner was OK. Some minestrone soup with yak meat and potatoes. I’ve had worse I guess. We stayed there after dinner. It was interesting since we couldn’t really make conversation with them. But just stare and smile. The host guy busted out his vodka. We knew we were in trouble. Soon enough he offered us a shot. It was super strong. I only took a sip and gave to Tim. He even gave us like 5 mongolian cents for good luck I guess. I’m sure it had some sort of meaning, couldn’t get it out of him. Tim kept taking the shots. I think he had total of 6 vodka shots. He was pretty tipsy. We walked back to our cabin. Tim was being funny and saying silly things. I kept making him water and gave him for aspirin. I’m so glad I didn’t take the shots.

Wed. Oct.11
Didn’t sleep much, I was a bit restless.
Went horse trekking around the mountains nearby the camp area. It was sunny day at least. My horse was being sassy for some reason. My horse kept eating every few seconds and when he wanted he would just take off and get ahead or he would stop for no reason. I was losing it and it didn’t help Tim kept laughing. Then I had the brightest idea yet. I passed my small backpack to Tim since I was getting tired of carrying. Big mistake! As soon as I tried passing it on, Tim’s horse got scared and freaked my horse out. My horse took off towards a tree. Somehow I managed to pull a matrix move and leaned all the way back and holding on with one hand to avoid crashing into the tree. Last minute the horse turned and missed the tree by an inch. Then he took off still a bit scared towards the cliff. Tim kept shouting pull hard. I was pulling so hard that he starting to go in reverse mode near the cliff. I for sure thought he was going to throw me off. And I just thought OK I’m in for a good ride down the hill. At least there was a lot of grass so I thought I would have some padding rolling down. Good thing he calm down so did I. I’m sure he sensed I was scared too. I’m so glad nothing happened. No broken bones. Now I know why Jimmy, the guy we hired the horses from said don’t pass anything to each other. After that I was a bit nervous still and I’m sure he for sure he sensed that. He kept being so temperamental. He would not pay attention. He tried to eat every few seconds again or just take off. I wanted to get off the freaking horse so bad. We made a big loop. As we got closer to the lake I kept thinking we’re almost there but NO. Two hours later and we were still not close to the camp. I was super sore and annoyed by then. I remember we got off the horse just to walk the horse and take a brake. It felt like a marathon and I had just hit the “wall”. I wanted to stop now. I wasn’t enjoying the ride. It was beautiful and everything, but I didn’t care a bit. Finally out of the blue. My horse starts trotting and the other horse followed. Every inch of my body was aching but I didn’t care I wanted to go faster. We did that for the last 40 minutes. I was so happy to arrive at the camp after eight hours of riding on that stupid horse. To end the interesting day, I had the bright idea to cook the pasta we had brought. It was so nasty. I over cooked the pasta and the sauce taste old and bla. What a day!

Thurs. Oct.12
Was ready by 8:30am, couldn’t find our guide. Finally found him. We tried to tell him we wanted to leave now but not sure if he understood. He kept taking his sweet little time. He took thirty minutes to load the pack horse with our packs. I was sure he had no idea what to do. Was frustrating couldn’t ask what time we would arrived back at the hostel. We wanted to leave on the same day back to Moron. What can you do, lost in translation. It was nice ride back. We stopped at two ger's along the way for a short brake. Tim kept taking pictures of me. He said I looked like cowboy with my hat on. I did feel like a cowboy at times. My horse kept being moody. I was so done with him. I was so glad to get off that stupid horse. =)

We left after unloading the horse. Otto was taking a nap. We just wanted to leave had some coffee with Jimmy before leaving.

It was night time by the time we arrived to Moron. Otto took us to have dinner – goulash of course. I was so tired, just wanted a nice warm shower. Otto took us to one the ger first. Two other girls were staying there as well. They seemed really nice. We barely talked. I just had shower in mind. It had been three days this time without a shower. We had to go to public showers. I didn’t care. The first one we went to was full but Otto took us to another one. I didn’t care I just wanted a hot shower and I did. I wanted to stay under the hot water forever. Felt very refreshing.
Got back all fresh and ready to go to bed. We started talking to the two girls. Very nice and easy going. I liked them from the get go – Shyan and Leah from Singapore. They plan to travel for six months around Asia.

Fri. Oct. 13
Shyan and Val came with us. They didn’t have a ride back. They took public transportation to the north and said it was a bit challenging and didn’t want to get stuck going back to the capital. I didn’t mind at all plus they helped with the gas and it was great company. Someone else to talk to other than Tim. Drove for a long time. We didn’t even stop for lunch. Otto just bought these fried dumplings and shared with all of us. Arrived finally at the white lake which BTW wasn’t white at all. I’m sure in during the winter it gets covered with snow. Didn’t do much after that. Tim and I went for a walk around the lake. Talked with the girls the rest of the night.

Sat. Oct.14
Snowed a bit overnight. Drove again like eight hours to our last town of the trip. The scenery was getting very much repetitive. I kept starring into nothingness and just drifting away as a jumped from side to side trying to hold on. We stopped at a bigger city for lunch. It was unusual to see a city layout in a grid. It was one of the biggest cities so far on this trip. Had the worst pizza ever. It had this dry up cheese with a wanna be salami looking thing. The bread was old and hard.


Sun. Oct. 15
Cold morning, gloomy skies! Had the worst breakfast – Mongolian cookies. The lady host even asked us the night before at what time we wanted breakfast and everything. I thought it was going to be a bit more elaborate at least toast with butter or something like that. But I should have known the dinner she made was also not the best it was just dumplings. They were cold and soggy and not very filling when I was expecting something with more substance.

Saw another temple before heading back to Ulan Bator. It was nothing special plus it was super windy and cold. I’m so temple out!

We arrived in Ulan Bator around 5ish. I was so pissed; the hot water ran out in the middle of my shower. I had still had to rinse the shampoo on my hair. I waited for few minutes and the water was still freezing not even lukewarm. I decided to wash it on the sink at least I only have to wet my hair with the freezing water. I was mad after to know that Tim did have a hot shower. He was shaving first and the by the time he took a shower it was hot again. Lucky me!

The rest of the night we just sat being lazy bums. I was craving potato chips. I had a whole pack of sour cream & onion chips, it tasted like Pringles but it was different brand Mr. Potato. The logo was a face of a funny dude with a Mexican hat. I loved it! Saw couple of movies. It was nice to just relax and do nothing.

Looking back on the trip. It was fun but nothing out of this world. Don’t have much to say about it. I’m glad we did it but probably won’t do it again.