Wednesday, October 13, 2004
Gobi Desert Tour and Karkhorin
First thing after having done the usual travel overhead routine in Ulaan Baatar, I hopped on the next available tour to the explore the vast Gobi desert, which occupies most of the south of Mongolia.
The itinary went down south through Bayanzag and Dalanzadgad, followed the Gurvansaikan national park westwards and then headed up for a last stop in Karkhorin, where the capital of Genghis Khan's empire once stood. The whole trip took 9 days.
The Gobi desert landscape is extremely varied, ranging from arid burnt out black gravel plateaux to sand dunes, snow topped mountains, red earth cliffs, shrub forrests, grassy plains with rivers and lakes, a valley where the ice never melts, etc. Every day brought other sceneries, so there was no time to get bored!
...a dinosaur bone:
...entering the ice valley:
The desert is also teeming with life. The most visible are the thousands of gerbils, marmots, and low flying small birds. Also a very common sight were the herds of sheep, goats, cows, yaks, gazelles, wild donkeys, horses and camels, as well as the buzzards gliding high in search of carrion. And, of course, the dispersed human population and its gers.
... after the rain:
We travelled by jeep: 4-8 hours drives almost every day. In the evening, we stayed in traditional gers rented by the locals. Sometimes, we got a stove for heating. In any case, a good sleeping bag was a must as it could get very cold at night. Often, our bottled water freezed in the jeeps.
During the day, the temperature hardly got over 10ºC which, combined with the dryness of the climate was rather a good thing, as it prevented the formation of body odour. We only had 1 possibility to take a shower, at the public facilities in Dalanzadgad, on day 3 of the trip...
Besides sightseeing, we also had a good share of fun and some interesting ethnic experiences. The most memorable without doubt being the Mongolian wedding where we got invited to the reception in the ger after the ceremony. Plates of food and snacks were passed between the guests: pieces of freshly killed mutton, noodle soup, cabbage salad, apples and dried raisins, sundried sheep and camel milk... All of this washed down by generously filled chalices of alcohol.
I distinguished 3 varieties of drinks: the mild airag (foamy horse milk beer after which one was requested to sing), the treacherous camel milk spirit (like fermented lactoserum) and the deadly "Mongol Standard" vodka. The hosts kept the supplies coming and, under those circumstances, it is very bad manners not to down your cup. So the atmosphere got very relaxed and joyful.
Then things got blurred... Eventually, in the early afternoon, the activity in the ger decreased while the desert got littered with alcoholised corpses. My lights went back on at 6pm. The hosts were very happy: the alcohol had been drunk and, judging by the bodycount, the guests had enjoyed themselves. Good! Yes!
Karkhorin
This town is not really in the Gobi desert, but as it is more or less on the way back to Ulaanbataar, most Gobi tours do a stop there. Seeing the sleepy shabby frontier-like town it has become, it is hard to imagine that this place was the center of the world in the 14th century, when it was the capital of the biggest empire of all times. But the successive destructions and invasions left absolutely nothing of the Genghis Khan's first capital (at the end of his reign, he moved to Beijing, which became his new capital).
The only interest of stopping there is probably the tibetan buddhist Erdene Zuu temples, which were built in 1770 and almost completely destroyed by the communists during the purges of 1940. They are now slowly being restored.
... the group on its last stop:
The itinary went down south through Bayanzag and Dalanzadgad, followed the Gurvansaikan national park westwards and then headed up for a last stop in Karkhorin, where the capital of Genghis Khan's empire once stood. The whole trip took 9 days.
The Gobi desert landscape is extremely varied, ranging from arid burnt out black gravel plateaux to sand dunes, snow topped mountains, red earth cliffs, shrub forrests, grassy plains with rivers and lakes, a valley where the ice never melts, etc. Every day brought other sceneries, so there was no time to get bored!
...a dinosaur bone:
...entering the ice valley:
The desert is also teeming with life. The most visible are the thousands of gerbils, marmots, and low flying small birds. Also a very common sight were the herds of sheep, goats, cows, yaks, gazelles, wild donkeys, horses and camels, as well as the buzzards gliding high in search of carrion. And, of course, the dispersed human population and its gers.
... after the rain:
We travelled by jeep: 4-8 hours drives almost every day. In the evening, we stayed in traditional gers rented by the locals. Sometimes, we got a stove for heating. In any case, a good sleeping bag was a must as it could get very cold at night. Often, our bottled water freezed in the jeeps.
During the day, the temperature hardly got over 10ºC which, combined with the dryness of the climate was rather a good thing, as it prevented the formation of body odour. We only had 1 possibility to take a shower, at the public facilities in Dalanzadgad, on day 3 of the trip...
Besides sightseeing, we also had a good share of fun and some interesting ethnic experiences. The most memorable without doubt being the Mongolian wedding where we got invited to the reception in the ger after the ceremony. Plates of food and snacks were passed between the guests: pieces of freshly killed mutton, noodle soup, cabbage salad, apples and dried raisins, sundried sheep and camel milk... All of this washed down by generously filled chalices of alcohol.
I distinguished 3 varieties of drinks: the mild airag (foamy horse milk beer after which one was requested to sing), the treacherous camel milk spirit (like fermented lactoserum) and the deadly "Mongol Standard" vodka. The hosts kept the supplies coming and, under those circumstances, it is very bad manners not to down your cup. So the atmosphere got very relaxed and joyful.
Then things got blurred... Eventually, in the early afternoon, the activity in the ger decreased while the desert got littered with alcoholised corpses. My lights went back on at 6pm. The hosts were very happy: the alcohol had been drunk and, judging by the bodycount, the guests had enjoyed themselves. Good! Yes!
Karkhorin
This town is not really in the Gobi desert, but as it is more or less on the way back to Ulaanbataar, most Gobi tours do a stop there. Seeing the sleepy shabby frontier-like town it has become, it is hard to imagine that this place was the center of the world in the 14th century, when it was the capital of the biggest empire of all times. But the successive destructions and invasions left absolutely nothing of the Genghis Khan's first capital (at the end of his reign, he moved to Beijing, which became his new capital).
The only interest of stopping there is probably the tibetan buddhist Erdene Zuu temples, which were built in 1770 and almost completely destroyed by the communists during the purges of 1940. They are now slowly being restored.
... the group on its last stop:
