Dave & Meredith’s Travel Blog

I’ve posted a gallery of pictures from my recent trek through Mongolia. You can click here to see it or look at the list of galleries on the Photo Galleries page. I’ve also posted a short video of our guides singing a Kazakh folk song on our last night camping – click here to see it.

- Dave

I had two days in Ulaan Baatar before flying back the States. I mixed it with some souvenir/gift shopping and some sightseeing.

A Mongolian band playing on the side of one of the bigger cashmere stores in Ulaan Baatar. They were pretty good and the guy was really good at different kinds of throat-singing.

I went to the black market which is huge and has everything you can imagine: clothes, saddles, electronics, furniture, etc.

A shoe vendor at the black market.

My guide from the lake took me to a new entertainment complex that Mongolia is building a few miles outside of UB. He said it had a status of Genghis Khan and kept smiling as if it were some joke on me. It was definitely a surprise when I got there. It’s over 40 meters high not including the building that is its pedestal. It’s (currently) the world’s largest status of a horse with a rider.

The view of the statue as we walked towards it.

The statue from below.

Here I am on a viewing platform on the horse’s head. You can take an elevator inside the statue and then stairs to get outside.

And in the completely random and unexpected category, here is a door we saw while walking around UB: its the main office of the Mongolian National Beatbox Association.

And that’s the whole trip. Late that night, I flew out of UB and after 30 hours of travel, I was back in Boston. I loved the trip and am sure I’ll go back again but it felt great to come home.

- Dave

After the horse trek in the west was finished, I went to the north of Mongolia for a few days to check out the area around Lake Khövsgöl. The lake is known for how deep it is and the clarity of its water. It’s big enough that it contains about 1% of the world’s fresh water. The scene is pretty mellow and after two full days of a horseback ride, a boat ride, and a short hike, my guide and I packed up to head back to UB.

Looking down the shore of Lake Khovsgol. The water is deceptively clear: in some places you think you could swim to touch the bottom but it’s much, much further down than you think.

A look up the lake from Khatgal, the town at the southern end of the lake.

Here I am inspecting the Mongolian Navy whose home port is Khatgal.

At the top of the mountain behind our ger camp.

My guide, Byambaa. He’s far more fit than I am so I was happy that I beat him to the top. Then again, he paused for 15 minutes to call his girlfriend back in UB.

A beautiful sunset over our ger camp the night before we left.

On the way back to the airport, Byambaa took me by one of the highest concentrations of deer-stones in the world. These are remnants of an older civilization and there have been many interpretations of the markings on them but he said that recent research indicates that the society was a matriarchal one and these stones are monuments to the leaders. They’re called deer-stones because of the deer usually etched into them like in this picture. They believe these represented the tattoos on the leaders’ bodies.

One of the deer-on a deer-stone.

Me next to one of the few deer-stones left that has a person’s head on it.

After seeing the deer-stones, we drove to the airport and flew back to UB.

- Dave

When I went to Mongolia in 2008, one of my memories was that I felt a bit sore after some of the longer days in the saddle. The saddles are supplied by the local Kazakh guides and are called “Russian cavalry” saddles. They are basically a steel and wood frame with a leather cushion on top and they’re somewhat comfortable in spite of that description. One of our American guides last year brought his own saddle – a gift from a previous client. I tried riding it for about 15 minutes at the end of the trip and thought that if I came back again, I’d bring my own saddle as well. So earlier this year, when I found myself planning to go back, I put this at the top of my packing list.

I was reading in one of my Mongolia guide books about people who bring their own riding gear and they interviewed a guide who said that the best saddle for comfort would be an Australian saddle. Meredith and I have a friend Sharon who is a serious rider and when I spoke to her and mentioned an Australian saddle, Sharon said, “no question, long days in terrain with lots of ups and downs? You want an Australian saddle.” I’d never heard of Australian saddles before. All I knew about was English or Western. It turns out that Australian saddles are modified English saddles, created when settlers brought English saddles to Australia and found that they didn’t work well for working cattle all day. They modified the design to maximize comfort and to make it safer, i.e. hard to get out of the saddle unless you actually want to. Ok, sounds good. It was tough to find one in New England though – it’s hard enough to find Western gear here. Almost everyone here rides English. I tried several shops around which had a couple of used saddles but none fit well. I got lucky when a woman in Rhode Island advertised a used Australian saddle on Craig’s List. I drove down one Saturday morning, rode it for a few minutes and bought it.

Getting it to Mongolia was a bit of an adventure. I sent it as checked luggage in a big cardboard box and with a lot of other gear packed around it for protection, the box weighed 65 pounds. (Luckily, Japan Air’s limit for trans-pacific flights was 70 lbs. or this was going to be expensive.) I was pretty relieved when I unpacked it 5 flights later at our first campsite in the park and it was intact.

The verdict after riding it for 10 days of 4-7 hours per day? It made a huge difference and was worth all the effort to find it and haul it over there. I’ve left it there in storage for my next trip back.

The saddle on my horse. This was a real Plush-o-Matic. In addition to the very high seat back an Australian saddle has, I also bought a foam rubber pad for the seat (called a Seat Saver or, less manly, a Tush Cushion). The saddle blanket was thrown in by the woman who sold me the saddle. Note the built-in saddle bags – sweet!

Yours truly all saddled up and at the very end of our ride. It was cold and windy that day and I’m wearing about 5 layers.

- Dave

When we’re at camp, things are pretty relaxed. Once you get your tent set up, you can go hiking or for a ride if there’s time. One site is my favorite for simply walking upriver past several streams so you can look down an intersecting valley. Our group of camels posed nicely along the way for me.

Always an unexpected contrast: camels and snow.

Meal time was always a social event with lots of good conversation.

Dinner time meant plenty of food… 

…and sometimes a surprise like watermelon martinis.

The trip is a series of beautiful campsites but the ones near the end are my favorites.

The view from my tent near the end of the trek.

Our last campsite – at 10,000 feet next the glaciers.

One of the last things at each campsite: in the morning, our guide Eddie gets out a map and lay out the plan for the day.

- Dave

Although there were a few camp sites where we stayed more than one night, life on the trail typically began in the morning with packing up and moving on. We used camels for carrying our gear – about 7 or 8 of them. After getting your own gear packed up, you’d hand it over to the guides who would load it onto the camels along with all the camp gear.

Karbai and Sarkut loading up a camel.

One fully-loaded camel. It’s amazing what they can carry – about 500 lbs. each.

We would usually saddle up and ride out ahead of the camel train to get a head start. There is a lot of varied terrain out there. Sometimes we were riding in valleys, some times over a rocky pass, sometimes through meadows.

Most of the trip was sunny but here we are riding through a valley on a cold, rainy morning. Bummer.

Riding over a 10,000 foot pass.

Walking our horses down the other side of the pass. Amazing views along the way.

Around mid-day, we’d stop for lunch on the trail. Lunch was always hearty – you never went hungry on this trip.

Amy and Jess, two of our guides with the lunch spread.

Our lunch spot as we rode closer and closer to the glaciers near the end of our trip. 

A lunch-induced food coma sometimes was unavoidable.

After lunch, more riding. Sometimes we would stop in a local ger. They would invite us in and serve us food like at the beginning of our trip.

This ger had a freshly killed goat carcass hanging on the wall. Its head was on the floor near the door. Pretty grim.

The area is full of history and there are many petroglyphs and deer-stones, etc. One day we were in an area with many of them and we spent time exploring.

A part of on rock panel showing an Argali sheep and a moose. Probably about 3 or 4 thousand years old.

The group rides through a valley on the way to the next site.

Some days were short – only about 4 hours of riding. Some were long and went 6 hours or so.  It was always very nice to finally get to camp and relax.

More to come…

- Dave

We spent the first two days of our time in the park getting used to our horses and meeting the local Kazakhs who would be our horse and camel wranglers. They all lived in the area – one family’s group of gers was a short distance behind our site at the bottom of the mountain:

A group of gers from a local Kazakh family

Per local custom, we were invited inside and given food such as tea, cheese, yoghurt, etc.

The head wrangler named Karbai sang a song for us while playing the dombura.

Afterwards, we went outside where they put new shoes on two of the horses we would use.

Karbai hammers a shoe into shape while the other wranglers tend to the horse. Not easy to see here but the wrangler in the center of the picture is wearing a Hawaiian aloha shirt with surfboards and 1940’s cars on it. Very stylish.

Putting the shoe on the horse. These guys work pretty hard.

The next day, like last year, many of the locals – easily over 100 – came out and staged a Kazakh version of naadam for us. There were horse races, tug-of-war (usually with a goat carcass but they used a pair of jeans for us), and a game where they have to pick something up off the ground while staying on a moving horse. One of our guys named Sarkut won that one.

Two Kazakhs in the horse race next to the lake.

The next day, we hit the trail on our horses to head to the next camp site. More to come…

- Dave

Now that I’ve been home a week and I’m getting back into some routine, I have some time to write a few posts about the trip. After about 30 hours of flying, I finally got into Ulaan Baatar and a solid night’s sleep in the hotel. We spent the next day or two there exploring the town, running some errands, etc. Like last year, we went to a show one night with lots of singing, dancing, music, etc. There were contortionists again as well:

Impressive. Ouch!

After we were done in Ulaan Baatar, we flew another flight 3 hours west to Ulgii, the westernmost airport in Mongolia and the capital of that region. We stayed again at the Eagle Ger Camp along the river:

The river that runs next to the Eagle Ger Camp.

Our gers. Mine and my…ger-mates…is in front.

We were in Mongolia during naadam which is the time of the annual Mongolian games. Although the games in Ulaan Baatar are best known, they are heavily commercialized and it is tough for spectators to get close and really experience them so we went to local naadams instead. The naadam is made of “the three manly games”: wrestling, archery, and horse racing. In Ulgii, we only had time before we left to watch the archery portion of the games although we did see more later.

Focused before shooting. The goal is accuracy, not distance.

Before leaving Ulgii, we had time to visit a man who owned and trained 3 golden eagles used for hunting. We spent some time there interacting with the eagles and most people got a chance to hold them on their arm. I of course was too busy taking pictures to remember to get IN one. Oh well…next time.

Looking one of his eagles in the eye.

After leaving Ulgii, we drove about 6 hours over really bumpy roads to get to the park. Along the way, we stopped for lunch in a town called Tsengel and watched the wrestling part of their naadam:

The two wrestlers size each other up.

Then they lock in a grip. They stay like this for a while and it looks like nothing is happening but you can see the leg muscles are flexing.

One of them is thrown off balance…

…and goes down. All it takes is touching an arm or leg to the ground to lose.

At the end of the day, we arrived in Altai Tavan Bogd National Park at the lower end of the lake called Khoton Nur (nur = lake in Mongolian). It’s a beautiful location and it was even nicer to see our tents already set up for us since some of our guides had arrived a day or two earlier:

Our camp site at Lower Khoton Nur.

We spent a few days here, meeting our local horse and camel wranglers, getting used to our horses, etc.

More to come…

- Dave

I’m very disappointed that the elevator warning sign that I posted about last year has been replaced in the meantime by one that is properly translated. While the sign outside that says “Do Not Recline For Dangerous Fall Down” is still there, the big one inside described in this post is now completely rewritten in correct English. That said, there is still plenty of fodder around. One of my favorites was before I even arrived. On the flight to UB from Korea, I saw in the airline magazine for MIAT (the state airline here), there is a interview with a Mongolian investment banker who claims that “Mongolians have a very rich endowment.” Hmm.

The other day, several of us went to the black market here in UB and my mission quickly became finding items (shirts, hats, luggage, whatever) that had botched translations on them. One of my favorites was a shirt with Snoopy and Woodstock on it. It had Snoopy saying “What am I?” followed by him reaching the conclusion, “I am a doog” [sic].

And although not incorrect, a funny ad I saw for a hotel had the tag line, “The Best Value. Superb Services. There you go.”

So there you go.

- Dave

I’ve been back in Ulaan Baatar for a couple of days and it’s been great to get full nights’ sleep in a bed followed by long, hot showers. After some shopping and dining out with new friends, it’s now time for a quick side trip up to Lake Khovsgol and I leave for the airport in 6 hours. As usual for Mongolian airlines, schedules have changed and the flight I was supposed to be on returning on Wednesday was canceled so I’m returning to UB on a Tuesday flight. Since this cuts things short and leaves me with an extra day, I’m spending that day/night at a camp in Terelj National Park which is about 80km northeast of UB. This may be a blessing in disguise since it gives me more exposure to different regions and types of landscapes within UB. Once back from Terelj, I’ll have a day here in UB to run a few errands and then get ready for the long journey home. I won’t have Internet access while away. I hope to post more on the blog when I’m back about events from the trip and also some new photo galleries. Ciao…

- Dave