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Other entries in Mongolia

The camel bone knife and collapsing tent

I woke up after my first night in a traditional Mongolian ger feeling refreshed and treated myself to a warm shower and proper toilets.  The gers are really cool, they all have proper beds and furniture, and mine even had a fridge!

After a spot of brekky, Alta and myself went to explore the Erdene Zuu monastery and the ruins of the ancient capital of Karakorum.  The monastery was really nice with its chinese architecture complete with loads of monks chanting prayers all over the place which was pretty cool as it added to the experience, even though I am atheist!  The ruins of the capital were pretty small, but there were about 30 men digging out the walls of an old building when i got there which was nice.  The only thing standing at ground level from the ancient capital is a stone statue of a turtle.

I also bought my first Mongolian souvenirs from one of the stalls nearby the ruins.  Don't quite know why, but i bought two pretty cool knives (one of which is carved out of camel bone) for $45.  I was pretty happy with that for a first effort at proper haggling....she initially asked for $100 for both but i was having none of it.  I was also tempted to buy an old Russian sword for $60, but i decided that i had already spent far too much money and it would be an arse to get home.

We only had the morning to look around the sights as we had to drive to Saikhan Owoo today which is over 100km away on dirt tracks.  We stopped to have lunch besides a nice river and ate our sarnies surrounded by yaks and horses which was....erm...smelly.

After lunch we continued our drive towards Saikhan Owoo on some pretty crappy roads through the mongolian steppe.  Nothing my fizzy/fester/fiesta/ferrari couldnt have handled though i reckon!

We didnt make it as far as Saikhan Owoo, so we just pulled off the road and decided to camp in the middle of nowhere for the night.  It was quite amusing putting up the tents as some of the poles were for different tents and by the time they were up, they looked like they might fall down any minute.  It was during the tent erection (hee hee) that I realised that our driver Omboo wasnt the sharpest knife in the block.....he kept on putting pegs in the most random places and tying the support ropes to the inside of the tent , almost making certain that one of the tents woul;d fall over in the night, but i left him too it and just changed all of the pegs on my tent because id hate to wake up in a collapsed tent.

Im sorry to all those horse loving girls back in England, but for dinner i had horse meat stew and then horse steak, which was surprisingly quite nice although a bit tough.  I saw it as payback for all the time i have spent in my car being held up by bloody horses on country lanes.  I mean, honestly, cant you just ride them in fields or something?

My suspicions of the tents were confirmed, when in the middle of the night, my guide Alta's tent collapsed on her and she had to sleep in the car!!!   So glad i changed my tent pegs around!

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