Along the way, we had a picnic lunch and the boys played soccer.
We made an impromptu stop by a family who was milking their goats. Colin attempted to catch a goat so it could be milked next.
Then Emmett joined in the hunt...he briefly caught a goat but Mom accidentally let it loose.
We all tried milking goats...no one was successful except me. Perhaps being the only female in the group with children gave me an advantage (you can think on that one...)
We passed a girl who was collecting dung to dry and burn for cooking and heating. She was using a traditional basket, and the technique involved flipping the dung patty over her head so that it would land in the basket on her back.
We passed another random gathering, so we stopped to check it out. It was another festival--we missed the horse racing but showed up in time for the final rounds of the wrestling competition.
The wrestlers are wearing traditional Mongolian wrestling clothing. There was a prize involved, but no one knew what it was in advance.
This was the final match. The winner would perform a short eagle dance, in which he moved around the area gently flapping his arms like a bird.
There were plenty of horses with beautiful saddles.
Shortly past the festival, we stopped at a sacred rock to walk around it, clockwise, as Mongolians do.
From there, we arrived at our second host family's location and got settled in. We had another Mongolian Happy Hour with beer that we chilled in the nearby river.
Day 7 began with a hike at Naiman Nuur National Park (Naiman Nuur means "eight lakes"). We began our hike high above one of the lakes, and the easy part was going down. This was us at the beginning of the hike. It was really windy and a bit chilly.....I look like an Oompa-Loompa.
The view of the lake from above was beautiful.
The views of the lake from the bottom were pretty as well.
Not pictured is the nearby tourist camp at which we stopped to use their flush toilets and sinks with running water. After 4 days of not washing my hands once, I think I washed mine 3 times. It was glorious.
The walk back up to our vans was quite a bit harder than the walk down. When Colin got tired in the final stretch, I played "Eye of the Tiger" (our family's motivational song) on my iPhone to get the group over the finish line.
After our hike, we returned to our gers and had the afternoon to relax. We hiked up behind our camp to find some great views and lots of rocks.....heaven for our boys.
Emmett was excited to find this skull.
And squeeze himself in between big rocks.
Colin and Bob took a great selfie, too.
Boogie taught us all different games to play with anklebones (which come from all the slaughtered goats; nomadic families don't let anything go to waste).
We flew our kite again, and these kids loved it just as much as the ones at the first family.
On Day 8 we said goodbye to our second family and got back in our vans to head towards the Gobi Desert. We stopped several times in the morning, trying to spot marmot. They are very elusive and hard to see since they quickly went into their holes when we approached. But it was fun to try.
At lunchtime we stopped at a local market to eat and look around. The market had everything you'd need for a ger--furniture, stoves, and felt coverings. There were stores with beautiful deels, the traditional dress of Mongolian countryside people. We also saw plenty of dirt bikes, which are quite popular amongst the nomads.
After the market we drove some more and stopped at a site with petroglyphs. It was fascinating to see the drawings that remained on these rocks after so many years. There were ancient burial sites nearby, and the views of the surrounding land were stunning.
A highlight of the day for everyone in the group was our arrival at our ger camp. These camps are designed for tourists and equipped with some of the creature comforts that tourists are accustomed to--mainly, showers, electricity, showers, flush toilets...and did I mention showers? I'm pretty sure we all RAN to the showers, which were either scalding hot or ice cold. Either way, they had no water pressure. The camp was in the middle of a desert, after all. But after 6 days of not showering, the showers felt AMAZING. (After 6 days of not washing my hair, the shampoo literally slid off my hair the first time I tried to wash it. Lather, rinse, repeat has never been so necessary.)
After dinner, the camp put on a "fashion show" of Mongolian traditional costumes.
Emmett and Colin got to try on part of the warrior costumes, which they really enjoyed. Especially the weapons.
The next morning, on Day 9, we all showered again...just because we could. Bob and Emmett walked with the group to the ruins of nearby Ongii Monastery. It was one of the largest monasteries in Mongolia before its destruction in 1939 (during the Stalin purges). There had been up to 1,000 monks living there before it was destroyed.
We got on the road to head towards our next camp...and saw some Gobi-style traffic.
We're getting quite used to large groups of animals blocking the road, but this was our first camel block!
We passed an enormous herd of camels....several hundred at least. Both drivers jumped out to take pictures because apparently it's quite rare to see this many camels together at once. It was impossible to capture the entire herd in one photo.
We also stopped at an ovoo, which is a sacred pile of stones. Mongolians typically add 1 (or 3) stones to the pile while walking around it clockwise 1 (or 3) times and asking for something in particular. I love this video because it shows just how open and empty the land was!
We stopped to have lunch next to a sand dune....only 3% of the Gobi Desert is actually sand, the rest is steppe with grasses and small plants. But this was part of the elite 3%.
Colin was particularly excited to finally get to sand that he could run barefoot in. He had been looking forward to this for days.
After getting settled in at our second ger camp, the boys and I had to take a picture with its mascot.
We ended the night at the nearby cliffs of Bayanzag, also known as the Flaming Cliffs because of their vibrant colors. In 1922, the paleontologist Roy Chapman Andrews (future director of the American Museum of Natural History) first found dinosaur bones in this area. Hundreds of fossils were found here, including a nest complete with dinosaur eggs. The cliffs were spectacular and the boys enjoyed looking for dinosaur fossils of their own. It was a great end to our first evening in the Gobi!
Interested in the other posts about our Mongolian countryside tour? Check out Part 1 and Part 3.
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