#ger camp

[guttuan-pt]

ツーリスト用のゲルキャンプ場

https://photos.app.goo.gl/Y92M8zwGTQJ9fDVp9

https://www.amicusmongolia.com/yurt/amarbayasgalant-urgoo-tourist-ger-camp-mongolia.html

[kvatek]

Kapital team in Mongolia

[walkerstrails]

Staying in the Terelj National Park

Staying in the Terelj National Park

We were met at the train station when we arrived by a transfer service since the Terelj National Park where we were planning to stay at the Terelj Lodge is about an hours drive out of town.

We spent a bit of time running around getting local currency from ATM’s. We did have some minor issues there with the machines not accepting some of the cards. Thankfully we both had one card that worked and…

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[trailsmith]

Nature's Door Ger Camp, Lake Hovsgol.  This is the project that took me to Mongolia in 2000, I helped to build and manage this camp from 2000 to 2003

[simeon-takes-a-break]

Trans-Mongolian Adventure - Part THREE (Or what I still remember from that time back when the world was still in black and white)

I knew it would eventually come to this. Procrastination at its best. All I had to do is take every now and then 30min time and bloody write. But what did I do for the last 3 months instead? Do anything but dedicate time to the blog. Uh funny Youtube videos? Sure. Facebook posts? Hell yeah. 9gag? Immer her damit. Write on my blog? Yeah yeah, let me just check the latest news on 20min beforehand. Shame shame shame on me. And of course I forget things. How do important people write their memoirs? I mean do YOU know what you did just 3 months ago? Sure, we have pictures to remind us (very often actually too many. I will dedicate some special lines to the obsessive picture taking terrorists later. Hahah there we have the word again 'later'). But the funny little things often get lost in our memories when we look back. Also we tend to alter things when we memorize. I read that somewhere; we often remember things that actually never did happen that way. At least I did take some notes on my phone. So combining these with the pics I have and whatever my brain decided to memorize, I hope I can sorta reconstruct what happened in Mongolia 3 months ago. Gosh, T H R E E months. Dafuq happened? This just reminds me of an episode of Futurama where suddenly time starts to skip. Here's a hilarious scene from the episode. Actually no, I will post the link only at the end of the text, cause I know what will happen: You will watch the video, then look to the right hand side of Youtube and click on the next video until you eventually end up watching some random funny cat video 4 hours later and forget about the blog entry. What? Don't deny it, we all do this! Alright brain, do not fail me. Mongolia, hmmmmm.... We arrived early in the morning in the capital Ulan Bator at a surprisingly quiet and chilled train station and were greeted by our honcho Gerlee. A cool and witty Mongolian girl that actually likes her job. That really makes the difference when I compare to the honchos back in Russia. We spent the day visiting temples that were occupied by a billion pigeons (I can't stand those flying rats) and featured a pair of giant Buddha feet. They were placed there to advertise and raise money for a huge project outside of the city. So apparently the Mongolians want to erect a giant Buddha 8 meters taller than the statue of liberty as part of an over 100 meters tall monument. I guess the huge Genghis Khan statue they built in 2006 is not enough. We visited that one and its actually really impressive. The statue is made of shiny metal displaying Khan sitting on his horse. It's in the middle of nowhere 2 hours drive away from the capital. I have still the picture in my mind when I first saw its head far on the horizon and was instantly reminded of the statue of liberty. Visitors can climb up the stairs and walk on the neck of the horse to a viewing platform right on top of the horse's head. And that's not all. They want to build a whole park around it including some 10'000 life size horsemen. And those who sponsor the crafting of one of these statues can have their own face sculptured in turn. (Reminds me of the Terra cotta warriors. With the minor difference that those people hopefully won't be killed after the statues are finished). I thought how funny would it be if some sponsored one of these horsemen and have Lady Gagas head placed on it instead. Very mature thoughts of a 30 year old, I know I know. Highlight was certainly our trip to the Ger camp. Up until then I had no idea what Gers are. Basically they are round tents with a door always pointing south and a little oven in the middle. They heat up super fast in the winter, are nice and cool in the summer and can be taken down and rebuilt somewhere else within half a day, perfect for the Mongolian nomads. Nothing in there is arranged randomly so when we visited a family in their Ger it takes seconds until you break some rule and accidentally offend them. Or at least so I felt. We got offered all kinds of dairy products including rock hard fermented yellow unidentifiable stuff, salty tea with horse milk (!), and as le grande finale, warm jiggly yogurt. For those who know and mock my eating habits, needless to say, it was nothing less than torture. But of course another rule was that it is considered rude if you refuse anything you've been offered. "Just keep smiling, don't breathe so you don't taste it and just swallow whatever is there in your mouth." Apart from that our stay in the Gers was amazing. I've never seen such clear night skies full of countless stars. No light pollution whatsoever, so we could actually SEE the milky way forming a bright belt across the Mongolian sky. Shooting stars and quickly passing satellites included. Truly breathtaking. Then as a proud Swiss citizen, it is kinda hard to tell this, but there were endless fields of Edelweiss flowers spread across the Terelj national park. So many that I couldn't avoid stepping on some of them. I mean, I've never seen a real Edelweiss in the Swiss alps and we have that white flower in our official tourism logo. (OK, I admit, I don't hike that much back home, but still impressive). In the later afternoon the group decided to go climb a hill near the camp and I joined them kinda in the last moment so I was still wearing my flip flops. Going up was actually surprisingly easy, also thanks to a huge stick I found, making me feel like Gandalf. The landscape was indeed LOTResque. Going down however was much more of challenge. The fact that it was completely dark by then didn't help either. So I took them off (they were near and dear to me as I go them at the Havaianas flagship store in Sao Paolo during my holiday in Brazil. Unfortunately they did suffer a gruesome death in Myanmar. May they rest in peace.) From then on every step felt like a was crushing some worms, insects or snails. I don't remember when was the last time I was walking barefoot in untouched nature (mowed lawn or beach doesn't count). Actually very liberating. Another highlight within the highlight (Yo, highlightception dawg) was the epic horse riding that nearly cost my manhood. First of all I was given a horse with a saddle and spurs made for midgets. Seriously, I had to fully bend my knees in order to even get my feet into the spurs, and I'm not a tall guy. Not only I looked ridiculous but I had no balance at all. So one of the locals offered me his noble steed, which was indeed better spurs-wise. But it also had a traditional saddle made of iron and completely not anatomically shaped for, well, me. Second, let me describe you the pros and cons for each horse speed:

Walk: Uncomfortable but manageable. Advantage: Relaxed, look at beautiful nature. Disadvantage: Hey, where's my group? Oh look 2 miles ahead. Move it grandma horse!

Gallop: Advantage: F*k yeah. Speed baby. Feel like Tom Cruise in that movie "Far and Away" with Nicole Kidman, where he claims his land in America during a horse race. Mongoliaaaaa, vast natuuuure. Freeeeedom! Disadvantage: Scary fast. I don't wanna end up like Christopher Reeve. Also my horse is near heart-attack exhaustion.

Trot: Advantage: Just the right amount of speed. Horse is coping well and I'm at same speed as the group. Disadvantage: I've never experienced so much pain in my whole life. Oh dear lord, why are thou punishing me? What kind of medieval iron torturing device have you placed me on? I swear, one more minute at this speed and certain parts of me won't function anymore. 

Hence I tried switching back and forth from walk into gallop. Also we were very lucky with the weather. Just the day before another group went horse riding and we stayed behind at the camp. Suddenly the sky went almost pitch black and a serious thunderstorm began to unfold including massive rainfall, lightning hitting ground 200 meters away from us and super loud thunders. In the middle of this apocalypse we saw two riders appearing in the distant far galloping like crazy towards us turning out to be one girl from the group, who later told me that she's been riding horses forever, and the group honcho. She had a little too much weight on her hips and was dressed somewhat over the top, which kinda made her not really fitting in this scenery. So next thing the honcho storms into the parked van drives of to rescue the rest of the group. While we were watching the van driving off into the fields, the other girls appeared on the horizon. It was sooo hilarious watching them galloping towards the driving van, the sky collapsing over their heads, jumping of their horses and eventually into the van while their funny honcho ran around them waiving hysterically with her little (of course useless) umbrella. They made it safe back to the camp, soaking wet with the shock on their pale faces, but a minute later they also cracked up and we had a great evening all together with lots of excellent Mongolian vodka. The days we spent in Ulan Bator were also really nice: Most beautiful sunset I've seen on my trip so far, on top of a hill where an overly heroic Sowjet monument reminds of past times. Great traditional music and dance show with a guy who really impressed me with his special throat singing technique, producing awkwardly low and high unnatural sounds. Tasty Mongolian barbeque, where one could grab whatever raw veggies, meats and noodles and the cook prepares them freshly on a huge hot plate using a gigantic metal tool resembling a sword. Fun public bus rides with great music onboard such as Macklemore's Thrift Shop or Wham's Last Christmas in July! Random guy starting to talk to me on the streets, turning out he's been living a long time in Bulgaria and so we had a nice conversation in Bulgarian. Looking back it was truly a great time squeezed into just a few days. Time to board the transmongolian train for a last time. Final destination: Beijing! And as promised. Here's the Futurama link: http://simeon-takes-a-break.tumblr.com/post/73172651390/futurma-clip-from-my-post-dd-17-10-as-the

[always-wandering-but-never--blog]

[adventuredecennial-blog]

Karakorum, Mongolia

23rd of April, 2013

Woke up to frost everywhere and the mountains in the distance covered in snow- even though we were toasty warm with the fire! Had a traditional ham with eggs and toast for breakfast before setting off for our second ger camp. Went off road to see some sand dunes which were also covered in patches of snow but this was nothing compared to the road ahead of us- the whole landscape was completely blanketed in snow. Zoe insisted on throwing snow balls at me so we had a pretty fun time being childish, crazy Aussies who never see snow :P

It was supposed to be about a 1 hour drive but took 2 purely because of the snow all over the road, but the scenery along the way was incredible! Arrived at the ger camp getting our feet drowned in the snow where Zoe then decided to make snow angels and totally drench herself which provided us with some light entertainment for quite a while :P It wasn’t long until lunch where we had a creamy mushroom soup and a beef stew with rice and vegies again in our own private little ger dining room- so good!

After lunch we headed to see the ruins of Genghis Khan’s palace and the original capital city of Mongolia, Karakorum, built in the 16th century. The old temple and city walls remain with a lot of the original features and artwork of the Mongols and the 5th Dalai Lama, spanning from the 1500’s to 1800’s. Was quite cool to see the remnants of such a huge and defining power that spanned right across Asia and in to Europe. Following the tour we went to a lookout which had a gorgeous view over the town and surrounding mountain areas, including the beginning of a river which flows in to the deepest fresh water lake in the world, Lake Baikal which we will also be visiting when we get to Russia on the weekend :)

We then stopped by the supermarket to get some snacks before driving back to the camp for some rest and then dinner- this time a really nice beef and noodle dish. After polishing it off we got creative by cutting our coke bottles in half to make cups for our Mongolian beer and courtesy of the snow outside our ger we were able to have plenty cool beer in front of the warm fire to finish the night off! It was my first time peeing in snow too btw, I think I had way too much fun making it all melt ahahaha :P

[adventuredecennial-blog]

Bayangobi, Mongolia

22nd of April, 2013.

This morning we left the hotel around 9am to head to the countryside ger camp out near Bayangobi, about 280kms from the city and a 4 hour drive. We stopped off at a supermarket before leaving Ulaan Baatar to stock up on snackage for the journey plus two 2.5L bottles of beer and a 1L bottle of vodka for a little desert party tonight at the camp :P

The ride was pretty cool, you would have a 4 lane highway just end in a giant pothole that you would have to 4 wheel-drive around. A lot of the time it was smoother to drive on the roadside rather than on the actual road- I know a few off-roader people that would be in their element in this country J After avoiding hundreds of horses, donkeys, sheep, dogs, ditches and nomads in the middle of the highway we arrived at our ger camp around 1.30. Since we are just out of tourist season we are the only ones in the camp and they opened up just for us- so we are being treated like royalty! These gers are amazing too- with beds, a fireplace in the middle, sink, table, dresser and even a mini-bar fridge! We went in to another ger for lunch consisting of a spicy salad, a beef and noodle soup and beef goulash, vegies and rice with tea and chocolate to top it off J

After a bit of exploring around the camp, we headed off to visit a nearby nomad family. We were invited into their very homely ger which was drapped in tapestries, pictures of the family and their prize-winning horses and a little religious shrine. Also met their grandson/ son who was 18 months and was pretty much the cutest kid ever- he kept imitating the sheep and picked up a tiny baby lamb from the flock outside and brought it to us :P After a cup of traditional salted tea, we checked out their animals and they gave us a ride on one of their horses J

When evening hit we returned to the camp for dinner with salad and beef dumplings on the menu, pls we gave Annie a taste of vegemite and she somewhat enjoyed it! It wasn’t long until the vodka came out in our ger and we had our little social gathering where we talked about anything and everything which made it a really good night; next thing we know it’s early morning so we decide to retire in order to get at least some sleep before breakfast!