30 May 2010

"Gobi-ng Insane" A Tale of the Gobi, Part 5

After a night in Kharkhorin, we prepared to set out again...

A view of the ancient capitol's monastery, Erdene Zuu and the surrounding... nothingness!


 On a hill overlooking the town, there is a new monument which they call the "Grave of the Khan". It has three giant maps like this one, showing the Mongol Empires. They don't actually know where Ghenggis was buried though so it's just symbolic.

A view of the town, from the "Grave". 

Behind the monument, a river and a valley that I later discovered winds into the valley where the water fall is. We continued on that day to Tsetserleg, only a couple of hours away on a pretty good road.



Beyond Tsetserleg there is this rock... which is in all the guide books and such, but surprisingly unimpressive when you see it in person... still kinda crazy and cool though.

A monastery of sorts, I believe, on the hill that towers over Tsetserleg (written in cyrillic on the sign).

The town from the top of the religious array... I love how Tsetserleg is just nestled in some steep hills... I don't have any pictures that do it justice.

Looking back the other way.

Us girls! Haha it began to snow...

 Tales to tell, but I must get all these pictures up and perhaps I can add later... After Tseterleg, we headed West to Terkhin Tsagaan Nuur, the White Lake. We traveled on the half done road west, meant to unite the western aimags and UB... but after 10 years, it's not even half finished.

A once in a lifetime sighting of a family convoy moving their ger by oxen!!

Volcano! Really hard to take pictures of it...

The view of the lake from the volcano crater.

The lake and the guesthouse where we stayed........ (pumpin out the pictures...)

Finally, we returned to UB. Spent a couple of days there, but I'll put pics of UB up later, it's not so important. In conclusion of the Gobi trip, I have a picture above of some trinkets available at the UB black market, that I found quite amusing.

Now I can update everything that's happened in May, in these next 2 weeks before I come home again.

02 May 2010

"Gobi-ng Insane" A Tale of the Gobi, Part 4

A yak!... anyways, we took a long and rather ardous 14 hour drive out of the Gobi, traveling from Omnogovi Aimag (Aimag is "state") through Ovorkhangai Aimag, finally into Arkhangai Aimag. The last hours of the day were spent slipping and sliding into completely empty mountains. The road was invisible, and our only hope was the occasional car coming the other way, each of whom our driver flagged down to ascertain teh correct route. FINALLY, around 9 (we had gotten up at around 5am) we reached Khujirt, where we stayed in a ger owned by relatives of Marik's.


Quite a cool experience, the ger was painted beautifully, and even had the carpet depicting some magnificence of their great Ghenggis Khan.

Cards are the ultimate companion of life in Mongolia, both at home and on the road.

It had been a loooong day.

Not uncommon sight. No, Marik isn't stuck, he's just trying to dig the car out. The white jeep saved our guts. Guess who it belongs to!?....

World Vision! Made us laugh.

Contemplating the first attraction in the ancient capitol city, Kharkhorin: The Penis Stone. Pointed so subtly at the mountain shaped like a vagina, in order to deter the monastery's monks from fornicating with the local woman. Legend has it, it worked.

The Ancient Monastery.




Blue is the Mongolian ... sort of very holy color. Yellow Buddhism was founded in Mongolia. 



We broke into a museum? ... It was quite empty, notice the cases behind Steven.






Me and a turtle that once marked the cornerstone of a worldwide empire!