Steal Softly Through Snow

N 45 20.039 E 104 00.629 - 9 October - Ongi

It was a cold night and in the ger with the leaky holey felt, it cooled down quickly in the night after the fire died out. I woke up kind of early, like normal, and hoped to get the fire going again. There was some leftover wood from the night before. I fussed with it for a little bit but it just wasn't having it. The stoves that had leaky lids just never really caught all that well. It seemed to go a little bit but it seems that the secret to those is you just have to pack them completely full of wood. Being conservative and just trying to burn a few sticks (to prevent it from getting boiling hot in a few minutes) just doesn't work.

When breakfast arrives, we get fry bread, an exciting change from the normal bread we have been getting before. It is a bit greasy but pretty tasty. It is a one time even though, we never get it again. We pack and say goodbye to the camel guy and head out. We cover the same road we came in on, back through the rocky canyon although this time it looks completely different. It is covered in a layer of fresh snow. It is really pretty and exciting. We see a bustard running around and we go back through those funny looking spherical cactus like plants. And the snow looks nice against the normal brownish dirt and rocks.

We ask if we can stop and see the snow, but that has already been accounted for. We pull off at a stupa (usually placed at high points or other kind of nice areas) and we pile out. There is a bit of wandering around the snow, looking at it, seeing footprints, but it all quickly devolves into a sort of full blown snowball fight. It starts out as everybody one for themselves but ends up as everybody against Dorj which he revels in. He creates a stockpile of snowballs and dares us to attack.

The rest of the drive is a bit dull. It is all the same stuff we covered yesterday and after we got out of the canyon, the snow disappears and it gets dry again. We head back to Bulgan and this time have lunch there. We pull up to a ger in the middle of a wide street (or a large wide dirt area between some buildings with a cow eating out of pile of burning rubbish), Dorj honks and yells and we are told lunch will be ready in 20 minutes, free time then. So free time like this usually means just wander around the town aimlessly until something happens. It is a pretty typical town, dusty, a few Soviet looking buildings and lots of fenced in gers in rows, suburban style. We see Dorj and Zola going into the medical building and wonder why (tooth ache later becomes a major issue, but we don't know anything yet). We also stop at a shop and see what they have. Snacks mostly or types of juice. We are just starting to become addicted to Khan Chips, strange but tasty bits of corn/potato (or so we think) ring things. They are pretty synthetic and the huge puffy bags mostly contain air but they really are the king of chips.

Finally, much longer than 20 minutes, our lunch is ready and we go into the restaurant ger. Walking around town, we had seen them laying out discs of rolled out dough on the top of the ger, drying them in the sun, and those were probably our lunch. There is a gigantic bowl on the stove (removable rings to hold different sizes of pots) filled with a noodle soup. Of course it is a meat soup (meaning sheep) with various starchy vegetables (carrots, potatoes, etc) with the cut up noodles from the roof. It is pretty nice. There are a few picnic tables in the ger but most sit on carpets on the floor.

We head on, drive drive drive, and eventually end up at Ongi to see the destroyed monenesary. There are a lot of them around Mongolia, the Stalinists were busy in the 1930s knocking them down and purging the monks. This one has an amazing setting, the side of a hill looking over a valley where two rivers join. There is also another ruin off down in the valley, part of the whole complex. The ruins look to be made out of mud bricks and there are still bits of broken clay all over. The sun is starting to set and the light on the cliffs gives it all an eerie feel. Large flocks of black birds fly overhead, too far away to be identifiable.

We get back into the van to be taken to wherever we are supposed to be staying that night, about 50 meters on as it turns out. The area is surrounded by tourist camps and they had picked one with small cabins, run by a very savvy looking woman. We are impressed that Zola, so young at 21, is able to handle people like that. As we pull up too, there are two French tourist with their driver sitting in the middle of various engine parts on the ground. I guess they didn't expect to stay there but it appears their jeep had other ideas. And Dorj just can't resist, has to go over and talk engine parts and see if he can poke around too.

The cabin is small, really just big enough to fit 6 small beds into without a stove or any sort of heat. C's bed keeps falling apart, the frame is bowed and some of the boards keep dropping through. I try to push it together the best I can with some crushed plastic water bottles which sort of works. We tell Dorj about it and he is on the case, a minute or two later some guys come in with a bit of flat board to patch it up.

We try to get a shower at the neighboring tourist camp. They said no, then said ok maybe at 9, yeah ok come back at 9. By the time we get back to the cabin, the word has already been passed on that no, can't do it after all. Never mind. Oh well. Zola said she might be able to organize one for tomorrow, so that's ok. Dinner is a nice vegetarian rice dish, Alex is still feeling bad, and it is nice.