Where the streets have no name

N 47 42.914 E 106 57.242 - 20 October - Zuun Mod

I didn't sleep much this night. If you see somebody pour a pan of coal into a stove in a ger, run. Run fast. The temperature will slowly build to about the surface of the sun and stay that temperature for most of the night. I had the misfortune of being closest to the stove. I melted until about 3 am when the coal finally started burning down. That's even worse too, covered in sweat all night and then it starts getting cold. Still, the stay in this ger was one of my favorites.

We drive to Zuun Mod, an hour or so away and pull up behind some buildings where there are a few horses tied up. Today we were meant to ride horses for a few hours, go hiking for a bit, and then stay with the tour organizer's aunt in her ger. I am a bit annoyed to find out that my horse isn't there, it is somewhere else. While everybody else mounts up and rides off, I get back in the car, we drive around town, unpack the bags into a ger, and drive up towards the mountains, passing the others riding across a field, and then get out and wait at the border of the park. So much for a whole lot of riding. They are still like 30 minutes away and this sucks. Finally they get me on a horse and a kid leads me down to meet them. I also get scolded a few times for holding onto the saddle. But I guess everybody else gets scolded too for doing the same thing. My horse is rather unruly and I'm decidedly grumpy from the whole let's go find you a horse adventure.

Still, I guess the ride out through town and across that big field wasn't so great, but that's not the point. When we get into the park, we have a nice ride through some woods, an hour or so and then stop and the horseman tells we can go off hiking, meet back in few hours. I was trying to zoom through these days so I can get to writing about China, wasn't I? So, another ruined monastery, Manashir Khid destroyed in the 1930s along with most of the rest of them by the Stalinists. So, more ruined mud brick buildings, but in a quite cool setting, the top of a valley up against a large rocky hill. We eat lunch and spend time hiking up the rocks, great views of the valley from the top, a bit of snow in the woods behind.

We hike back and pick up the horses again and make the trek back to town. We get in a bit of fast riding on the flat field outside of town. It wasn't a mammouth horse ride but it was enough for me. The hiking was my favorite part of it today and besides my horse really didn't seem to like me much. The ger is in the middle of town, so it is our first urban ger. In one of the fenced off bits of town. And actually the streets do have names there, but they are usually something more like 8B or 3.

The next morning, we get dropped off again at the same place, outside the park and we hike in and up over some of the hills. We don't hike all that far or very fast, the woods just on the edge of the park are filled with some cool birds, loads of nuthatches, woodpeckers and even a goldcrest.

Ok, I started this entry weeks ago, maybe I'll just quickly summarize it and publish it as is. Gotta get to writing about China already.

We had a good day hiking, not too strenuous, just sort of wandering around up the hills, through some woods, seeing some interesting birds and enjoying walking through patches of snow.

We have one last night in a ger, the last of the trip and it is a short drive back to UB the next day. A few last days in UB, trying to see a few of the sights, trying not to get run down by traffic and shopping at the Black Market (a huge outdoor market filled with lots of cheap stuff). Next up is the long train journey to Beijing and China.