The Global Guy

So July 1st is Canada day…I never would have thought about it. Sarah, our trip’s resident Canadian, wouldn’t let us forget and treated us to pancakes for dinner. Why pancakes? I have no idea, but I just figure what do you expect from the same people who brought us Anne Murray and Strange Brew. Our campsite tonight had a resident bird who was very protective about his nesting spot, which just happened to be near the only convenient place to use as a toilet. It’s kinda hard to do your business when you’re being dive-bombed! We’ve also got a nearby cow carcass that’s luckily past the stinking stage, but it makes for some interesting speculation about what happened.

Today was mostly a driving day, but we did get to see a couple of interesting sights. One was the "belly button" of Mongolia. Supposedly this particular ovoo marks the geographic center of the country. My GPS disagreed, but who am I to argue with local tradition. The other thing we saw was supposedly a hundred year old tree. Our guide said that he can remember seeing this as a boy when it was completely green and covered with leaves. Today its just a pale shadow of its former self. In fact, the main attraction seemed to be the colony of squirrels who have taken up residence in the root system.

As I mentioned in my previous post, there are no worse roads in the world than a Mongolian highway. Our vehicle for this expedition was a 4 wheel drive Russian van called a "Yaz". The ladies of our trip named it "Ivan", and later after we it had proved itself worthy, gave it the title of "Ivan the Conqueror. Let me tell you, conquer it did! The journey was over everything from paved roads (the last 50km leading back to Ulaan Baator) dirt tracks, no tracks, mud tracks, and even full blown rivers. I was amazed at how well this little van did, especially considering it had the weight of 7 people plus their gear in it. Our driver, Oogi, was a master at handling this thing over the roughest roads. We got to witness exactly how good he was when it came time to cross a rain swollen river. Apparently an hour or so before us another van had tried to cross and gotten stuck. Oogi took one look at the situation, moved slightly downriver, and crossed like the van was on dry land. On the other side we tossed a chain to the stuck van, and pulled them free. As a testament to how tough these vans are, as soon as they were on dry land, the motor started up immediately!

Luckily not all rivers required such heroics to cross. Others like the one above just required a bit of insanity to actually venture onto the bridge. The one above had the helpful feature of a toilet attached to it, presumably so you didn’t scare the crap out of yourself while crossing.

We’ve just come back from a 10 day trip out to western and central Mongolia. Babak, Bec, Josie, Sarah and myself hooked up with the worlds best driver and the worlds worst guide/translator for the obligatory big trip out to the countryside. The main destination was to Lake Khovsgol, which is the largest lake in Mongolia. It contains about 1 percent of the world’s fresh water, and is so pure you can drink directly from it. Of course getting there isn’t the easiest thing in the world. I had thought that Cambodian roads were horrible, but they are luxury compared to the dirt tracks that pass for major highways in this country.

We decided to try to reduce some of the driving by taking a train from Ulaan Baatar to a copper mining town called Erdenet. The train was typical Russian style, with four berths per compartment. Poor Bec had to share a bed with three strangers in the compartment next to us, but she did get to hang out with us until we decided to go to sleep.

Once we got to Erdenet, our driver and guide met us and the trip started properly. We bounced around for 8 hours or so before finally finding a nice camping spot near the Selenge river. I volunteered to do the job of fire lighter which ended up being a lot of fun. We cooked dinner, and sat around drinking vodka and chatting. Eventually some local kids came up to us and the girls went off to talk to them for a while.

The next day we finally reached the lake. Apparently it had just finally thawed out from the winter the previous week, and it was still COLD! Josie and I went horse riding for a few hours, checking out some of the scenery. We got caught in a massive thunderstorm and ended up sheltering with a local herder family. They fed us hot tea, and plenty of cheese and bread to keep us warm. Later that day the whole group went out on a boat ride to see some more of the lake. Unfortunately the lake is HUGE and we only saw a small portion of it.