camping

Camping in Mongolia – part 1

pajje 2013 The Transmongolian railroad , , , , 0 Comment

We arrived to Ulanbaator and just as we planned we had a driver waiting for us, time to go camping!

According to the pre-information we got we knew it should take around 3 hours to drive to our camp where the first hour would be on tarmac roads and from that, “more exciting roads”. I would say that the tarmac road was exciting and lasted for around 30 minutes, once we came outside of the city no more tarmac but way more adrenalin and what a view. I mean I have been riding downhill tracks on my bike or drove motocross on tracks which were in better conditions than the roads we drove today. Besides driving on cattle tracks we drove on the Mongolian steppe, through mountain passes and yes, over mountains.

Once we arrived at the camp we saw that our camps is five our six gers and the view from here is amazing. You can see high mountains, deep valleys, rivers and untouched nature. Absolutely breathtaking and all the silence, oh my god! The only things that we hear is our own loudly laughs when we miscalculated how warm it will be inside the tent once we light up the fire (wehave around 60C right now) or when we realize that that asian girl is not an escort girl, shes a guide for a big Swedish group.

Everybody except me and Anton has so much gears, it feels like they emptied a outdoor store and everybody is walking around like a commercial somewhere in the wilderness, well except me and Anton. We have regulare jeans, a shirt, sneakers and a big bag of beer with us. The look they gave us is priceless when we open the first bottle of beer and decided to climb the closest peak. That wasn’t any problem and we both climbed to the top and got down again to base camp and after that we were blacklisted by the other swedes. I really don’t care since I don’t travel around the world to meet other swedes anyway.

Camping in Mongolia – part two

pajje 2013 The Transmongolian railroad , , , , , 0 Comment

Woke up in the middle of the night that finally the heat started to leave the tent and I could use the blanket, feels good to not have to sleep in a sauna anymore and a few hours later we woke up and got the best breakfast on the whole trip. Even if we are in the middle of nowhere we gets some toast (over open fire so it has that lovely smoke taste), juice, tea, pancakes and you name it, I just love it!

The mission for today was to see Mongolia Genghis Khan style, in other words just get ready and mount the horse and start horseback riding. The horses are much smaller than the horses you see in Sweden but don’t get fooled, they are fast and used to run in the mountains, My horse was probably on speed so if I didn’t actively hold him back he started to run while Antons horse was more…hungry and took any opportunity he had to eat. Our guide solved this issue by simple create a horsewhip from an old tree and after he learned us the Mongolian word for speed up we could suddenly talk to our horses. To bad we didn’t learn the word to stop or slow down because the horse didn’t care how much you tried to hold him back, luckily we were riding in mountains and I simple turned the horse riding uphill to slow him down. A few hours in you started to get a feeling for it and you could really enjoy the views and for a second or two you felt like Genghis Kahn.

After our horseback riding we decided to go river rafting, a long hike later and we are finally gently following the stream. It was nice and even if I wished for some more action it was really nice to follow the stream, see the nature and just enjoy the silence . When the sun started to set our guides started to sing a Mongolian song which made the whole scenery really picturesquely.

The other Swedish gang left today so now its only us, one British, one American and one German here, it feels good and the atmosphere is much better. The locals we kind a havent seen many and in this camp there is only one who speaks English, she is nice thought so I assume they all are.