We were up this morning some time after 7:00. Our host family was already up and to work as I left the ger. I smiled at Grandma who was shoveling manure from the sheep and goats, which is the fuel the family uses for their stoves.
Grandpa had untied the camels, which had visited the well, and then headed off northward towards the mountains.
I sat on a rock watching them move off, when suddenly my attention was turned to the east from whence I heard the pounding of hooves. I was in time to see over twenty horses gallop over the ridge towards the well.
Andrea joined me a few minutes later and managed to end up in the middle of a second wave of horses, that simply galloped right around her. It was the first time we had seen our host family's horses, and we assume they just know to come in the morning for water.
Out of this herd the younger man selected two horses for us to ride, and he tied them up by his horse in the camp while we ate breakfast.
After breakfast, Grandpa helped us onto our horses and we rode off with the younger man to the west, the opposite direction we had ridden the camels.
Eventually our guide and driver met up with us and we dismounted and loaded into the van.
We drove on a few more minutes until we reached the semi-Gobi.
The sand dunes don't photograph especially well, but they were sure fun to climb and play around in! We took of our shoes and socks and ran up the side of one of them. The sand is the finest I have ever encountered, and so, so dry.
It was also quite cold underneath the top layer, so as our feet slipped under we experienced a significant temperature difference. We spent about twenty minutes or half an hour on the dune, and we enjoyed descending and ascending so much that we did it twice--something our guide observed from afar and had a good joke about later. Climbing the dunes takes a lot of effort because the sand gives way so quickly (not unlike walking through deep snow), so he thought climbing it twice just for fun was a crazy idea.
After visiting the semi-Gobi our visit to the Khogno Khan and Khogno Tarna park was over, and our driver headed south back to the highway to take us to our next spot, the Gorkhi-Terelj National Park.
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