We began our day with breakfast served by our tour guide at the Idre guesthouse. After breakfast we loaded up a van, and our guide, driver, and the two of us headed west out of UB.
Shortly outside of UB we stopped by an ovoo.
The ovoo is a sacred cairn with roots in Shamanism, although our guide told us Buddhists build them as well (the ovoos themselves don't look very Buddhist to me, although these structures across the highway did).
It is customary in Mongolia to circle an ovoo three times clockwise and add stones to the pile prior or during a journey, which we did.
After the ovoo stop our destination was the camp of a semi-nomadic family (they move camp four times a year) who live just outside Khogno Tarna National Park. Khogno Tarna is about 300 kilometers from Ulaanbaatar, but things take a bit longer on Mongolian highways, what with potholes and herds of sheep and goats and cows crossing the road, so it took about five hours or so, not including a couple smoke breaks for the guide and driver/scenic stops for the tourists and an hour stop for lunch.
I think the landscape we drove through is properly described as steppe, although not as flat as I would normally think of steppe being. Other than a couple of small towns, we saw very little development once outside of UB, although there was plenty of indications of human life, what with ovoos, ger camps, and herds of (mostly) domesticated animals, sometimes with a shepherd on horseback or a motorcycle. There were occasional wheat fields as well, but mostly it was simply grassland.
Once off the highway the guide and driver had a bit of trouble finding the camp, but they did eventually and we pulled in. They greeted the family, whom they had not seen since last tour season, and we were sort of introduced and certainly welcomed. The family consisted of older parents (they looked very, very old, but we assume were perhaps only in their 50s) and their son and his wife (who we think are in their 30s). The younger couple have children, but they spend the week at school in the nearest town.
The camp consists of an enclosure for some of their animals and four gers, two of which are dedicated for tourists. There is also a storage shed, and a pit toilet with an old truck cab around it to provide some privacy (you can see it up on the ridge above the camp in the picture below). They have solar panels which charge what look to be car batteries which are used to power a freezer, TV, and a light bulb in each ger. The water tank on the trailer is filled at the well, about two or three hundred metres from this site, and never more than a kilometre or two from where the family camps. You can also just make out a lone horse in the picture, which is the horse the men ride (the younger man also rides a motorcyle, but it seems the older man prefers the horse).
Inside the family's kitchen/living ger, we were served Mongolia's famous milk tea, which we later found out is typically salty, but was not in this case.
While drinking the tea the older man presented us with his snuff bottle, an interesting Mongolian welcoming tradition. We took the lead from our guide, who merely sniffed it rather than actually using the snuff. At one point he reacted nervously as we passed it between ourselves, noting that the bottle is quite expensive.
After tea our guide encouraged us to explore on our own, telling us to come back to camp in about an hour and a half.
To the north of the camp is the Khogno Khan mountain range, from whence the park gets its name.
The Khogno Khan mountain is a sacred mountain, but it is not especially impressive as mountains go (i.e., not especially high or imposing). The granite rocks around the mountain represent the edge of the taiga, or boreal forest, landscape. This makes the park's landscape very unique, because it is where the steppe meets the taiga. Adding to the geographical allure, there is also a desert portion known as "semi-Gobi," which we will visit tomorrow.
For now we headed towards the rocks.
Walking around here we could see the family's cattle herd, which I would estimate at about 30-50 head. We could see two herds of goats and sheep as well, but at this point it was not clear which one was our host family's. Unlike the horses, cows, and camels, which all herd homogeneously, the sheep and goats in Mongolia appear to always herd together. Both herds were made up of well over a hundred animals, and maybe as many as two hundred, including kids and lambs.
We didn't see the horse herd, but we did find a couple of horses that seemed very enamored with each other.
The rocks themselves were quite beautiful, as was the steppe to the south.
We returned to camp to move into our ger, which we had to ourselves, our guide taking another one, and our drive opting for his van.
The family shared the remaining ger. We also got to watch the older man return on his horse, driving five adult camels and one baby in from their grazing.
He watered them at the well, and then they galloped into camp to eat from a trough.
Here I played tug-of-war with the baby, a surprisingly large animal for only three months old.
Once the camels finished eating, Andrea and I mounted two of them and the younger man got on the horse to lead us out onto the steppe.
We rode the camels for over an hour. My camel looked relaxed and seemed to enjoy himself, but Andrea's had a bad attitude and scowled and made plenty of grunts.
The sun was getting low as we rode on the open steppe with the mountains to our north and the desert just visible to the southwest, and it was very, very beautiful.
We also rode by a shrine that was awfully fascinating. Our host paused here briefly. whether out of respect for the site or simply to let us view it, I'm not sure (our host family spoke no English, so the man and I communicated with our hands and body langauge).
The scarves come in five colours, and they are visible at every religiously significant site we saw in Mongolia (although they apparently are borrowed from Tibet). The colours represent aspects of the world (e.g., sky, water, fire), but I haven't found descriptions to be consistent. What did seem to be consistent was the popularity of blue over the other colours.
Besides the scarves, animal bones are common sights at the shrines, and here there were rows of skulls.
This shrine seemed to have a bit more of a Buddhist feel than some of the others we saw, because of the rack of prayer wheels.
On the way back to camp we passed the well, which a camel had returned to, presumably in hopes of finding more water.
Once we dismounted our camels it was time for dinner.
The daughter-in-law seemed to have made supper, which was hand-made noodles with some vegetables and mutton jerky. We ate with the family and our guide in the kitchen ger. We had been quite worried that food in Mongolia would be unpalatable, but this meal was actually very good, and I had a second helping.
Luckily for us sunset is quite late in Mongolia in May, so even though it was around 19:00, we still had two hours of daylight after dinner.
I still had not gotten enough of the camels, so I visited them first.
Next we headed towards the well, where the cows were being watered.
Then it was back to camp for a final check-in with the camels, which had now been tied up in a row for the night.
Mother and baby were tied up separately, just a little ways away.
It was still much to early to turn in, so next we headed up the ridge to meet the herd of sheep and goats, which the younger couple were jointly herding towards camp.
We joined in herding them, and made friends with a little orphan kid.
It was a great ending to an incredible day.
