10 Days in the wilderness

Just got back from our 10 day trip through south and central Mongolia. I'm trying to decide whether or not it was the biggest adventure to date. So much happened in so little time...gonna give a day by day account...might take several postings ;)

DAY 1

We left UB at about 10 in the morning, me, Pauline, and this Malaysian girl named Kym. She wanted to do a trip but had no one to do it with, so she came with us...made the price cheaper too if there were more people. We met our driver, Inhe, and our guide and cook, Uyanga...and all was good, they were amazingly nice. Our first destination was the Gobi desert, we couldn't make it there in one day but it was a great drive. We discovered, outside of the "cities" Mongolia's roads are more like two tire ruts in the dirt which drivers can choose to follow or not. There are no road signs or markers, therefore their ability to navigate is pretty impressive. Our drive to the Gobi was over some incredibly flat land...no trees, no real grass, just stones and dirt, maybe a few shrubs. Lots of camel herds though...the two-humped kind. Big mofos who like to lie down in the middle of the "road". It was pretty hot, so kept seeing mirages in the distance, lakes that didn't exist...etc. We fucked one of our tires a few hours into the trip...so that needed a change. We camped for the night in the middle of this flat plain, you could basically stand up and look for miles into the distance. Needless to say, the sunset was incredible! Also realized toilets would be non-existent on this trip. If we were lucky, there would be a tiny wood shed, with a hole and two planks to stand on...otherwise...it was behind whatever shrub or rock you could find. It got to a point, where we really didn't bother with privacy.

DAY 2

We woke up, ate breakfast on a bed roll in the middle of a briskly cold Mongolian plain and jumped into the SUV headed for the Gobi.

...too lazy to keep typing...will write more later...