July | 2015 | STOP BY FOR POT PIE

… Continued from previous post.

This dog’s name is Simba, he belongs to one of the families that we stayed with. Jill loved playing with him and I loved watching him hunt the lizards he spotted in the desert.

These two-humped camels give off a surprising amount of heat; I felt like I was sitting on a heated car seat the entire time.

Climbing Khongor, the largest of Mongolia’s sand dunes, started off straight forward but eventually became an exercise in frustration. Towards the top, the angle of ascent was 65 – 70 degrees and at that gradient, the sand is cruel and unforgiving. I must have climbed the same five metre stretch at least ten times, it was incredibly demoralising and it didn’t help that by that point, my boots and socks were completely full of sand.

The Bayanzag, rock formations in the desert were reminiscent of America’s Grand Canyon (though on a much smaller scale) and Rich of Saxaul, a petrified forest, was close to one of the families that we stayed with.

One of our lunch spots.

A well near a monastery. The water we drank here is believed to have healing properties.

One of the camps that we stayed at.

Wild Mongolia.

Orkhon Falls.

This unbearably cute baby goat still had its umbilical cord attached, it was less than a day old when these pictures were taken.

A building from the Erdene Zuu monastery complex. This was one of the few monasteries to survive the religious purge Mongolia suffered at the hands of the Soviets.

Mongolian barbecue!

The train that we’d learn to see as home.

The pictures below were taken while hiking the Great Baikal Trail. Lake Baikal is known as the Blue Eye of Siberia and is the oldest, largest and deepest freshwater lake in the World. It contains more than 20,000 cubic km of water, more than all five of America’s great lakes combined. If the world’s drinking water ran out tomorrow, Lake Baikal could supply the entire population for the next forty years. By virtue of the fact that it contains so much water (and the purifying action of natural sponges at its depths), Baikal water is incredibly pure and completely safe to drink. Jill and I didn’t drink anything else while we were there.

The train we slept on for three nights. Jill and I were the only non-Russian speakers on board.

St. Basil’s Cathedral in Moscow’s Red Square.

It didn’t occur to me until Jill’s dad, Randy, pointed it out but this trip was even wider in scope than I first realised. I knew that between, China, Mongolia and Russia, and the associated changes in people, culture, cuisine and landscape, that we’d be experiencing at least a few eye opening moments during our travels. What I didn’t realise was that with our planned visit to family in west Canada being right before our start on the Trans-Mongolian railway, we’d be heading in one direction and wouldn’t stop until we were back home in Boston. Around the world in just under a month!

As you can imagine, we saw quite a lot and I wrote a suitably comprehensive 40,000 words about our experiences during that time. Even though I always write my travel logs with an audience in mind, this one is far too long for me to consider sharing it with you here. Instead, I’ll walk you through our journey with a photo diary.

Highlights of our two day hike on the Great Wall of China and the surrounding mountainside. At night we set up camp in an old watch tower and cooked our food over a fire. When it got dark, the only sources of light were the moon and the stars. It was very ‘Game of Thrones’; I felt like one of the watchers on the wall.

Ulaanbaatar, Mongolia’s capital, was not at all what I was expecting. The thousand year history made its presence felt but while walking around, things felt strangely modern. The locals spoke excellent English and the women were stylishly dressed in European clothes (not traditional Mongolian attire like I’d been expecting). The city already felt unique, what with the mix of soviet-era buildings, ultra-modern curved glass skyscrapers and the backdrop of both mountains and desert but with all of these other unexpected elements thrown in too, I didn’t know what to make of it.

Baga Gazriin Chuluu, rock formations in the South Gobi desert.

Mongolia is known for its free-spirited nomadic families and like them, we spent our time moving from place to place. Each night in the country following our first was spent with a different one of the Mongolian families that we met on our way. The pictures below were taken while with our first family.

The open road… We didn’t see many of these (roads, that is), while in Mongolia. Most of the places we went were only reachable with a robust off-road vehicle.

Mongolian food was like a mix of several Asian and east Asian cuisines. By and large it tasted pretty good but the amount of fat that Mongolians like to leave on their meat is ridiculous.

We had to stop for goats (and other passing animals) several times while on the road.

Yol Valley.

Jill picked a great time of year for our trip; not only was the weather excellent in each of the countries that we visited but all of the animals in Mongolia (horses, sheep, yaks, goats…) seemed to have given birth to their young right before we arrived. We welcomed the opportunity to revel in their unbearable cuteness.

These gers belonged to the second nomad family that we stayed with.

We came across these wandering camels while on our way somewhere (Mongolians let their camels roam free during summer, the camels often travel hundreds of miles away during that time but always return home).