Six days in Gobi @ Mongolia

Leaving Ulaanbaatar in late November is a relief in itself. -35°C and a constant smell of smoke make up for an average day in the Mongolian capital. Spending six days in the Gobi desert is great in itself. The pleasant -16°C and crisp air were just an added bonus.

Most tourists flee mongolia in the middle of october. For three days, it seemed that we would not be able to find any other late suckers to fill the van and go on the tour. Everything worked out, though, and we got to meet Björn and George, a Finnish and a British.

It takes two days to get to Gobi per se, so we slept the first night at its outskirts, in a nomadic family’s winter house. Due to the weather, they mostly shepperd their livestock during the season. Although pretty simple, most of the nomadic families abandoned the horse for a more practical mounting.

The livestock is usually set to roam freely during the day and is gathered back at night. Being the least populated country on the planet, mixing herds is not usually problem. Even so, animals have their horns painted for owner identification. This particular family uses blue and yellow.

And bellow is a potty-trained boy marching to the outhouse to resolve his business.

From the second day onward, it’s a drastic change of scenery. The snow completely disappears and the landscape aquires more of a stereotypical desert look. The accomodations also change: nomads in the Gobi desert live in tents called Gers. They are kept warm during the night by a hearth that’s fed either by wood or manure. Since Gobi’s bushes tend to burn quite quickly, the families that used manure were our favorites. The night sky was absolutely amazing, as it tends to be when the air is dry.

On one of the following days, our guide took us to see the sunset on the top of a sand dune. It was probably less than 100m high and, with a layman’s arrogance, the whole party tought it would be easy. It took us about an hour to climb to the top in what I believed to be the greatest physical feat I had ever done. The feeling of climbing a soft sand dune is better demonstrated by the world’s most beloved plumber:

Arriving there, however, was well worth the effort. Even though the sunset was blocked by clouds, I was able to take this post’s cover photo and this other one, with Björn sitting down, George with his camera, and our guide, Jaaga, on the left.

At the last day before returning, we went to a homestead that was built with scrap-metal, in a very Mad-Max/Fallout fashion. Inside we were greeted by four very playful children, who called me Antonia and never gave me their names in return. I am very opposed to make local people pose for me, specially children, but these opportunities came spontaneously and I was happy to take them.

After six days without a shower but with very decent food -although this was far from a consensus- we returned to Ulaanbaatar to pick our stuff up and leave Mongolia.