Mongolia (4)

They were very excited to show us this Turtle rock formation. Sadly, I don’t see it.

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I love a suspension bridge!

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Tom is always fun to video.

On the way up the mountain to the temple there was prayers and sayings on billboards all the way up to the top.

We hiked to the aryabal meditation Temple admiring breathtaking views along the way.
One of the photos shows how the temple was designed to look like the head of an elephant.

Once we reached the top, we spun this beautiful wooden spinner. There were numbers, 1 to 100, at the top and once the spinner stopped on one of the numbers you were to find that number along the path and apply it to yourself. Number my number was 93. I was disappointed in that my saying didn’t make any sense to me.

There were many steps required to get to the top of the Temple and we were instructed to leave all our troubles at the bottom of the steps. Once we came back down they would all be gone.

I got very tired taking off my shoes before entering these temples because my shoes were not easy too tie.

Beautiful views.

There was no need but I just had to get to the top of that bridge.

We pulled into a little town and then backed down an alley. The bus was huge and our driver was excellent.

This was a classic Kazak ger and was about 2 feet taller than the Mongolian gers so that you didn’t have to bend over to get through the doorway.

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This was another ger; but rather than a Mongolian family this was a Kazakh family who live in Kazakhstan, but come to Mongolia to visit their grandmother for the summer.

The two little girls were very eloquent and so cute.

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This little girl was 10 or 12 and she had only been playing this dobro for 3 months.

I had seen this crib before in another asian country, maybe Uzbeckistan.

The crib had a hole in it’s bottom where the babies but would lie. When the baby peed or pooped it went through the hole and shuttled down to a bucket that would catch the feces.

Therefore diapers were not needed. However today all Mongolian babies wear diapers.

I always wondered about the cleanliness of this system. Yuck.

Dressing up for the locals.

Another local meal. Yum.

What a crowd.

You can see in the photos they actually lived in a two-story brick home and only used this ger as an example of what they used to live in. I’m sure they had a wonderful bathroom in that home; but we were only allowed to use this hole.

It was scary because I had a phone in my pocket and I realized I could have fallen through this hole myself.

The kids were always happy to get stuff from us. I gave them toothbrushes and hand cream. Nita brought them bubbles which I thought was a great idea.

Five of us wanted to walk to a temple built in the early 1900s that sits in the middle of Ulaanbaatar. Tessa offered to come with us and was a wonderful help in describing everything we saw.

This Monument was erected as a permit from the city allowing the temple to be built. We see the same thing near other temples in this country.

I am amazed at these old buildings sitting right in the center of modern Ulaanbaatar.

Do these four people look familiar? They are the guards in front of all important temples. Don’t forget the guy with the rat with the jewel in the rat’s mouth. Creepy.