We often had threatening clouds but it was rare when we got rained on.
Award winner photos!! I do say so, myself.)
Probably worth its weight in gold to get electricity out in the middle of nowhere via solar panels.
Feels just like being out west.
CLICK.
Goats everywhere!
I was stuck in the middle of the back seat for all of our drive through the Gobi Desert. To add insult to injury the men on both sides of me fell asleep! What? I’m not that interesting??
So let me tell you about this sports story which is mind blowing.
I have no interest in watching any kind of sports. When you talk about sports I hear wah wah wah wah wah wah wah.
But what ha happened was……. I had purchased an annual data package for my phone that covered all the countries I was going to this year except Rwanda. So I realized I had 45 gigabytes ,that I had already paid for, which we’re going to be moot at the end of this trip. So I started using them like a drunken sailor. Every bus ride I had my data on and I was watching Facebook and YouTube and Amazon and email.
Nita was in the front seat and very interested in the Knicks. I had to ask what sport she was talking about. Duh. But I’m always for an underdog and I heard they hadn’t won a champion game since the 90s. Nita asked that I try to find the game on my phone using my data package. I believe it was 11:00 a.m. We were driving through the Gobi Desert and we were 12 hours ahead of New York. This meant the New York’s Knicks game, maybe number three or four, was just finishing up about 11:00 p.m. the night before.
I located the game on my phone where they were just giving me the scores as they happened.
We tuned in when they were about 25 points behind and 9 minutes to go. People were getting very excited in the 4×4 as they were explaining to me that 9 minutes was a long time in basketball.
The Knicks kept making baskets, many of them 3 pointers. I must interject here that I was a huge Minnesota Gophers fan in 1972 (I had season tickets!) So I knew something about how basketball players made points. But there never was a three pointer in those days. So I was very excited to hear the Knicks were making 3 points at a time.
People in the car were going crazy when we were getting very close to an even score at the 4-minute mark. The Knicks kept making points until about the one minute mark when they decided to have a timeout or a commercial or whatever. Then they had another timeout or commercial. … And then my phone stopped at 30 seconds……. Which devastated my fellow Travelers.
I fooled around with the phone until I got reception again as we were told the Knicks won!
Our tour group were in four separate 4x4s so Nita demanded our non English-speaking driver turn on his walkie-talkie so she can announce to everybody that the Knicks had won.
The fact we were driving in a car, in the middle of the Mongolian Gobi Desert, in the middle of the morning, with a telephone that cost me $45 a month, and we were able to listen to the play by play of a Knicks game in New York City in the middle of their night BLOWS MY MIND!!!!
More welcoming milk tea. Yuck.
These Farmers made this candy for $8 US per bag out of yak milk. It tasted like caramel and dad was the recipient when I got home.
More discussions with local nomadic families in their ger. This little boy was precious.
Finally! Yak milk made into something I wanted to drink — fermented vodka.
CLICK.
There is nothing scarier than watching a video of camels when all of a sudden it becomes a selfie of yourself.
I was enamored with the hair plugs that were growing in these camels heads. — see the first photo.
They were shedding their fur and it was coming off in bunches. I grabbed a little and stuck it in my pocket and took it home with me. Tom was appalled.
These were double-humped which I think is called a Dromedary. When they are dehydrated and have less fat in their humps their humps become limp and flaccid — poor things!
I was very disappointed in this camel ride. We all got on camels and then walked to the one giant sand dune to get our photos taken.
When I asked if we were going to get to ride over the sand dune I was told we spent too much time in the morning hiking to that 2 foot water fall.
Then we walk back to the original spot and got off the camels. Big deal.
When I got the group pictures they were so blurry you couldn’t tell who is who. Disappointing.
I realize I am very jaded from all my travels. Had I never been on a camel before, it probably would have been thrilling.
The disappointing group photo. I’m the cute one. LOL
They always have things for sale. You can’t blame them. You’ve got to sell when you have the opportunity.
Quite fancy for a movable nomadic ger. Tom always gives me his chocolate. And I appreciate it.
Called the Flaming Cliffs of Mongolia, the towering red cliffs of Bayanzag, glowing like flames at sunrise and sunset, create one of the most striking landscapes in Mongolia.
Bayanzag is known to the world as the place where dinosaur eggs were first discovered — where Roy Chapman Andrews from the American Museum of Natural History, NYC, and his team in 1923 discovered a brand new Cretaceous world in Mongolia and changed paleontology forever.
The same desert that embodied Protoceratops nests 70 million years ago is still home today to families who herd livestock across its floor for generations, following their ancient way of living. They read the land for water, move with the seasons, build their gers and break camp with a fluency that comes from centuries of tradition.
Many more photos on the next blog.