Tuesday, September 01, 2009

gobi trip

just got back to UB from the gobi trip. we enjoyed the khovsgol trip more for several reasons but the gobi trip was nice and had a few eventful incidents.

first our driver was a maniac. I'm glad we made it back in one piece. he drove really fast and a few times caught quite a bit if air by not slowing down on bumps. once he decided to pass the other van we were traveling with 1/2 km from camp and nearly flipped the car getting back in the tracks. but we survived, he was a nice guy, and spoke a little English.

the more eventful stuff happened to the other car, one girl in particular. the second day we saw one group of cars the entire day. we passed them no problem. went another hour and waited for the other van but the never showed up. our driver somehow got cell reception and called the other driver and they'd had an accident. so we drove back an hour to the site. the other group of cars was a group of Italian tourons in nice land cruisers. one Italian managed to convince his driver to let him drive. well as the other van approached instead of going right and passing as is customary and what the cars ahead of him did, he swerved left into the van and the collided. the van got the worse deal, front smashed in, engine fire, car needed a couple hours work to get it going. and the Italian didn't apologize though it was clearly his fault and wanted to leave right away. luckily no injuries, just a few scrapes and whiplash and the car was somewhat repaired that night.

incident 2, the French girl from the other car sprained her knee pretty bad playing a Mongolian running game and colliding with a pretty big guy. just when it was getting better, yesterday at lunch she went to use the bathroom (outhouse). directions weren't clear and she went into a neighboring yard and ended up being bitten in the ass by a dog. no teeth marks but an open wound. they took her to a hospital in the town we were in last night and as of yesterday she was deciding if she should get the anti-rabies shots (10 over 10 days) and forget the rest of her trip or take the small risk of maybe getting rabies and dying. must be the worst vacation ever for her.

about the trip, saw lots of camels, desert, some small sandstone cliffs (flaming cliffs), big sand dunes, and road camels. erick and I took the public bus back today, the other couple in our car have two more days in places we've already seen. the bus wasn't too bad (7 hours) except they wouldn't let us put our bags below so we had our bags on half a seat and the floor and we had to share 1 1/2 seats for 7 hours, not very comfortable.

tomorrow we fly to khovd in the west. should be interesting because we have nothing arranged and it doesn't seem too developed tourism wise.

1 comment:

Unknown said...

Always go potty facing the entrance - nobody can see your butt. She may have a better chance in fending off the dog too.