khovd trips

now on to our time in khovd. besides the car ride back, this was the "real" mongolian adventure we were looking for.

we lucked out in khovd, not having any plans and not speaking mongolian. we found a guesthouse (only guesthouse in khovd- the big family guesthouse) run by adiya in his parents' house. he spoke english and arranged a couple trips for us and also came along as a translator, though his english wasn't great. also found a great vegetarian restaurant in khovd as well, which was a great find.

khovd power comes from russian so everyday we were there, there was a power outage of some duration, which also meant no water. the day before we left, the power was supposed to be out for 3-4 days...

we did two 3-day trips from khovd. the first one we went to see tsambaragav uul (mountain) and a canyon along the khovd river. the driver had never been there, so we stopped at a ger to ask for directions. got invited in, served milk tea, fried dough, aaruul (dried curds), our first true experience in a ger, which was cool. drove up a canyon and hiked up to a ridge close the the mountain, we could see the glacier, really beautiful. adiya determined it was too cold to camp even though we'd set up the tent, so we drove down the canyon and went up to a random ger and asked to spend the night there. it was a nomadic family, young mother and father and a 6-month old baby. we were probably the first westerners they'd seen. we slept on their floor, they cooked dinner for adiya and the driver (us too if we wanted to eat meat) and didn't expect anything in return even though we showed up unannounced and completely unknown to them. amazing hospitality. second night camped near the khovd river, which was beautiful. on the drive back to khovd, we stopped at a kazakh ger and had tea (just went to some random ger) b/c adiya wanted us to see the difference b/w the mongolian and kazakh gers. the kazakh gers were very colorful and full of embroidery. the grandmother asked if erick and i spoke kazakh since we looked more "european" (at least erick). funny.

our second trip we went to look at some big caves with petroglyphs (didn't really see any), tsenkherlin agui, then drove 6 hours to monkhkhairkan mountain to see a waterfall. again, they didn't know directions so we stopped several time to ask horsemen, people in gers, etc. ended up taking the "bad" road, which was pretty bad, lots of rocks, rockfall, and even a dead camel feet up pinned underneath a big rock. we got to the waterfall area near dark, they still didn't know where it was. luckily there was a ger, we stopped, went in for tea, and it was interesting b/c it was small and 3 bachelors lived there. they said there was a family that live near the waterfall that would be better for us to stay with and one of the guys would take us. drove another 45 minutes in the dark and arrived at a few gers. one family gave up their ger for us to sleep in, we thought they were sleeping in another ger but turns out they slept in their truck that night!

beautiful view the next morning of the mountain. adiya mentioned that the waterfall was close but didn't say where. we waited for him and the driver for 2 hours to leave, they were talking/visiting people and who knows what. we watched the nomads chase the yaks around, played with a couple kids. got in the car with the one bachelor that helped us out and took him back to his place to pick up something then he rode with us to town. asked adiya about the waterfall on the way and he said he told us that morning, it was close to where we stayed and there's no water in it right now. so we drove all that way and no waterfall! who knows if it exists.

drove back towards khovd that day, to khar us nuur (lake) where we stayed with adiya's grandmother. she'd killed a goat that day for us, i tried a little, erick of course not. at night we played cards with her (she's a card shark) and the next day got to watch her distill airag into vodka, boil the milk and make the milk skim, and cook the goat organs. and got to try homemade yogurt. it was a cool experience and didn't feel that bad since it was adiya's grandmother, not some strangers.

so overall, we're very glad we went to khovd and that we got to have there authentic mongolian adventures, staying/meeting with nomads who'd never seen westerners, seeing how they live and experiencing the amazing hospitality. and of course if we never went, we wouldn't have to great adventure of driving back to UB from the previous post...

pictures sometime probably much later, depending on if we can post in china.