Golden Gobi #4

We left the infertile landscapes for some more mountainous ones, next to trees and at the altitude of 2.000m in the heart of Arkhangai county. This was the place where we experienced horse riding and probably the friendliest Mongolian nomadic family that hosted us and offered at once “airag”, a traditional mix of tea and yak milk. Mongolian horse riding? Hmmmm, we were pretty confident after the first 2 hours, where the horses (short but really muscular) were just moving faster than the camels, on my behalf I suppose, as my horse was held up from the horse leader. Shortly after we had the second horse riding sessions that it was just amazing. Just by whispering “chew” the horse accelerated so fast until you were afraid of it and you had to make it stop. Our ride tour included a frozen waterfall, a frozen lake and some nice view of the river, in addition to a plain valley next to the snowy mountains.

Our next stop was Kharkhorin or Karakorum, the old capital of Mongolian empire back in the Chinggis Khan years. The diffrence is that they have enough wood to make fences and separate their landpieces between family gers. The highlight of this town is the Erdene Zuud Khiiid, probably the most well known monastery in the country. It was also interesting our visit at the local school, where children were amazed to see foreigners inside their classrooms. We arrived early at night at our last stop on the way back to UB, next to some imposing rocky mountains and it was actually our last experience of a remote place in this mindblowing trip. The view from our ger was magnificent and we hiked a bit around to take as many pix as possible of the sunset. Our way back to the capital was quite silent with a stop just for lunch and we had plenty of sceneries to remember. Ulaanbaatar welcomed once again in a foggy atmoshere and we spent two more days there in order to get our train tickets to China, but it was more adventurous than we thought.