In a country where 100km is a good day’s travel on the earth roads that serve most of it, we had just learned from locals at Baruunbayan-Ulaan, a soum center where we had stopped to get petrol, that the heavy log and plank bridge we heading for in […]
I was coming to the end of my first tent camping trip in Mongolia in July of 2010. We had traveled south to a remote Gobi lake, Orog Nuur…myself, my driver/guide and a cook… and back north into the Hangai Mountains to see a variety of sights, including […]
I’m not a “writer” but I do write, mostly on this blog. I ran across a travel writing contest sponsored by the We Said Go Travel site and decided to re-write five of my posts from my two-week camping trip in Mongolia in July 2010 and see […]
This will be a occasional, on-going series of images of my favorite places in Mongolia. Baga Gazriin Chuluu means “Small Earth/Land Rocks”. There is also an Ikh Gazriin Chuluu (Great Earth Rocks), but I haven’t gotten there yet. There are more photos of Baga Gazriin Chuluu, including the […]
Summer is here and I thought I’d present a photo essay on one of the most beloved foods in Mongolia….marmot. Say “tarvaga” to the average Mongolian and watch their eyes light up. Unfortunately, the native Siberian marmots have gone from occupying the steppes in the millions to Endangered […]
Before I left on my July/August trip to Mongolia, I bought some new stuff and posted about it here and here. It included a new camera pack, jacket, hard drive for image back-up and memory cards. I also bought a couple of pairs of L.L. Bean tropic weight […]
After the dramatic trip down the mountain and then arriving at our campsite just before dark, it was lovely to wake up to sunshine the next morning on a grassy hillside. Even better was the parade of horses and yaks that came right by where I was sitting […]
After leaving the falls, our route took us along and across the Orkhon Gol until we started to climb back into the mountains. Once again, we were in wildflower heaven. We were on our way up to Tovhon Monastery, a famous remote mountain retreat founded by Zanabazar, the […]
After lunch at the lovely spot that ended the previous post, we drove higher into the mountains, up where there were forests of larch trees. Many of them were a reddish color, which indicated that they were dead or dying of a beetle infestation. […]
One of the places I most want to go back to and spend a week camping, painting and sketching is this place. For me, the “Valley of the Yaks” is the whole package. Green mountains, beautiful small rivers, herders, their gers and their animals, raptors like black kites […]
