Mongolia: Khar Khorin

Another travel day. The horses ran away last night so we will have to wait until the Gobi to ride anything. It took half an hour to actually reach the Millennium Road from the ger camp, over flat terrain marked only by the few tracks made from occasional drivers.

An hour from this to Khar Khorin, then the rest of the way was completely dirt road. What will happen is one path will become miserable so vehicles will “off road” creating multiple paths. This does not reduce the dust clouds however. I have been coughing quite frequently from all the dust, and every time we take a country road, paved or not, everyone ends up with black noses. It gets very hot in the minibus as well with the bright Mongolian sun. No opening the window because of the dusty wind, so we focus more on the beautiful landscapes and roaming animal herds.

We were excited to learn the two Belgians, a father and son graduating from college, would be going to the Gobi the same time as us, so we hope to see them at least on the plane there. Apparently Khar Khorin was only the second largest city in its region because Tsetserleg is the "capital" of this region with supposedly twenty thousand residents.

The town is rather nice and lay out better than the other places we’ve seen. It also has trees, a very sparse commodity in the areas seen thus far. Our hotel, while the gers were quite nice, are a blessing as everyone Hotel Simbaneeded a shower, especially with the dust we had just experienced (we had pulled off the road to eat lunch by one of the few creeks when a decent sized sand storm hit).

Hotel Simba was established a mere two years ago has a small restaurant, a billiards room, and a bar with karaoke and disco. When we arrived they warmed water for us to shower, another sparse commodity in the rural areas. I do feel a lot better having the indoor plumbing and clean hair. A good night’s rest will hopefully re-energize me as I get sleepy every two hours (I think from excessive sunlight with it rising around 6:30 in the morning and setting closer to 10:30 in the evening as well as the thin air). Mongols all seem to have very nice singing voices, they are not afraid to sing with everything they’ve got.