Mongolia Day 12: Arriving in the Gobi Desert

​Today was a travel day - we spent most of the day preparing for our trip to the Gobi.

In the morning we went to the National Art museum and marveled over the beautiful Buddhist works. The museum featured paintings and bronze sculpture by Zanabazar, the first Bogd.  But there were also lots of thankas (Buddhist paintings), appliqué and embroidery thankas, Tsam costumes and masks, two and three dimensional mandalas, etc.  It was really interesting and beautiful art, and we had our exceptional guide, MG, to explain it all.

Zanabazar also created the first modern Mongolian alphabet 

We had a nice lunch near the hotel, and spent a bit of time at the crafts market on the square, then headed to the airport.

We stopped in the way to visit a small dinosaur museum. It was cool to see the famous dinosaur eggs and babies, as well as the Tyrannosaurus  Bataar - a smaller, less carnivorous version of Tyrannosaurus Rex.  No photos were allowed, but we sneaked a few.

We couldn't see much on the flight because of cloud cover, which was disappointing. 

Upon arrival in Dalanzadgad, we got into some Lexus SUVs and headed off across the desert.  It was an hour ride, mostly on dirt roads, and lots of fun. At times the road had at least six or more different lanes through the grass and sand, and was probably about 100 yards across - each driver could choose whichever path seemed best for avoiding ruts, rocks, horses, goats or the immense dust clouds produced by the car ahead.  We laughed a lot, and bounced a fair bit as well.

Our ger camp is beautiful!  Larger  than the other two, it sits on a perfectly flat plain in the center of the enormous  valley - equidistant from all the major attractions in this area which are all an hour or so away.  We had a nice dinner (camel steak), settled into our gers, and then walked outside in the cool evening to watch the sunset with a huge camp dog.  It was lovely.