Today we had a fantastic exploring the very surprising Gobi Desert.
After breakfast, we got into our fancy Lexus SUVs and drove about an hour across the desert to visit the Natural Museum at the entrance to the Gobi Gurvansaikan National Park. The museum was mostly aged taxidermy (from the 1960s), but it did give us a sense of the number and variety of birds, reptiles and mammals that live in the Altai Mountain range.
From there, it was another half hour on a twisty and bumpy mountain road to get to the Yol (Vulture or Eagle) Valley hike. It was a beautiful walk down into the valley, seeing pika and ground squirrels, as well as several new birds. The highlight was when we spotted a whole flock of ibis on the top of a cliff.
It took us about an hour to walk down to the waterfall at the narrowest part of the gorge, and another hour back - dodging a few raindrops in the way. The tall mountains that rose up on both sides of the gorge were lovely and impressive. Rock hopping across the little stream multiple times was also fun and a bit challenging at times.
We stopped for lunch at a camp near the park entrance, and then headed back to the Gobi Dream Lodge. In the afternoon we had a ger building demonstration. We watched the drivers take down the small ger, and then we helped to put it back up. Really fun- especially given how much time we are spending in gers on this trip.
Before dinner, we watched “The Story of the Weeping Camel” about the traditional Hoos ritual that Mongolian herders perform to get orphaned or rejected foals adopted by a mother. It was really a lovely movie, and we saw so many of the cultural features that we have learned about over the last 2 weeks. So satisfying.
The rain rolled in after dinner, so we retreated back to our gers. It was really windy and chilly outside (not like the deserts we are used to), but toasty in the ger. 😄
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