Greetings All!
We started our rural Mongolian experience yesterday by traveling to the Terelj National Forest about an hour and a half outside Ulaanbaatar. It's probably one of the most beautiful places I have seen. Green rolling hills with statuesque granite boulders that are more like building blocks for giants. Ger camps are dotted here and there with herds of horses, goats and cows wandering all over the country side. I could seriously live here.
Our first stop was to this hill that by tradition you throw a rock on to this large pile of rocks and walk around it three times. You're supposed to make a wish for a safe journey or something. I got about half way around the rock pile when I saw that you can hold an eagle! Yep, we totally held an eagle! The bird dude put the leather arm piece on us and we held up this gorgeous brown eagle. I didn't realize how large they were till it was up close (within pecking my eyes out range). Leavitt, Nat and me were the adventurous ones on that.
As our little bus continued on we came across some camels. They apparently come with 2 humps here. Leavitt got into overly eager puppy mode and we stopped to ride those. It's seriously like an outdoor Disneyland for us here! In India they say the camel represents love. I guess if you can love a camel you can love anything. Seriously though, these things are dog ugly and smell bad. Needless to say, Leavitt has lots of love.
Our eye opening experience is when we drank this Mongolian drink. It was good until we drank it. Apparently it was fermented mare's milk. Geez, does every culture ferment something? Keri said it best, it tasted like cat vomit.
Our ger camp was nestled back in this hillside. In our ger we had 4 beds which we shared with us and U.K. Keri. We dropped our bags immediately and headed for horseback riding. The Dutch's, Quarantine girl (she was in Chinese quarantine for a week, I think her name is April), Leavitt, Nat and me went to do a 2 hour ride.
My favorite horse is a buckskin and I saw this Mongolian looking buckskin horse. He was beautiful. The horses are a little smaller than the ones back in the U.S. but are still pretty awesome. The guide kept warning me saying that he is a little more frisky. I told him it was fine and I want him.
I didn't realize until we got on the trail that he wasn't really frisky, it was more like he liked going fast. He would go into a trot just to stay ahead of everyone else. I called him Alphahorse or later, just Alpha. Leavitt got one that she named Biff, who was a bit on the sluggish side. She ended up getting a tree branch and wacking him on the side to move along faster. Nat's horse was the biter of the group, she was just mean that way.
After I got a bit more comfortable with Alpha and knowing that our guide could careless about me going into a gallop, Leavitt and I cut loose a bit more. I loved it so much. The terrain is grassy with rolling hills and to gallop along hillsides and stuff was absolutely liberating.
We wanted to go back for a run today before we left Terelj, but we didn't have any time. I walked down to Alpha this morning and our horse guide was there. He saw me and gave me a big thumbs up and smiled at me. I guess he was okay with my horse handling :) As it turns out, my horse used to be a Mongolian race horse, which would make sense that he was always on the go.
To top of our evening we did some archery. Our tour guide G said that she has never seen anyone hit the target before. It's 30 meters away and the bow is a recurve one and its a little tough to shoot the arrow because the arrow has to rest on your hand. The first to hit the target was Nat! She totally hit it from 30 meters. Not to be out done, everyone else went through again and again and then Leavitt hit it as well. So gold and silver medals in archery went to Canada. Tonight we'll be eating Mongolian BBQ again and heading to the train station after wards. We'll be taking a 36 hour train ride across the border and over to Lake Baikal. The trains aren't that bad, it really does help when you have fun people to share it with.
I'm looking forward to Siberia, but I will definitely miss Mongolia. It has definitely been more my speed than all the busy cities we've been to. Since we'll be on train for the next few days and I'm not sure what the next leg of our trip will bring, I will be officially in the communication black hole!
Talk to you all soon!
Emily the Mongol Horse Rider
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