Five Bars Over Mongolia

For you Blackberry addicts, you will be pleased to know that no matter where you are on the Gobi Desert, you can get cell phone connections. I could not get it in my apartment in Penticton but miles in the middle of nowhere in Mongolia, we are getting five bars. Telus should hire some Mongolians to work on their cell system. After a short 16 hour train ride from Beijing we arrived in Sainschand Mongolia at about 5:00 am. Most of the time was spent at the border dealing with immigration issues. After a pleasant strip search and some scowls we were allowed to leave China and enter Mongolia.
Our first stop was a ger (pronounced gar) camp located about 2o kilometres from Sainschand where we were to spend two nights. It was a basic camp with not a lot of amenities. Our ger (pronounced gar) was nicely appointed but the washrooms were a couple of 100 feet away. A long trip at around four in the morning with a wonky flashlight. One shower that sort of worked if you squatted down to use it as there was not enough water pressure to push it all the way to the end of the spray nozzle if you were standing. Some hot water, but cold showers were the order of the day. After all we were in the Gobi Desert.
The Gobi is not all sand dunes, most of it is made up of thin scrub where camels, sheep, goats and horses can find a few things to eat. Raising these animals is still the way of life for most Mongolians living in the Gobi. The live in gers (pronounced gars) and migrate at least three or four times a year. Mostly to assure that the camels, goats, sheep and horses have something to eat and to prevent over grazing.
A short nap and some breakfast, we headed out to a Monastery called Khamar. It has existed in the middle of the desert for almost 200 years. It it located here as it is near a source of some kind of power. It is a working monastery still today. There seems to be a huge deposit of iron in the area as the landscape is dotted with huge mounds of red dirt. Perhaps the power is magnetic. Despite the fact of its remote location, it was very busy with a few tourists but mostly Mongolians come to worship.
We were joined on our adventures by a couple and their young son. Americans currently living in Taiwan. We were stuffed into a minivan and transported around the Gobi at breakneck speeds over roads that had not existed a week before. If there was no road, we just sort of headed into the right direction. We got stuck in the sand once. But there was enough of us to push ourselves back on to solid ground. Not a problem. We could have easily called MAA (Mongolian Automobile Association) to send out some tow-camels. Remember we have great cell phone reception.

Later on our return to the ger (pronounced gar) camp, we came across a well where a Mongolian family was watering their goats, sheep, cattle and camels. They dropped huge canvas bags down into the well, pulled them up and dumped them into troughs where the camels, sheep, goats jockeyed for position get a drink. Finished, they jumped into their old truck (after using a big hand crank to get it started) and a couple of motorcycles and roared off home while the animals meandered off to find something to eat. It was a great end to our first day in Mongolia.