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This blog entry picks up on Thursday, July 18^th.  I went to the gym to lift weights.  Mike worked on the July 17^th blog entry, Facebook and Instagram posts.  Mike watched the 2007 movie Mongol to learn about Chinggis Khan’s early life prior to heading to the countryside over the weekend to see where he was born. We enjoyed an Indian meal at Namaste.  We cleaned the apartment and packed for our departure on Friday. 

We checked out of our apartment at 8:15 on Friday.  We used the UB Cab app (similar to Uber) to order a taxi to take us to the Bayanzurkh bus station which has routes to the eastern area of Mongolia.  We already had our bus tickets to go to our destination, Chinggis City.  While we were at the bus station, we purchased our return bus tickets from Chinggis City to Ulaanbaatar for Wednesday.  The bus left on time at 10:00 am.  There were a couple of pick ups along the way.  During one of the quick stops a non-passenger got on the bus, hoping the bus driver wouldn’t see him.  The bus driver noticed immediately and asked the man to get off the bus.  He wouldn’t get off, so the bus driver took the man’s hand and led him off the bus.  Our bus stopped at a restaurant where passengers could use the toilet and purchase a plated lunch (we had mutton with gravy, mashed potatoes, rice, carrot and beet salads). 

 A nice young man who spoke good English, whose name is too hard to pronounce and told us to call him Max, sat with us during lunch.  He was on his way to Chinggis City to fix hospital equipment.  We asked Max if he would be willing to call a hotel for us in Chinggis City as we had tried to reserve a hotel for the evening but the three hotels we contacted didn’t speak English and they would hang up when we called and did not respond to our emails.  Max called a hotel and reserved a room for us.  During the remainder of the bus ride the driver needed to stop periodically to pour water on the engine to keep it cool.  He had run out of the water he brought with so he and a couple of the men from the bus walked to the river to replenish the water containers. One of my fears is having a bus (or any vehicle for that matter) breakdown in the middle of nowhere and dying on the side of the road from heat, lack of food, and no water.  I was thrilled when our bus arrived in Chinggis City at 4:00 pm!  The walk to Khanburged Hotel from the bus station was about 20 minutes.  Max’s work contact offered to drive us to the hotel and Max came in to translate for us when we checked in.  The hotel was nice (sigh of relief!).  We looked at a couple of rooms and picked the one we wanted which was $40 US (that included all taxes and breakfast). 

Getting to Chinggis City was easy.  However, our destination for the following day was Dadal which is a 5-hour drive (in the best of circumstances), and we had absolutely no idea how we were going to get there.  We anticipated this journey was going to be different than other experiences based on what we read in the Lonely Planet Guidebook, “This is by far the most remote, least visited part of Mongolia, and a venture into its depths is a challenge to even the most experienced of travelers”.  Mike and I plan our experiences together.  Sometimes we will tell the other person to plan something on their own.  This was one of those times – I had told Mike to plan this excursion.  He warned me before we left Ulaanbaatar that we may not make it to Dadal.  I was fine with that.  After reading the aforementioned quote while sitting in our hotel room in Chinggis City, I asked Mike why he wanted to do this and he shared a different passage from the guidebook that described the reasons why to go there, “the blue sky soars above mountains furred in dark groves of larch, and rolling steppe sliced into partitions by icy cold rivers”.  Ok, I guess that’s enough reason…fingers crossed that it is!

Our lodge in Dadal had been working on finding a driver to pick us up in Chinggis City on Saturday for days but had not found one.   We walked to a taxi location that we read about to see if there were any taxis going to Dadal.  It was basically an empty lot.  We considered checking into something we read – that a postal truck travels to Dadal from Chinggis City once a week and the round trip takes about 9 hours over awful ‘roads’.  Instead, we talked to a man walking past who spoke very little English and told him we were trying to find a ride to Dadal for the next day.  He called a friend, took Mike’s number and said he’d call around and call us if he found someone.  He suggested we go to the museum and ask there, which didn’t provide successful results.  We decided to go to the ‘mall’ (which was like a flea market) and walked past the park which has all of the ‘man game’ statues (wrestling, horseback riding, archery). 

We are both very independent and don’t typically ask for help.  This experience was completely pushing both of us outside our comfort zone!  Asking for help in a different language certainly adds a layer of complexity.  We asked the first shop owner, via our Google translator, if she knew anyone going to Dadal the next day.  She posted an ad on Facebook with Mike’s Mongolian phone number (hopefully someone who speaks English will be nearby if we get a call!).  We spoke to another shop keeper named Gaya, who spoke great English!  He took Mike’s number and said he’d call around and call us if he found someone.  Ok, we now had two people helping us find a ride and 1 Facebook ad.  We Google translated with two men working at an electronics store near the mall.  They did a little research on their phones and then shook their heads no.  We stopped and asked 3 older men who were standing at the mall entrance if they knew anyone who could take us to Dadal on Saturday.  They seemed optimistic.  A younger man who spoke English joined our conversation and tried to help translate.  One of the men knew someone who would do it for $150 US.  We said that was too much money.  After several minutes we decided we were willing to pay the money.  We asked the older man who had the contact to follow us into the mall and asked Gaya to translate for us.  The shop owner across the aisle was listening to the conversation and told the older man that the person was asking for too much money and he walked away.  Our only lead for a ride just left…now what are we going to do???  Gaya said he would drive us to Dadal for $150 US and pick us up at our hotel at 9 am the next morning.  We were excited to have a ride confirmed and a driver we had been talking with who knew English. 

We sent our lodge in Dadal a message that we found a driver for 500,000 Mongolian dollars.  The lodge owner asked to call us on video with an interpreter.  The lodge owner said that is way too much money.  He asked us to give him an hour to find someone else.  He found someone before we hung up from the call.  His father (aka “Dad”) would drive from Dadal to Chinggis City the next day, pick us up between 1 and 2:00 pm and take us to Dadal for 250,000 Mongolian Dollars ($75 US).  We called Gaya and told him the lodge secured a ride for us and thanked him for all his help.  We walked to the restaurant across the road from our hotel (also called Khanburged), toasted our Tiger beers to having found a ride, and enjoyed a meat pizza for dinner.   Dad called us to confirm our plan for the morning.  He thought he’d be at the hotel at 10:00 am. 

On Saturday morning, we ate breakfast at the hotel (barley porridge, soup, fried dough with jam, fried egg on bread, cabbage salad, and bread).  Our plan was to find a ride from Dadal back to Chinggis City on Tuesday and stay at a hotel overnight before catching our bus back to Ulaanbaatar on Wednesday morning.  We liked the hotel we were in however they were fully booked for Tuesday night.  We walked to the Chinggis Hotel and looked at a couple of rooms and reserved the one we liked for Tuesday night.  We stopped at the grocery store and bought water, sandwiches, and apples for our ride to Dadal.  At 1:30 we messaged the lodge owner to ask for an update on Dad’s arrival time, he said it should be within an hour.  Dad (and to our surprise Mom came along to keep Dad awake) arrived at 3:00 pm.  They had been driving for 7 hours!  And now had to turn around and do it all over again!  Dad spoke good English.  He was a commercial airline pilot for many years.  Dad explained that the haze we could see on the horizon was from the Siberian fires in Russia.  The first two hours of the drive were on pavement and pleasant.  The rest of the trip was on extremely bumpy dirt ‘roads’.  We had no idea our Prius could do the things that Dad’s Prius did!  It sounded like we must have bottomed out the car about every 30 minutes going over a bump, but the car kept on going.  A piece of the plastic undercarriage did come loose and started dragging during the last 2 hours of the trip.  Dad said he’d deal with it on Sunday.  Once it got dark out, it was even more difficult to drive.  The last 11 miles took one hour.  We arrived at Amur Lodge at 10:30 pm.  Dad and Mom still had to drive another 12 miles to their home.  We ate a lovely meal prepared by the lodge.  We fell asleep grateful to have made it to Dadal safely.

On Sunday I woke up stricken with anxiety and fear that we had to find a ride back to Chinggis City on Tuesday.  Getting somewhere is one thing.  Getting back is completely another!  After breakfast, we walked about 15 minutes to the Chinggis Khan birthplace memorial, a granite marker to honor his roots in this village. 

Then we walked to a nearby lodge and talked with a young man who said we could call him Koy (for short).  Koy spoke excellent English.  Although the lodge was working on finding us a ride, we told Koy we were trying to find a ride to Chinggis City on Tuesday.  He said people go every day, that we would find a ride. He took Mike’s number and said he’d call us.  We walked about 20 minutes into town. 

The museums we wanted to go to were closed.  We walked to the 3 stupas by the Naadam stadium that commemorate the hundreds of people lost in the purges directed by Stalin in the 1930s. 

The horses and cows were roaming through the town (population 5,000).  We stopped at a shop and asked the owner if he knew anyone going to Chinggis City on Tuesday.  He said to do a Facebook ad (which the lodge owner already did).  We asked a group of 5 men if they knew of anyone that could give us a ride.  One man said he doesn’t know how to get to Chinggis City.  I personally don’t understand how ANYONE knows how to get to Chinggis City from Dadal!!!  There are dirt paths going in multiple directions across the grassy steppe.  No road signs at all (maybe this is one of the reasons Mike encourages me to learn directions based on the sun’s position!)  The ‘roads’ remind me of our tractor paths to our fields when we lived on a farm.  The ‘roads’ remind Mike of the road to his family’s cabin.  We stopped at the grocery store.  Mike talked with Daria, an English-speaking woman, who said she’d try to find someone and took Mike’s phone number.  As we were ready to leave it started to rain.  The cook from the lodge happened to be at the store and gave us a ride.  While we were gone, the electricity went out at the lodge, which also meant no water due to the use of water pumps.  They thought we’d have power back at 8 pm.  During lunch we talked with a Mongolian woman who used to live in Denver and Los Angeles.  Little did she know that she was about to become our English translator at the lodge!  We sat on the porch of our cabin and listened to the rain while reading.  We didn’t have a cell phone connection, so I was anxious that we may be missing calls for a ride back on Tuesday.  I really enjoy camping.  However, I have never tried dry camping, which is basically what we were doing at this point.  I was really struggling with accepting the entire situation (especially not knowing when or how we were getting back to Chinggis City!), unlike Mike who was completely accepting and not worried.  I finally got to a place of acceptance before falling asleep at 11:30 pm. This new lifestyle is definitely helping me to work on personal goals, like having less fear and anxiety regarding uncertainty (after all, nothing is ever certain as life itself is completely uncertain!).  When I woke up to go to the bathroom at 4:30 am, the power was back on. 

After breakfast on Monday, we called Koy to ensure he hadn’t tried calling and see if he had found a driver to take us back to Chinggis City on Tuesday.  He said he was still working on it and he would call us.  We walked to town and stopped at the Governor’s office building.  Three men were sitting on the steps and we Google translated that we wanted to find a ride the next day.  They talked amongst themselves.  One man made several calls.  He told us to be back there at 1:00, he found us a ride.  We told him we needed the ride the next day.  He exchanged numbers with Mike and told us to come back at 11:00 am on Tuesday and he would call people to try and find us a ride.  We were certainly hoping to have something arranged before 11:00 am on the day we wanted to leave!  We told him we would call him if we found a ride, otherwise we would see him at 11:00 am the next day.  We went into the Governor’s office and asked a policeman if he knew when the two museums next door may be open.  He made several calls.  About 15 minutes later, a man arrived and gave us a tour of both museums.  The policeman was from Chinggis City and had been in Dadal for 7 days on a work assignment.  He said he was going back to Chinggis City on Tuesday or Wednesday.  He and Mike became Facebook friends and started a Messenger chat.  He hung out with us for both museum tours (none of them spoke English).  He was having a great time using Mike’s phone to take pictures of us in front of every exhibit.  Sometimes he would ask Mike to just be in the picture.  Or just me.  And some photos included both of us.  Occasionally, he’d do a selfie with all of us. 

We needed to get back to the lodge for lunch and as we were ready to say goodbye, the policeman asked the museum guide to explain each exhibit (in Mongolian) while he videotaped the entire 15-minute-long knowledge dump using Mike’s phone.  Mike couldn’t send the lodge a message that we would be late because the officer was using his phone.  After signing the guestbook (translating it for them in Mongolian) and thanking both of them for their time and information, we started our walk to the lodge.  We decided that Officer Bilguun was probably the nicest police officer we have ever met. Bayar (aka Dad) was at a store across the street, and he yelled to us.  He gave us a ride back to the lodge. He asked if there was anywhere we wanted to go.  We said we wanted to see the river and asked if he thought we could walk to it.  He said he would come back and pick us up after lunch and give us a tour.  During lunch we asked our English-speaking translator at the lodge to call our policeman friend to ensure we were all on the same page regarding riding with him to Chinggis City.  He said he’d message Mike when he knew when he was going.  Dad picked us up and drove us to the site of Chinggis Khan’s birth and a memorial to the writing of the book, “The Secret History of the Mongols,” written in the 1200s.  The area was stunning!  He pointed to the area, in the distance, where he was born at home in the family ger.  We stopped at a fresh spring where people come to bottle the ice-cold fresh water.  He drove us to a location where we could see the river. 

Dad told us since we hadn’t found a ride back to Chinggis City for the next day that he and mom would take us.  He said they would stay overnight and not drive back the same day.  Koy called a few minutes after Dad said that and told us he found us a ride.  We had Koy talk to Dad to get all the details.  Our driver was charging 100,000 Mongolian dollars ($30 US dollars).  It is common here to ride with someone who is going somewhere and pay a fee to ride along (which is much cheaper than hiring a private driver).   I was doing the happy dance!  Yay, we have someone confirmed for 9 am on Tuesday to take us to Chinggis City!  We really enjoy spending time with Dad and Mom, they are so sweet, but we didn’t want them to have to make that trip again.  Mike sent a message to our policeman friend that we found a ride. After dinner, we packed.  I woke up at 2:30 am and had to go to the bathroom.  The toilets are located in a different building.  Mike woke up and had to go too.  It was pouring down rain.  We waited for about 30 minutes and decided to go for it.  The puddles were about 4 inches deep.  We were soaked when we got back to our cabin.  It rained and rained.  I was wondering if our driver was still going to go to Chinggis City, as the roads had to be muddy.  As I fell back to sleep I was hoping that our driver had a 4 x 4 vehicle. 

After breakfast, our driver called the lodge as they were having trouble finding it.  They arrived at 9:15 am in a 7 seat mini-van (the parents and 3 daughters).  The lodge owner translated for us that we would also be picking up two pregnant women.  We picked up a woman who sat in the back with Mike and me.  Then we picked up the second woman, who also had a 13-month-old baby.   After getting luggage for 10 people arranged, stopping at the store for drinks and snacks, getting gas and having a toilet break, the 10 of us were headed out of town at 10:15 am.  Five minutes later, we were stuck in the mud. 

After everyone got out of the van, the husband maneuvered the vehicle forward and backward, with the wife’s guidance, for 20 minutes until it was unstuck.  We were all laughing and giving each other high fives as we started on our way again.  At this point I’m wondering, should we really try to go today with all the rain we got…aren’t we going to just get stuck every five minutes???  Nope, it wasn’t five minutes it was only two minutes before we got stuck again. 

After trying the same technique for about 20 minutes, it seemed like we were sinking deeper into the mud.  We tried to flag down vehicles that were driving on other ‘roads’ in the area, but no one stopped.  We tried to find rocks to put under the tires to give it traction.  There wasn’t anything other than more mud and slippery long grasses and wildflowers.  My anxiety took over my brain and I started imagining that we were going to die in the heat, with no food and water, in this vast grassy countryside (at least it’s pretty!).  I immediately stopped my crazy thoughts and started visualizing a positive outcome.

We saw a 4 x 4 vehicle coming our way.  Would they stop and help?  Is there anything they can even do?  They stopped! It was a Mongolian man who had lived in Chicago and spoke excellent English. He had a shovel.  The husband of our van shoveled and repositioned mud for about 10 minutes.  Now it was time to try pushing the van out of the mud.  Mike noticed a winch on the front of the 4 x 4.  Mr. Chicago didn’t know how to use it.  Mike suggested looking at a You Tube video (which Mr. Chicago said he didn’t know how, so Mike helped him).  They learned what part was needed to activate the winch.  Mr. Chicago didn’t think he had the part.  While Mr. Chicago was looking by his spare tire for the part, three other vehicles arrived on the ‘road’ parallel to ours.  The first car, a Prius, got stuck.  The second vehicle tried to go around the stuck Prius and when the two vehicles were side by side, the second vehicle slid down into the stuck Prius.  The second vehicle was able to back up (we were preoccupied with our own situation that we have no idea how much damage there was).  The third vehicle let everyone out of the car and a 3-year-old boy was inadvertently left by himself.  He was so scared and crying.  I was the closest person to him, so I went over and took his tiny hand and tried to comfort him.  I cry when anyone else cries, so my eyes welled up immediately.  Within a minute, the older brother ran back and carried the 3-year-old to the rest of their group.  In the interim, Mr. Chicago found the winch part!!!  The men in our group were able to get it attached.  Our stuck van was moving in the right direction!  Mike and I wanted the 4 x 4 to back up and keep pulling the van, however, the Mongolians thought they were in the clear and detached the winch.  The van was still stuck.  After attaching the winch the second time, the Mongolians made sure the van was on drier ‘road’. 

After spending an hour trying to avoid being covered in mud and thanking our angels (Mr. Chicago and his wife), we were on the road again.  I really didn’t want to keep doing this every two – five minutes for the next 7-hour drive because it would become a 14 hour drive.  Before we left, I asked Mr. Chicago if the roads were better where we were headed.  He said we shouldn’t have any problem.  Easy to say when you’re in a 4 x 4.  And which ‘road’ had he actually been on???  There are three roads to pick from at any given moment.  I had a headache.  My pollen allergies had kicked in from being in the grassy fields. I had who knows how many bug bites.  And my nervous system was on overdrive, fearful of the rest of the ride…do we even have enough gas after gunning the engine for so long (I’ve been on this trek before, there aren’t gas stations!).  I told Mike “this is NOT what I envision as living my BEST LIFE!”.  After taking several deep breaths to calm down, we laughed.  We said we wished we were good storytellers; this is a good one!  As we would hit big bumps, the wife would hang her head out the window to ensure we hadn’t left any parts behind.  The back bumper got loose.  In one of the tiny ‘towns’ a few hours down the road, we stopped at an auto shop to have the bumper examined.  We had to stop often for animals.  Occasionally, we would ditch the ‘roads’ and drive in the grass (we weren’t sure what that was all about). 

We dropped off the woman with the baby about an hour before our destination.  Once we got on a paved road, the husband raced past every other car on the road.  We couldn’t see the speedometer…we just know we were flying.  We arrived at the Chinggis Hotel at 5:30. As I unfolded my body from the extremely cramped back seat and exited the van, I immediately felt my central nervous system calming down.

We certainly don’t want to experience this again.  However, it was an interesting experience.  Mike doesn’t have to wonder now what the Eastern part of Mongolia is like.  I wish we had taken time to get a nice family photo.  However, they still had another four or so hours to drive to Ulaanbaatar.  We loved the mom!  She was so full of life!  She was laughing or singing (beautifully) 99% of the trip.  She would stick her arm out the window to feel the air and she would lightly touch plants that were next to the vehicle as we were rolling along.  Her spirit and energy were infectious, which helped me to stay somewhat sane.  She was wearing a white dress and she was next to the van when we were stuck getting mud all over herself.  The 1% of the time she wasn’t laughing or singing was when we were stuck and she was irritated with her husband for not following her instructions.  She was so inspiring to me!  The husband stayed calm the entire time.  They set such an amazing example for their three daughters.  The girls were probably 7 to 10 years old.  They were so well behaved.  They played quietly together.  They loved on each other – friendly kisses and hugs. They were content to look out the windows.  They didn’t have their noses in electronic devices.

After checking into our hotel, we walked to the bus station to confirm our bus tickets and departure time for the next day. Then we went to the hotel bar/restaurant to eat dinner and toast our Chinggis beers for arriving safely!

Today, we left the hotel at 7:15 am and walked about 15 minutes to the bus station dodging lots of mud puddles that developed from the rain over night.  The bus left on time at 8:00 am and stopped at the same restaurant that we had stopped at on Friday.  We met Laura, from Pennsylvania, who was on our bus and has been in Mongolia for a year doing humanitarian work.  She gave us her number and told us to call her if we needed anything.  We arrived at the bus station in Ulaanbaatar at 2:00 pm.  We bought our bus tickets for our next countryside adventure on July 31^st.  We took a UB Cab to a drop off within a 10-minute walk from our apartment.  We are in the same Airbnb that we were in for 30 days.  It feels like home!  We unpacked.  I went grocery shopping.  Mike went to Subway to get a sandwich on his way to play pickleball.  I enjoyed my “Sandy time” in the apartment with as little stimulus as possible.  I’ve had enough stimulus to last for a while.