Reading Time: 10 minutes

After our trip to the north, we had a few days in Ulaanbaatar before our next destination to explore – the southern part of Mongolia and the Gobi Desert. After the long bus ride on Monday and the lack of air, my body let me know that the next couple of days were going to have to be low-key. I was definitely not at 100%. On Tuesday, we grabbed lunch at Greeno and then walked over to the grocery store – even though we were in a different apartment, it was still pretty much in the same area – south side of Peace Avenue instead of north side – so, we were familiar with things. While Sandy started shopping, I went upstairs to the bookstore and found the next book I wanted to read.  It is called The Story of a Little Nomad, written by Oyunjargal Renchin.  It’s a short one so I should be able to get it wrapped up quick. We made spaghetti for dinner. I sent a message to the pickleball group to see if any games were planned for the time while we are back in Ulaanbaatar and sure enough, they are playing tonight.  I was hoping it would be later in the week so I might feel better, but I went and had a really good time.  There were only a few of us – including a couple visiting from Seattle (she is from Mongolia) – and we had some great games. It is always fun to play against May – she is from here but now lives in Belfast – and she had a friend (Gana) join us who lives in Vancouver, BC – very good players. The weather was great so the walk to and from the sports hall was lovely.

I still didn’t feel that great on Wednesday so I lounged around the apartment all day.  I got caught up on Indy Car races and other TV shows.  Sandy was far more productive.  She found some migraine medicine for me (I was running low on what I usually take and didn’t want to take any because I don’t want to run out). I was feeling better enough by the afternoon that I opted to not take any but it is good to now have enough so if I get bad headaches in the future, I can nip them in the bud. She also did a three-mile workout and found some snacks for us including watermelon, which she has been craving for weeks. And she also did all of our laundry. We went out for dinner – returning to Silk Road for the excellent chicken tacos there. We watched some of the Olympics and then went to bed.

Thursday found us working on things at the apartment – changing out our water bottle filters, working on the blog, etc. We went to the gym at 4:15 and had good workouts – I’m starting to feel better.  The main thing has just been lack of energy and the headache, otherwise fine. After the gym, we walked through the square with the Beatles statue and found a ton of tents all selling back-to-school items for the kids. We stopped into Hashtag to confirm they had wings and stayed to eat wings for me and an energy bowl for Sandy.

Sandy had a fun start to her Friday.  She got to video chat with her high school besties – Sarah, Kathy, and Kathy – they were having a girls weekend in Colorado and they were able to include Sandy that way.   Missing events like this is really hard.  She is so grateful for technology and being able to spend 90 minutes catching up and laughing with friends. 

After her chat, we went to Muse Coffee Shop for “Starbucks” time. Back at the apartment, we had Greek salads and leftover spaghetti. For dinner, we wanted to try the Chinggis Club – that’s the most common brand of beer we have seen and it looked like they might have good food.  When we got there, we got the big X – when someone gives you the X, it means they are closed or they don’t have what you are looking for. On the positive side, it was close to Bier House.  We went there again and I had wings (yes, two days in a row) while Sandy had the fish n chips.  And we had the Chinggis Dark beer – this is the only place we have seen it and it is our favorite beer in Mongolia. Our walk home was eventful.  We got about halfway (it’s usually about a 30-minute walk) and then the skies opened up.  We tucked into a CU convenience shop and waited with a couple of others for a while.  When it finally lightened, we continued to walk only to find that the roads were flooded – rivers running down each side that made it virtually impossible to walk through.  Well, that’s an overstatement, we could walk through, but the water was around three or four inches deep and moving fast. We knew we had to pack to leave the next day and we were trying to avoid getting too soaked without a chance to get the clothes and shoes dry. We ordered a cab through the UB Cab app, but nobody would pick up the order. All we could do was keep walking.  We did end up pretty soaked and finally made it home after about 90 minutes. We packed what we could and left the wet stuff to air dry as much as possible overnight.

Saturday was moving day. Our bus was scheduled to leave from the Dragon Bus Terminal at 9am. We easily got a cab to take us from the apartment. The bus ride today was longer than I was expecting.  I thought it would be around eight or nine hours. It was a little more than ten. It was nice to have functioning air for this ride and this time we were back up in the front. Our hotel is the Khovuun Hotel in Dalanzadgad and Shinekhuu was at the bus station to meet us and take us to the hotel.  His family owns this hotel and a sister property in the city.

We found out that we’d be able to move to a double room tomorrow, which will give us more space than the two singles we have in tonight’s room. Hungry, we headed out to Dudu Pizza – about a 15-minute walk from the hotel. Even though they close at 9pm and we arrived at 8:15pm, we weren’t allowed to eat there or even outside on their patio. We ordered our pizza – a vegetarian one (they call them vegan) – and took it back to the hotel to eat. Our neighbors were entirely too loud, too late. I banged on the wall around 11:30pm and then Sandy went to visit them around midnight. She set them straight and we got some sleep.

We went for breakfast in the breakfast room of the hotel at 8:30am on Sunday. It’s a good breakfast – basically an English breakfast along with soup. We moved to our new room and got settled in and then we went for a four-mile walk around the city. Dalanzadgad is a decent sized city of around 30,000 people. I think there are more paved roads in the city than I was expecting and they have nice sidewalks and trails. It is the capital of the Omnigovi Aimag (province). We looked for a place for lunch and because it is Sunday, the first few places we checked on were closed (rest day). We went to Saikhan Japanese restaurant and had spinach salads and shared potato salad. In the afternoon, we met with Shinekhuu to come up with a plan for our time here in the Gobi. He then invited us to dinner with his wife and his son at their sister property, called Erkhes Hotel and Restaurant. We both had chicken with pineapple and it was excellent. Getting to know Shinekhuu, Anukhai, and Anand-Ochir (he is just over one year) was a lot of fun. After dinner, Anukhai suggested that we go to Dino’s Land, which is an amusement park with all kinds of dinosaur statues and a big ferris wheel. It was a great evening.

We have three main things we are hoping to see while we are in the desert and Monday gave us a chance at one of those things. The day started with a quick video chat with our friend, Jen – it’s her birthday and she was responding to our message.  That was fun to see Bill and her. After breakfast (same as yesterday), we met Shinekhuu and found out that Anukhai and Anand-Ochir would be able to join us for today’s excursion. Their car is a model we have not been in before.  It’s made in China and has really neat features – my favorite is the camera system that combines the views from the different angles into a view that shows an overhead image of the car.  That view makes it very easy to see any obstacles. They played quite a bit of English-speaking music – I want It That Way by the Backstreet Boys was Shinekhuu’s favorite song in high school.  He is 29 and Anukhai is 25. The ride to the area where White Stupa is took about three hours and that included a toilet/shopping stop. We ate lunch at Gobi Caravanserai – a nice resort in the middle of the desert. It took a long time to get the food – Sandy had a salad and we shared an order of buuz. Apparently, the Gobi has gotten a once-in-a-lifetime amount of rain over the summer. It has caused several road closures, which means Shinekhuu is basing our destination plans on how the roads are.  It also means that the desert is way more green than it typically is. During today’s drive, we saw a lot more camels than we saw on the bus ride coming into Dalanzadgad. These camels are Bactrian and they have two humps compared to those with one hump in Morocco.

After lunch, we drove the short distance to White Stupa (Tsagaan Suvarga). This is a 400-meter long area of white-sand cliffs and beautiful colors because of the minerals in the area. We walked along the top of the cliffs enjoying the views, then we grabbed ice cream cones and headed to the bottom of the cliffs in the car.  It’s a gorgeous area.

The drive back took just over three hours and as we pulled back into the hotel, Mr. Moon was coming up and looked amazing (a full moon).

Yesterday (Tuesday) breakfast was pretty much the same again although the eggs were scrambled instead of fried. We enjoyed a chat with travelers from Berlin and Moscow. We split up to accomplish different things today. Sandy headed for Nomin to grocery shop for some foods she is looking for. I went to The Gobi Museum of Nature and History. Sandy was successful in her search and I enjoyed the museum’s presentation of information on the Gobi’s history, the camels, the mining that takes place here, the dinosaur expeditions, and some of the more famous people from the area. I grabbed a mutton shish kebab for lunch – I don’t mind mutton, but I’m in need of a break. It’s like tagine in Morocco – it tastes good, but I’ve just had too much. Then we met back up for a workout at the gym.  This one might be our least expensive one so far – just under $3 each. There is a medical clinic near the sports hall where the gym is so we went over and had our blood pressures checked – both still doing well. For dinner, we walked 200 meters from the hotel over to MM Lounge. They have a varied menu with Mongolian dishes and European dishes. I had a steak and Sandy had salmon.

And now we arrive at today (Wednesday). We needed a change from the breakfasts so Sandy had picked up bananas and milk along with some other groceries yesterday. So we had our bananas and cereals for breakfast, which was a nice change. Shinekhuu then picked us up at 10 and we were off to the Gobi Gurvan Saikhan National Park. There were a few places Shinekhuu wanted to take us but he couldn’t because the roads were flooded.  We could have still gone but it would have required a little more than ten miles of walking and we just didn’t feel like it. That was fine because we were totally happy with the waterfall we went to instead. This was a short three-mile walk round trip and the area was gorgeous.  We even saw some black-tailed gazelles on the cliffs.

After the waterfall, we drove to a small museum in the park with lots of taxidermy of the wildlife in the area. And then we went for lunch at a ger camp/resort close to town. Our translator interpreted one of the options to Black Soup and Bean, which silly me thought that meant black bean soup. Imagine our disappointment when it was mutton soup that found its way to our place-setting. The bean is spelled BIN in Mongolian and it is a kind of bread that we both really liked.  We can’t figure out why we haven’t seen it anywhere else in the last couple of months. We ate the soup broth but not much of the meat as we were trying to avoid meat for this meal. The resort is really nice and the main ger where the restaurant is may be one of the largest in Mongolia according to Shinekhuu.  We took a tour of one of the guest gers, which have their own private bathroom, sink, and shower.  Sandy said she wants us to find similar gers for our trip out west, however, that is not likely.

We were back from today’s excursion around 4pm and we went back to MM Lounge for dinner – this time, Sandy had a chicken breast with cheese and I had a shrimp pasta. There is a YouTube video they play at MM Lounge that we like – I need to look for it on my own – it is labeled Relaxing Saxophone Jazz Music – Soothing Night Jazz Saxophone.