Mongolia, far away from home and for a while already on our bucket list; and now we are here. Well, nearly, as we have to pass the Russian-Mongolian border first. Easily said for somebody living in the European Union, but takes a lot of time to be honest. Arriving at 7.45am at the border, we finally made it into Mongolia shortly after their lunch break started around 1.30pm local time. Kindly enough they simply pushed us literally through on the Mongolia side, where else the Russians before took much more time for a proper handling.
Being in Mongolia, the country did not welcome us as expected in the first phase. Unfortunately we were hit by some rain for a couple of days. A bit boring on one hand, as we could not do too much outside, but looking back, offering truly spectacular views on the amazing Mongolia landscape.
And also here we are in the middle of the short summer, with a lot of green after the rain, but also a lot of flowers popping up wherever they find a good spot.
Another thing we missed more and more during the past weeks also showed up again – wildlife! Not the best weather, but it seems the animals are enjoying the cooler climate and the water, so we had couple of great opportunities on the wildlife side, too.
The owl was already amazing, but especially the Mongolian Pika made us extremely happy. And so cooperative and not to shy at all when posing for a short photo shooting. 🙂
Not a surprise, but guess what, we also can’t complain about our campsites. Welcome to the worlds largest campground. And with a bit of sunshine, it is even more beautiful immediately. Unfortunately these were the rare moments in the last couple of days.
We saw many yurts before, for example in Kyrgyztan, but never as many as here in Mongolia. Even in the outskirts of some the larger cities, people are still living in yurts. Difficult to say if by there own, free will, or because the can’t afford it otherwise. Overall the first impression is that there are a lot of poor people, especially when you get to the larger cities like Hovt.
But also the religion changes very obviously when entering Mongolia, not familiar, but very interesting, so we do hope to learn more about this side in the next couple of weeks, too.
Sometimes unfortunate, but also the quality of the roads changes. But that is also part of the game, even if it creates us a 150 kilometres detour around this broken bridge. The river was simply to deep to cross it without a bridge at that time of the year.
Weather was not the nicest so far, but the forecast is promising significant improvements for the next couple of days. Heading forward towards Mongol Else, we do hope for great weather to see the dunes. So stay tuned, more coming soon…
