10 Days into Mongolia

Just love the place. We have slowed right down. Plenty of camping along the Tuur River just outside Ulaanbaatar (capital of Mongolia). Great people (not in your face).

Today we went to the Russian Embassy to apply for our Russian visas. Alan did the original forms and submitted them electronically. When we went in to provide our hard copies we were told we had to amend our letter of invitation. So back we go to our favoured restaurant (California Restaurant) to connect onto Wi Fi and redo and re-submit the letter of invitation. By the way this restaurant and its manager have been just fantastic helping us with printing documents and serving us great food. I thank them for all they have done for us. Tomorrow we go back to the Russian Embassy to re-submit our visa applications. Alan has done a great job to date with the paper trail – no doubt a difficult job. That’s why we pay the big money for this tour.

As I am writing this page we had some local Mongolian volunteers come along adjacent to our camp site on the river, picking up rubbish in the reserve area – generally cleaning up the area. One of the major issues in most Asian countries we have visited is the way they handle waste. It just does not seem to be an issue to them and most counties have a major waste problem. These guys are to be commended. One chap we met, Angarag Batsaikhan (group organiser), challenged Alan to a wrestle – no need to say who won. Alan’s legs were smaller than Angarag biceps. He just picked Alan up and spun him around.

After settling down to an evening drink Angarag came over to us to witness a unique event, they were cooking an animal, a bit like a small fox. They cut the head off then reach in and extract the inner organs, intestines, etc. They heat up small river stones on an open fire to a very high temperature then stuff 3 to 6 rocks into the gutted animal, then replace organs, intestines, onions, garlic, etc., then a few more stones. They then wire up the neck area and seal it off and lay the animal on some cold larger rocks to commence burning off all the skin fur with a kerosene blow torch.

We left the cooking lesson and walked back to our camp. Apparently they let the animal cook in its own way along with imported hot rocks for about 1 hour. No doubt we are expecting a visit back later to taste the result of a very unique cooking method. Never seen this before – got it all on video along with still shots that will end up on this blog. Alan and I were laughing right through the whole process.

Tomorrow all going well with the visa applications we may take off towards the Gobi Desert for a couple of weeks while the visas are being processed (a 2 week time frame). We have a route mapped out with the assistance of a local tour manager who was so very helpful. If anybody reading this is thinking of coming to Mongolia his website is www.mongolia-expeditions.com

Yesterday Donna and I purchased a GPS (similar to the Taylors). Alan gave me a crash course on how to use it. I think we are confident enough now to tell the Taylors to piss off if they annoy us and not get lost. But we would miss them.