Mongolia, Gun Galuut Nature Reserve: Endangered Animals and Nomads

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Excitement was in the air when we left Terelj National Park for our third destination in Mongolia, Gun Galuut Nature Reserve. A Selena Travel itinerary dictated our trip in Mongolia and the plans were for us to accomplish a lot in the beautiful reserve. First, we were to visit our second ger camp of the trip, and then we were supposed to go horseback riding across the steppe to try and spot some endangered argali sheep and white-naped cranes, among many other animals. On our second day at Gun Galuut, we were due to visit a nomadic family, where we would spend the night after going camel riding on the steppe. Besides the planned activities, a lot of walking was in store for us as well as free time to relax and enjoy the Mongolian countryside.

The drive from Terelj National Park to Gun Galuut Nature Reserve lasted around two hours; our driver, Rentsen, drove just as crazily as he had driven the previous day. We asked our guide, Chaagii, about the road that Rentsen was driving along, as it was in fairly good condition, and Chaagii told us that some Japanese investors had built many roads through the Mongolian countryside; we think that it was probably in exchange for land as Chaagii pointed out several buildings and a golf course that had all been built by Japanese or Korean investors.

During the journey, we passed a construction site where an enormous, shiny silver statue of Chinggis (Ghengis) Khan, sitting nobly atop one of his horses, was in the process of being built.

The statue was nearly complete and Chaagii told us that a museum was also being built on the site; everything was due to open in 2008. Mongolians are extremely proud of Chinggis Khan and the area will definitely allow them to pay tribute to the famous and successful conqueror. We only made one stop on the way to Gun Galuut, to purchase some bottled water; therefore, we shortly arrived at the entrance to the reserve and Rentsen was soon speeding along the dirt track leading into the vast steppe.

Steppe Nomads Ger Camp was the place we stayed inside Gun Galuut Nature Reserve, and it was located about 17 kilometres from the main road and entrance. The nature reserve was situated on a large steppe and it was a strange, lonely place that was very flat and desolate. Rentsen did his best to drive along faint tyre tracks on the dusty ground to get to the ger camp, but there were a few occasions where we thought we might be going the wrong way; he never let us down, though, and seemed to know the countryside very well.

Further along the nonexistent road, we came upon a large lake (Lake Ayaga), where many horses and flocks of animals, like sheep and goats, were milling about. The horses were the most interesting to watch as they were rolling around on their backs, trying to cool off in the dust and salt deposits on the edge of the lake. During the drive inside the reserve, we also spotted the first of many birds that we would see there, including many cranes. We also had to pause under a small bridge to let a nomadic herder move hundreds of sheep, goats and horses out of our way so that we could continue driving towards our ger camp.

Just before we arrived at Steppe Nomads, Rentsen let us out of the car at a large hill; there we climbed to the top in order to gain an excellent 360 degree view of the surrounding area. It was an exhausting climb to the top as we were at a higher altitude and it was very windy on the steppe; we were almost blown away at the top of the hill. We fought back against the wind, though, so that we could take some photos before heading back down to the car. We spotted the ger camp in the distance and the gers (the round, white tents that serve as homes for nomadic Mongolians) looked very small from our vantage point. When we arrived at camp, we were pleasantly surprised because the tents were much larger than they had initially appeared and they were tastefully decorated, too.

When we checked into our ger for the night, we had an hour to spare before lunch, and a few hours after lunch, before our horseback riding adventure on the steppe. During the spare time, we worked for a little while on our travel journal, but for most of the time, we played cards with Chaagii and Rentsen. We taught them how to play "Kings in the Corner" and they taught us how to play a Mongolian card game that was really fun and similar to the card game "Hearts".

Lunch at Steppe Nomads impressed us; we had another large meal that consisted of a creamy mayonnaise-based salad with chopped apples, a bowl of gruel and a plate of rice served with a beef log that was stuffed full of mashed potatoes and small carrot chunks. For dessert, we were served a traditional Mongolian treat, which was a martini glass filled with cherries and cherry juice. The one dish that neither of us liked during our tour was this dessert and we had to endure it a second time at Hustai National Park; you will find out more about this in our next journal entry.

While we are on the topic of food, we might as well tell you what we ate for dinner that evening and for breakfast the following day. Dinner was three courses: a vinegar-based coleslaw, minced mutton spaghetti with diced peppers, carrots and tomatoes combined in a gruel-like sauce, and chocolate marshmallow pies for dessert. Breakfast was two courses and included deep-fried pancakes that we covered with butter and nutella, as well as onion omelets with two small pieces of sausage that were basically like baked hot dog pieces, and yummy.

Chaagii and Rentsen had tired of playing cards before the horses were ready for our horseback ride, so Chaagii suggested that we go for a walk around the area outside the ger camp. We walked down to a small river where we spotted a couple of Americans swimming in the cold water; the two guys were pretty embarrassed because they were in their pants (that's the same as underwear for the Americans reading this) and they didn't expect anyone to see them, much less a pretty young Mongolian woman!

We continued walking in the opposite direction of the Americans, but we still walked along the river to observe the many animals drinking water along its banks. It was nice to see some water since the majority of the landscape in the nature reserve was so dry and barren; the ground around the river was much greener and it was nice to see a bit of colour that was different to brown, or another shade of brown. It was hot and sunny during the walk and we walked for around an hour, before spotting a nomadic family's ger north of the river; we continued our walk in that direction to pay them a visit.

In many places that we visited in Mongolia, we often spotted animals corpses or bones on the ground, and we saw a few during the afternoon's walk. Once an animal had been used for its meat or pelts, the remains were often just thrown on the ground outside as there was no other way for the nomads to dispense the leftovers. We still thought it was creepy whenever we ran across a horse or cow skull, or some poor sheep's rotting corpse on the ground, but it was also a reminder of the poor and harsh living conditions that nomadic Mongolians have to endure.

When we arrived at the ger to say hello to the family, they invited us inside to sit down and rest. Inside the tent, they offered us some traditional Mongolian tea that was made with water from the river, the same water that had thousands of animal turds floating in it (we are heaving just thinking about it). We both drank as much of the tea as we could, to be polite, but it was awful and tasted just like dirty river water. We supposed that it wouldn't be as bad if we grew up using river water to make cups of English Breakfast in the morning, or if we had some milk and sugar to add to the nomadic cup of tea.

The nomadic family seemed very nice. They had just moved to that part of the steppe and they were still waiting for their animals to arrive. The child in the family was washing dishes in a small tupperware tub (full of that wonderful river water) that was sitting on a small table in the middle of the ger. When we arrived, the man of the tent had been putting things in order outside the ger since they had recently moved there for the summer. He stopped and brought us inside the tent to have tea.

The woman of the tent was going through her daily cleansing and moisturising routine and we saw her rubbing lotion on her face. We told her that she was beautiful enough and didn't need to do anything else on account of us being there; Chaagii translated this for us and everyone laughed, being quite happy during the visit. It was soon time for our horseback ride, so we headed back to camp after enjoying some time with the nomadic family.

Back at camp, our rider was ready to take us on our horseback ride to watch for endangered Argali sheep. There are only around 100 of these sheep left in the wild in Mongolia, living high in the mountains, and less than 200 in the world. It took us almost two hours to reach the mountains where the sheep normally roam and, after thinking that we would not see any of the rare animals, we spotted at least ten of the sheep walking along the crest of one of the mountain hills.

The Argali sheep are known for their curly horns and they are quite large animals; it was good that they were large because we couldn't get too close to the shy creatures. Just before we spotted the sheep, we saw a Mongolian marmot running across the steppe; this was a fortunate sighting as they don't come out of their holes until evening to find food. The marmot reminded us of a prairie dog and was a cute little creature.

The horseback ride went well; Dan had not ridden a horse since the first time he rode one as a child in Norfolk and Kyle had not ridden a horse since his trip to Cairo several years ago, when he rode a horse and camel out to the great pyramids at Giza. The horse rider who was leading us had the horses walk, so the journey was slowgoing. The scenery was very beautiful and we passed many, many herds of animals along the way. At one point, we passed a herd of horses that were related to the ones we were riding and our horses started neighing and whinnying, conversing with their relatives.

A couple of times, we had to stop so the horses could drink some water. When Dan got off his horse, the creature started acting up and stamped on his foot. It hurt when the full weight of the horse came down on Dan's foot, but fortunately there were no broken bones. Once we mounted the horses again and were on our way, we fell into a good gait, but Kyle's horse started walking really close to, and slightly behind, Dan's horse. As a result, Kyle's foot kept kicking the back of Dan's horse at the same time that Dan's horse had a bit of tummy trouble. Soon after, Kyle felt a warm gush on his foot and looked down to see some explosive diarrhea landing on his shoe. Gross!

The ride back was tough, the sun was setting and we were very late for dinner which was supposed to be at 9:00pm. It was already 8:30pm when we left the mountain area where we spotted the Argali sheep, and we had a 2-hour journey to get back. We rode faster for part of the way; this was very uncomfortable but our guide and his cousin, who was a young 8 year old boy, sang some Mongolian songs to pass the time. It was really serene to listen to them singing as we looked around at the empty landscape.

We felt like true nomads for the couple of hours back to camp, since we had bonded with our horses, the horse rider and his cousin. By the time we got back to camp, it was very dark and Rentsen had set out in his car to find us, thinking that something bad might have happened. The last 45 minutes of the journey was actually in the dark and was quite eerie, since there were no sounds except the clopping of the horses' hooves. The only light we had to go by was the thin moonlight and stars above, but we could see the dim lights of the ger camp ahead in the distance, marking our way.

All of us were in pain from riding for four hours - two hours longer than we were scheduled to ride - and we were quite happy to get down off the horses and have something to eat. It was almost 11:00pm by the time we made it back and the ger camp was ready to shut down for the night. As we were finishing our dinner, the camp's solar power ran out, so we had to finish dinner and then shower afterwards by candlelight. Even by dim candlelight, each of us saw a lot of grime wash off our bodies from horseback riding on the dusty steppe in Gun Galuut Nature Reserve.

Once breakfast was finished the next day, we were taken to another nomadic family's ger. This time, we would be spending the rest of the day and evening with the family so we could get a feel for the nomadic way of life in Mongolia. The ger was located about 20 minutes away from Steppe Nomads and was set in between two mountains on a flat plain that was completely isolated. This was to be our home for the next 24 hours and it was truly amazing spending time there. The wind had picked up the day we arrived at the nomadic family's ger and there was a continuous breeze sweeping through the steppe, whipping up lots of dirt and dust in the process.

We dropped off our bags in the ger where we would be sleeping that evening and we were greeted by the children of the family there. The oldest child was no longer a child, he was 20 years old, and he spoke some English; he had been studying the language at school in Ulaanbaatar. The family spent summers on the steppe but spent their winters in Ulaanbaatar. We hung out in our ger with the children of the family, and with Chaagii and Rentsen, for about an hour. During that time, the oldest of the children served us warm cow's milk, which did not taste good, and we drank it while hearing about his life as a nomad in summer and what he thought about living in the big city for the rest of the year.

When all of the children left to take care of their chores around their camp, we walked around the area to observe how they lived and how they dealt with the many animals they had (over 1000!). There were a couple of women and a young girl helping manage the family's sheep and goats that were enclosed in a pen. They were collecting wool from the sheep by grabbing them and ripping sections of it off. The sheep seemed to be used to the activity and weren't complaining that much, at least not baa-dly.

Once finished, one of the women opened the pen and let all of the animals out to graze. For several minutes, the sheep and goats ran out of the enclosure, and all of them were bleating very loudly. We noticed that the animals immediately formed small groups and that they cried out so the other members of the group, particularly the young ones, could find them. Once all of the animals had left, we saw a baby sheep and baby goat wandering frantically around the enclosure, clearly lost and not able to see where their parents went.

At this point, the women working with the animals brought out some fresh milk in a bottle and we were able to feed the little ones, who were very hungry and drank as much milk as they could. The women working also let us each hold the babies; they were feisty little things but, once settled in our arms, they seemed to relax and enjoy being cuddled. We still think that we enjoyed holding them more than they enjoyed being held!

After the fun with the animals, we realised that there was no running water to wash our hands, so we used some of the trusty hand sanitiser we brought on the trip; it has come in handy (please excuse the pun) more than once over the past 5-1/2 months. Back at the ger, we had a quick lunch of noodles with dried beef and then Chaagii wanted to take the two youngest kids in the nomadic family down to the river and we both agreed to go with them.

The walk to the river took around 45 minutes and along the way we were chased by a small tornado of dust that formed just to the side of us and started to move straight in our direction. It was really fun running with the children as quickly as we could to avoid the twister; it just missed us and we felt very lucky not to have gotten dirtier than we already were. A few moments later, the twister had blown over a hill and was out of our sight. During the walk, we were amazed at how much wildlife there was on the steppe, since the landscape was so dry and appeared dead.

At the river, the two kids wanted to splash around so they jumped right into the freezing water. They loved it and it was a good thing they did hop in because it was the only way they could bathe, and the kids needed to clean themselves up. Chaagii joined the kids (not because she needed to bathe, though) and, at that time, Rentsen had come to see us, with some water and juice that he had gone to buy that afternoon. The kids and Chaagii played in the river for 20 minutes and we sat on the riverbank with Rentsen, watching all of the fun. The kids wanted to walk back to their camp in order to dry off along the way, but Rentsen offered to drive the two of us back. We were pretty tired from the day's activity and we gladly hopped in the car while Chaagii walked the kids back by foot.

When we returned to camp, Dan was the first to experience using the homemade toilet at the edge of the nomadic family's camp, about 150 yards away. There were two pieces of wood on the ground to stand on and the wood was placed on the sides of a large hole that was about six feet deep. All of this was enclosed in what looked like an outhouse and, since the toilet was newly built, it was not a completely miserable experience using it.

Back at the camp, we waited for Chaagii and the kids to get back from the walk. We passed the time by playing the card game "S***head" but once everyone returned, we taught Chaagii and the kids the card game "War", which was easy enough to play with little children, especially little children that didn't speak any English! The next activity that evening was camel riding and we played cards for a couple of hours whilst waiting for the camels to be saddled and prepped for the ride. The kids loved the card game; after playing for a while, we had to slightly fix the game, by secretly looking at our cards before flipping them over, to ensure that the little girl won each time, so that the little girl in the family ended up winning. She went to bed very happy that evening!

Once we finished playing "War", we went outside to take a look at the camels and the horses that the family used for horseracing in national competitions. The family has won several medals and they were very good at breaking in horses. We were able to meet the father of the nomadic family and a couple of his cousins who help him with the work.

The oldest child in the family took us on the camel ride. The ride was really fun; Dan had never ridden a camel before and it had been several years since Kyle's experience in Egypt. Riding the camels was not very comfortable because the saddles were no more than thin rugs, and the camels were quite thin and bony; also, the camels were in the middle of molting, whereby they lose their thick winter fur to be able to survive the hot Mongolian summers. With the camels being in the middle of the molting stage, the already-ugly-but-still -cute animals were even more ugly-but-still-a-little -bit-cute animals. The poor things stank and really needed to have gone to the river with us and the kids earlier that day.

The way we mounted the camels was much different than mounting a horse. The camels were lying on their stomachs with their legs folded under themselves. As soon as we climbed on their backs, the nomadic boy made a noise and the camels stood up, first with the back legs and then with the front legs. This was a little scary because the animals were so tall; we felt twice as high as we did on the horses during our ride the day before.

Our ride only lasted one hour because we had to get back in time to eat dinner. The journey went over some rough terrain and, at one point, all of the camels were running quickly along the steppe. As the camels travelled forwards, we were rocking forwards and backwards with their movements. The pain we felt by bouncing up and down on the camels backs was immense (bear in mind that we told you above that the camels did not have padded saddles) but, despite the pain, the ride was enjoyable. However, we were glad to finally get back to camp and climb off the camels. Just to let you know, we decided to skip out on the second hour of riding after dinner, because we felt a bit bruised from all of the animal riding we had done over the past 24 hours.

Glad to be back at the ger, we sat down to eat the dinner that Chaagii had prepared for us. The meal consisted of gruel with dried beef and some pickled vegetables in a jar that had been imported from Poland; the vegetables were good and we spooned them into our gruel. We had some bread with dinner and, for dessert, we had milk soup which was really delicious; it was a sweet bowl of white creamy milk that was warmed, mixed with sugar and beaten; everything that evening tasted really good. After dinner, we played some more cards with the kids and Chaagii - we taught the kids how to play "Kings in the Corner" - but we had to play by candlelight because the sun had set and there was no electricity on the steppe.

Rentsen was really tired and had fallen asleep on one of the beds in our ger while we played cards. When we finished playing games, Chaagii woke him up and they headed to their ger for the evening, while the kids went to theirs to go to bed. We were happy with such a fun day, but also very tired and ready to sleep. The good thing about the ger in the Steppe Nomads camp, and also the nomadic family's ger, was that there didn't seem to be as many spiders as there were at Buuveit Ger Camp, the place we stayed overnight in Terelj National Park (see the previous journal entry if you haven't already read it). There were so many spiders in that ger that neither of us could sleep very well; in Gun Galuut Nature Reserve, sleep came much easier.

We had to bid goodbye to everyone the next morning because we needed to make our way to our next destination in Mongolia, Hustai National Park. That morning was the start of a very special day on the trip, Dan's 30th birthday. Last year at the same time, he had no idea that he would be spending his special day in the Mongolian countryside looking for endangered Przewalski (Takhi) horses, the only true wild horses that can not be found anywhere else in the world but Mongolia. More on that to come in the next journal entry, so please read on...