Ger camp

Our guide picked us up at 10 a.m on a rainy morning, after a reasonable breakfast of eggs, bread and what we think was luncheon meat. We set off in a Land Cruiser in what we were told would be a drive of some two hours to the Gorkhi-Terelj National Park. A third of that time was taken up with heavy traffic in Ulaan Baatar itself. We stopped on the way to see a guy who had two eagles and two vultures on perches. We were not entirely impressed. Though they were creatures of great wingspan, they did not look very happy. We left without pulling out our cameras. I can't help thinking that our guide was not entirely pleased with that result. 

The next stop was to put a stone on a cairn near the entrance to the national park. We politely followed the "tradition" of walking three times round the cairn, before getting back into the vehicle and setting off again. There were lots of sheep and goats, yaks and cattle. The endless rolling hills of almost featureless grass were for me the most appealing and impressive part of the scenery. As we progressed into the national park the landscape became hillier and more rocky - and somehow less special. 

The Land Cruiser was not well and several times the driver had the bonnet up to peer inside at the engine - but it got us there in the end. A metalled road was being prepared, but for most of the way into the national park, there was no tarmac, just dirt tracks. These were easily passable with care, and we saw several large coaches lumbering along them. Such tracks would be impassable in England for six months of the year to anything other than 4WD vehicles. Little if any attempt was made to provide bridges or otherwise easier passage through muddy sections or to limit the routes taken by vehicles, so the dirt tracks spread out to make highly visible wide scars on the landscape. 

In this part of the park, close to the city, there was much ongoing tourist development, and the white gers are everywhere. Though gers are a traditional part of Mongolian nomad life, they are still large white circles, resembling fuel tanks or similar, and I found them obtrusive in quantity.

Our camp was in a lightly wooded area of rocks, cliffs and boulders, at around 5000' above sea level. Whilst pretty and note-worthy, you might see similar scenery in the USA or Mexico, in the High Atlas of Morocco or in Southern Africa, or in Spain or France. To be perfectly honest it could be anywhere temperate in the world. Only the ever-present lines and clusters of gers marked it as being in Central Asia. This part of the national park is being heavily developed; from my bed in the ger I can see a building site!
The gers themselves are built on foundations with concrete paths between them. They are tents only in the strictest sense that the outermost material is canvas. They are not less permanent than any building of wood, brick or stone, and in principle and usage most closely resemble caravans on a fixed caravan site. The inside of the ger is glorious. Lino resembling wood block flooring; three very nice and comfortable beds; tables and stools; a sink (with a little tank of water and a mirror), and a stove for heating purposes, with a chimney pipe up to the middle of the roof. The colour scheme is orange, and the orange-painted spokes of the ger are decorated with highly detailed floral paintings.