Into the Gobi Desert

It’s Friday morning and our alarm goes off at 3am (ouch!) for a 4am pick up to UB Airport for one of the highlights of our journey, a four day trip to the Gobi desert. We only have a small weight allowance for the flight so the bulk of our luggage will remain at our UB hotel for our return. Eggy is ready and waiting for us in the lobby and everything works well as after a good flight we arrive in bright sunshine at Dalanzadgad Airport, in the middle of the Gobi, on time at 7.50am. Our guide NK and driver Choijo are waiting at the airport, having driven 700 km yesterday from UB.

Our accommodation throughout the four days will be in Gers which are the traditional homes of Mongolians and can be seen all across the country, even close to UB. Ours will be in Tourist Ger Camps which gives decent comfort whilst allowing you to stay in remote parts of the Gobi Desert. These Camps have around 20 Gers and two shared buildings, one a dining area and the other containing toilets and showers.

Our first night will be in Camp 1 then we will travel in a loop through the Steppes and Mountainous areas staying at two other Camps before returning to Camp 1 on the last night before flying back to UB on Tuesday morning.

We had a great cooked breakfast at Camp 1 before going through our itinerary with NK and then having a couple of hours sleep. After lunch we travelled about 40 minutes from the Camp to walk the Eagle Gorge. There are three tarmac roads on the Gobi but the majority of driving has to be done off road which is challenging but provides constant spectacular views.

Photo’s cannot do justice to the scale of everything we will see here. This afternoon as we drove to Eagle Gorge there were shadowed mountains to our left and on the other side perfectly flat Steppe to the horizon, punctuated by occasional nomadic Ger (always white) and herds of various animals.

We will run out of superlatives during these four days but the walk through the Gorge was fantastic. From the car park it begins about 80 metres wide but narrows down gradually until after about an hour it is just a few metres from side to side, before gradually opening up again. A stream runs through the Gorge and has to be negotiated via natural stepping stones and we kept dry. The narrowest point was tricky to negotiate but achieved and we walked a bit further past this point and then returned to the car after a well paced three hour walk.

At the wider points of the Gorge we encountered several Yak herds, there were lots of gerbils running around (nest building for winter) and plenty of horses. We also saw a number of Golden Eagles (hence the name of the Gorge) and also Bearded Vultures, Mongolia’s biggest bird with a wingspan of over 9 feet.

We had a bizarre incident as we wandered through the Gorge. There were occasional hikers, but then we happened upon three Mongolian men one of who was staggering around. It quickly became apparent that he was completely drunk and extremely aggressive. One of his friends was trying to hold him back and the other one looked drunk but stayed in the background. The very drunk one approached NK, slurred some kind of insult and looked like he was going to take a swing at him, but his mate caught him in time. We had some concern but managed to divert past them and continued to the Gorge, whilst the drunkards walked towards the Car Park. Our driver later told us that he saw these people pick an argument with the local horse trek guides who gave them all a good thumping. That was good news!

Despite this minor blip we had had a memorable walk in the Gorge in the most perfect weather. It was a totally blue sky. Warm in the sun but very chilly when in the Gorge in the shade of the surrounding mountains.

Although we have already been to locations with big annual temperature swings, nothing matches the Gobi. Summer maximum can hit +50C and just to give it some symmetry the winter temperature can fall to -50C. Quite incredible.

We drove back to our Camp across the Steppe with the sun going down and arrived back just as the full harvest moon was rising above the horizon.

We enjoyed a hot shower, dinner (delicious spaghetti bolognese - something we weren’t expecting in the Gobi!), a beer and an early night. Janet had noticed a small mouse in our Ger (not really a surprise in our location) when we were getting ready for dinner so we mentioned it to our guide. We were presented with a solution which was a ‘sticky mouse trap’ to put under the bed which would glue the poor mouse’s feet to a glue pad when it ran over it. We decided we could not be that nasty - and didn’t mind sharing our accommodation - so we abstained from using this primitive execution equipment! We only saw the little thing once more before bed time and we think it slept as well as us.Read more