Mongolia
Every now and then you get lucky, and all the experiences you hope for actually eventuate. Mongolia was incredible.
I've thrown up from overheating in the sun and been so cold that I've had to pull my sleeping bag tight around my thermals-clad body so that only my nose protruded. I've had constipation, diaorreah, asthma. I've been to a disco in a ger (complete with red and green flashing neon lights) and played soccer with the Mongolian students. I've walked up rocky hills, recorded slab burials, ring burials, corrals, khirig-surs, bal-bals, lithic sites, sherd sites and had lunch in an abandoned monastery. I've seen sick horses, watched goats being butchered, eaten the goats for dinner and seen the ground littered with bones, rotting carcasses and feathers. Vultures nested above the campsite, we've walked passed eagles sitting on the ground just five metres away, foxes have stared at our van rumbling by. Then there were the rabbits, sparrows, geckoes, yangers, sheep, goat, horses, cats, dogs.
And that was just the first seven days.
On the eighth day, the Russian van got bogged. And on the ninth day my one-pole tent somehow managed to survive a thunderstorm.
I've thrown up from overheating in the sun and been so cold that I've had to pull my sleeping bag tight around my thermals-clad body so that only my nose protruded. I've had constipation, diaorreah, asthma. I've been to a disco in a ger (complete with red and green flashing neon lights) and played soccer with the Mongolian students. I've walked up rocky hills, recorded slab burials, ring burials, corrals, khirig-surs, bal-bals, lithic sites, sherd sites and had lunch in an abandoned monastery. I've seen sick horses, watched goats being butchered, eaten the goats for dinner and seen the ground littered with bones, rotting carcasses and feathers. Vultures nested above the campsite, we've walked passed eagles sitting on the ground just five metres away, foxes have stared at our van rumbling by. Then there were the rabbits, sparrows, geckoes, yangers, sheep, goat, horses, cats, dogs.
And that was just the first seven days.
On the eighth day, the Russian van got bogged. And on the ninth day my one-pole tent somehow managed to survive a thunderstorm.