Day 11 : 07/30. Snorkelling in Mongolia.

We woke up at 6:45 this morning , the camp in very calm, peaceful, the sun skims the surrounding hills. Sanglier ( ' Boar ' ), the interprete's horse, limps more and more. 

We saddle on once again, on our ponies. It is pouring with rain and we spend the day in the greyness of the icy rain. An hour later, we already are soaked to our underwear in spite of our K-ways and our deels. This day, we trot to warm up, the rain tires us and we don't even look around us : our goal is to prevent the rain to filter too much under our clothes. I remember being so fed up but still I had understood that if the rain is a pain, it is not too serious. It makes us cold but it dries up ! The bright side of the situation is that our riding-pants ( we only brought one per person ) is being cleaned up ! 

All of a sudden and for the first time, we turn. We go into a perpendicular valley from the Orkhon one. When we arrive at the bottom of the valley, some mongolian students welcome us under a ger of a Tourist Camp. It is the first time we have access to a tourist camp and we will only spend two hours there : the necessary amount of time to warm up thank to the central stove. Ana and me create a new tumble-dryer technic : we cook our socks on the stove ! It works ! ( Be careful though because it burns ... )

Then we eat some very hot noodles, a big ration that I shovel quickly, I am still hungry and there is no second share served in the tourist camp...

After this needed pause, we climb to Tuvkhen monastery : 2 kilometers in van and three kilometers on foot, sloping in the mud and then we erach a wonderful place. Before the 1937 massacre by the communists, two hundreds bonzes used to live in the place built by Zanabazar.

Then we headed back down to catch up with the horses, saddle on and head to the orkhon. During the descent, Laure and I spoted new flowers and we picked some to stick them in our journals. 

 

This afternoon, Sanglier fell sitted because of its limp. We worry more and more for this horse and Ariuka's absence is sometimes burdensome. We live between to cultures : what should we do ? Should we let the mongols handle the situation and should we insist again and again to obtain an extra-horse ? The ambiance is less deleterious than these past days and I hope it will stay so. 

Our angry outburst from the day before had an impact ! 

The van comes : this night, we sleep close to a trail. The mountain is behind us, and the immensity of the Orkhon is in front of us : it is wonderful, huge and beautiful. 

This night, I have some muscular pains. The cold made me tense my muscles and my right stirrup is too long. We have some network and send an SMS to our parents, I get one from Benoît and I am delighted. Ana teaches Ariuka how to say " Putain de bordel de merde " ( Note of Laure : I'm not translating that kind of vocabulary ) and she would use it everytime instead of the mongolian expression. 

I also note that at 6:30 pm, Ana declared herself as ' the most beautiful girl in the world' !!!! See our Daily sentences . 

Barbara