The Mongolian Gobi is a vast and mainly uninhabited desert stretching for probably a few thousand kilometres across the southern two thirds of the country. We have been travelling now for eleven days since our misadventures in UB and have driven through largely empty steppes with scattered ger camps, herds of freely wandering horses, camels, sheep and goats and the occasional wasted and uninviting town with ger dominated housing, dusty dirt and potholed “roads” winding between scrappy and makeshift timber fencing, stray dogs and of course a few locals doing their day to day business. These towns are rough looking, unattractive and bewildering to some extent with almost none of the local business signs having any meaning for us. But for Will and I it is the emptiness of the Gobi that attracted us to come to Mongolia and we are getting that in spades…
For us the Gobi is a vast maze of confusing dirt and rock strewn tracks through featureless terrain with practically no identifying features, and apart from a few of the larger towns, nothing to identify which town you are in, if indeed you have found the town being sought. Four or five days ago we could not initially find the town of Altai, confused and mislead by the only road sign in over 400km. The plains and low hills stretch out to meet a broad, uninterrupted and distant horizon often showing a few dirt tracks wandering away into the distance, mostly going in different directions. Some go to ger camps, some to derelict looking collections of buildings which are hard to tell if abandoned or inhabited; others go who knows where.
To navigate we use four paper maps of Mongolia - but what is shown on some as a strong red line is a collection of rough dirt tracks on the ground. Apart from in UB and the occasional larger town, there are practically no other bitumen roads in Mongolia. There is only part correlation between the maps - some show different tracks, some include small settlements or other features while others omit these. We also use a magnetic compass, a basic sat nav (in our Garmin World Map, UB and Khovd are the only towns or cities named for the whole of Mongolia and we navigate by the shape of now mainly dry lakes shown on the screen in bright blue, but, usefully, also on some of the paper maps), local terrain occasionally and of course the vague hand wave of locals. Put together these are just adequate for navigating our way across almost 2,000 km of featureless, treeless and forbidding terrain.
The tracks are rough and we are vibrated and tossed around for almost the whole driving day as we try to find the least rough track and dodge sharp rocks and less commonly, large wheel destroying boulders. Occasionally we can gather speed and sail across the vibrations but usually this is not possible. A vehicle or motorbike sometimes approaches and can be seen a long way off by a plume of dust in the distance. But other vehicles than ours may be seen only a few times daily and we mostly have the stark and awesome loneliness of the place to ourselves.
There is a surprising amount of bird life with the occasional eagle, water bird or flock of small birds seen. Now and then we have been surprised by little hamster type animals scurrying across the road and a few apparently stray dogs chasing our car or in packs as we approach towns. But mainly it is the herds of larger animals that break up the monotony of the driving day through largely undistinguished countryside. Now and then a herder on horseback tends his animals. Horsemen and other locals we have seen commonly wear a heavy coat - often drab brown in colour but sometimes maroon or blue, long, well below the knee, full, and buttoned to a braided edge with sa few toggle ties on one shoulder and below, under the same arm. A small collar and a colourful, wide waist tie, often bright orange or yellow and an unexpected hat completes the traditional costume.
Now and then, mainly to get closer to the locals and add some colour to the sameness of each day we pick up a hitch hiker, and explain, always by sign language, how far we can take them (usually the next town), and then make room by shifting stuff from our single spare seat (the other back seat is folded up and its space full). On one day a woman wanted a ride and we stopped, only to have four or five men rush across the road to get in also! One look in our car and our single raised finger indicating we could fit only one person reduced this to one - the woman, who we dropped off at the next town. At one lunch stop in the small, scrappy but friendly town of Delgen we were fed by a woman named Enkhboyar, who cut raw meat and mixed, kneaded, rolled and cut noodles from scratch (ie from flour and water) and made a beautiful mutton and noodle broth for us in surprisingly fast time. While we waited, Tserenpuntsag, her husband most likely, invited me into their ger home behind the tiny, one table, two stool restaurant: the circular wall was lined with cabinets, stacked e suitcases, a couple of beds, a cabinet, photos, sofa, TV and other household items. Colourful is the word to describe the interior, by contrast with the sameness of the generally white exterior. In the centre was a couple of metal chests forming low benches and between a cast iron dung burning heater cast its warmth. Outside head high piles of dried dung wait for winter, which is just around the corner. It is now late in the season for our travelling, and very cold each morning. We hasten west to get up and over the Altai mountains…
[Photos: Gobi camels; inside a ger, Delgen; Gobi campsite; Will and hitch hiker]
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