Horses Coming!!

Today we left the snow leopard camp, which according to my phone was somewhere close to Santmargaz, Zavkhan, Mongolia, if anybody's really that interested.  All I could tell you before looking it up was that it was in the Margaz Mountains in the middle of nowhere.  Looking at my ger, it looked so lonely with everything packed up and not exploded all over the place.  Same thing in the meal ger.  All of you who know me would not be surprised to know I took up  more than my fair share of space around the charger areas.  But I was more than happy to let anybody use my cords or chargers if I wasn't using them.  I had bought cheap hand warmers before leaving in case the Chinese border patrol decided they were batteries.  I didn't want to risk losing my nice penguin hand warmers the kids got me for Christmas a couple of years ago.  Bina said I might need them for the yak herders, so I gave him one pair (along with their bag and charging cord) and showed him how they worked and told him I'd send the other pair back with Ariuna before I left town.  I would much rather they be with the guys in camp than a border guard confiscate them.  My things that had been living in our car had already been transferred to the car we would be taking for the next part of the trip, so after breakfast, all that was left was the goodbyes.  All the trackers came out to see us, and we were changing drivers, too.  I tried to give the traditional greeting that I had seen many of them do with each other.  It ended up being fist bumps, and they all seemed to be really excited to fist bump me before we left.  I had grown to lean on every one of them and I trusted them very much.  It was a pretty tearful goodbye.  This has been an amazing trip so far.

Our drive was most of the day.  We drove by the sand dunes.  They are fed from the western part of the mountain range.  They run about 200 km (124 miles) long and about 10-20 km (6-12 miles) wide.  The highest dune is about 200 m (650 ft) high.

Then we stopped by the salt lake.

And we drove through the dunes!  This was bouncy and fun.

Before long, we came upon a little town.  I think the town (not the snow leopard camp) is actually called Santmargaz.  It was across the river.  During the winter, it's much closer to the camp.  Once the spring warm-up starts, you have to go all the way to the bridge to get to town.  We could still see ice on it, but there were spots that were melting pretty well and the running water was visible.  Not really safe for driving over at this point.

The bridge was a little old and worn in many spots, but we made it across.

We drove through town.  

And stopped at this little store called the Sample Market.  I resumed my attempts to remember cyrillics from almost learning them many, many years ago when I worked with Russian linguists in Germany.  Mongolia uses a modified cyrillic alphabet.  I didn't do too poorly, if I do say so myself.  Of course, I downloaded a cheat sheet for the letters that weren't in the Russian alphabet or the ones I had forgotten.

She had a huge assortment of things for such a small building.  Various alcohols, candies, vegetables, pelts, pantry staples, and other things.  We tried some milk vodka that the shopkeeper made herself and got some snacks.  I got some Mongolian candy to take home.

The carrots here are even bigger than they were in Ecuador!!

After leaving the market and getting gas, we went to another part of the river (over a much newer bridge) and had lunch.  You can see the ice still there, but also the running water in spots.

Then we entered Khoman Tal National Park.  After driving a while, we saw some saiga antelope running off in the distance.  These guys are fast!  This was the best shot I got.  They moved waaay too fast for me to follow them with the camer.  One minute they were there, and the next they were gone!

We also got a good look at the Mongolian ground jay.  This one sat still long enough and was close enough for a really good shot!

Soon after, we entered a fenced area, which is where the Przewalski horse (Takhi, in Mongolian) is kept so that it is more easily managed.  Eventually, they will remove the fencing, but not just yet.  The Takhi in the wild went extinct in the past, but thanks to controlled breeding programs in a few zoos around the world, they have been reintroduced to a few places, and Khoman Tal National Park in Mongolia is one of those.  The guys at this camp are doing a great job taking care of these wild horses and keeping their numbers high and growing, managing ground cover and vegetation for them to eat.  We got there and had our first showers since going to the snow leopard camp (Oh was it glorious!), and settled into our ger.  It was nice to have overnight electricity, too, so I plugged in Darth Vader (my CPAP) and was settled in early for an all-night sleep with no waking up unable to breathe!  Suddenly, there was a knock on the door and we heard someone yell, "Horses coming!"  So we just had to throw our boots and coats on and head out to see them!

This was a fairly large herd, and the stallion's name was Laniekea.  There are about 15 herds in the park, ranging for 4-14 members.  I had both cameras and was so tired that I was having trouble even holding the little Lumix, so lots of my pictures were blurry, even when the horses were standing still.  But when the ranger came driving up and scared them off, I was able to get them running away with my phone.

Then we went back to our ger and had nice dreams of Takhi after nice showers and me getting to breathe all night!