Onon Balj NP
Close to the village itself which mainly consists of wooden houses and not Gers is a spring from which apparently Ghengis Khaan took a sip or two as his birthplace is allegedly is in that area. So we wanted to fill up our water at the spring and camp somewhere along the river, Onon Gol. The park management where you pay the entrance fee to the Park is also in Dadal as are some shops where we could get bread and some veggies (the choice is not immense but you can usually rely on getting potatoes, cabbage and onions and often also apples, carrots and tomatoes).
About 40 k’s away from Dadal we encountered a car that was having some troubles, the radiator was busted and the passengers (a man a woman and a boy) were stranded. We took Amara, the woman, with us as she explained to us that they were from Dadal and she’d try to organize a repair or a spare part from there. She studied in UB and had learned a bit of English so we could exchange basic details about each other’s lives. It was a bit cramped in the cockpit now, as Melville normally only sits two people. I squeezed in between the seats and we managed (as we did many more times in the weeks to come ‘coz hitch a ride between Gers and towns or away from broken cars did seem quite normal). We had to cross numerous deep puddles along the river front as the Onon was carrying really high water at that time (we were to learn more about that later that day). In Dadal, Amara told us, she had a friend who spoke much more English and she would take us to her. The drive took us through forested hills and raggy mountains not un-similar to the scenery we had admired in Siberia (which is actrually only a few k’s away from the Mongolian border in that region).
Once we had reached Dadal Amara brought us to her friend, Nanatsetseg who offered to show us around, and ventured on to organize her business. Via Nana she had asked us if we could stay and take her back to the car but as we did not know how long it would take her, we still needed to organize our permit for the park and we had needed a good two hours from her car to Dadal we honestly said that we’d rather venture on. Given the large numbers of cars we passed going the opposite direction we thought it wouldn’t be too difficult for her to get a ride back. When Nana told us later on that Amara had been on a business trip transporting local dairy products to UB to trade them for other goods to be sold in the shop where she worked as a shop assistant in summer we hoped for her that she managed to organize her parts. On our way back, Nana told us a few days later that they had not been able to organize something in Dadal and had to go to UB to get that radiator fixed/replaced, we hoped whoever then took her to UB (there are public or semi-public/semi-private bus services) also took her dairy products .
Nana was a local teacher and on holidays for two months, she had learned English at University and told us that she used every opportunity to speak English. She helped us to locate the National Park Office where we needed to get a ticket for the park. Strictly speaking we would have also needed a border permit to travel further into the region because the Russian border is so close, but when we asked for this nobody really seemed to know so we just skipped that bit in the hope not to be caught by some soldiers, as it turned out we did not need it for other reasons ;o) NPs are a reasonably young invention and the WWF and many other internationally operating NGOs are involved in Mongolian administration of parks but obviously the locals hardly ever frequent them which also often means they don’t know where they are (thanks heavens to LP who often have a map of towns with the locations). In other places we had some trouble locating the offices but thanks to Nana no such trouble in Dadal! To get from the town square to the office (maybe 500 meters) we now took Nana, a member of the local council and the two of us to the place – hard work, that’s when we decided maximum capacity in the cockpit is 3 :o) In the office everybody was very excited about our visit, they had a large topographic map of the region where they showed us places of interest and also asked us about what we were most interested in, again Nana’s translations were invaluable. They were a bit puzzled that we did not want to go horse riding or live a day with a Nomad family as most other tourists do but given that we had been in the country only a week we were looking for a nice camp spot and some solitude (which can be plentysome but also non existing in Mongolia as you will later on hear) simply to relax and not be on the road for a couple of days. They highlighted a few nice spots but also told us that the river was very high and not passable at the moment, the only bridge was in a not so trustworthy condition and they advised us against using it. This limited the areas we could visit but we were told we could camp anywehere we wanted to, by now it was already getting late and we just wanted to get on our way.
After a quick excursion to the shops in Dadal with Nana we headed off with a promise to say farewell once we’d leave the park. The first task to find the Ghengis spring – our first go at navigating with the GPS, turns out that we would not have to have taken the momentous detour through the woods as we did ‘coz there was an earth road from the village to the spring, hmmm… ‘detours’ like this were to happen to us several times again :o) Anyhow on the way to the spring we passed a massive ovoo – a holy site where people have piled up a mountain of stones and offerings to the sky gods.
Holger making an offering at the large Dadal Ovoo
Ovoos are situated on top of mountains and usually you’d walk around it three times clockwise leaving an offering to the sky gods, some people throw a rock on the pile each time they circumvent the ovoo. This one was huge and decorated with many prayer scarves in blue or sometimes orange and now also a little Koala! (… on other occasions we left Kuermmelinge…)
We finally found the spring and filled up our water tank. At the spring a Mongol family was having a picnic and they called us over to share some ‘Mongolian Whiskey’, presumably Vodka and Ghengis Spring Water. We returned the favor with some Kuemmerlinge and with the usual difficulties we explained our travels. It turned out that one lady of the group had been to Australia and was fascinated to be photographed with the Australian number plate :o) After exchanging email-address we now headed towards the park and after a drive up a steep hill we found pleasant spot not too far away from a little ovoo, that looked sort of abandoned – no scarves, no obvious offerings. While having dinner we noticed a couple to come and visit the ovoo, so we thought maybe it’s a place for taking your loved one a date? But we were out of sight and did not think about it too much…
While setting up we saw big clouds in the distant skies and Holger even managed to photograph some lightening. I was already sound asleep in the swag at the sound of soft raindrops I crept up further in the swag and curled up, all cosy and warm. I was, however, woken up by Holger close to around midnight when the soft raindrops had developed into a colossal downpour, already flooding the bottom half of the swag. It was a gigantic thunderstorm and we were on top of the hill in the middle of it.
As quickly as possible we retracted to the car and Holgi pulled the swag underneath the car. In the following hour or so, the valley underneath was probably filled up with the sound of us shouting at each other a) because it was so loud and b) we had, humm, slightly different ideas as to how to proceed from here. Anyway we managed to get the mattress in the back, use the dry blanket and sleeping bag we still had stored in the car and squeezed in a couple of hours sleep. Next morning saw us dry all our wet stuff (clothes, bedding, swag, towels…) all around the car and again we saw some people coming to the ovoo. At midday while we were packing up a motorbike came up the hill, on board was a stern looking man in a camouflage-uniform who identified himself as an official. ‘Oh Noes’, I thought because we did not have a border permit (the area is close to the Russian border, however we had a park pass and a Russian visa – I hoped that maybe that counted as well!?!). It turned out that we had committed a fauxpax by camping on the hill and were too close to the ovoo and we were good-humouredly advised to camp in valleys not on top of hills – at least that was our interpretation. Top of hills are for sky-gods only, and as exotic as we are, we are definitely no sky-gods. On the way down the hill and for the few next hours Holger was still a bit flabbergasted and repeatedly muffled something about ‘Land of blue skies and without fences- ha!’ (which, by the way is not quite true, there are fences, if not that many). However we felt a bit embarrassed when we saw that at the bottom of the hill a camp had been set up in the meantime and that the people, probably about 20 and all Mongolians, were WALKING up the hill to the ovoo. OK learned a lesson there and although HOlger laughs at me I reckon the thunderstorm, argument and flood was a sign :o)
We found a beautiful spot on a meadow some 10 k’s further down the river and set up the tent because we decided to stay a couple of days. This was a peaceful spot and the river was running high. The afternoon saw the return of the thunderstorms (which are quite normal here in summer) and we were able to witness an absolutely spectacular ‘Windhose’/Tornado! It did not pass directly over our heads but probably 200meters away from us, pretty impressive and huge once it hit the trees lining the river you could see the wind channel going up becoming all green and brown with leaves.
The river afterwards was carrying heaps of drift and even a young fir tree had been uprooted – marvelous to watch, from a distance at least. Apart from these highly dramatic events, our stay was calm and peaceful except for the only the occasional visits of cows and three horsemen .
No comments:
Post a Comment