Getting to Oelgyi, 18.9..-19.9.2010

Our hope was to drive to a place called Khovd the next day to stay there in a hotel but again we had dug ourselves a hole (in a literal as much as in a figural sense, as you will see) we had mixed up which Khovd we were driving to ;o) The one which we picked as next day’s goal was not the prosperous Khovd heralded in LP, which would have been another 100k’s further south. We had found early on that in the same Aimag several cities can have the same name (indeed we passed another, even smaller Khovd on the way) but we thought by now (after 5 weeks of navigating) we were clever cookies and had would not be fooled anymore by such circumstances - hahaha! Slightly disgruntled because we felt the possibility of a hot shower slip away from under our grip we nevertheless decided against the 100k detour to get to Khovd-City.


Again this turned out to be a really good thing as we found again an unbelievable pretty scenery in form of a river valley offering fantastic camping :o) Well, after we had dug ourselves out of an actual mud pit, for that matter. OK, this time it was me: I was driving, and after descending through some sand cliffs I drove along the river bed in search for a spot. We avoided some muddy looking bits and I saw a meadow on which I wanted to make a turn. Somebody had made hey there so I thought it’s safe to drive over the earth. I’m not sure what they harvested there but I know now for certain that it is growing in rather swampy conditions – I had dug us in and rather colossal I’d say!

So out came the recovery gear again and after connecting all straps we had Holger winched us out – and this time we have photographic evidence :o) It took only about 30 minutes or so, but I have to admit I felt kind embarrassed…
While we were setting up camp some horse riders approached us, a family who had been out collecting seabuckthorne-berries and who were a really cheery party :o) They gave us some berries and in return we gave them some of our presents. They invited us to mount their horses to make some pictures and then we made some pictures of them with us, with the car, on their horses, etc. We all enjoyed this interlude very much and there was a lot of laughter.

They invited us to their ger a few k’s down the river but as we were in the middle of setting up (and very keen on putting the camp shower to use) we passed this one on. We exchanged addresses and promised to send the pictures once we were back in Germany. An hour later or so, the two teenage boys returned and brought us some milk and some Aaruul and were obviously fascinated by Melville and our journey so we chatted (as much as possible) with them and shared a few moments.

This was really great meeting and because these were the last Mongolian herders we were to meet this made for a memorable and long lasting positive impression :o))))