Our Gobi Trip

What a trip! Kathy and I went with our friends Seulgi and So Young to the Gobi Desert a week ago. Unforgettable, simply because of the strangeness of the landscape, the differences in the way people exist, the remarkable animals there, the people we met, and the whole experience of being there. Most Americans hear of the Gobi Desert from childhood. It seems a place of camels, of endless sand, of excruciating heat, of unhindered sun and of the Mongol people who live there. Our experience was much of that. 

CLICK ON THE TEXT BELOW TO GO TO EACH PAGE.

     

OUR GOBI TRIP - page 1      OUR GOBI TRIP - page 2      OUR GOBI TRIP - page 3

Seulgi and So Young are Korean foreign exchange students at MIU for a semester, with adventurous souls and desire to see some places in Mongolia before returning home to Korea. It was so nice to be together. We traveled by train during the day to Sainshand, a small town that grew up around a Russian army base during the days of the occupation of Mongolia by the Soviets. For some Sainshand is an escape from the craziness of Ulaanbaatar. For others, it is a boring place only to be visited if necessity calls for it. We found it some of both. The town is clean, quiet, dry, but with a city center that feels rural but quaint and comfortable. We enjoyed it.

We had the privilege of being guided by Khalzan, who lives with his wife in Sainshand and does fine art painting for a living. He is the father of Chimgee, a teacher at LEI. 

We saw a bunch of places... 

• the desert sand
• the ger home of a nomad family who we visited with
• a watering area where the nomads can get water for themselves and their animals
• abandoned jet hangers used by the Soviets during their occupation of Mongolia
• a ride on camels
• table tennis and karaoke in the city

Unforgettable!!!