Trains, Camels, Sunrise and Sunset-- Oohh Gobi!

What more can be a better way to end a month of doing trainings than an impulsive two day trip to Sainshand. Sainshand is an aimag in one of the towns in the Gobi which is approximately 460 kilometers south of UB. After barely a week of planning, the seven of us embark on this trip all with one vested interest: to see the Gobi desert( probably with a few more interests like getting away from the city and work)

I have never experienced traveling for 10 hours straight more so in a train. It was like going home from Manila to Zambales raised to the nth exponential form with a million and one bus stops.The scene outside the train was very "unvaried" both in your left and right- once in awhile you see some herds of horses and cattle, some drops of hue from yellow and violet flowers but the rest of the train ride all you can see are hectares of vast, empty lands. You know what they say: "make something extraordinary out of the ordinary" and so we played games, games and more games until we reached our destination. Thanks to Kara and Chris for providing us with enough games to distract us from complaining too much.     

The Seven Sainshand Tourists ( Photo Credits: Rebecca Damm) From L to R: Chris, Becky, Andrew, Kara, "Me", Farrah and Jo 

On our way to Sainshand, we met a 10 year old Mongolian girl with her younger five year old brother who were also going to Sainshand. Since I am really bad with Mongolian names, I can barely remember their names except that the girl was Minnie Mouse's latest endorser of skirts and bags. These children sat right next to us for 10 hours without any adult supervision. Every now and then, other people in the train would offer them food and drinks and we even invited the young girl to join us in our games,  but it seems like the older sibling has everything under control and is used to look after her brother. We even diagnosed her to have early signs of obsessive-compulsiveness as she had wiped their seats and tables 999 times.

After ten glorious hours in our train cabin, we finally reached Sainshand at 9 p.m,without a single plan in mind except for finding people who could help us find a cheap place to stay. This trip was really one of those trips by which the phrase : "let fate dictates the path" applies to. We were all clueless on what to do except from few excerpts from a "Lonely Planet" guide and other volunteers who visited this place. After few negotiations with people, we managed to find a van and a ger camp to stay for the night.

Early at 5:00 a.m, we went to catch the sunrise  in Tavan Dohoi. When we get to the place, there were at least thirty Mongolians at site and doing their rituals of throwing milk and vodka and going around some ovoos (rock piles). Seeing the sun rise in the Gobi desert is  one of the most  memorable experiences I have  here in Mongolia to date. After the breathtaking sunrise, we went straight to a giant bell- a few kilometers from Tavan Dohoi and trailed along some Mongolians, went to Shambhala ( Energy Center) after, then to some caves and a place where we found petrified wood. At 8:00 a.m, we finished going through all of this and decided to go back to our ger to have our breakfast.


 Pooping and peeing seems to be a problem for me as the sight of worms feeding in some people's poop scared the "heaven and hell" out of me. I tried controlling my urge to defecate but gave in to this urge when Andrew lent me his orange shovel that I can use for my pooping in the desert.  "Dig six inches, poop and cover" were all his instructions. And so I walked at least a kilometer from the ger camp, dug, pooped, sweated a bit, covered my crime and watered it with my pee.

 At 8:30 a.m, we left our ger camp and passed by the Khamaryn Khiid Monastery -just a few meters away from our camp. It looked like they were trying to renovate it. We took a few pictures and turned some prayer wheels in the monastery. I did not know that these prayer wheels are supposed to be turned clockwise, and so I did what any curious cat would do, turned a wheel counterclockwise.

Turn these prayer wheels CLOCKWISE and not COUNTERCLOCKWISE- check!

Our guide then brought us to a local herder and had our first camel rides in the Gobi. I was nervous at first as I have not ridden a single four-legged animal before all by myself. Oh Mongolia, Mongolia... always pushing me to my limits and with just 5,000 tugrugs, another experience stored in my cerebrum.

In between the camel's humps

Up close and personal with my camel trying to get rid of that "itch"

When we all got our rides, we were invited to the herder's ger and drank "airag" or a fermented horse milk. It tasted a bit sour but it was not at bad at all. Then, we witnessed one herder kill a sheep in less than 10 seconds. A bloodless and painless death, indeed. He incised the skin of the sheep with a knife, put his hand inside, snapped a vein and in seconds the sheep was already dead.

This is how they do it in Mongolia

This is how my uncle did it in the Philippines

After the camels, we went to Khar Uul Mountain where only men can climb the peak of the mountain. The women can only climb until a designated middle point.  It was unclear  why women are prevented to climb the peak but they are quite strict with this as we accidentally hiked one point further and were told that we were not suppose to be there.

On our way up!

At the midpoint of the hike, we saw some tame goats who seem to guard the monastery.

At lunch time, we went back to the town proper as there were no other place left to see. We decided to grab lunch and bid our guide goodbye. We then dined in the "Best Restaurant" in town, as what the sign said, which is across the "Just an Average not so Friendly" Restaurant that we first went into.We spent a few hours in the afternoon in the park while we wait for having our train tickets changed to night trip. After a few hours of playing more games and hanging out in the park, we had some Chinese food for dinner and headed back to the train station.

 To complete our trip, here are some of the pictures we had at the train station, all of which were taken by Andy.

It was a tiring trip that as soon as I arrived safely home after another 10 hour train ride, I went straight to my bed and dozed for 6 straight hours. I never imagined that we only stayed there for two days and yet my body felt like it was already a week hiking trip. But all I can say is that I did have a wonderful two day Gobi trip.

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