Day 191: A Memorable Day Hiking in the Gobi’s Yol Valley
Today is certain to be among the most memorable of our trip so far. Jam-packed with activities and new friends and stunning surroundings.
Breakfast was at 7:45 am but we were a little late because the kids were sleeping so hard. That despite the fact that the little circle skylight in our ger shot a hot beam of morning sunlight right onto their beds. The pillow crease on James’s face was epic.
At breakfast, James looked out the giant window overlooking the plain and saw a goat herd and a shepherd on a bike riding laps around the animals. He stared for a while and goes, “Why is that guy chasing those animals?” Ha!
By 9 am we were in two different 4x4s headed to the Yol Valley an hour and 20 minutes away.
There aren’t roads here, just two-tracked trails through the flat flat flat terrain. You can see for miles straight. It’s what I imagine the US’s Great Plains looked like 200 years ago. And maybe even more crazy than the endless expanse of flat land is the massive, massive sky.
New Yorkers don’t get sky like this.
While racing along one of these trails, we came upon a 10-year-old girl (ish) on a horse with her dog and about 300 goats and sheep. Not another soul for miles, and this child is out here on her own, hard at work, with tons of responsibility.
I’m not saying I’d trade her experience for our kids’, but damn there’s got to be a lesson in there on how kids are actually capable of doing a lot more than American parents in 2019 give them credit for.
Noted.
The experience was also funny because when we slowed to take a picture, the entire herd came immediately trotting over to our two cars in search of shade (according to Ganzo). Our drivers had to be extra careful when extracting their cars from the mob.
I was riding with James and a non-English speaking driver. James sat for an hour and 20 minutes and stared curiously out the window at the beautiful but definitely unchanging landscape — without saying a single word.
Wouldn’t have happened 6 months ago. What’s going through that cute little head?
We arrived at the Yol Valley and, knowing we had a one hour-plus hike ahead of us, arranged for two horses to take the kids while Teddy and I walked.
Yol Valley is beautiful. Hard to describe. Ganzo took us along a small valley/creekbed flanked by cartoonish-ly smooth and steep sloping green grassy mountains. The sky was deep blue with, again, cartoonishly fluffy white cumulus clouds.
After about 30 minutes we reached a no-horses-past-this-point spot and continued on on foot. Lots of running, jumping on rocks, maneuvering across the creek, etc as we made our way through the valley.
On our return we ran into Alan and Carol, the couple at the lodge we’d befriended yesterday. Every time we cross their path we stop and have a great conversation. Turns out they’ve got three grandkids, and it shows — they’re so, so lovely with our kids.
We had time for a quick visit to the Yol Valley nature museum — a four-room cinderblock building with about two dozen old taxidermied Mongolian animals, including ibex, gazelle, these cute little gerbil things called pikas (we saw lots of those including a dead one), snow leopards, wolves and eagles.
Before we left, we did have one injury. Teddy’s metal water bottle bonked Willa in the head in a freak collision and left a quarter-sized blue egg on her forehead….
On the drive back I rode with James and Ganzo, and we played games the entire time. The animal guessing game, the human guessing game, a storytelling game Ganzo made up, “top three” (animals, baby animals, THINGS, and more). I was glad to see our lodge appear on the horizon, and I’m sure Ganzo was too, though you wouldn’t know it.
We ate lunch at 3 pm! By 4 we were getting a dumpling-making lesson from one of the kitchen staff back in the dining room. We were terrible at it, and a small crowd of staffers were all tittering in Mongolian about our non-existent abilities, but the kids had an absolute blast.
Can you tell which ones are ours? 
“It’s not as easy as it looks!” Willa exclaimed to James when she had her first try rolling the dough. Best to learn that lesson now, girl! Skills take practice!!
By now we’d run into Alan and Carol three more times and with each encounter the kids became more obsessed with them because they’re so nice. Kids showed them how they’d learned to make the dumplings, etc.
By 5 we’d borrowed these electric motorbike/dune buggy things from the lodge and were cruising around the plains on them, each of us with a kid on the back. We stopped and watched a wild horse herd for a while — so many babies! And then we rode over to a nearby goat/sheep herd and got close.
When you’re that close it sounds like the sheep are all bleating, “Ted!”
We headed back because we could see the lodge staff were doing a ger-building demonstration, which was neat for the kids to see.
While watching, Willa walked up to Alan and Carol and said, “We’re going to go up to the game room and play ankle bone after this if you want to come join us?” So earnest and adorable.
Alan did in fact come, and we showed him the rules (and bought him a cocktail for his trouble). Willa won. Undefeated!
While we sat and chatted with Alan post-game, we noticed that James had sauntered over to a big American family at the other end of the room who’d also been playing anklebone. He stood there and hovered over their game for a long time but eventually we could hear him holding court, telling them stories of our trip and fielding questions. Who is this guy?
Meanwhile, in chatting wtih Alan we learned that he’s a 75-year-old semi-retired internal medicine physician who’d had his own practice for many years as part of Penn. Now he works four days a week at a clinic in a poor community in Philly. His high school sweetheart wife passed away 20 years ago and Carol is his second wife. They love to travel and have been so many amazing places, many more than once. His son Aaron started a successful band called The Disco Biscuits which we’ll be looking up as soon as we get back online.
Such an endearing, kind human.
After Alan left we made our way over to this other group to give James the hook and learned that they knew a lot about us — thanks James! Adorable family with three kids 18, 22 and 24.
Back in our ger we showered for dinner. In a disappointing episode, James bit Willa on the back out of frustration over something trivial, and left a nasty mark. He was instantly remorseful and ashamed but it put a temporary damper on our lovely day. Uggggh. Whyyyyy, dude?
At dinner, the staff brought out our dumplings, steamed and ready to eat! The kids’ first reaction was to run over to Alan and Carol’s table to ask if they wanted to taste one. Of course they did. We prepared a small plate and James carefully carried them across the dining room to his waiting friends.
Later, when they came over to thank the kids and compliment their skills, Willa said “Maybe we could meet up again — like, back home or something?” Their eagerness for socializing/human connection is the cutest slash saddest thing ever.
Then Willa said, “Let’s play anklebone again tomorrow — Carol, we can show you how to play.” Alan said, “Oh I never play boardgames with Carol because she always wins.” To which Willa replied, looking right at Carol, “Then you and I should play because I win every time.”
Carol looked at me and said, “A woman after my own heart!” Ha.
You’d think the day was done but no, there was more. At 8:30 we returned to the sunset lookout atop the hill, reunited with Ganzo and brought with us three little girls Willa’s age who live on the property (staff kids). No common language but they all ran up the hill together into the sunset, holding hands and laughing.
Another reason Willa and James are the perfect age for this trip: It’s so easy for them to make random BFFs. That probably slows down even at 10 or 11. Right now all they care about is having kids their age to play hide and seek, make snort and fart noises, draw, throw rocks, run races, etc.
We were up there until it almost dark. Ganzo ran around with the kids and we got to chatting with Aziz, a car dealership franchisee-owner from Vancouver — a Kenyan-born immigrant of Indian descent, educated in England. Yet another really interesting cool person we’ve met just today,
Misc:
There are almost only Americans at this lodge. The owner of Nomadic Expeditions is Mongolian but New Jersey-raised and has an office there. Seems like he’s helping spearhead the whole movement to attract big-money tourism to Mongolia. It won’t be long now until it’s a hotspot.
James and Willa have been SO GOOD on this Mongolia swing. We’re chalking it up to a combination of 1) new friends to talk to and 2) no juice. In Norway — scene of their most annoying/exhausting bad behavior (eg, not listening, whining, wrestling non stop) — they had so much juice at breakfast because the buffet had all these pre-poured glasses of juice to binge on and we somehow let it happen. We don’t allow ANY juice at home, so I’m not sure why we got lax. But the new rule is ONE small half glass of OJ at breakfast and water the rest of the day. And it’s made a difference.
Related: Many different people this week have expressed how impressed they are with the kids’ behavior and maturity.
Being in nature is so good for kids, especially for James who is both more skittish and more squeamish than Willa. These adventures help him with his bravery….
Ganzo has rocketed to the top of the guide charts. He is doting and goofy with the kids in a sincere way, and is young/cool person we’d actually be friends with which makes it fun for us too. He has some very American/familiar ways about him too: His laugh, strut and clothes make us think of a few people back home we know.
Mongolian people, especially the women, are really good looking. Perfect skin, very tan.
Ganzo told us there’s such a thing as “Mongolian Time.” Basically a holdover from nomadic culture, when people didn’t/couldn’t give an exact time for something. People show up when they show up, instead of at the appointed time. Punctuality is not part of the nomadic culture. We’ve been using it a lot.
“Threesday” = What James claimed was the day after Tuesday.
Willa and James love to play Top Three (a game they learned from Meg and Luke in Cape Town — pick your top three things of any given category and go around the room). Willa picked “Top Three Favorite Feelings” tonight and these were hers: Coming inside from a chilly dark mountain stop on our Andes train to the warm bar car for hot chocolate, the feeling of a butterfly landing on your arm, riding in a safari truck with the wind on your face. Incredible.
