Day 194: Last Full Day in The Gobi — Bulgan Village — Babies Documentary — Flaming Cliffs — Special Sunset Performance
It rained hard last night which washed out our planned dinner and performance up the hill at the sunset viewing spot. The lodge staff rescheduled for tonight — more on that below.
We escaped the rain in our cozy ger — but the bugs had the same idea. We were in a war with dozens of these little black bugs and a handful of months. Harmless but annoying.
The situation was made worse by the fact that we were in day 2 of a blackout in the area. Lights worked on a generator but the outlets didn’t — so we couldn’t employ our fan in our battle.
Margaret didn’t sleep great as a result.
[Update: We mentioned the bug situation to Ganzo and he said he only had one bug all night. We sorta thought this was just part of living in the ger but he said that shouldn’t happen. The lodge staff must have done something during the day because tonight we had far fewer bugs.]
The temperature had dropped about 15 – 20 degrees overnight.
I worked out on the hill behind the lodge, taking in the perpetual sky and trying to savor our last few hours in this remarkable part of the world.
After breakfast we loaded up and drove 30 min to the small village of Bulgan. Apparently when a community gets over 1000 people they get more of an “official” village designation.
There wasn’t a whole lot to see: a few little stores, a gas station, several street dogs, a school with a playground. But I think that’s the point.
Bulgan was also experiencing a blackout so there was a constant hum from generators working to power the stores and homes.
When we got home we went to the “cinema” at the lodge — a cozy movie room with couches and a huge TV. Ganzo had coffee and tea prepared for us.
We chose to watch Babies, a documentary about 4 babies from birth to walking. The babies are from Namibia, Mongolia, Tokyo and San Francisco. It was a good mix of fascinating and cute. The kids enjoyed it too. It was one more reminder in a growing list of how lucky we are (and our kids are) to be born in the US.
After the movie Ganzo played us a short documentary on the first discoveries of dinosaur fossils at the Flaming Cliffs — our afternoon destination. After watching this and hearing yesterday’s paleontology presentation, we were sufficiently fired up for this experience.
The Cliffs are about 35 minutes away from the lodge. They are called “flaming” because the dirt has high levels of copper which reflects the sun — especially at sunset. It’s a major attraction for The Gobi — meaning that there were maybe 15 vehicles in the parking lot plus a handful of people hiking from nearby camps.
We walked onto the cliffs from two different angles to get some good pics.
Then we got back into the SUVs and drove down away from the other tourists, right into the area where fossils have been found. It’s crazy, there are no guards, no restrictions, nothing. Apparently this is all changing next year but we had free reign.
Sogey (sp?) our driver had been there recently with the Paleontologist and walked us to an area where you can find *actual* fossils. Seriously. After he pointed out one spot I walked about 40 feet, saw something white in the dirt, started digging and brushing and found some of my own. We were holding fossils of dinosaur bones that had been in that dirt for millions of years.
Ganzo disappeared for a minute then came out wearing a blow up dinosaur costume and running after the kids. It was so unexpected and hilarious.
The weather had cleared so we were looking forward to our dinner and musical performance at the sunset spot, a reschedule after last nights rainout.
It turned out to be one of the truly memorable highlights from our year thus far. They had a bar setup at the permanent wooden hut and had put together a beautiful table under a tent with 5 folding chairs. Ganzo joined us.
As desert was served and the sun peeked below a cloud to create an incredible sunset backdrop, the performance began. We had met these kids a couple days ago so it was great to see them play and dance. They were legitimately good.
It would have been a special end of our Gobi visit to just see the performance — but in their second to last song they asked Willa and James to join them.
I *happened* to have jokingly mentioned at the beginning of dinner that if they performed tonight they could eat one of the chocolates in our ger. I’m not sure if that impacted anything but we were stuuuuned to see Willa, and especially James, join a dance with the kids. I had a huge smile on my face the entire time.
What an end to a 5 day experience we will certainly never forget.
5:50am departure for UB tomorrow.
Additional Notes:
Mongolian Time: Ganzo explained that Mongolians are on “Mongolian Time.” They really don’t think about being punctual in any way. Unsuprisingly this comes from their nomadic culture — if you were traveling 30km across the desert on food you never really knew when you were going to show up.
Cheers in Mongolia: When we got to the sunset spot for our pre-dinner drink, Ganzo had a beer and Margaret and I had G&Ts. It was the first time we had seen Ganzo have a drink the whole time we’ve been with him. He wanted to show us how Mongolian’s do “cheers” before a drink: you dip the tip of your ring finger into your drink, then you flick some of your drink (1) up to the blue sky; (2) out to all living creatures and (3) down to Mother Earth. The history here is that generals would dip their rings into their alcohol to make sure it wasn’t poisoned. If it was, it would have discolored the drink.
Talking Baseball: Willa has been reading her Kindle like a champ. Her latest book is the “Who Was Jackie Robinson” biography. We’ve been talking about Satchel Paige, Roy Campanella, Pee Wee Reece, the Negro Leagues, the Hall of Fame, etc. I cannot overstate how amazing this is! Love that little bookworm.
