Three Camels Lodge

After stopping off at a ger on the way to the lodge (tried some fermented mare’s milk, snuffed the snuff bottle and had a quick chat), we arrived at Three Camels Lodge and let out a massive sigh of relief. This is exactly what we wanted.

The gers are comfortable. Everything is clean. The staff are friendly. It’s peaceful. The food is delicious. The bathrooms are meticulously clean and there’s hot water for showers. There’s biodegradable soap in the bathroom, enough loos for everyone (flushable ones, might I add). The toilets are a 100m walk from our ger but the weather’s lovely so it doesn’t matter. The reception is one big ger, as is the dining hall. All meals are provided in the dining hall and when you’re fully stuffed with delicious food, there’s a big lounge room with a bar and comfy couches (and a great view!) to sit and read and watch the day go by. There’s plenty to do if you want to but we’ve found we’ve been too busy to do nothing.
The night of our arrival it was late so we ate dinner and had a decent sleep. The second day was filled with two journeys: one to see petroglyphs and one to see the Flaming Cliffs.
The petroglyphs are located at the top of some very course mountains. It’s a steep climb (down is worse though) and wouldn’t be suitable for anyone not particularly agile. But wholey dooley, it was worth it.




























Dad LOVED it. I did too, but there’s only so many pictures on rocks you can look at. I mean, they’re cool and the fact that they’re really old is cool – but there’s no point standing there and staring at the same one for ages. Which was good, because they’re everywhere. On lots of different rocks. We were sceptical – dad reckons they were made somewhere else (like, this year or something) and then placed there. We did a scientific experiment and concluded (with our great archaeological knowledge) that they’re definitely real. There were deer, reindeers, horses, camels, men with bows and arrows, ibex and a lot of unrecognisable things.
We scratched around for a while and walked back down the hill to go back for lunch.
Post-lunch we had a quick rest and moved out to see the Flaming Cliffs. We rode a camel for one hour which was pretty unnecessary. It wasn’t very exciting, but if we didn’t do it we wouldn’t have known. The camel lady was not very friendly and was the fattest Mongolian I’ve met. Not that it matters, it’s just how it is. Her daughter was particularly interesting. She had pink UGG ugg boots on (the proper brand – who knows where they came from!), black patterned tights, very very tight short shorts (she was large like her mother), a pink sleeveless mesh singlet, pink earrings, make up and a diamonty hair clip in her hair.








Off the camels, we hiked up the flaming cliffs (I hate rock climbing and that’s practically what we had to do, with no guide). It was worth it as the view was lovely. Geologically it was just a whole bunch of unconsolidated sand with a couple of different coloured veins and a 1m layer of tuff that acted as the cap. It was pretty cool though. We didn’t find any dinosaur bones but we found of couple of little fossils of ocean creatures.

The cliffs were great but I was expecting more. A cliff to me is something extraordinarily large. These were maybe 30m high, but they were still cool!
Back at the lodge we chilled out, showered, ate and slept. Ahhhhhhhh.
Today we were hoping to rest and read. Not going to happen. We are going to see the singing sand dunes, and to stay there for the night. We don’t want to pack/unpack but nevermind. It won’t hurt us. I just really like this lodge and I want to stay and wander around and take night time photos and walk along the basalt ridge that most definitely used to be a river bed.