You’ll be riding on the horses yeah-ehhhhhhhh
We didn’t ride the horses this time but we sung the song on the way home.
Backtracking to Friday, I was sick again. No work for Sally. I just didn’t go to the office – I actually got some report writing done that’s not too bad. I’m still crook, chesty shitty thing again.
Party time at open mic night – different venue to the usual Xanadu gig and not as many people. I bought a glass of rose that had been sitting opened in the cupboard for at least a year. It was just the most disgusting thing ever. I’d prefer passion pop anyday over that disgustingness.
Saturday morning was an early start for a big day. The group of Australian volunteers (including myself) went for a day trip to Hustai National Park. It’s a two hour drive west of UB. The park itself isn’t visibly different from anywhere else around the area, except there are no gers because no one’s allowed to live there. There’s only one road that you have to drive on (unlike the rest of Mongolia where if one road is bumpy, you make a new one). We met the Mozzies – the Mongolians who have studied in Australia under the Mongolia-Australia scholarship. 28 people each year head to Australia to complete their masters or alike. They have to come back to Mongolia to work post-completion. A khorkhog was organised for lunch. I skipped it. I’m not a bit meat eater at the moment.
While everyone was eating their meat and pickled vegetables, I was watching two storms roll in. Mongolian storms are great. They’re actually worth watching. You can see them roll in, feel the change in the air, smell the rain coming and then watch them dissipate or move their wrath forward.
It was wonderful to watch. The storms were coming in at 90degrees from each other and they both were rumbling. Once they hit it was fairly heavy rain but they moved quickly.
But not quick enough: we caught them again when we went for a drive in the park. Someone spotted some horses. The horses are the Prezwalski Horse – or the Takhi as the Mongolians call them. They’re the horses that were/still are breeding at Western Plains Zoo in Dubbo. The Dubbo horses died fairly early on, but the actual breeding program is obviously successful as we saw some horses! We had one hour to get a bit closer. You’re not suppose to get within 300m of the horses. They were a long way away though, at the very top of a very steep mountain. I wasn’t going to go and then thought – what the hell. Exercise is good even if we don’t get a better vantage point.
The walk was fairly intense. We walked quickly and with purpose and had a strategy. We totally made it! We found the horses! It was so, so, so SO cool. These horses in their natural habitat – once extinct and now living again courtesy of a world wide breeding program. And we were standing there, watching these horses with their little baby horses eat and play. We couldn’t stay because of our time limit.
Either way we planned it, we were going to get wet. Ascending the mountain we watched another storm roll in. We could hear and feel the rumble of the thunder and it didn’t bother us. We were after the horses.
Within the first minute of our descent it started raining. Not the fine little droplets of rain that you can usually stay relatively dry in. It was the HUGE droplets of rain that PELT down and feel just like hail. If I was standing perpendicular to the ground, the rain was hitting me at a 30 degree angle which meant there was no escaping it. I tied my new cap over my camera which worked a treat. My cap was under my shirt. That didn’t help much because I was dripping wet within seconds.
It wasn’t an annoying rain though. It was so beautiful up there with the horse, looking out at the view, walking down the ridge in perfect temperature, being hit by heavy rain. The rain just made it more beautiful.
BUT we did get wet. Below: Dad’s new hat that he’ll get second hand when I get home (too expensive to buy two and I need one for the last month of summer and I know dad will want a cap with a hand-embroidered ‘Hustai NP’ symbol on it). The hat saved my camera. Yay! And right: my friends and I post-walk. Absolutely drenched, squelching in our boots. Note: the orange hat under my shirt where my camera was
On the way home we spotted a LOT of marmots – they’re a lot cuter when they’re alive, instead of looking like bloated teddy bears with no legs (when they’re cooked).
Everyone was super tired. We were almost to the main paved road when we hit some unstable sand in the bus. The driver thought he’d just fang it to try to get out. I yelped and got up- knowing he’d just made a deeper bog. There was no step to get out of the bus. Perfect getting-bogged conditions though. It wasn’t hot or cold, it was on sunset so there was no need for shade. The sand was dry by due to the rain was sticky enough that we could move it with ease. We collected some rocks/wood to help and dug out the wheels to no avail. A 4WD came to the rescue and pulled us out – and we were on our way! We sang the chorus of Daryl Braithwaite on the way home, still on a high from seeing the Takhi even though we were soaked to the bone.
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