In which Chris goes horse trekking in the taiga.
From Naiman Nuur we returned to Orkhon Khürkhree, spent a night there and then headed into the North. Pausing at some ‘hot springs’, $5 to sit in a hot tub seemed somewhat exorbitant, it wasn’t exactly Yellowstone, we headed up to Tsetserleg and onwards to Terkhin Tsagaan Nuur, the Great White Lake. Surrounded by volcanic landscape peppered with extinct volcanoes and empty craters, this was one of the most beautiful places we’d seen. The water wasn’t too cold and the plans for organising a hike quickly evaporated in the face of sunbathing and swimming. Sadly the thing was marred for me by feeling extremely bad with an upset stomach. We did a few little walks, to the top of a small crater and to see some underground caverns and potholes, but whilst not eating for a day or two allowed me to get rid of the stomach cramps, it left me with no energy for anything but reading and dozing and lolling around in the water.
I’d hit my low point. I felt rubbish and had no energy. We been travelling about two weeks and the journey had worn me down, unending driving and discomfort doing their best to combine with feeling ill in miasma of self-pity. I basically wanted it to end. I was tired of eating nothing but rice and pasta alternate nights and was sick of the endlessness of the days of driving. The one good point was that losing my desire to eat meant I’d also lost my cravings for various luxury foods, such as beer and ice cream, and on occasion, pizza. It should be stressed at this point that our diet consisted entirely or rice, pasta, onions, garlic, tinned tomatoes and curry powder for dinner, bread and chocolate spread or local cheese (initially embraced but then ignored for the dire effects it sometimes produced) and porridge for breakfast. This might sound ok but try it - after two weeks it was really getting too much.
Gradually it passed and as we left the lake and continued north I begin to eat a bit and feel generally less pessimistic about the world. The North was perhaps the highlight of the trip for me. It was stunningly beautiful, as beautiful as anywhere I’d seen in New Zealand or California and far more remote. The Russian border lay around 50km to the north and the habitat was taiga, that classic image of Siberia of vast expanses of conifers, steep and inaccessible mountains and deep and sparkling lakes.
Khüvsgül Nuur is the world’s fourteenth largest source of freshwater (according to the guidebook anyway) and, surrounded by spectacular mountains, protected by the Khüvsgül Nuur National Park. The roads were difficult, steep and rocky and we often averaged 15 or 20km/h. It was cold too, cold enough (and drizzly enough on the first night) to persuade us to stay in a ger camp. We enjoyed two nights of relative comfort and luxury on the shores of the lake while we organised a horse trek.
We had three days of horse trekking and it could easily have been more. We had a guide, a couple of pack horses and our guide’s son along for the ride. Our first day took us along the edge of the water under grey skies. The guide, Boya, and his son, Vasandorje (but who got nicknamed Pitta for some ineffable reason), didn’t speak English but were cheery and helpful. There weren’t any lessons, we just sort of got plonked on a horse and it followed the one in front until it got bored and went a different way. Actually it wasn’t that bad – noone’s horse bolted in any significant way – and by the end of the day I was generally happy in making it go somewhere in the vague direction that I wanted, at least, if it wasn’t too far off the direction it wanted to go. We couldn’t remember their names so we gave them new ones, mine being Onyx because it was black and shiny (my camel had likewise been called Shakira, though I can’t remember exactly why anymore) and sort of mysterious.
We camped near the lake and spent the evening playing games with Vasandorje and then singing songs around the campfire, watching the stars and doing the hokey-kokey.
Our second day took us up into the mountains, into wild and rocky terrain where eventually we had to lead the horses by hand. Our campsite was at the head of a steep valley, looking out over the lake and the peaks stretching to Russia to the North. Another campfire night, followed by a sloping and sleepless night fending off the cold (remember that useless sleeping bag I had in Fontainebleau? well, I still had it, and this time I was 50km from Siberia). Our last day took us up and over the valley ridge, leading the horses by hand up a steep, steep hillside before pausing for breath at the top and then dropping down the other side to traverse a precipitous and impressive scree slope that plunged to the valley floor below. It was wild and perhaps the most exhilarating hour’s walk of the whole trip.
From Khüvsgül, two days of driving across the steppe and through the classic Central Mongolian landscape took us back to Ulaanbaatar, back to civilisation 23 days and 3,152km after we’d started.
And that was it really. Just like that it was over. It was time to go home.
