Mongolia - Baga Gazriin Chuluu

Baga Gazriin Chulu

We left Ulaanbaatar on the first day of our tour, driving south to Dundgovi Province about 260 kilometres to Baga Gazriin Chuluu, a 15 km long and 10 km wide granite stone-mountain. The drive itself was beautiful: green rolling hills and distant mountains, and more horses, goats, sheep, cattle, and camels - yes, even camels! - than we could count in our first day and few hours of driving. And the green hills were covered in flowers. Even before we began our tour our guide told us it had been a very wet summer in Mongolia and in the Gobi which could affect the roads and our itinerary. What we learned very quickly is that a lot of rain means a lot of grazing, and in the middle-Gobi garlic chives as far as you can see.

Baga Gazriin Chuluu was amazing to explore - orange granite rocks emerging from the green steppe almost out of nowhere. We visited a cave where a Buddhist lama is said to have meditated for many years as well as a Buddhist monastery which was destroyed in the Communist revolution of the 1920s. The ruins of the monastery was quite beautiful, hiding in a grove of trees which the monks had planted beneath the rocky cliffs.

Our ger camp for that evening was located near the edge of the mountain, and we walked around the rocks in the afternoon before dinner. After dinner, we watched the glow of the sunset fade and the hills darken into twilight, meandered up the road to see the horses which had come closer to camp as night began to fall. Mars, Venus and Jupiter joined the moon in the sky and we went to sleep. Woke up at dawn to the soft sounds of of paws on the felt roof of the ger: upon investigating, it was a cat! It was the only one I saw throughout our trip.

Before breakfast we took a walk, watching the horses run and fight over the hills under dramatic clouds. It was another start to another beautiful day.

Driving from UB, hills covered in purple wilflowers.

Herding horses

Goats and sheep

And sheep and goats

First camel sighting!

Crow on an ovoo

Two crows on an ovoo

Garlic chives

Getting closer to our destination

Ruins of the monastery

The monastery ruins are hidden in those grove of trees

The blue of the blue scarves represents the sky

And the yellow scarves represent the sun.

Our ger camp

The thoroughfare to the ger camp

If you look closely, you can see a woman collecting dung for fuel in the distance

Blooming purple succulent

Being cute

Cool granite!

Inside our ger, which had more decorations than most of the gers we stayed in

View out our ger door

A very dramatic sky over the toilet