life, upside down: Mongolia - Horse Trek to the Eight Lakes and Return to Orkhon Valley

Horse trekking in the Eight Lakes region

We left the ger camp in the Orkhon Valley in mid-late afternoon. Because the horses are not contained in any pasture but are free to roam where they please, our guide had trouble finding them because they had wandered far away. But, he found them (with the help of our driver, who was not the type of person to just sit around waiting for something to happen) and brought them back to camp, saddled them up, and after he ate a quick meal we were on our way.

Because we started out so late our first day's ride was not quite as leisurely as it might have been and we did not have time to stop and take photos of the beautiful scenery. It was absolutely gorgeous, and the first day's ride was a little bit magical with the golden afternoon light shining on autumn colours in a beautiful mountain valley as we rode. This was definitely my favourite part of our horse trek, and the most pleasant due to the fair weather (even though it rained a little before we reached our destination), the easy terrain, and the initial euphoria of the realisation of a life-long dream. From the get-go it was apparent I had gotten the most difficult horse who would not pay any mind to my instructions, but I didn't mind too much (except for a bit of embarrassment) when he tried to gallop off before I could rein him in.

We stopped at a family's ger as evening fell. This was not like the other ger camps we had stayed in where a family had a few extra ger for travelers to stay in, as this family had only one extra guest ger which we stayed in and our guides stayed in the family's pantry ger. We got up early in the morning to watch the goats waking up (it was really cute, mothers and kids would sleep next to each other!) and the women of the family milking the yaks.

It was a beautiful, crisp sunny morning. The sun got quite hot as we headed off through the valley, and we passed a large ger camp where we saw French-speaking tourists getting saddled up for their horse trek. It got a lot cooler as we headed into the forest, left the trail and started going up. (We realised on the way back that we had left the trail because it was wet, muddy and rocky.)

Unfortunately as we got to the top of the mountain pass it started to sprinkle.. then rain.. then downpour. We were wearing our raincoats at least but it was still cold and wet! We stopped for a bit until it let up, then headed down the other side of the mountain pass into a beautiful valley, with stretches of golden poplars, wide open marshes and huge beds of volcanic boulders. It was difficult terrain for the horses to travel, through brambles and muddy marshes and the path was rocky and difficult. It is worth noting that even in the best of conditions, the only way to get to this region is on horseback! (It was a bit of a comfort that our horses were experienced trail horses, who knew the trail quite well I trusted my horse to get me there, which he did (in the end at least.))

We arrived at our destination around midday, which was the edge of one of the eight lakes of the Naiman Nuur Eight Lakes National Park. We ate lunch and rested a bit, looked at the lake which was surrounded by the same volcanic boulders we'd seen ever since the Orkhon Valley, and when the sun came out we went for an afternoon ride to the largest of the lakes. It was another beautiful ride! We were a bit more daring with taking photos from the back of the horse and got a couple snaps along the way. Our destination was a beautiful, clear alpine lake surrounded by forested mountains. But we could see dark clouds coming in... so we hopped back on our horses for a quick return. Unfortunately we couldn't beat the rain, and got completely soaked on the way back. But it was quite cozy with the fire going in our little ger, and we got our clothes (mostly) dry before the morning.

The next day we were to Orkhon Valley. Unfortunately, because it had rained so much the trail was even tougher going back than it had been on our arrival, and we ended up walking our horses down the muddy, rocky mountain trail. And my favourite part of the ride, the ride from Orkhon Valley to the first family with whom we stayed, we weren't able to ride it again as the first half had taken so much time our guide called our driver to come pick us up.

The good thing about all that rain was the Orkhon river was full and the Ulaan Tsutgalan waterfall was raging! It was really neat to compare it, just two days apart but with (what must have been) a lot of rain in between.

Day one of the horse trek: Stopped for the evening

Day two of the horse trek: dawn breaks over the herd of goats

Sleepy goats

This old billy followed us around for a while

Small Mongolian horses with typical Mongolian saddles. (My horse is the one
with his head behind the tree..)

Setting off. We didn't really know it but we were about to head up over
that mountain

View out our ger door at the Eight Lake

Beautiful little blue flowers... I looked them up in a wildflowers of Mongolia
book I saw at the airport, but have since forgotten what they were.

Setting off on our afternoon horse trek to Shireet Lake, the largest of the Naiman Nuur

The pack horse tagged along even though our guides tried to get him to stay behind.
It was kind of cute (but he was a slow ambler and a bad influence on the other horses.)