Keira woke up at about 6:30am. Chris took her out ("wee coming!") and I tried to go back to sleep. The mozzies are still thick, so Chris and Keira collected pine cones to restart the fire and stand in the smoke. Apparently Keira said "I don't like camping. I want to sleep in a ger that has a floor and stuff." Toya is not awake - we have to wake her every morning. She says most of her clients usually like to sleep in (backpacker types I expect). There is a scene in "Long Way Around" where Ewan McGregor is camping in Siberia. He goes to the toilet in the bush and gets about 20 mosquito bites in the process - I just relived that scene. I should say that despite the bugs Dadal is a pretty place. The river valley is lovely and lush. The town itself is surrounded by pine and cypress trees. It really does look like where I grew up in Gippsland, with just a few more trees. The Dadal petrol station is the only one I have seen that is in a clearing among pine trees. We are camping on the edge of an evergreen forest, with some of the biggest trees we have seen in Mongolia. We even have two silver birch (or larch, I don't know my northern trees) and a view of a velvet green valley. Get rid of the bugs and it would be perfect.
We are down to eating stale bread and jam for breakfast. Mongolian breakfasts are pretty poor normally. We horrified Toya by trying to toast some of the dry bread over the fire. Trips like this always involve a series of ups and downs. This morning Chris and I counted the days left. That said, last night we all sat up around the fire and told stories about Mongolia and Australia. Toya also cooks great meals in the evenings. We found out that Toya has two children (9 and 2) and Baabaa has three children. Baabaa has also worked in China and Korea.
I can hear a cuckoo bird in the distance, I have not heard a real one before. Keira heard it too. Her reaction? "The cuckoo monster is coming to get me!" Both girl's are covered in bites despite being lathered in repellent. I counted 50 on Alesia. As I write Keira is sitting in the tent beside me playing a complex game with saches of Maxwell House instant coffee mix. The other day in the car she spent 20 minutes playing a game using only her fingers as the characters.
No, there is nothing wrong with my camera - they were just walking through the smoke in the trees
Dadal Museum
We got into town at 10:30am. Everything was still closed. We wanted to see the museum, but the caretaker was in Russia. Toya got mad at the district office, telling them that they should be able to open tourist facilities for tourists in the middle of summer. We wandered some shops while the hunt started for the spare key. We finally got in the museum (about young Genghis Khan and the town of Dadal). I came across Keira hugging an old moth-eaten stuffed deer in the display of wild animals. She got really made when I took her away from her "pet".
Keira with a statue of the young Genghis Khan. When I took a photo of the statue alone Keira told it to say "cheese"
After the museum we went looking for the spring that Genghis drank from as a boy. After one false start we found it. The day had turned hot so the girls were probably a bit disrespectful by putting the COLD water on their heads. Sallymae committed a cultural faux pas by putting her feet in the cold water. Toya has a thing about cold water being bad for you - we are always given cups of hot or warm water from the thermos to drink. Toya's explanation was that Mongolian's believe something bad will happen to you if you put your feet in the cold spring water. We left the spring and drove to the top of a high with a lookout and ovoo - of course where Ghengis was born.
Appreciating the spring, just like Genghis probably did
Hey Dad, I said it looked like Gippsland, didn't I!
Some tourists arriving on the hill got a special deal when their daughter posed with two walking barbie dolls
We suggested lunch and that's when we found out that Toya thought a normal time for lunch for 2pm. hadn't she noticed the girls complaining around midday for the past 3 days. We are still deep in Buriat territory - Mongolia's second largest minority group. Chris suggested to Toya that the great Genghis might have been Buriat. The quick replay was "The Buriat say this, but it is not true!" Everyone wants to own the great hero.
Graffiti in a roadside shelter
Baabaa and Toya figured out we like water. So we left Dadal and headed for another river, with hopefully less mosquitoes. About two hours later we left Dadal soum and headed into a dramatic landscape of rocky outcrops and lush vegetation, flanking a big muddy brown river. We drove across a big bridge and followed the river for a few kilometres. We rounded a bend and saw something very un-Mongolian - trees by the river giving shade to sandy bank....and two white bottoms. Parked beside the river was another Tsern Tours van, with the driver and the guide/cook sitting next to it.
We all got out. We watched the naked swimmers (two German guys, their clothes were drying on a travel clothesline strung between two branches, occasionally the guide got up to stop passing goats from nibbling at the clothes). Toya and Baabaa chatted with their counterparts, most likely comparing notes on their guests (Mine are smelly and say "das gut!" all the time. Mine get up really early and the kids are always hungry). Keira and Alesia were keen to go for a swing. We all stripped down to our underwear (no problems as the German guys were nude) and jumped in. It was freezing, but after four days without a wash we all got in and demonstrated our swimming skills. Even Baabaa got in and washed some shirts. Toya stayed on the bank, she can't swim and thinks we are all crazy. Sallymae produced some shampoo (biodegradable) and we all washed our hair [and Keira says that she looked like Noni when she went into the water in her black singlet, and Sallymae went swimming - Keira just asked what I was writing and added some thoughts].
See that black spot in the middle of the above photo? That is our car and three tents...
Keira doing some finger-painting by the light of the setting sun
Chris keeping busy collecting dried dung for the anti-mosquito fire
As I write now we are camped in what feels like the middle of green nothing. Toya said there would be less mosquitoes in the hills without trees. There are marginally less. But the view is marvellous, the birdsong sweet (birds that nest in the ground), and the sun and the clouds cast shadows the length of a city across the valley spread out in front of us. We are not completely alone, about 10km (or maybe more, it is hard to judge distance here without any landmarks) across the bottom of the valley I can see three white gers. Toya is frying up something nice for dinner. Chris is collecting dry dung for a fire. We are tired and glad we are past the half-way mark in our trip, but the view tonight is marvelous.
