Trips

       After the Orphanage visit, we headed to the Kazakh village of Nalaikh.  The Kazakhs are a Turkic people of Eastern Europe.  They are Muslims in a largely Buddhist country.  We stopped at a mini-market to buy snacks for our camp stay. 
          We arrived in Nalaikh at 11:30 and stopped at the local market to buy beef, potatoes, eggs, flour, apples and bananas, candles, and TP.  We took our purchases to the ger of a Kazakh family and helped grandma make noodle soup for our lunch.  Sue and I cut up beef and then helped to make noodles.  It was like Girl Scout camping.  The toilet was an outhouse with boards across a pit to squat over.  We saw the lean-to sheds for the family's four cows and their two-room winter house.  Although the interiors of the ger and the winter house were beautifully decorated with woven rugs, it is a relatively poor existence for this retired coal miner.  Before we left, grandpa let me hold his 35-pound golden eagle that he uses to hunt foxes.

On the way out of UB

 

Gers dot the countryside close to UB

Beautiful clouds and landscape at our mini-market stop

Ger of the Kazakh family in the Village of Nalaikh

 

Yard with outbuildings

 

Interior of the ger

Grandma and granddaughter

 

Cutting up the meat and potatoes

Rolling out the noodle dough

Cutting the dough into noodles

 

Grandma cooking the soup

Kazakh grandfather playing the Topshur

 

Winter home of the Kazakh family

 

Winter home interior

Winter home interior

The family's fox-hunting golden eagle

 

Gale and the golden eagle

 

Gale and the golden eagle

Neighbor children watching the proceedings

 

        We started to do a walking tour of the village, which has three brick factories and several coal mines.  We visited the Moslem mosque, which was built only last year.  The Imam came from Turkey and is paid by the Turkish government.  As we came out it started to rain heavily with lightening and thunder.  We aborted the rest of our village tour and headed to our camp.

 

Village of Nalaikh's Mosque

 

Interior of the Mosque

Interior of the Mosque

He asked to have their picture taken - wish I had a way to send it to him!

 

Storm over the Village of Nalaikh

 

View from the bus window

 

        You might say, "and then the fun began!" The main road to the ger camp (and beyond) was under construction and was totally closed. This meant that all traffic literally went overland on dirt roads.  Due to the very hard rain, we came to an area that was seriously washed out and our bus had to park because it could not drive through.  We sat for four hours watching cars and SUV's slip, slide, and get stuck in the mud.  During this time Lucky and the area OAT director, who was accompanying us, made phone calls to organize other options for the night.  One was to have the camp jeeps come and get three or four of us at a time and take us to our camp, the Guru Eco Camp.  The jeeps couldn't get through from the other side. One jeep arrived from UB (he was bringing groceries and supplies for the camp) and took three people to the camp.  Another jeep came and took three more of our tour and the Director to a second choice camp.  The first group told us the road and crossing the flooded streams was so scary and dangerous that they were staying put.  Our bus couldn’t turn around to head back to UB because other drivers said that the road back was flooded into a lake and was impassible.  Finally, several dump trucks with stones, a grader, two front-end loaders, and a bulldozer showed up and went to work clearing the road toward our camp and working to free the stuck cars.  It was a circus of activity.

 

 

Stopped by the floodwaters

 

This is not a river! Usually, only a ditch.

Cars stuck and stopped everywhere

Finally, help arrived

 

        Our bus eventually was able to take us almost to our camp but couldn't cross the last stream so a jeep ferried us across to a smaller bus and got the rest of us and our luggage to our camp for dinner at 8:30 PM.  What a wild day! Lucky and the OAT director really earned their pay today!!

 

Preparing traditional Mongolian lamb stew for our dinner

 

Our first ger

We thought this an appropriate symbol for us since the big horn sheep is the symbol of Rocky Mountain NP

 

Low doors! Very hard on the head when you forget.

 

 

 

        Our first ger was equipped with a very nice attached bathroom (except for the low doorway to access it). The camp staff came in to light the stove after dinner so that it is warm for us to go to bed, and again in the morning (around 6am) so it was warm enough to comfortably get out of bed. The nights were a little cool - great sleeping weather. All of our gers on the trip had electricity in the ger.

 

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